A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy

by Alex White

  “Do you feel bad for him?”

  “Of course I do,” he whispered. “Orna can pretend they’re soulless, but I know the truth.”

  “Which is?”

  “Everyone can be sick in their soul and still think they’re the good guys.”

  Maslin’s father had called him a coward for getting scarred up. He spent his whole life trying to make up for that.

  “Can’t you ignore that stuff?” asked Boots. “Not dive so deep into their minds or whatever?”

  Alister shook his head. “That’s not how it works. You know how Miss Brio got combat training so she wouldn’t be kidnapped?”

  “Yeah. And then Orna kidnapped her anyway.”

  He smiled wanly. “There are a lot of types out there who don’t want their minds read—criminals, spies, powerful folk. They can learn mnemonics to clear out their brains and make them hard to see into. Even I can’t force my way past someone’s guard.”

  “That’s why you started cooking Tormish food,” said Boots. “The smell. Scent is the most nostalgic thing you can conjure.”

  He nodded.

  “And when he’s the most distracted, most devastated, you can ask him anything.”

  It was clever, yet cruel. Alister had felt everything going through Maslin’s mind, but kept a straight face during the interrogation. Any display of weakness might’ve inspired Maslin to rebel, ruining the result. That’s why they had Jeannie standing by to ask the follow-up.

  “I was surprised … when the captain said he’d found two readers,” said Boots.

  “I know you think we’re freaks, Boots,” he said. “You don’t have to hide it.”

  Boots chuckled, and he stared at her, wide-eyed and wounded. She waved at him with her metal appendage. “Missing arm,” she said. “Did Cordell tell you about my arcana dystocia?”

  Alister shook his head.

  “I don’t have a spell like you, so … I’m the last person who’ll call you a freak. I want to know: how is it that both you and your sister have the reader’s mark?”

  He pulled his knees to his chest, shrinking back. He looked so young. The twins had to be Nilah’s age, but they made the ex-racer look downright old by comparison.

  “I’m not talking about that right now. I don’t want to think about it.”

  She shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “Then don’t, but as your crewmate, I want to tell you something.”

  He frowned and closed his eyes as though bracing for a blow.

  “Come to me if you ever want to talk,” she said.

  The door slid open, and Jeannie appeared at the end of the screen corridor, her face etched with surprise. For a moment, Boots thought she spied a flash of anger, but it dissipated like mist on the wind. Jeannie donned a polite smile and approached.

  “Boots,” she said. “Nice of you to come by. Any particular reason?”

  “Just wondering how you two were doing down here,” Boots replied. “We used to store some pretty strange chems in this bulkhead. If memory serves, there’s a loose panel over there where one of the boys kept his strongest stash during the war.” Boots pointed.

  “Very colorful,” said Jeannie. “You know all the secrets on the Capricious?”

  Boots lightly pounded her heel against the deck. “Rode out the war in this rust bucket. Then rode out that whole Harrow business in here. He’s been my ship off and on for too many years. Still can’t get away from him. Anyway, I need to be hitting the sack so I’m ready for the night cycle. Just wanted to have a quick chat.”

  “Good night, then,” said Jeannie.

  Boots looked to Alister, who pressed his cheeks to his knees. His eyes remained fixed upon some point on the far wall. He wouldn’t look at her, so she nodded to Jeannie and took her leave.

  Boots had almost made it to the door when he called her name.

  “Yeah?” she asked.

  He peered at her around the screen, like a child ready to bolt for a hiding place. “They’re human, people like Maslin. You know that.”

  “Everyone is,” said Boots.

  “But they still have to die. They can’t keep doing what they’re doing.”

  Boots scratched her temple and gave him a thin smile. “Too right, kid. Try to take it easy.”

  She turned and left. She’d only made it about ten paces down the hall when Jeannie stopped her.

  “Boots,” she called. “What did you say to him?”

  Boots shrugged. “The same thing I’m going to say to you: feel free to talk to me.”

