Ghost Ship

  Ghost Ship

  SPARROWHAWK BOOK 2

  Kathryn Hoff

  Copyright © 2019 by Kathryn Hoff

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Cover Design by JD&J Design © 2019 by Kathryn Hoff

  Book Layout © 2017 BookDesignTemplates.com

  Ghost Ship/ Kathryn Hoff. —1st ed.

  For Ari

  CHAPTER 1

  The gambler

  Kojo strode down Kriti City’s broad avenue in dress jacket, shiny boots, and weapons belt, swaggering past music-blaring bars and brothels like he captained a man-o’-war. I marched at his right flank, tricked out as a bodyguard in some of Papa’s old mercenary gear: armored vest, blade-resistant collar, and two stun pistols. With my hulking size and heavy, half-Neanderthal features, no one would take me for Kojo’s little sister.

  In Kriti, that hardscrabble cesspool of cutthroats and fugitives at the edge of navigable space, we drew barely a second glance.

  From the portside avenue lined with glittering palaces for drink, gambling, and other indulgences, we turned into a side street of pawnshops and flophouses. A few minutes’ walking carried us out of the Terran quarter completely.

  The Selkid streets had a different kind of glitz. Residents the size and shape of upright walruses waded through watery alleys. The walls echoed with their raucous calls, like tin pots cascading onto bricks. On every corner, seal-sleek Selkid geishas barked for trade and the eating troughs stank with fungus and seaweed.

  Kojo paused at an arched doorway flanked by armed bouncers. “This is it, Patch. Stay close.”

  Trust my half-brother to recognize the sign for casino in any language.

  At Kojo’s whispered question, the doorman waved a flipper toward a shadowy corner. We weaved between busy chinko tables, barely noticed by gamblers intent on the spinning wheels and tumbling dice. We were not unobserved, however: imagers and automatic sniffers dotted the ceiling, poised to capture every turn of a hand or flipper. Along the walls lounged slender young Selkid toughs wearing Ordalo’s red-and-black livery. Each of them bore armor and weapons far better than my hand-me-downs.

  Steps in the back corner led to a dais that overlooked the gambling floor. There, a mountainous Selkid draped in shimmering robes lounged on a couch, munching on a platter of greens. Two little geishas wallowed nearby to tend to his needs.

  Kojo climbed the steps and bowed politely. “Mzee Ordalo. I am Captain Babatunji of the cutter Sparrowhawk.”

  The Selkid paused his grazing long enough to point to a stool. It was so low that anyone seated on it would have to crouch like a frog.

  Kojo obediently squatted. I took up position behind him, my hand resting on my stunner.

  Ordalo screeched like a tortured rooster. His translator plug squawked, “I have heard unpleasant rumors, Captain. Rumors about your association with the Corridor Patrol.”

  Kojo waived a dismissive hand. “There were complications, now resolved. Tragically, the Patrol officer in question died in the line of duty. An honored hero.”

  Ordalo ruffled his neck fur at that. “Indeed? I have heard you are resourceful. Perhaps we can do business again in the future. I always have a need for reliable, specialized transport services.”

  Ancestors! I clenched my teeth to keep them from grinding. My sincere hope was that once the meeting was finished, we’d never see or hear from Ordalo again.

  “I’ve heard rumors as well,” Kojo said. “Rumors that the Settlement Authority is cracking down on tech smuggling in this sector…and you’re in their sights.”

  The Selkid’s snicker rang out like a rusty hinge. “I circulate such rumors myself to drive up prices. Don’t be concerned. I have a business arrangement with the Settlement Authority’s sector commander—and business is good.”

  I fought down a moment of panic. Surely he was just bragging? He couldn’t really have the Authority in his furry pocket, could he?

  Ordalo belched. “Now, where is my item?”

  One side of Kojo’s mouth quirked up. “Broken up into three cargo drones, orbiting a moon between here and the jump gate.”

  Ordalo held out a flipper. “The coordinates and access codes.”

  Kojo didn’t move. “My markers.”

  For long moments, Ordalo chewed. I held my breath.

  Ordalo grunted. A geisha passed over a datacon.

