by Alex White
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Alex White
Excerpt from The Worst of All Possible Worlds copyright © 2018 by Alex White
Excerpt from One Way copyright © 2018 by S. J. Morden
Author photograph by Rebecca Winks
Cover design by Lisa Marie Pompilio
Cover images by Shutterstock
Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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First Edition: December 2018
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Names: White, Alex (Novelist), author.
Title: A bad deal for the whole galaxy / Alex White.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Orbit, December 2018. | Series: The Salvagers ; Book two
Identifiers: LCCN 2018044714| ISBN 9780316412100 (trade pbk.) | ISBN 9780316412094 (ebook)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Science fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3623.H5687 B33 218 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018044714
ISBNs: 978-0-316-41210-0 (trade paperback), 978-0-316-41209-4 (ebook)
E3-20181025-JV-PC
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One: Polyphony
Chapter Two: Flanking Maneuvers
Chapter Three: Melody
Chapter Four: Fans
Chapter Five: Staccato
Chapter Six: Undercover
Chapter Seven: Discord
Chapter Eight: Safecracking
Chapter Nine: Reverse
Chapter Ten: Escape Clause
Chapter Eleven: Frequency
Chapter Twelve: Desperate Measures
Chapter Thirteen: Breakbeat
Chapter Fourteen: Airlock
Chapter Fifteen: Solo
Chapter Sixteen: Revenant
Chapter Seventeen: Overture
Chapter Eighteen: Form Up
Chapter Nineteen: Duet
Chapter Twenty: Standoff
Chapter Twenty-One: Last Dance
Chapter Twenty-Two: Rendezvous
Acknowledgments
Extras
Meet the Author
A Preview of The Worst of All Possible Worlds
A Preview of One Way
By Alex White
Praise for the Salvagers series
Orbit Newsletter
For my spouse,
Renée, because no one writes alone.
Chapter One
Polyphony
The crowd writhed and swayed, bodies in motion to a blistering-hot beat. Wisps of arcane fireworks drifted overhead—glimmering wireframe dragons and murmurations of cormorants spraying cool flakes of magic as they passed.
At the premier concert event in the galaxy, every stare that wasn’t trained on the light show overhead should have rested on the singer Indira Panjala, whose silvered hair flowed in time with the kick drum. No one should’ve been looking at Nilah Brio.
But Aaron Forscythe was, recognition in his expression.
She’d taken every precaution. She’d stuffed her now-famous mohawk under a purple wig. She’d done up her face, accenting different contours, flowing lines of neon makeup covering most of her features. She’d worn the sort of short party dress she hated. The glowing, tattooed dermaluxes that covered her arms were covered in translucent sleeves, obscuring the patterns.
Confirming her fears, Aaron spun and began shouldering through the crowd away from her.
“I’ve been made!” Nilah shouted into her comm, taking off after him.
“Hunter Two, hit him with a sleeper, say he’s drunk, and bring him back to the ship.” Cordell Lamarr’s deep voice entered her ear, overpowering Indira’s crescendo.
Aaron shoved a woman so hard she went sprawling to the floor. He plowed through the bystanders with an unnatural strength, creating a rising chorus of protestations.
“I’m bloody trying,” snapped Nilah, vaulting over a stumbling drunk before juking past another. Her dermalux tattoos filtered through her translucent sleeves with strobing white light, temporarily blinding anyone unfortunate enough to look directly at them. The crowd parted before her as people covered their eyes and looked away.
If Aaron hadn’t been smacking everyone around, he might’ve disappeared into the crowd with little difficulty. The shifting light show of the Panjala concert made him tough to track across a sea of bobbing heads. A few meters away, hands flailed as Aaron shoved another concertgoer, drawing Nilah’s attention. He’d almost reached the exit to the arena.
“Planetwise exit! Hunter One, block him off,” she called out into her comm.
“Damn.” The gruff voice of Orna Sokol, quartermaster of the Capricious, joined the radio chatter. “I’m too far away. There are a lot of tunnels down there. Don’t lose him. ETA two minutes.”
“I’m not going to lose him,” said Nilah, dodging a spilling drink. “I’m the one that found him.”
“You’re also the one that got spotted,” said Orna, chuckling.
“We’ll talk about this on the ship,” hissed Nilah.
“Focus up,” said Cordell. “We’re hearing a lot of chatter from concert security. You might want to shut those tattoos off.”
“Blast it,” Nilah grumbled, suppressing her dermaluxes as her target made it to the arena’s emergency exit.
Aaron kicked the door open and stormed out into the balconies above Goldsmith Park, leaving Nilah to wrestle through the remainder of the crowd. By the time she pushed outside, the only sign of him was the clang of his feet on the stairwell below. Cool, night-cycle air tickled her bare skin, and this high up, wind whipped at her dress. She leaned over the railing to see if she could spot him—and was rewarded by the sizzle of a flame bolt passing by her head.