  The two women looked each other over, and Boots spotted annoyance in Jeannie’s gaze, seeping out between the cracks of her polite veneer.

  “Don’t … don’t just show up like that,” said Jeannie.

  “Just wanted to have a friendly chat.”

  “I know how to take care of my brother.”

  Raising her hands, defeated, Boots said, “No one was suggesting—”

  “He’s been through a lot. You can’t simply talk him out of the things he’s seen.”

  “We’ve all seen things, sister. The sooner we learn to get along—”

  “Not like Alister,” Jeannie said, interrupting again. “You’re not qualified to care for him, psychologically. Not after he’s been inside the minds of these bastards.”

  “Oh? Well, if you’re taking new patients, where do I sign up?”

  “I keep up Alister’s well-being. That’s my job—something only another reader can do. Please don’t get in the way with your heartfelt speeches. He can truly share his burden with me in a way you won’t understand.”

  Boots sized up Jeannie, suppressing the urge to explain how ship life is supposed to work. Jeannie never blinked, never looked away, defiant, yet professional.

  “Okay,” sighed Boots, resting her hands on her hips. “You take care of him. Who takes care of you?”

  Jeannie’s eyes widened in momentary surprise, like Boots had spoken another language. Had anyone ever asked after her happiness?

  “No one,” said Jeannie. “I’m fine on my own.”

  “I’m just trying to make this easier on you.”

  “Please start by staying out of my way,” she said, but her matter-of-factness melted a touch as she added, “You seem nice … but you’re out of your depth.”

  Then Jeannie disappeared back into her room. Boots stared at the door as it sealed the pair of enigmatic twins inside. She wasn’t the comfort-giving type; she wasn’t sure why she’d even tried. Feelings had never been her strong suit.

  She jammed her hands into her pockets and sauntered away.

  “Don’t have to tell me twice.”

  The night cycle darkened the bridge, dimming all but the faint running lights lining each console. Nilah lay on the second dais, her back on the deck, hands folded behind her head. Above her, long star streaks wheeled across the canopy as the ship gently spun along its axis. The extravagant yachts of her youth tended to downplay the jumps between worlds, disguising the space outside with projections of idyllic beaches or distant nebulae.

  When Nilah was on the Lang yacht, she spent every night practicing for the next race, having the track beamed into her mind by expert trancers. She’d never allowed herself to experience the engineering wonder of a ship slipping through the Flow.

  Once she’d gotten used to it, Nilah preferred the Capricious to the frilly ships of yesteryear. As a mechanist, her magic gave her a psychic interface with any tech, and she had a natural affinity for the presence of powerful machines like the Capricious. Without a layer of cloying luxury, she felt an intense connection to the inner workings of the vessel. It was elemental and unprocessed, like the rough sport shocks of her Hyper 8 race car. Within the hardened hull of the Capricious, Nilah felt the whole of the stars upon her skin.

  “You’re in my spot, kid,” said Boots, and the older woman clomped across the deck to stand over her.

  Nilah grimaced. “I don’t believe I saw you here before.”

  Boots sat do
wn next to her and laid back, arm clanking against the deck. “Used to do this all the time when I was on night watch. Just lay back and stare at the Flow. When it’s just you and the stars, there’s no war.”

  “Do you mind if I ask you something about your time on this ship?” said Nilah.

  Boots gave her a look of trepidation but nodded.

  “How did you spend much time in the Flow if the Famine War was on Clarkesfall?”

  Boots snorted. “There’s a lot more to a war than the battles on home ground. As things got worse, Arca’s national coffers were exhausted. We flew a lot of supply missions to Harvest and Hopper’s Hope. That’s when I first laid eyes on the plot where my distillery is. Thought I could buy it with my hazard pay when everything was over. But … the longer the war went on, the less you got in pay and the more you got in food and fresh water.”

  “Did the Capricious have his own jump drive?”

