Ship Child Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  SHIP CHILD

  About the Author

  SHIP CHILD

  Doomsday Ship #3

  Barbara Lund

  Copyright © 2019 Barbara Lund

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2018

  ISBN: 1-944127-25-9

  ISBN-13: 978-1-944127-25-1

  www.barbaralund.com

  For Holly’s Forum Members.

  You know who you are, and you know why.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Adrien Raigne for the art;

  The Desolate never truly existed until you drew her.

  Thanks to EJ Clarke at SilverJay Editing for editing.

  Any mistakes left are mine.

  The tiny asteroid floating in a field of larger rocks didn’t have much to recommend it, except an encrypted beacon—codes only given to trusted associates—and an enormous shuttle-bay door. From the exterior of the belt, every asteroid looked the same. The owner of this one had gone to great lengths to keep it that way, and if we hadn’t known what we were looking for or how to find that beacon, we’d have had to wander for years.

  Assuming they could find this specific rock, any uninvited guest would be ambushed and destroyed by the shipkillers hidden in a cluster around the beacon. I had heard of warships with less ammo.

  Lucky we had a standing invitation.

  I couldn’t wait to get out of my current disguise—prosthetic nose, gold eyes, blue nails and lips. I’d been wearing it when we kidnapped Madelene and as soon as she was off my ship, it would be gone. “Josue,” I muttered, staring out the front viewscreen of the Desolate while eyeing the shadows where I thought the shipkillers might be hiding, “transmit our code.”

  “What do you think I’ve been doing?” he snapped from one of the port speakers, then paused. “Sorry, Tal.”

  “S’okay.”

  “Something’s different,” he muttered almost too low for me to hear. “Coot had a really basic AI last time we were here, but this time…”

  I prompted him after a long pause. “This time?”

  “This time,” he said with a sigh, “it’s a lot more complex. Like a child compared to Cara or me, but compared to what it was…”

  Something moved down on the surface of the asteroid, and one of the ship’s sensors chirped that we were being targeted.

  Sweat popped on my forehead. We might have the best illegal shields credit could buy, but Coot’s shipkillers would go right through them.

  “Transmit the code again,” I snapped.

  “I am!”

  Jerking up out of the pilot’s couch, I glared at the viewscreen as if we could get answers faster. “Coot would never allow more than the most simple AI system. He’s got… issues.”

  “I know that, Tal. I overheard you two arguing last time. But I’m talking to the old man’s AI…”

  “Damn.” I used the limited deck space to pace back and forth, tapping my ridiculous long blue fingernails together, glad Josue wasn’t currently projecting his holo. The deck was small enough, and even though it didn’t hurt him or me to walk through his holo, it still gave me chill bumps to do it. Back and forth I went until the silence became too much. Were we about to get blasted? “Have we—?”

  “Getting clearances now.” The alarm shut off, and Josue sounded just as relieved as I felt. “We have permission to dock.”

  I bit my lip. Had our code expired? Was it really Coot down there? Were we walking into some sort of trap?

  “The hell happened?” I asked Josue.

  “Um. The AI… glitched?”

  I paused. Like Josue had been glitching? “Is this safe?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

  Great. My buddy was spitting in the dark, guessing which way it would go. “Okay. Take us in.”

  Normally, when I was awake I piloted the ship through most takeoffs, landings, and microjumps, leaving the macrojumps between systems to Josue’s superior number-cruncher, but Coot had Rules, and Rule One for docking in his asteroid was letting him take control, so when I said “take us in” I meant “let Coot bring us in.” The old fart, bless him.

  Josue grumbled, but he took his metaphorical hands off the stick and lowered our outer shields, allowing the grav beam to suck us in the bay door and set us down inside the asteroid.

  Despite being one of the smaller asteroids in the bunch, Coot’s rock was as large as a small moon, hollowed out bit by bit over the years as he’d mined it for ice, gems, and metals. He’d told me that he’d “retired” one day from mining by simply moving into the space and setting up his own very limited procurement company. Limited not so much in value—though everything he sold was high-value—but more in legality, or lack thereof. We’d met during one of my more questionable jobs. I’d helped him out of a tight spot, then he’d helped me, and the rest, as they say, was history. So despite Josue’s concern over the AI, I slipped into a spacesuit, buckled a gun on my thigh, and headed for the rear balcony airlock.

  The hangar was too massive to be called a shuttle bay; the leviathan Cara Mia would fit inside. Twice. Which made it too difficult to air up; hence the spacesuit. Coot had left the gravity of the asteroid alone—he had told me it was easier on his old bones—so once I stepped out of my airlock, I turned off the magnetization on my boots and pushed gently off the deck, snagging the rail and then jumping out, to float down to the cavern floor at about one-tenth gee.

  I put one hand on my gun and kept a wary eye out for problems, not truly relaxing until the old man met me inside his airlock.

  We stood eye to eye when either of us bothered to stand up straight, and his empty left sleeve reminded me—as always—that legitimate jobs like mining were dangerous. He’d told me he’d lost an entire arm, a finger, and two toes to his job before retirement, but I hadn’t yet worked up the courage to ask for specifics.