“He shot at me!” she said, ducking away from the edge.
“That slinger fire triggered the detectors,” said Cordell. “Cops are on the way.”
“Hang back, babe,” said Orna. “Wait for backup.”
Nilah quickly leaned out once more to catch a view of her quarry near the base of the stairs, headed for the lush greenery of Goldsmith Park. If she didn’t stop him now, he’d get into the Morrison Station superstructure and vanish. All the hunting they’d done would be worthless if he wen
t to ground. She took hold of the handle on the stadium’s emergency descender box and swallowed. It was only sixteen floors or so to the sidewalk.
“Not the stupidest thing I’ve done,” she muttered.
“Wait. ETA eighty seconds,” said Orna.
Nilah pulled open the emergency box, finding ten shiny descenders inside. She took one of the clear discs and pressed the tester just to make sure the binary spells inside were still good.
A former race car driver, she would’ve been an Ultra GP galactic champion if Mother and her crew hadn’t ruined her last shot at the crown. At least her experience made her an expert at judging speed over distance. Forty-eight meters to the ground would make for a pretty quick fall. She spied Forscythe’s shadow as he rounded the final corner and burst out into the open.
Now or never.
Nilah swung her legs over the railing and leapt into the neon haze of Morrison Station’s downtown, the descender clutched tightly in her hand. Wind roared in her ears. The shadowy figure of her target grew exponentially in size.
She snapped the descender mere feet away from Aaron’s head, gelatinous phantoplasm instantly enveloping the both of them, blunting the kinetic energy of her fall. Their limbs interlocked as they bounced across the park grounds, the world free-spinning.
Eventually, the bubble of goo burst, spitting them out onto the summery grass beneath the statue of Carrie Morrison. The pair arose, dripping with smoky gelatin, and regarded each other. Nilah brought her fists to a fighting posture, and her dermaluxes began to pulse in time with the distant music.
Aaron was doughy and soft, not exactly the image of a dangerous criminal and cultist—and a lot younger than expected. He couldn’t have been much older than eighteen.
“Nilah Brio,” said Aaron, smirking. “The little racer who never did.”
“‘Never did’ what?”
“Win the Driver’s Crown,” he said, a tremor entering his voice. “He’ll be pleased when I bring him your body.”
She narrowed her eyes and smiled. “You can’t be serious. I saved the universe from your lot and literally punched out a horde of springflies. It was all over the Link.”
“The news always lies,” he said, whipping his slinger level with her face and blasting off a few spells.
She tumbled away from his wavering aim with little difficulty, rolling to her feet and bolting forward. Two more shots erupted in her direction, but Aaron didn’t have the military precision required to make them land. His grip on the slinger was too tight, too amateurish.
Nilah whipped her arms toward him, momentarily blinding Aaron with the spray of light, then sent a kick straight into his jaw, lifting him up off the ground. He came down hard on his back, going slack.
“ETA thirty seconds,” said Orna, her voice almost panicked. “What’s going on over there, babe?”
“I just took him down. Glass jaw, as they say—”
Two figures emerged from the shadows around the Morrison monument, daggers in their eyes. One male, one female, clad in fine suits, their postures spoke of expertise. Perhaps they were bodyguards for Aaron. Perhaps they were assassins come to cut her throat. Either way, she’d have to deal with them alone—thirty seconds would be an eternity once the spells started flying.
“Forscythe has friends,” said Nilah. She squared herself to the newcomers, her dermaluxes gently pulsing, like lightning in a storm cloud. “Hello, chums.”
They spread out to flank her, silent as ghosts. Aaron began to stir. His beady eyes flew open, and he scrambled to his feet, dashing away between the two goons. In two seconds, he’d be into the access corridors.
“Why don’t we skip all of this?” Nilah asked of the closest one. “You can just walk aw—”
They slashed glyphs from the air with their fingers—one elemental sigil of ice, the other of wind. Together, the spells could form a flash-freeze that would kill her instantly. Her eyes darted from spell to spell, searching for the more powerful of the two casters.
Nilah dashed for the wind caster, peppering her with a hail of flashing blows. The caster flipped out a baton and took a swing, but she kicked it away; the woman’s wind spell fizzled in the jolt. With the killer’s guard softened, Nilah leapt for her like a great cat, latching on and attacking. The woman shouted in pain as Nilah wrapped her legs around her chest, boxing her ears and eyes with punishing fists. Uncoiling like a spring, Nilah kicked off of her, knocking her backward against a rock, where she lay still.
Nilah rose to her feet to find the frost caster’s glyph engorged with power. The fellow moved with surprising alacrity, ripping arcane ligatures from the night. She’d misjudged their skill, taking out the wrong target first. The ice caster’s fingers brushed closed the last throbbing line of the glyph, and the air crackled with frost.
