Cagebird by Karin Lowachee

Author:Karin Lowachee [Lowachee, Karin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0446615080
Published: 2013-06-20T16:00:00+00:00

WRECKED

5.19.2186 EHSD—Protege

I wap"=s ten years old when Marcus took me into my first command crew meeting, which was once a week. None of the ten department commanders, plus Caligtiera, found it odd that I was there, which made it easier. So easy that I was bored. Even though Bo-Sheng had said this ship was a pirate, and Estienne confirmed it, it seemed to run just like any other ship. Not that I knew firsthand. But Marcus went over procedures and costs, cargo and schedules and flagged crew files with meticulous discussion. They also talked about their allies, like Shiva, who was their bloodmate, and others in the network spanning all the way to Hubcentral. He made me take notes in my slate, which I had to send to his comp so he could review.

It only got interesting when they talked about punishing people for breaking ship rules—like people who stole from each other or the ship, or witheld profit that they’d made on one mission or another. Sometimes the punishment was brig time, other times it was a thrashing.

Once or twice Marcus just put people in the airlock and vented them. At the end of my first month of meetings they talked about this one girl who used to steal drugs from medical. She was a junkie and lied twice about getting on recovery. Marcus said he didn’t abide drug use on his ship because it made people stupid and desperate and dependent on something other than their Blood (which is what he called the ship). So out she went. And I took notes.

You couldn’t just let people go on stations if you wanted them off your ship, Marcus said. Because they knew the operations of the ship and the network, and he wouldn’t risk them getting caught and blabbing to Hub authorities. But he always gave a couple of warnings before venting you. So it was fair, he said.

She shrieked like a strit. It hurt my ears.

He had me watch because I had to learn to stomach it. The girl was a shivering, sweating mess—from fear as well as her addiction. She might’ve been sixteen or twelve, it was hard to tell from her drug-abused body. They stripped her naked and set her in the airlock at gunpoint. Her nipples were like little withered grapes. She screamed a lot. He’d taken the ship to a drop point only he knew. There were dozens, he said, mapped by this ship or the others in the network. Like how Hub ships mapped the Dragons. But the Dragons were big. And she was just going to be one more piece of refuse floating toward some star.

Nothing like that was happening in the fifth meeting though. I knew the routine by then. Before the meeting wrapped Marcus would tell me to go outside and wait for him. I figured it was because they wanted to discuss things that I was still too young to understand, and that was all right, usually by then I’d be so bored I needed a nap.

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