Free Ghost Spin by Chris Moriarty Page A

story right. Not to mention the fact that she’s a war criminal.”
    Another thing you two have in common.
    God have mercy, it did know about Flinders. But no, perhaps it was just talking about the piracy trial. He started to make a crack about having been seduced into piracy by a highborn lady, but then he realized abruptly that he really didn’t want to continue this conversation. In fact, he really didn’t want to talk about Catherine Li at all.
    Even thinking her name was a mistake. It made her suddenly present and pressing. A real person, and one about whom he knew things that only a lover of many years’ standing should know. And some things that no one, not even a lover, should know about another person.
    She does have several redeeming qualities, the machine pointed out, responding to his unspoken thoughts with unnerving accuracy. Though I admit it’s hard to explain exactly what they are.
    And then it hit him again: that wave of intermingled memory and emotion. What on earth was the ghost doing to him? And how was it doing it? How could anyone make a person feel actual physical desire for someone they’d never met before? And not just desire, either. Because what he was feeling right now made him jealous and sad. Jealous of the ghost and what he’d had with his woman. Sad about the fact that he, William Llewellyn, was going to end his short and pointless lifehanging on some docking gantry before he ever had the chance to find a woman who’d feel that way about
him
.
    He was struck by a profoundly disturbing thought. Was love just a matter of knowing—really truly knowing—another person? Could you cross a line to where you knew someone so well that you could no longer hold yourself apart from them? And if so, then how was he going to fare in this unholy trinity of man, woman, and machine that he’d entered into? Had he accidentally sold his soul for a new NavComp? And how had a nice boy who’d never meant to get into trouble—because the ghost was right about that, even if it was wrong about everything else—how had he ever managed to get himself into this mess?
    “If you say so,” he said, shrugging off his doubts and regrets. “It really doesn’t matter since I’m never going to meet the bitch.”
    The ghost’s eldritch laughter tickled across his mind again. And there was something else behind the laughter. Something sharp and bright and silver that twisted in his mind like a poacher’s snare tightening around a rabbit’s neck.
    I wouldn’t be too sure of that, William. I’m sure Catherine’s very eager to meet you. Though for your sake, I suppose I should hope she never does. If she ever finds out what you did to me, she’ll kill you.
    Llewellyn started to protest—but whatever he might have said in his defense was cut off by the ship’s warning Klaxon.
    “Station Nav’s telling us to stand down and return to dock,” Sital called from the conn.
    Llewellyn turned to find his first mate’s face looking up at him—and looking worried.
    Ignore them, the ghost whispered.
    “I can’t ignore them!” Llewellyn snapped.
    You’d better. Unless you want to end up outside the airlocks next to the poor devils Avery hanged last week.
    Llewellyn shook his head, wishing he could shake off the voice inside it and get his mind back in focus. His internals tried to dump a load of synthetic myelin enhancer into his bloodstream, but he quashed the reflex; this wasn’t an emergency yet, but it might become one, andhe ought to save the juice for when he needed it. You couldn’t stay on synth too long without paying for it.
    “Do they say why we should stand down?” he asked Sital.
    “No.”
    It’s Avery. She’s sitting off the closest Drift entry point, waiting for you. I’m looking at her encrypted spinfeed right now.
    God Almighty, now the NavComp was intercepting Navy communiqués and decoding quantum-encrypted spinfeeds? What kind of monster had Meyer sold him?
    You can’t know it’s