  “No. Almost none of our ships did. Poor planet. Not much of an armada. The Gate Cartel, however, propped up a provisional jump gate. Both the Arcans and the Kandamili were allowed through, and there could be no fighting within ten thousand klicks of it. Always a race to get from our defense grid to that safe zone …”

  Nilah listened in silence as Boots spoke. The older woman hadn’t shared much of her military history. Neither had Cordell, for that matter, even if he liked to wear the regalia.

  “We used to call it the ‘trash bubble,’” said Boots. “The jump gate had this thin layer of debris almost exactly ten thousand klicks out, and the Kandis would hide in it and ambush you. Our scanners couldn’t penetrate it by the end of the war. The orbital dynamics kind of massaged it into a shell. Ships and corpses, ours and theirs.”

  Boots sat up, resting her elbows on her knees. “So you’d have to pop the bubble on the way in, interdictors blasting your back the whole time, then you’d slip into the Flow for some nice peace and quiet. You’d have your shore leave on Hopper’s or wherever, then it was back into the Flow. And when you came home, it was a full-on slugfest just trying to get to the surface again.”

  Nilah tried to imagine the difference between the peaceful magical field surrounding them and the few ship-to-ship actions she’d witnessed.

  “I can understand … why you get along so well with the other Fallen,” said Nilah. “I never had to experience anything like that when I was growing up. Orna talks about it sometimes, and I’m scared to say anything, because I know it’ll be wrong. We’ve, uh … We’ve had a few fights from time to time.”

  Boots ejected the small knife blade from her finger and picked at her teeth before flicking away a sliver of food. “Trouble in paradise, eh?”

  “I’m the only one who hasn’t lost anything, not really,” she said, but raised her hands as Boots made a face. “No, I’m not saying that’s regrettable. No one should want to suffer as you all have. I’m only saying that it makes you a family, and I feel a little outside sometimes.”

  Boots chucked Nilah on the shoulder and smiled. “Kid, you’re crew on this ship. You helped kill one of the guys that took out my homeworld. You don’t need to be worrying about crap like that. Every Fallen on every world probably toasted you last year when the news broke.”

  “It’s hard to believe the rough-and-tumble refugees identify with someone like me. I sometimes worry that I’m insufferably posh.”

  The older woman shook with quiet laughter. “You? No. Who would ever say such a thing? But seriously, I wouldn’t talk about this crap with any offworlder, and here you’ve got me rambling on like one of those clowns from the refugee bars. Of course you’re cool with us. Just … with Orna … she doesn’t want you to act like you know what she went through. She just wants to tell you.”

  “Okay. Yeah. I get that,” said Nilah, and she hoped she did.

  Boots laid back again, her eyes dimly illuminated by the changing stars. “So, Taitu, huh?”

  “Captain says we’re going to drop off the prisoner and prep for the next mission. The sooner the better, if you ask me.”

  “Ready to get to work, then?” asked Boots.

  Nilah shuddered. She’d gone to check on Maslin to make sure that nothing was amiss and had found him wailing in his cell, eyelids aglow. Malik, upon examining the arms dealer, said he was trying to kill himself with sleep deprivation—the only weapon he had left. It was nothing the doctor couldn’t fix.

  “I just want Durand off the ship,” said Nilah. “Have you talked to the captain about our next mission?”

  “Not yet,” said Boots. “You?”

  “Yeah. Jeannie pried a name from Durand’s mind when she asked about the mission: Izak Vraba—the head of the Children of the Singularity. We don’t know much else about the bloke, but Durand is scared to death of him. Considers him a godlike being. And then there’s something about a contract, but we couldn’t quite understand. I think it’s probably the Money Mill.”

  “That’s a good sign.”

  “How is that good?” asked Nilah.

  “Means we’re on the right track and not just chasing down some cult for no reason.”

  Nilah nodded and closed her eyes. She took long, slow breaths, feeling the hum of the ship through the back of her skull. It had become as familiar to her as the gentle sighs Orna made when she slept.

  Boots sucked her teeth. “What are we doing, kid?”

  “Lying on the floor?” said Nilah.

