A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy

by Alex White

  “I’ve got this!” said Boots. “Focus on the heavy slinger!”

  “You sure?” Aisha asked.

  “I’d better be.”

  Boots throttled up, and much to her disappointment, the Capricious didn’t go rocketing away like the Midnight Runner. He was a sluggish boat, and his maneuvers were less about grace and more about throwing weight around.

  “Multiple contacts. They’re scrambling fighters!” said Armin. “Six bandits. Hatchet five-seven-zero, eight hundred fifty, sixteen thousand ASL.”

  “We don’t need to respond,” said Cordell. “Just keep that throttle open, Boots.”

  Boots shoved the throttle to full, hoping that was the right way to handle a marauder. “Yes, sir!”

  “How are we coming on that jump dump?” asked Cordell, swiveling his shields back into the firing solution.

  “We’ll shout for you when it’s done, Cap,” Orna’s voice echoed through the bridge. “That’s the only status we’ve got.”

  “Missile inbound! Tigershark multi-warhead seeker. We’re dead to rights in two seconds,” said Armin, and Aisha rushed to the dedicated weapons controls, tracing her glyph.

  “Tracking …” said Aisha, swiveling the keel slinger on the projection.

  Boots pitched the ship down to give the gunner more horizon to work with. The model ship flashed as its slinger discharged a lance round, which led the distant missile by a wide margin. The two projectiles collided, blooming into fiery flowers in the sky.

  “Good kill!” said Cordell. “If you keep that up, we can hold them off for a few more—”

  “We’ve got to disconnect the main power,” Nilah interrupted over the intercom.

  “That’ll put us in free fall over a moon with no shields, amps, or gravity,” Cordell responded. “Any other options?”

  Vraba’s warship launched fifty missiles, each speeding toward the Capricious like a rabid dog. Boots checked the readouts; they were already at full throttle. Aisha frantically traced her glyphs, blasting at the projectiles, but she’d never hit all of them.

  Then the lights went out, and Boots’s stomach contents rose into her throat. The breezy combat gravity disappeared, replaced by the sickening spin of free fall. The roars of the Capricious’s three engines fell completely silent, replaced by unsettling rattles.

  Standby power gave them two things: emergency lights, and a depressingly accurate altimeter. Boots watched the numbers plummet, each second dragging them closer to an icy demise.

  The lights returned along with the main drive. Boots shoved the throttle wide open, and nearly blacked out from the sudden pull of gravity. She glanced back to find Cordell on the ground, trying to get back to his feet. The gravity drive toggled back on, and he nearly leapt from the deck with his newfound weightlessness.

  “Jump dump connected,” said Orna. “Sealing the engine room.”

  “Missiles closing fast!” said Armin. “Time to jump!”

  “The warship can see us! They’ll be able to follow us!” Boots called back.

  “It’ll take them time to analyze our trail,” said Cordell. “Jump to the Harvest gate now.”

  Boots tapped away at her console, loading in the prearranged coordinates—and hoped she’d done it right. It’d been a long time since astrogation school. “Ready to jump, Captain.”

  Aisha blasted two more missiles, but she could barely keep herself upright with all the spells she was casting. “I can’t hold them off much longer—”

  The long trails of missiles inched toward the projection of the Capricious, ready to harpoon its hull. A heartbeat later, they’d all be salvage.

  “Jump!”

  Boots slammed down the all-discharge button, and the ship compressed around her, pushing its distances into two dimensions, folding into the shape of the Flow. She’d never made a jump from inside atmosphere, but she knew what they’d left behind: a massive fireball of fusing oxygen, dissipating into a hot glow. The missiles would be thrown off course by the transmuting gravity well of the fleeing ship, hurling the warheads in a half-dozen random directions at almost the speed of light.

  When at last the smear of stars in the Flow came drifting past, Boots dared to hope they had escaped. The projection indicated the whole ship had made it, not just the bridge, so that was promising. When they arrived at Harvest, they’d jump straightaway to a hidden location. There’d be witnesses, but Vraba would have to get that information, too.

  Boots let go of the controls. She’d just flown a sortie in a cargo ship, and it was the single most unnerving experience of her career. It handled like an overgrown hog, and Aisha regularly whipped it through space with unparalleled grace.

  Aisha’s hand came heavy on Boots’s shoulder. “Nice going, zipperjock. You keep flying. I’m going to check on my fool of a husband.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Airlock

  Boots was impressed.

  To say that Sharp had been a good score would’ve undersold good scores everywhere. The man was an ultra-fast healer, metabolizing Malik’s protein therapies like a champ. The second he was well enough for long conversations, he’d started briefing everyone on the inner workings of the Children. He said he’d been holding back for months after he was cut off from his handler, and he was all too happy to share with the Capricious crew.

