DarkShip Thieves by Sarah A. Hoyt Page A

fleeing through the Power Tree Ring. I rendered assistance." A steely kind of casualness had crept into Klaavil's voice. It was a tone that should have been impossible, except that it was exactly how it sounded. He wanted to—and did—sound offhand, but at the same time it was clear he was wielding that casualness as a weapon. He knew that picking me up was, if not a crime, a serious disruption of routine. There was no possible way he could have failed to know it. But he was too stubborn to admit that he'd done anything at all out of the ordinary.
    "You rendered . . ." the voice boomed away into speechlessness, which went very badly with whatever was being used to amplify it. "You can't have rendered assistance to a Patrician of Earth! And what was she fleeing from?"
    He looked at me, as if for a cue. I'd told him the whole story in the last month, but he seemed to be deciding exactly what he should tell them. Or perhaps, I thought, taking the measure of the man, or perhaps thinking up the most outrageous response possible.
    "Mutineers," he finally said.
    "Mutineers?"
    "Mutineers took over her father's space cruiser, waylaid the Good Man Milton Sinistra and pursued his daughter, after she escaped in a lifepod, intending to make Circum. I found her in the power tree ring, and I rendered assistance."
    This time the silence was absolute. It was an unnatural silence, without even the traces of breathing or of clothing rustling, or of anything at all that might indicate a person on the other side. I wondered if they had turned the sound off completely. Had they gone away and decided to ignore us.
    The silence extended, becoming, of itself, an answer. Kit at first sat expectantly, leaning towards the sound receptor on the console. But after a while he sat back, frowning at the screen, and then at the keyboard, and then at the screen again. He looked up at the domed dimatough ceiling, as if he expected the voice to be cowering up there, somewhere, possibly scared of his glare.
    Then, in an undertone, sounding like he was putting an end to a long-drawn-out conversation, he said, "Right." He paused. His fingers drummed on the console. "Right. "
    He leaned forward, once more alert, full of purpose and pressed a red dot on the console. "Eden Base," he said. "Please give me docking coordinates, so you can bring me in."
    He let go the red dot, which must have been some sort of emergency communication device, because immediately after his words, there was frantic crackling, and the sound of someone breathing fast, as if he'd run a long distance. "Cat Klaavil," the voice, said, sounding monstrously amplified, but far less sure of itself. It was as if the voice were a kid dressed in daddy's shoes and stepping on stilts, trying to appear bigger and utterly failing. "We regret to inform you that we cannot bring you in."
    "No?" Kit sound terribly calm. I wondered what he intended to do? Were we to live off space and virtus of family gatherings?
    "We don't have a procedure to deal with this issue. I . . . In two hundred and fifty years of recorded landings, this has never happened."
    "I see," Klaavil said. He still sounded very calm. He took a deep and deliberate breath, which I was sure was as much to be heard on the other side as to steel himself. Something like a light of battle came into his eyes, and he said, "I am Christopher Bartolomeu Klaavil, flying the Cathouse on behalf of the Energy Board of Eden." He ignored an attempt at interruption, what sounded suspiciously like a voice about to tell him they knew that . "I have collected six ripe powerpods, which are right now on my cargo hold. I am now requesting landing coordinates so I can be brought safely into Eden—"
    "We explained we cannot—"
    "Should I fail to get landing coordinates, considering I have no other alternative for landing, I will have to fling my ship at Eden, in the hopes of somehow hitting near the entrance of a landing bay. Of course, I have no idea where that