  Kojo kept his eyes on Ordalo. “Take a look, Patch.”

  I scanned the entries. Kojo’s gambling debt, discharged. The lien on our ship, released. The indentures that threatened to put me and Kojo into three years of servitude, canceled.

  We were nearly there, the end of the nightmare we’d been trapped in.

  Forcing myself to stay calm, I nodded to Kojo. “The releases look good, Captain. Once Mzee Ordalo imprints them, we’ll hand over the coordinates and codes.”

  Ordalo’s facial wrinkles doubled in the Selkid version of a grin. “I prefer to do things properly. The releases will be filed after my buyer has retrieved the item and verified that all is as promised.”

  “We’ve done our part.” The strain in Kojo’s smile was probably lost on the Selkid. “We carried the goods. If your buyer has a problem, that’s not our concern.”

  “I am making it your concern,” Ordalo said. “How do I know the goods are there, eh? How do I know you have not substituted an inferior product?”

  “I know better than to cross someone as powerful as you, Mzee,” Kojo said.

  “Then there will be no problem.”

  Ordalo raised a flipper. One of the geishas hurried to place a seat—an actual chair with arms, not a lowly stool—between Ordalo and Kojo.

  After a moment, a blue-robed Gavoran woman stepped up to the dais and seated herself on the chair. Her pale face was lined with age and her blond pelt thinning, but sharp eyes peered from under her Neanderthal brow ridge. Around her neck she wore the etched-glass seal of Lumina Escrow.

  She bowed to Ordalo, then nodded to Kojo. “I am Ghiel, certified escrow agent.” Her glance paused as she registered my mixed-race features, but she was too well-schooled to react with more than a tightening of lips.

  A geisha ran a scanner over the woman’s right shoulder, showing the readout confirming her identity first to Ordalo, then to me and Kojo. To be certain the scanner hadn’t been tampered with, I ran it over my own shoulder. Pachita Babatunji, Terran.

  I nodded to Kojo. “The escrow agent is acceptable.” Lumina was the best—neutral agents protected by law and tradition, facilitators of trade between star systems among unknown parties. The only reason I didn’t use them for Sparrowhawk’s trades was because we couldn’t afford the commission.

  Ordalo imprinted our releases and handed the datacon to the agent, reciting the instructions. “Lumina will file the releases with the registrar upon the buyer’s acceptance of the goods delivered at the coordinates provided. If the buyer rejects the goods, Lumina will destroy both the releases and the goods.”

  And in that case, Ordalo would come after us, armed with all the legal right to take our ship and the next three years of our lives.

  The escrow agent handed me the datacon.

  I hesitated. “We need a time limit. If the buyer won’t commit within a week, Lumina should file the releases.”

  “These things take time,” Ordalo grunted. “Forty-nine days.”

  “Fourteen.”

  Ordalo growled from deep within his torso. “I do not dicker. Twent
y-eight days, or leave now.”

  No choice. Our ship, our livelihood, and our freedom depended on this deal going through. Every passing hour brought another chance that something might go wrong.

  I input the orbital coordinates of the drones and the access codes to retrieve the goods stashed within them.

  “We are done,” Ordalo said. “Go now, Captain Babatunji.” He snuffled back into his trough of greens.

  At Ordalo’s curt dismissal, my fists clenched with the urge to strike back. Ordalo’s organization had used Kojo’s gambling habit to trap us into transporting a microbial synthreactor, a highly illicit piece of terraforming equipment. We’d smuggled the thing for weeks in the bulkheads of our space hauler, facing danger at every checkpoint and jump gate. Now, we’d given Ordalo everything he’d demanded—but he was sending us away to wait.

  As we retreated across the gambling floor, Kojo paused at the chinko table.

  Ancestors! Even after all the trouble his gambling had caused, he still had the urge to make a play. “Not now!” I grabbed Kojo’s arm to steer him toward the door.

  One of the door guards uttered an ear-piercing shriek—just before a stun blast knocked him across the floor.

  Armed Terrans rushed in, wearing the gray coats of Kriti’s police garda. “Everyone down! This is an arrest!”

