Free DarkShip Thieves by Sarah A. Hoyt

is not quite sure how to avoid the wall his broom is heading towards.
    "How long will it take us to get there?" I said. I felt oddly vulnerable. I was locked in this ship with a person who had no reason to like me. I assumed it was better than being in Circum Terra, or perhaps back in daddy's ship, with whatever the goons wanted to do to me? I had a strong feeling if they'd gotten their way I'd no longer be consuming oxygen.
    He shook his head, and didn't say anything, and I realized he thought I was trying to get information about the darkship's base. Which I was. Of course I was, but not as a spy. If I was going to this place, it seemed logical that I ask where it was, what it was and . . .
    "It's not that I don't want to answer," he said. "Though I would like to say, even if the setup I rescued you from was elaborate, it wasn't impossible. It's quite likely that the people of Earth, wanting at long last to trace us, would have set up just this elaborate trap with tasty bait for the one Cat without a Nav, the one cat who travels alone, the outcast one. It would make me think more highly of Earthwo—of your people's policing efforts, but it would not be impossible.
    He raised his eyebrows at me, as if thinking through the implications of such an unlikely trap. "But in that case, I suspect they would have put a tracer on you, rather than get you to ask me where my home was.
    "My equipment could not detect a bug, but that doesn't mean there isn't one. Just that the bug is well hidden, or perhaps of a type I can't detect. Of course, if that's the case, whether I tell you or not, is largely inconsequential. But the thing is that I truly don't know. Our . . . home is on a variable orbit. I have alarms and detectors and an idea of in which direction to head. We'll reach it when we reach it."
    His reasoning was almost as paranoid as mine when faced with Father's plans, or Father's when faced with the universe at large. And the variable orbit made sense. I had a vague idea that when the Mules had first left, while the space travel capacity they had endowed Earth with still endured, and before the last spasms of the riots had destroyed it, they had swept the solar system for a trace of the Mules.
    Of course, these couldn't be the Mules. Not as such. The Mules had no women, and my captor had blondie and the family group which either had women or some spectacularly odd looking males. Not that this would be unlikely. One heard stories even from Circum Terra, where females were scarce. Year after year, much less century after century, with few or no women led to creative arrangements and given bio-engineering—"How old are you?"
    His eyes widened. Whatever he'd been expecting, that question wasn't it. "Twenty two," he said, in the bewildered tone of someone who can't be bothered making up a lie.
    Oh. So no Mules, because unless they reckoned years different—"Years?"
    He grinned this time. A genuinely amused grin. "Millennia. What do you think?"
    "I don't know," I said, slowly. It hadn't mattered. Not so much. Not while I thought we were going to part ways and never see each other again. But thoughts of the things the Mules were alleged to have done, the people they were said to have killed—hundreds of people, thousands, millions, for reasons that only the Mules could understand. And the things that had been done to the Earth under their watch. All of it made my hair stand on end at the thought of being in this ship with one of them for who knew how long. What would he think of me? What would he care for a mere human. "Are you a Mule?"
    The smile vanished, the mouth tightened. The odd looking eyes—which were becoming readable the more I looked at him—turned guarded. "What do you care? Does prejudice against bioing still hold on Earth?"
    "No," I said, because prejudice is a charged word. At any rate, I was truthful. There was no prejudice as such. Bioing was a death-bringing crime. For those perpetrating it and the results.