  I touched my helmet to his to talk, avoiding the com channels. “Couple of problems,” I told him. “We need a new ident for the ship and me, but I need a secured, encrypted com line for a passenger to transfer us funds, and I don’t trust her any farther than you could throw her in one gee. And Josue is freaking out about your AI.”

  Coot arched bushy white eyebrows at me. . “You’re still alive,” he said. “Bring your passenger along. I’ll get a line set up for you.”

  Not super reassuring.

  “Right.” Turning back to the Desolate, I nodded.

  Several months into our partnership, Josue had started keeping the com line to my cochlear implant open, eavesdropping on my conversations and surroundings. Once I’d figured it out, I’d encouraged him with the understanding that occasionally I might need privacy, and he’d agreed. Now I heard him grumble in my ear and then I saw him open an airlock.

  Madelene, in one of my spare standard-issue one-size-fits-most-women spacesuits, exited the airlock, clomped across the deck, then gripped the railing. She hesitated, and I wondered if I’d have to go up to get her, but she must have pulled herself together because she jumped, and floated down to the floor a meter away from me.

  Good aim. Maybe programming and getting beaten up by her husband—and stealing my money—weren’t the only things she was good at.

  I pointed, guiding her inside the airlock. Once inside, we removed our helmets and followed the corridor deep into the bowels of the asteroid. With nothing more than a nod, Coot indicated the se
cured data port. Madelene stripped off her gloves, flexed her fingers, and went to work.

  Within five minutes, I went from not quite impoverished to quite wealthy, and another five minutes after that—after paying for new idents—merely solvent.

  Solvent was a nice change.

  Madelene glanced at Coot, then at me, smirking. “You can lose the disguise,” she said, reaching past me to tap one holo-key. “I know who you are.”

  My face—my real face—with my birthdate, planet of origin, and ID number flashed up in a three-dee holo between us.

  My hair in braids and beads and artful curls flowing past my waist.

  My dress—an anachronism I had sworn never to wear again—too tight in all the wrong places for a fight.

  Reflexively, my spine curled into the slouch it had taken me months to perfect. The one that would have caused Mother to swear and slap.

  Bracing one foot on the corridor wall for leverage in the lighter gravity, I punched Madelene in the throat.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, Coot dumped Madelene out of his Calephi doc-box. He let her sprawl on the floor as he slapped microlattice restraints on her wrists before she fully woke. Microlattice was the same stuff they’d made the bones of my ship from. She wasn’t going to break it.

  In a weird coincidence—if that was what it was—my real-face holo had followed me down the hall until I had threatened to punch Coot, too.

  Glitchy didn’t even begin to describe his AI. But one problem at a time.

  The old man had made me carry Madelene—not that she was all that heavy in one-tenth gee, but two arms and your fault may have been muttered a time or two—three meters down the hall and into a small room with three doc-boxes. Then he’d made me put her in a box over my protests. No killing on my rock, he’d said, shaking his head at me. Take it outside. Then he’d told me I was being too paranoid and had programmed the box to heal the woman’s throat so it wouldn’t finish swelling shut and kill her.

  It had healed the last of her bruises too.

  Which reminded me that it would suck if I had to kill her.

  Again. Other than the throat shot, I mean. Folding my arms, I cleared my throat. “What are your intentions?”

  She blinked up at me, obviously confused by the plain room instead of the plain corridor. Moving her wrists to test her bonds, Madelene then stilled like a… well, like a Calephi without a doc-box in front of a predator. “I just wanted you to be honest with me,” she said, tears welling in her dark eyes. “Understand you could trust me. So you could let me out.”

  Josue and I had kept her in her quarters all the way to Coot’s place. Considering I had the run of my entire ship—and Josue and even occasionally his alter personalities Weasel and Bait to keep me company—she had probably been lonely.

  Too bad for her. “This was not the way to help us understand that.”

  “You’re not going to alert the authorities?” Coot scowled, flexing his own fingers over the room’s data port as he ran search after search. I caught just enough to tell he was scanning for outbound messages which might have been hidden inside the money transfer… as he had been for the last fifteen minutes. And he called me paranoid. “They’re not welcome here.”

  “Of course not. Who do you think I am?”

  “That’s just it,” I broke in. “We don’t know.”

  Despite her position on the floor as we loomed over her, Madelene lifted her chin. “I’m the woman you stole from a bad husband and a bad situation. You rescued me. I owe you and I want to stay with you. Until further notice.”

  I stared at her. “You what?”

  “I—”

  She blinked, and I swallowed a curse when I saw a tear slide slowly down her cheek.

  “I want to stay with you,” the woman whispered.

  “On the Desolate?” That would complicate everything. Maybe I could leave her here with Coot—

  “Yes. With you. On your ship.” A second tear followed the first.

  Wincing, I leaned back against the wall. “Don’t you have family or friends or…?”

  “No. They would com… him… and force me to go back to him. I’m not going back. I’m going to divorce him, but they won’t see that as legal. He…” She closed her eyes. “He’s got some… plans… I don’t like. I’m not going to help him anymore.”