  Burzing hell. That wasn’t part of the plan.

  Chinko dealers grabbed for the cash on the tables. Geishas and customers dived for the floor.

  Kojo jumped left. I leaped right, ducking under a table. A big Selkid shoved in after me: I had to roll out of his way to keep from being crushed.

  Amid the melee, I noticed a geisha worming her way at speed toward a hatch near the wall. I followed on all fours, but when she slipped into a water-filled gutter and slid out of sight, I turned aside. That was no escape route for a terrestrial species.

  The garda were throwing nets over thrashing Selkids. I crouched behind an overturned couch. Where was Kojo? The floor was a scrum of kicking, slithering bodies; the air was filled with howls, growls, hollers, and screeches.

  On the dais, above the fray, stood the pale blue figure of the Lumina agent Ghiel, immune from arrest or interference.

  A garda thudded past as I scrambled backward out of his way. Kojo’s familiar tones shouted, “Let me go, you moron!”

  Kojo!

  I craned over the couch to see what was happening and caught a boot at the side of my head.

  The day before, Kojo and I had faced two Gavoran officials: a dour Settlement Authority administrator and a downright hostile Corridor Patrol subcommander.

  For our meeting site I’d chosen a grav pellet processor on the plains outlying Kriti City, a place we had a legitimate reason to visit. The Gavs didn’t like it—the vacant manager’s office was little more than a shack—but it made a good place to avoid being observed.

  Gritty dust frosted the shack’s window and lined the battered table and chairs. A small dust drift, criss-crossed by mouse tracks, obscured each corner.

  Kojo turned to the Gavs with wide eyes, his handsome brown face at his most open and sincere.

  “You understand, don’t you? We’re victims here. They showed us the contract and told us Dad agreed to carry goods to the Kriti system. We had no idea it was a synthreactor until after it was aboard ship. By then we were stuck. Those forged indentures threatening our freedom, liens on our ship—we didn’t dare alert the authorities.”

  Mzee Yaga from the Settlement Authority peered from under her heavy Neanderthal brow ridge. Green-robed and blond-pelted, she sat with back straight, hands demurely folded over her lap to avoid the dirty tabletop.

  “Why do you imagine they selected you for this scheme?” She spoke in fluent Terran, with just a trace of upper-class Gav accent.

  Although Kojo was Sparrowhawk’s captain and eight years older than me, her question was directed to me, perhaps because I was half Gavoran, or perhaps simply a reflection of Gavorans’ matriarchal society.

  I tried to match Kojo’s innocence. “Our pilot, Hiram Willows, is from the Kriti sector and knows the space close to the Gloom. And of course, our father’s sudden death left us vulnerable. We had no way to know whether he’d actually made that agreement with Ordalo or not.”

  Yaga sat back, thin lips pursed. Her badge proclaimed her a member of Mountain Clan, a clan of administrators and managers. I wondered what she’d done to get sent to a bilge-sucking post like Kriti.

  She glanced at the battle-scarred subcommander beside her and murmured in Gavoran, “There must be an illegal colony in the sector. There could be no other reason to bring a synthreactor here.”

  I kept my face bland, pretending not to understand the language.

  The microbial synthreactor was a sophisticated bit of terraforming tech, left behind by a now-extinct advanced race. Able to use available elements to synthesize microbes to foster plant growth, a synthreactor could turn a wasteland into farmland. No one had been able to replicate the alien technology it used, and with very few synthreactors still in existence, the Settlement Authority hoarded them jealously.

  An unregulated synthreactor could transform a barren planet into a colony site. It could also change a poor but peaceful sector into a war zone.

  In theory, the Settlement Authority represented all space-traveling races, doling out the right to terraform and settle new planets rationally and impartially. But the aliens who had settled a few of Earth’s Neanderthals onto the planet Gavora had made Gavorans heirs to all their jump gate and terraforming tech—and Gavs didn’t like to share. They especially didn’t like the idea of stray terraforming tech in the hands of their violent, adaptable, expansion-loving Terran cousins.