  The doctor was in decent spirits, despite getting pretty sliced up by hot, exploding rocks. Most of the wounds had been cauterized by the process, and the bad cuts required simple closures. If she’d taken that beating, Boots would’ve been lying low, but the doctor had too much to do, checking on everyone else’s wounds.

  She’d only just finished her shift when Armin and Cordell called her up to the captain’s quarters.

  Boots arrived disheveled—she hadn’t had any decent sleep for two days—to find Sharp seated at the captain’s table eating stuffed cabbages and fresh-baked bread. It was Armin’s family recipe, something the first mate prepared on a regular basis.

  Cordell had already tucked in to his meal, and he held a bite halfway to his mouth as she entered.

  “Here she is,” said the captain. “Tell her what you told us, Mister Sharp.”

  The man looked Boots up and down before extending a hand. “I don’t think we’ve formally met, Miss Elsworth. I was barely conscious when you came through the infirmary.”

  “It’s all good. Boots Elsworth.”

  “You may as well call me Sharp.”

  “What happened to you?” asked Boots. “Why were you stuck out there?”

  “I think they killed my handler,” said Sharp. “Not a hundred percent on that, but I stopped getting messages, and I couldn’t ask for extradition without a trusted contact. I thought I’d have made it out by now, but … the opportunity never came.”

  “Now tell her the other thing,” said Cordell, smiling.

  Sharp nodded to Boots. “I think your, uh, gods are building a space palace … on a level never attempted before.”

  It jived with what they’d seen from the Money Mill’s engine. The massive amount of capital required to build such a structure would bankrupt a planet. Boots kept those observations to herself, since they hadn’t properly vetted their new passenger.

  “A ‘space palace,’” Boots repeated. “Nice. What makes you think that?”

  “The Pinnacle wasn’t a cathedral, or a holy site. It was a recruitment office. Those who could defeat Osmond would be periodically lifted away by shuttle. The initiates talked about their coming rewards, about living in the stars with the most powerful people in the galaxy. They called it ‘Bastion.’”

  Boots narrowed her eyes. “How would you know where they went?”

  Sharp’s expression darkened. “Because one of them was my friend.”

  She waited for him to finish explaining, but he didn’t continue. Whatever had happened to this friend of his couldn’t have been good. She needed him to keep talking. “Maybe she just forgot to call?”

  He shook his hea
d, casting off a bad memory. “Her name was Clara. She was able to pass the test, but once she arrived at their base, she couldn’t handle it. Said she just … wanted to hear my voice again. Sent me the one message from Bastion, then went dark forever.”

  “What do you think happened to her?” asked Cordell.

  “I hope she’s dead,” Sharp replied. “If she was caught doubting the mission, they wouldn’t hesitate to … It wouldn’t be good. The other option is that she renewed her faith, and I hope to kill every last one of Henrick Witts’s cultists.”

  Boots leaned against the liquor console. “You came to the right place, buddy. How do we find Bastion?”

  Sharp took another bite and chewed it thoughtfully. “That’s the thing. I was able to get off Hammerhead once or twice while under deep cover. They brought me along on recruitment missions to pick up specialists and contractors—some of the galaxy’s best talent. If people agreed to work for us, we took them on the spot and delivered them to Vraba.”

  “Where were these recruitment missions?” asked Cordell.

  “Taitutian colonies across the galaxies. We recruited from a lot of private academies.” After a long sip of wine, Sharp sighed and put down his fork, leaving little on his plate.

  Crossing her arms, Boots said, “What did Vraba do with them?”

  “He’d take them away in his warship to be signed to unbreakable contracts,” said Sharp. “The good news is that the recruitment missions gave me access to Vraba’s servers, where I could download their agent roster.”

  “Unbreakable contracts … Why not just sign everyone?” asked Armin. “Why aren’t you under contract?”

  Boots snorted. “Maybe he is.”

  Awkward silence settled over the table, and Boots’s stomach decided to break her posturing by grumbling loudly.

  Cordell laughed. “Have a seat and dig in, Bootsie. It’s hard enough to talk without your gut being part of the conversation.”

  Sharp leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “Can I get some wine? This is the first time I’ve been off duty in almost a year.”

  Boots poured him a glass, then sat down beside him at the table. “I feel like I already know the answer, but humor me. Why aren’t you under contract already? Some kind of compulsion?”

  Sharp took a grateful swig from his glass and swallowed. “Because these aren’t ordinary contracts. They’ll last through anything. Regular barrister’s marks have their limits—loopholes like obeying the wording instead of the spirit of the agreement. They can be sued away. The kinds of contracts Vraba signs … he could make you kill your own kids.”

  “Thankfully, none of us have any children,” said Boots. “And let me guess: the barrister in question probably charges a fortune for his services, which are both perfect and everlasting.”

  “I didn’t get that far,” said Sharp, “but I’d imagine that you’re right.”

