Ghost Ship Read Online Free Page A

orbit when you came in. The Council of Clans named the day and the hour by which we were to depart Liad; anything we left behind to be forfeit to the Council. The delm wished to leave nothing to the Council, and my brother Edger, whom you met, was instrumental in negotiating with the Clutch Elders for the loan of a ship large enough to transport the Tree and this house.”
    It was said so reasonably that it took a heartbeat for the sense of the words to hit Theo.
    The Clutch asteroid ship in orbit was going to pick up the entire house, Jelaza Kazone, with the enormous tree growing out of the house’s center, and transport them ?
    Not possible . She was opening her mouth—maybe to tell him so, when he cocked his head, as if he’d heard a sound so soft it had slipped past her own excellent ears.
    “Miri will be with us very soon.”
    “How do you know that?” Theo demanded, which might have been less rude than whatever she’d been going to say about his transport . Maybe.
    Val Con gave her a bland look from bright green eyes.
    “We are lifemates. We share thoughts, feelings and memories.”
    Some of what she thought about that must’ve shown on her face because he smiled faintly.
    “Yes,” he said, “but it does not seem so to us. In fact, nothing could be more natural. Now . . .” There was a slight pause. “Such bondings are not unusual in our clan.”
    “Sorry to be late!” Miri swept into the room, dropped into the empty chair, and gave Theo a grin.
    “You’re looking well rested, Pilot. Ready to tell out that complicated problem of yours?”
    For all it was asked in easy Terran, Theo had a sense of—sharpening—as if the air in the room had suddenly taken on an edge. She looked at Val Con; he inclined his head, inviting her to start.
    Theo took a breath.
    “Actually,” she said, “it’s two problems.”
    * * *
    They were good listeners, the Delm of Korval, and in less time than Theo would have thought possible, she had laid the whole mess before them, from Win Ton’s unintentional, if not exactly accidental, waking of the ship Bechimo ; his sending the second key—the Captain’s key, by chance—to her, without telling her what it was; his subsequent capture, torture and escape; their meeting on Volmer; the realization that Bechimo —which Win Ton, and the Uncle, too, considered an aware and emancipated AI—was looking for her . And her last, terrible sight of Win Ton, unconscious inside the autodoc on the Uncle’s ship; his prognosis certain death, unless Bechimo , with the last uncontaminated record of Win Ton’s DNA in her archives, found Theo, and accepted her as Captain.
    “Scouts have a bias against Old Tech,” Val Con murmured, when finally she came to an end of it and slumped in her chair, exhausted with the telling. “An emancipated AI—one who has killed to protect her integrity, as might any other person.” He smiled, wryly, to Theo’s eye. “Yes, it is complicated, Theo Waitley. Congratulations. Truly, you are of the Line.”
    She blinked at him. “What?”
    “His idea of a joke,” Miri said. Leaning forward, she poured pale yellow liquid from the blue bottle into a glass. “Don’t dignify it.”
    Theo nodded, took the glass offered, and cautiously sampled the contents. Lemon water.
    “It seems to me that we are best served in the short term by doing nothing,” Val Con continued, accepting a glass from Miri in his turn.
    The red-haired woman nodded, poured for herself, and leaned back in her chair.
    As if in counterpoint, Theo leaned forward.
    “Wait—nothing? Win Ton’s dying ! And what if Bechimo does find me? What am I supposed to do with a ship the Scouts want to kill? Hide it under my pillow?”
    Miri laughed. Val Con shook his head.
    “Your friend is well enough for the short term,” he said, sounding startlingly like Father when he thought you were being exceptionally stupid. “Your employer’s healing units are everything he told you, and possibly more.