DarkShip Thieves Read Online Free Page A

surrounding gloom.
    My throat closed. It was a darkship. It was a darkship piloted by the descendant of the biorulers. The biorulers had been inhumanely intelligent, modified to be that way. They'd also been unable to reproduce—leading to their being called Mules—to ensure that the human race survived. But if this was a descendant, they must have been able to reproduce? Or was this one of the original biorulers? How long did they live? And what did they want with us? Their rule of Earth had been utterly ruthless. They'd moved and eliminated populations without regard. What would they do with me?
    In a panic, I looked behind, looked around for a harvester. But there was no one in sight. I tried to move away from the ship, but I seemed to have caught somehow. All I managed was a long, painful scrape.
    And all of a sudden my com button pushed itself down and a voice came over it. A deep, male voice, with an odd accent. "Blazing Light," it said. "Why are you scraping my sensors?"
    I froze. This thing wasn't a ship. It was a creature. A dark, huge and powerful creature. And I'd injured it.
     

Four
    "Sensors?" I said, in the general direction of the com, sounding far less assured than normal.
    There was a pause. Then the voice said, " Light ," as though that ought to mean something. "Ship sensors," the voice said at last.
    I blinked at the dark sphere. So it was a ship? Not a being? I felt fearful, which was odd.
    It's not that I didn't understand the meaning of fear. I understood it perfectly. Fear was what little old ladies who ran expensive boarding schools felt when they took a look at me. That was why they refused to admit me, unless dad brought force or money to bear. Fear was what larger young men who ran military academies felt after I got the first one over on them. And that was why they called Daddy Dearest in hysterics and demanded I be taken home again.
    What I didn't understand was feeling fear. But neither could I deny I was afraid of this dark, secret ship—this legend come to life. Could it just be another type of harvester? What, all black? To . . . what? Allow its fellows to ram into it? Or to play a prank on tourists? Likely, except that Circum Terra and the powertrees were not open to tourists. Only to butting-in Juvenile Patricians. And those were few and far between.
    Trying to understand who this might be, trying to figure out how to react, I stayed quiet long enough that the voice said, in the tone of one who has reached an unpleasant decision, "Right. I'm bringing you in."
    Bringing me in? "Bringing me in to where?"
    "The Cathouse," the voice said, with an absolutely matter of fact tone.
    I blinked, and my panic receded. The whole sequence of events from waking up with Andrija Baldo in my room to some space-borne bordello's kidnaping me only made sense—and perfect sense at that—if one assumed that I was dreaming.
    The certainty that I remained safely tucked away in my bed, in the space cruiser, kept me still and only mildly curious as something grabbed the lifepod. I didn't know what it was, not to draw a diagram but it looked like a mechanical claw that enveloped the transparent ship from all directions and . . . pulled and shoved. My stomach, already tempted my lack of gravity, now did its best to catapult towards my mouth.
    I had a moment of doubt, because one doesn't normally feel queasy in dreams, and then stopped thinking about it because the claw shoved me neatly through a membrane, then another—an air lock?—and into a vast, dark space.
    How vast it was, I couldn't tell, because it was dark. Though not dark as outside. More a twilight type of darkness, a veiled light—like a late Summer sunset over the Mediterranean.
    My lifepod was set down, with a resounding metallic thud and then the claw withdrew. I counted to five. Then to five again. Everything in me wanted to move. I wanted to open the door. I wanted to take off running. I did not want to sit here, waiting, confined—my