  “No, like where’s the sanity? We’re not soldiers, we’re salvagers. The police ought to be handling this.”

  “As my beloved likes to say, ‘We can steal all their crap.’”

  “I’m rich enough,” said Boots, “and I still haven’t figured out how to spend it. I want to take out Witts, like, more than anything. Never wanted someone dead so badly in my life …” She held up her hands as though gesturing to everything out there. “But those people have unbeatable magic. They have an empire of spies. One tiny marauder ain’t going to cut it, kid. This is a problem for the GATO authorities.”

  “Yeah,” said Nilah. “But in the year since we found the Harrow, they haven’t caught any more of the gods. You trust them to do it?”

  She watched Boots’s lips work over an answer, opening and closing without any sound. Boots squinted and let out a hissing breath through her nose. “No.”

  “I guess it’s up to us, then. Maybe we’ll find some more treasure along the way, so we don’t have to operate at a loss.”

  Boots watched the stars roll by, contemplating them. “All right, Nilah. It’s my watch, and your girlfriend is all alone, so get out of here. Check on Maslin on your way to bed.”

  Nilah did as she was asked and left Boots lying on the bridge. She was right—it’d been a few hours since anyone had seen Maslin, and he’d probably woken up. Low, orange light suffused the night cycle corridors as Nilah wound her way through the ship down to the brig. When she’d gone to the bridge, she’d been alert, unable to sleep after seeing Maslin. Now her heart had calmed, and she hoped he wouldn’t rile her up again.

  The door to the brig slid open, and blinding light filled her vision. Nilah narrowed her eyes and shielded her face, trying to adjust. Blurry details swam into focus: the walls of the cell, the active shield barrier. Maslin was still in there, but he’d painted the walls with his magic, covering every inch in white light.

  From her vantage point, she could only make out the shadow of a boot. They’d taken his laces from him, afraid he’d wedge them into the bunk and hang himself. The polybuff of his shoe was ragged from where a buckle had been ripped free; it looked as though it’d been chewed off. Nilah’s dermaluxes went purple as she crept closer.

  The spreading pool of red on the cell floor told her what she’d find before she saw the body. She gritted her teeth and moved to get a better look.

  Maslin lay facedown, eyes wide and shining under the light of his spell. His throat held angry red streaks along one side, leading to an open gash where sticky blood spilled forth. His limp hand
clutched the chewed-off boot buckle, its steel having been crudely filed to a sharpened edge against the nearby deck.

  They should’ve taken all his clothes and left him in there naked. Nilah remembered being so desperate to die, once, when Prime Minister Dwight Mandell used his power to bend her mind. Whoever this Izak Vraba was, the mere idea of his wrath had caused Maslin to kill himself.

  Nilah turned to the console and tapped the intercom. “Bridge, this is Nilah.”

  “Durand okay?” asked Boots.

  “No,” she said. “Wake the captain. Durand is dead.”

  Chapter Four

  Fans

  Taitutian Special Branch Agent Cedric Weathers obviously disliked Boots.

  From the moment she’d entered his office and they’d locked hands she knew. It was the look in his eyes, the grip of his handshake, and the way he said, “Everyone likes you, Miss Elsworth, but I don’t.”

  He was a short, athletic fellow in his thirties, with carefully coiffed hair and clean, manicured fingernails. He kept the lines of his suit as straight as the lines of his office, which were all either parallel or perpendicular, but never anything in-between. His face fit that mold, too, with its monolithic nose and flat, plucked brow, which mirrored his scowl.

  Boots gave him a thin smile with a wink and said, “I’m sure the genocidal maniacs agree with you, at least.”

  And that had been the inauspicious start of their meeting.

  He grilled her for two hours about the fate of Maslin Durand, seething with prepackaged fury over the death. She shouldn’t have been answering questions at all, but Cordell had sent her and Nilah to act as government liaisons for the transfer of Maslin’s corpse. The Special Branch had immediately separated the two of them and boxed her in with their most obnoxious agent.