Free DarkShip Thieves by Sarah A. Hoyt Page A

"But I want to know."
    He shrugged. "I'm twenty two Earth years old. Does that answer your question, or do you need my universal birth date, too?"
    No reason to get rude, but I wasn't going to argue. I just nodded. It answered my question well enough. If he was twenty two, he could not have been alive when the Mules left the Earth and therefore he could not possibly be one of them .
    "I've set the cooker to prepare some food," he said. "Since you didn't seem to have eaten in quite a while."
    Quite a while. Depending on how long I'd been asleep it could be almost twenty four hours. At any rate, I'd never heard of Morpheus knocking anyone out for less than twelve hours.
    I got up, and found myself swaying on my feet, not so much dizzy as unsure of my footing. It was like when Father had taken me on a cruise in the Mediterranean, years ago. The ship had been large enough that the floor felt as if it were stationary. But I hadn't felt it as stationary, rather as bobbing and bouncing.
    Now there was the same unsteadiness to the ground under me, that my back brain knew about, even though my feet couldn't quite feel it.
    "Easy," my captor said, sounding much like that voice in my head. "We're underway. It's a different drive, and for someone whose brain is sensitive enough to feel artificial gravity, it would be disorienting." He extended a hand towards me, as though to help me.
    "You're making fun of me," I said, almost wailing in fury and waving way his hand.
    His eyes widened again. "What? No. You're clearly sensitive to artificial gravity. A lot of navigators are. It comes with the built-in sense of direction."
    "Oh." I gave me a close look, to make sure it wasn't some joke I just didn't get. But he wasn't laughing. He was extending his hand, still. "Come on. You'll be unsteady until I you get your space legs."
    I allowed him to grasp my wrist. If this was a seduction ploy, he really wasn't very good at it. Like his inability to tie up women properly, it was oddly reassuring. Actually, he didn't even hold my wrist. just clasped it when it looked like I was about to fall, and the rest of the time let me try to progress on my own. I remembered the way, sort of. I'd come through here, trying to figure out what sort of creature held me captive. Now I looked at him and found him looking at me.
    "You wouldn't be feeling the need to garrotte me, would you?" he asked.
    The question was half coy and half teasing, and my first reaction was that I would, of course, not tell him if I had any such intention. But the next reaction was to think it through. Could I attack him, turn the ship around, get to Earth?
    Perhaps. No. Almost certainly. The ship was not that difficult, I thought. Well, all right. There were all the implements for collections and all the various navigation systems, and I'm sure they took some learning. But I also had no doubt I could learn them. The system had yet to be created that I couldn't back engineer and figure out. On the other hand, I remembered the gages in the control room. There was no way—absolutely no way—that I could learn it on the fly, without weeks of practice. And there were other considerations. Such as the fact that, if I took this ship to Earth, Earth defense systems in whatever continent I landed in, were likely to think I was an enemy and shoot before asking questions.
    But beyond all that, I couldn't be so crass as to hit my captor on the head and then head off.
    But why had he come and got me? Obviously the mind link had sent him feelings of my surprise. He knew I'd been hit with Morpheus. And doubtless he'd come in the nick of time. I had no idea what Daddy's goons intended to do to me, but I was fairly sure it wasn't pleasant. But why had he come? He hadn't told me.
    And, I realized as we entered the kitchen and he gestured for me to sit at the table, he wasn't about to tell me. Instead, he fiddled with the cooker, peering in screens and making half-mutters as one absorbed in a task.
    After