  The subcommander leaned his arms on the table, heedless of the dust, and spoke to Kojo. “Where is the unauthorized colony?”

  Kojo blinked. “We don’t know anything about a colony. We were told to bring the synthreactor to this sector and stash it. Then, on the target date, we let Ordalo know the location. That’s all.”

  The subcommander’s hooded eyes bored into Kojo’s. “I do not forget that it was aboard your ship a respected Patrol officer died.”

  Kojo tensed.

  I tapped the table to bring attention back to me. “Neither do we. His heroism will be long remembered.” In fact, some of the dead man’s personal effects still lay in one of Sparrowhawk’s lockers, but this didn’t seem like the time to bring it up.

  Kojo stirred in his seat. “Look, we’re doing our best to cooperate, but we’re taking a big risk delivering a tagged synthreactor to an outlaw like Ordalo. If we do this, you’ll drop the smuggling charge? And you’ll have to promise we’ll be released from the indentures and mortgage that Ordalo’s holding over us.”

  Yaga pursed her lips as if smelling something nasty. “We only reward positive results. The charges against you will be dropped once we trace the synthreactor to the illegal settlement. The other matters are between you and your creditors. According to you, your delivery of the synthreactor will discharge your debts, so you should have no reason to worry.”

  No reason to worry? Our livelihood and freedom were in the hands of others, our fate out of our control.

  Kojo glanced at me, his eyebrow raised in question, but I had nothing to offer. We were helpless, stuck like flies in a web.

  I touched my ear to signal assent. What choice did we have?

  “All right,” Kojo sighed. “But you have to make sure nobody knows, ever, that we helped you out with this. Ordalo has some very nasty friends.”

  “Of course,” Yaga replied. “You have the word of the Settlement Authority.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Questions

  The garda who raided the casino—local Kriti police, not the Gav Corridor Patrol—netted me like a fish, together with a Selkid geisha with a broken translator plug. An officer took my stunners and shoved me into the back of a transport with the others who’d been too slow.

  “I’ll want
those back,” I shouted, but the only response I got was a laugh.

  Crammed in with a dozen other arrestees, I did my best to stay quiet and out of the way of teeth, flippers, and smelly bits. No sign of Kojo, giving me hope that he’d gotten away.

  Processing at the garda facility got me tossed into a Terran holding cell along with a gaggle of gamblers and three chinko dealers. The gamblers hooted and shouted demands for lawyers, food, and better accommodations. Down the hall, the Selkid prisoners did the same, but louder.

  Chief among those shouting from the Selkid cell was Ordalo.

  In my cell, the chinko dealers settled quietly against the wall and appeared to go to sleep. I figured they’d had experience with this sort of thing and found a not-too-uncomfortable position near them for a doze.

  Someone kicked my foot. “Hey, look here! It’s a Gav gorilla. What’re you doing in here, monkey girl?”

  I stood slowly, letting the liquored-up fool take in my size—as tall as him and broader in the shoulders. With my back-sloped Gav forehead, heavy brow ridge, and thick neck, only my thrusting nose and uncontrollable orange curls marked my father’s Terran blood.

  “What I’m doing,” I sneered, “is not punching the lights out of any moron looking for a fight.”

  “Moron?” The idiot proved my point by throwing a punch.

  One thing about being a hybrid—I had a lot of practice fighting. I didn’t bother to slip the punch, just let his puny fist connect with my heavy-boned jaw.

  “Ahh!” He bent over, cradling his injured hand against his stomach. In that position, it was easy to grab him by belt and collar and lift him off the ground.

  The others in the cell backed away, eyes wide.

  I dumped him at their feet. “Better look after him. Next time I won’t be so gentle.”

  After that, they left me alone.

  In truth, I was more than ready to punch somebody out of sheer frustration. The casino raid was all wrong. The Settlement Authority enforced its technology restrictions through the all-Gav, incorruptible Corridor Patrol and not the bribery-rife Kriti garda. And while the Settlement Authority was vitally interested in shutting down tech smuggling routes, they wanted Ordalo free for now, at least until he picked up the synthreactor and led the Authority to his buyer and the illicit terraforming site.