Read Death of a Starship for Free Online

was. You’re
going to have to be better, Golliwog, if you’re going out in the
field with me.”
    “ Yes, ma’am.”
    Dr. Yee set down her light pen and
stared him up and down. “Do you think you could kill me,
Golliwog?”
    He opened his mouth to
answer, then stopped. Dr. Yee didn’t waste words, nor effort.
She was a trap. “I
don’t know, ma’am,” he finally said.
    She simply stared him
down.
    “ No,
ma’am.” Not yet ,
he added mentally.
    “ Not yet,
indeed,” she responded, a tiny smile quirking across her face.
“Remember, Golliwog, I built you. I know what you’re thinking before you do.
Someday you will surprise me, but not this day.”
    “ Someday, ma’am.” Then, on
impulse. “That’s a promise, ma’am.”
    She caught his gaze and held it
with her own. Her eyes were pit-black, Golliwog realized. “Good.”
Yee breathed the words out as if she were biting off pieces of her
life. “And if you succeed in killing me, then I don’t deserve to
live.”
    “ Yes, ma’am.”
    Yee made a flickering gesture with
her fingers. The lighting shifted, becoming less harsh, and a
station chair popped up out of the deck in front of her desk. “Sit,
Golliwog. Let me tell you where we’re going and why.”
    Golliwog sat. Somehow, he realized
he had just passed his true final examination.
    “ Tell me,” she said in a voice
that was eerily conversational. “I know you’ve studied ship types.
That will be important later. But have you ever heard of a system
called Halfsummer?”
    ‡
    Albrecht: Halfsummer, Gryphon
Landing
    He got dragged into the watch
commander’s office without being strip-searched, which amazed
Albrecht. They’d taken his thigh pack, the credits in his pocket,
day permit, voided crew card and the codelock key and stuffed them
in a plastic bag. Albrecht still clutched the receipt
chitty.
    “ Micah Albrecht,” said the watch
commander. It wasn’t a question. She was a big woman, heavy gravity
in her genes or a hell of a lot of gym time. She didn’t look
pleased to see him. Her office was eerily clean, devoid of
paperwork, personal decorations, or really, much of anything but a
desk and a single chair with her in it.
    So he stood where piggy and the
smart guy had left him. “Ma’am.”
    She stared at him for a while, then
shook her head. “People are idiots.”
    That didn’t seem to call for a
response.
    “ You care to explain to me, Mister
Micah Albrecht, why I got a hotshot detain-and-question order from
an expert legal system looking for people committing insurance
fraud on interstellar shipping? With respect, friend, you don’t
look like an interstellar shipping magnate to me.”
    So we are all friends here
at Public Safety , Albrecht thought. At
least he’d guessed right on the fraud, though he couldn’t imagine
why there was a flag on that data. “I’m a c-drive engineer, ma’am.
Old ship types are my hobby. Just reading up.”
    “ Grounded, right? No union card,
no engineer’s papers.” She grinned nastily. “You want to read up on
old ship types? Buy a hardbook, read on the can. Stay out of my
library and don’t waste my officers’ time.”
    He stood, breathing hard, his
knees aching from the takedown. At least they hadn’t
actually used the
shockstick.
    She continued to stare. “Why are
you still breathing my air, Micah Albrecht?”
    “ I’ll just be leaving, ma’am.” He
stepped backward, unwilling to turn away from her.
    “ Good idea. Don’t let me see you
again. Ever.”
    “ No ma’am.”
    Then he was in the hall, being
stared down in turn by piggy. The cop said nothing at all, just
trailed Albrecht back to the front desk where his belongings were
returned, then to the front doors.
    It was a long walk to the market,
but Albrecht didn’t want to stay anywhere near the shade of the
fat-leaved trees.
    ‡
    He almost threw the codelock key in
the trash, but decided to hold off. The tool’s presence bothered
him. Instead Albrecht headed to the