He released the spell, and it was like being thrust into the raw vacuum of space. Every inch of her overexposed skin seared with pain as frigid air wicked moisture away from the surface. Her eyes stung, and she shut them on reflex. Nilah wanted to shout, but when she opened her mouth, freezing air bit her throat. Orna had been right; she shouldn’t have engaged them alone. The spell howled, wrapping around the distant sounds of Panjala.
Then came another noise: a familiar, mechanical galloping.
A metallic screech erupted from above them, and a suit of bloodred robotic battle armor landed on the ice caster, crushing him into the dewy grass. As soon as Nilah could move a muscle, she looked away, shivering. She was glad to see Charger but would’ve preferred a less lethal resolution.
Charger’s cockpit hissed, popping open to reveal Orna strapped inside, a smile on her face. “Told you to wait, babe.”
“And how were you supposed to come to my rescue if I did?”
“Hunters, enough banter,” interrupted Cordell. “Have we got eyes on Forscythe?”
Nilah bounded up to Charger and mounted his back plate, sinking her feet into his vents like stirrups. “In pursuit, Boss.”
Orna shut herself back inside the cockpit, and the battle armor rocketed in the direction of the Morrison Station access corridor.
Nilah held on for dear life, her arms around Charger’s metal neck as the creature beneath her loped along. “We really should put some handholds on the big guy for this! Some up top, and footholds on the side.”
“I’m not putting love handles on my killbot.”
They reached the superstructure access hatch, which poked out from between a pair of bushes. Charger’s claws left long ruts in the grass as the pair skidded to a halt. Caution flashers blinked around the thick door frame, indicating the lack of gravity beyond—the grav drive range didn’t extend to the outer hull. Charger stepped inside, and Nilah’s stomach flipped as she adjusted to weightlessness.
The superstructure was a mesh of translucent tunnels with running lights, punctuated every now and again by a viewport. Between racing seasons, Nilah had enjoyed using the tunnels for fitness training, working her legs by leaping between the various observation decks dotting Morrison’s expansive hull. She could do a hundred kilometers of low-grav kicks easily.
The bright corridor extended before them, splitting into three branches. They launched to the end of the corridor, and Charger sampled the air as they flew. His neck snapped to the right, polychroic lenses flashing green with excitement.
“Good boy,” Orna murmured through his speakers, and they sailed down the right side of the split.
They raced through the superstructure, Charger scenting out their prey with little trouble. Each of the bot’s powerful pushes left an unfortunate red stain on the pristine walls, and Nilah wondered what they’d tell the police. When they reached the first observation deck, they found Aaron Forscythe trembling and red-faced, his slinger placed against his temple. He hovered before a wide cupola window, Taitu glinting in planetrise behind him.
Charger’s high-cal slingers swung out from their hip holsters before Nilah could even blink, but Orna stayed her hand.
&nb
sp; “This isn’t how it was supposed to happen,” said Aaron, his voice cracking. “I had a destiny.”
Nilah pushed off of Charger’s back, grabbing onto one of the floor’s many handrails. If he decided to fire at her, it’d be tricky to get out of the way. She couldn’t maneuver as unpredictably in zero gravity—it’d just be a straight line. “We traced your message. We know you work for Henrick Witts. Tell us who you’re here to meet, and we can protect you.”
“No one can protect me,” he said, gritting his teeth. “Now that I’ve failed, I’m dead.”
“If you don’t drop your weapon,” said Orna, locking back the hammers on Charger’s massive slingers, “I don’t think they’ll get the chance.”
“That’s open space behind that window,” Nilah warned, placing a hand atop one of Charger’s weapons.
“Yeah, well I’m sick of going after these middle-management dorks,” said Orna. “Bunch of rich idiots with almost no intel.”
Aaron sneered. “The Children of the Singularity will end you, too!”
Nilah drew up short. “The what now, mate?”
“We’re going to expose all of your lies,” said Aaron.
Orna’s laugh came out tinny through Charger’s speakers. “The only thing you’re doing is boring me to death.”
“Stop, darling.” Nilah tensed her legs, preparing to leap away in case he took a shot at her. “I’m sure he thinks he’s very important.”
“You ruined this for me!” screamed Aaron. “I was chosen by the gods!”
Nilah and Charger exchanged glances.
“I mean,” Nilah began, “not really. I’ve met the chosen ones. They’re stonking powerful, and you can’t even shoot straight. Just give up.”
A shaft of sunlight warmed the window as their star crested Taitu’s horizon. Nilah prayed no civilians would come around for a morning constitutional.
“Look, let’s work something out,” said Nilah. “I want to get back to my comfy clothes.”
“‘Work something out’?” he laughed, a tear rolling down his cheek. “You’ve robbed me of my place among the gods.”
“We already killed two of them,” said Orna. “Mother and Dwight Mandell. A place among the gods is six feet under, as far as I’m concerned.”