  I raised my eyebrows at Coot, who shrugged. Lot of help.

  Examining Madelene’s face, I sub-vocalized to Josue. “You think she means it?”

  “Yes. Her pupils and the small muscles around her eyes—”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought too.”

  She looked all pathetic and hopeful at the same time. “So I can—?”

  “Maybe.” I hoped this didn’t bite me in the ass somehow. “Coot?”

  “Don’t touch nothin.” He locked down the data port, then shuffled forward, waving for Madelene to raise her hands. When she did, he removed the restraints, more dexterous with his one hand than I was with two. “Nothin, you hear me?”

  “I won’t.” She rose slowly, as if she didn’t want to scare us again. Good choice.

  “Don’t do that again,” I growled. “People don’t react well when you surprise them with their own secrets.”

  She rubbed her throat gently. “I noticed.”

  “There’s a bounty on that name in three systems,” I continued. “I’m a little… sensitive.”

  The woman ducked her head. “I’m sure there’s one for me in Balastasia.”

  “There is.” Josue’s voice came from the speaker in my suit helmet so the others could hear it too.

  I glanced at Coot, but he just glared.

  Wisely for once, Madelene kept her mouth shut, though it opened again as I pulled off the nose prosthesis, then wiped the blue off my lips. “I’ll do the eyes later,” I muttered. When I’m in private.

  Her voice small, she said, “What do you want me to call you?”

  “Not that!” I snapped. Talibethia Eamona Marquez was a mouthful I couldn’t even spit out right now. Hopefully not ever again. “Forget that name. Call me Tal.”

  “Okay, Tal.”

  “Sounds like she’ll need an ident too, Coot.”

  He nodded. “Be extra.”

  “I can pay!” Madelene flexed her fingers, then froze. “Er. I can give you the routing and account number, and you can pull the credits.”

  “Deal,” he growled. I didn’t think she’d get another chance to touch his computers anytime soon.

  “Names are important,” she said with a sigh. “Maybe… maybe you could call me Maddy instead of Madelene?”

  “Sure.” I heroically restrained myself from rolling my eyes. Mostly. “Maddy.”

  “Names are important,” Josue whispered in my ear. “Coot needs to name the kid.”

  “The kid?” I rubbed my knuckles absently.

  “The AI. He needs to name it.”

  The old man interrupted. “Kid? What kid? What are you and that abom… er.” He glanced up at one of the scanners set in the ceiling. “That AI of yours talking about now?”

  I gulped. The last time AIs had come up, we’d had a screaming match that might have woken up the neighbors on the next asteroid… if there were any. But… he’d looked up at that scanner and stopped himself from saying “abomination.” Could Coot be changing his mind?

  Both Maddy and Coot were staring at me expectantly. Josue muttered again, “A name.”

  “That AI of mine is my friend,” I said softly. “His name’s Josue.”

  Maddy swayed, then touched the wall. “Your partner Josue is an AI?”

  “Of course!” I reconsidered. She’d been unconscious or confined to quarters the entire time she’d been on board the Desolate. She’d heard his voice but never seen his holos… and Josue had top-quality holos, and if she was staying with us, she’d run into them. Or through them, rather. Softening my voice, I said, “Yes, Josue is the AI on the Desolate.”

  “But…” she
said softly. “I liked him.”

  “Wha—?”

  Coot glanced up at the scanner again before interrupting. “What kid are you and Josue talking about?”

  “Your kid.” I grimaced. “Your AI. It needs a name.”

  A sputtering sound came from the speakers and I sub-vocally snapped at Josue to knock it off, ignoring his protest of innocence.

  Coot groaned and rubbed his hands over his face. “That’s what I thought you were… well, shit. You may as well come in while I get your stuff.”

  “In?” Madelene looked as bewildered by the conversation as I was.

  Leading us from the doc-box room down the corridor, Coot tapped out a complicated code on an ancient access port, hitched one shoulder, waited for the door to slide aside, then stomped over the threshold.

  * * *

  Once I worked up the courage, I followed him in. We’d never done business inside his living quarters before. Coot had always handled our transactions in the ship bay, the main corridor, or the small rooms attached to it.

  The room I stepped into now had tall ceilings arching over cream-colored walls pocked with sparkles. There were no windows to space—not this deep in the asteroid—but the color of the rock and the lighting made the room feel as big as the shuttle bay, and windows in the far wall looked over a mass of green leaves. I bashed my shin on a couch as I rushed to those windows, ignoring the high-tech displays in favor of the living plants.

  Just before I touched the windows, a noxious stink shot out of the near vent and an odd noise came out of the nearest speaker.

  Before I could chastise Josue again, Coot whipped around and glared at one of his scanners. “You stop that right now.”

  I bit my tongue to keep from yelling at him for yelling at my AI. “You grow your own food?” I asked cautiously.

  Coot grunted as he stripped his spacesuit off, revealing a thick red wrist-to-ankles suit underneath. “About my AI…”

  “Tal,” Josue said in my ear.