“Seqalin says they have some weird beliefs about sexual practice—but I don’t know which.”
“Umm. If they go to space in single-gender ships, maybe they have obligatory homosexuality in space? I could code everyone as male/male preference.”
“Yeah, but if we’re wrong . . . I don’t know.”
“And what about the children?”
Elias Madero, like most commercial ships, carried some of its crews’ children aboard. Children had been found well worth the extra work and worry, in terms of keeping a crew entertained and cooperative. Right now there were six, four under school age and two taking a work-study tour as junior apprentices.
“We put the kids in the core, where the scans are least likely to find them. Sedate the littles. If they just rob the ship and go on . . . the older ones can come back out and send a message. Got to clear out the nursery, though . . .”
“Do it,” Lund said. “But don’t code gender preference. Just leave it.” How was he going to hide the women? And what would happen to them if they were found?
Hazel Takeris, age sixteen, had found her first working trip to be as dull as her father had warned—but she wouldn’t have missed it for anything, certainly not another five terms at the Space Dependents Middle School on Oddlink Main Station. So she had willingly performed the routine chores allotted to the apprentices, reminding herself—when enthusiasm for washing dishes or scrubbing the deck flagged—that she could have been listening to Professor Hallas discourse on the history of a planet that lay—to Hazel’s mind—in the dim past of human history. A long way away, and very far back, and who really cared which millenium had produced which oddly named king or scientist.
When the alarm came, she was doing inventory of the galley stores, as ordered by the cook. She heard nothing of the ensuing discussion, because Cookie had told her to get back to work, and be sure her count was right. Thirty-eight three-kilo sacks of wheat flour. Six half-kilo boxes of sodium chloride salt, and four of a 50/50 mix of potassium and sodium chlorides. Eight—
“Haze—drop that and listen up.” Cookie’s face was an odd shade, the rich tan paled and splotchy. “Get four emergency ration kits, and go to Core 32. Hop it!”
“What—?” But apprentices didn’t ask questions, not when a crew member looked like that. Hazel grabbed four emergency kits, and as she went past Cookie dumped two more on top of them. She scurried as fast as she could through the corridors, turned into the drop to the Core, and met her dad, who was even paler than Cookie.
“Haze—gimme two of those—now go to 32. We’re going to lock you in. I put your suit in there already. Put it on, and wait. Be sure you wait long enough.”
She had grown up a spacer’s child; she could figure it out. “Raiders,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.
“Yeah. Go on, now. You and Stinky will be awake; we’ve sedated the littles, and they’ll be in Core 57 and 62. Oh—and remember, it’s the Nutex Militia.”
Hazel fell down the drop, landing easily, feet first, on the pad. Thirty-two was clockwise four; she had known the geography of this ship from early childhood. Thirty-two’s hatch was open; she slid in, dumped her rations, pulled the hatch shut, and locked it from inside. Her suit stood slumped in one corner, along with a stack of extra oxygen tanks. She got herself into it, her fingers shaking, fumbling at the catches and seals.
She started to report herself secure, on suit com, and then didn’t—what if the raiders were already aboard? No one had told her when to expect boarding; no one had told her when to come out. Wait long enough? How long was that? How was she supposed to know?
In her suit, she could not quite lie down in the compartment, but she propped herself corner-to-corner, so that if she fell asleep, she would not fall and make a noise. She had the helmet open to ambient air—no sense in wasting suit air yet, and the helmet would snap shut automatically at any drop in pressure. She looked at her suit chrono, and marked the time. Wait long enough. She wished she knew how long.
She wished she and Stinky had been in the same compartment so they could talk. As the two apprentices, they had formed a natural alliance. Besides that, they liked each other’s parents, and had spent the voyage trying to maneuver her father and his mother into some kind of arrangement. So far the adults had been resistant, but she and Stinky hadn’t given up hope. Surely everyone felt the same urge to partner that she and Stinky felt . . . that’s how adults came together to have children, after all.
Locked in the empty compartment, it finally occurred to Hazel that the straightforward solution would have been for her and Stinky to partner, and leave the parents alone . . . but she wasn’t ready to partner anyone. Not yet. Later . . . she allowed herself a few delicious minutes of imagining what it would be like if Stinky were in the same compartment, without the pressure suits or the adult supervision. She had thoughts like that, even though she had chosen to take the treatment to delay puberty; she might look only ten or eleven, but she was sixteen for true.
She pulled her mind away from that to the littles, locked away in other compartments. Sedated, her dad had said. How long would the sedation last? Brandalyn was always first up in the morning, bouncing around . . . would she come out of sedation first? Had they put her in the same compartment as her sister? Surely they’d thought of that. Stassi was quieter, and very attached to her big sister. The other two littles, Paolo and Dris, were cousins.
She looked at the chrono. Only fifteen minutes had passed. That couldn’t be long enough. The raiders might not have boarded yet. She might have to wait hours.
Her suit transmitted nonspecific vibrations that she could not identify—except that they were different from those she knew so well after all these months aboard. One hour, two, three. How long did raiders stay aboard a ship to plunder it? Docked at a regular cargo station, the automated handlers could unload a hold in seven hours and twelve minutes—if nothing went wrong. Would the raiders try to unload an entire hold? All the holds? Would they have the right equipment? How long would it take them?
It would be easier to steal the whole ship; she felt cold as she thought of it. If they did, if they took the entire ship . . . then what would happen to her? To Stinky? To the littles?
She heard noises—nearby noises. It must be the raiders, because no one had unlocked her compartment yet. Shuffling, thumping—then a shriek that stiffened her. Brandy, that would be; they had all joked that she had a scream that would slice steel plates. The child screamed again. Hazel clambered up, clumsy in the suit, and tried to unlock the hatch. She had to stop them—she had to protect the child. She had the lock undone when the hatch was yanked out of her grip, and two big men grabbed her, one for each arm, and pulled her out of the compartment. She could see Brandy kicking and screaming in the grip of another, who was trying to gag her with a length of cloth. Stassi was crying, more quietly, in the grip of another; the two little boys clung to Stinky, who looked as scared as she felt.
“A girl,” one of the men said. “The perverts.” Brandy’s scream choked off; the man holding her had managed to tie the gag. “You take her,” he said, shoving Brandy into Hazel’s arms. “And bring her along.”
She held Brandy to her, trying to comfort the child, who was sobbing into the gag. Stassi clung to one leg and Paolo to the other. Stinky carried Dris. The raiders pushed her along, back up toward the bridge.
The first thing she saw, coming into the bridge, was her dad’s body in a pool of blood. She almost dropped Brandy, but the child clung to her, legs and arms fastened tight. There were other bodies, all people she knew—Baris the navigator, and Sig the cargo chief, and—and Stinky’s mother, gagged and bound, but glaring furiously. All the women of the crew, she noted, were lying there in a row, bound and gagged. Captain Lund faced the bridge access, bound to his command seat. And all the armed men wearing the same uniform as the ones who had captured her.