  Boots looked to Cordell and Armin. “Well, we know who that is.”

  “No surprises there,” said Cordell.

  Boots served herself a cabbage roll and sliced into it—a little overdone. Armin wasn’t half the cook that Didier had been. “Stetson Giles … I owe that guy a hot slinger round right between the eyes.”

  Sharp nodded. “The guy from Finding Hana?”

  “You watched it?” Boots asked.

  His embarrassed look gave her all the answers she needed. “Nah. But everyone in intel reviewed your case after you parked the Harrow in our stratosphere. He’s the guy who shot your partner.”

  “More importantly,” said Boots, “he’s the guy with the—”

  Blinding pain pushed in through her eyelids, eliminating all thoughts of finishing that sentence. It was the old curse, as familiar as an abscessed tooth, coming to shut down the conversation. How many times had she felt it during the press junkets after her show went belly-up? When she’d talked of Stetson before, it’d been idle speculation. Now, she intended to implicate him, to help her friends catch him, and the contract she’d signed wouldn’t abide that.

  Between the thrumming beats of her heart, she could still feel the cold steel of Stetson’s slinger against her temple, his wicked laugh as he forced her to agree to his terms. The pain brought her low, and if she had to endure it forever, she’d sooner kill herself.

  “Boots!” said Armin, breaking through the haze.

  Sharp had jumped out of his chair, backing away as though she was contagious. “What’s with her?”

  “She can’t help us find Stetson,” said Cordell. “He bound her to a contract.”

  “Are those the only terms?” asked Sharp, and Boots gave him a weak nod.

  She sipped at the air, its safe coolness returning in the wake of her wave of flaming agony. “I know where he is. Just can’t tell you.”

  Sharp folded his arms and began to laugh. Boots could’ve slapped him if she could’ve mustered the coordination.

  He gave her an ominous smile. “It’s a good thing you have two readers, then. You don’t have to tell anyone anything.”

  The jump to Harvest had taken a single cycle, but in all that time, Nilah and Orna barely spoke. Once the energy charge was expended from the jump dump, they set about quietly dismantling the system and removing its glassy remains from the main drive. The big cylinder was more char than steel and eidolon, and the crystals inside had melted to black slag.

  The quartermaster remained tense throughout the procedure and, when they completed it, wiped her forehead and said, “Going to bed.”

  “Why don’t we grab a shower together?” asked Nilah, trying to brighten things despite their wounded ship. “It’s … been a while since we saw each other.”

  Orna exhaled through her nose. “Shower, yes. Anything else, no. Got to sack out, since the Runner is going to need serious repairs.”

  Something in the way she said it told Nilah her coldness was more than simple work stress.

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Orna made her way to the engineering hatch and pushed it open, the groan of the old hinge piercing in the cramped main drive compartment.

  “Hey,” Nilah said, stopping her as she climbed out.

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you.”

  “You, too,” Orna said, and left her alone in the small workspace to clean up the tools.

  For the rest of their voyage through the Flow, Nilah scarcely saw her girlfriend. Orna was either in their quarters, asleep, or working on the Runner. When Nilah finally found her way into bed, the quartermaster moved to the edge of the mattress, putting as much distance as she could between them. After the harshness of the Pinnacle, the gulf of cold sheets was almost more than Nilah could bear.

  They lay there for hours, and she stared at Orna’s scarred back, watching the rise and fall of her breath. She wanted to wake her, to kiss her, but was too afraid of what she might find out if she tried. Was Orna mad because Nilah forced them to rescue Sharp? Was she mad because Nilah had ridden in Charger? By the time she could work up the nerve to ask Orna what was wrong, Aisha’s voice came over the intercom.

  “All crew, ready stations. Dropping out of the Flow in ten minutes. Planetfall at Harvest in fifteen.”

  Orna was on her feet in seconds, yanking on her trousers and buckling her belt. She turned to Nilah, who gave her a smile.

  Nilah sat up. “Good morning, babe. Sleep well?”

  “Yeah,” she replied, pulling on her bra and tank top. “Not too bad. You need to get ready. Cap will be pissed if you’re late.”

  Just ask her.

  But that was too hard for Nilah. She could race a hundred grand prix, fight a horde of robots, and face down a god, but she’d never loved anyone as much as Orna. The quartermaster’s cool demeanor frightened her more than anything.

  She rose and donned her own clothes, and before she’d finished dressing, Orna left. Outside the door, Charger’s footfalls banged closer as he met his master to head to the mess.

  “See you down in the cargo bay,
” Nilah called, but Orna had already left.

  As the engines spun down to normal space, she tensed, half expecting an ambush planetside, but none came. Docking calls were made. The Capricious descended to the surface without incident, and all crew gathered in the cargo bay, along with Sharp.

  The cargo ramp whined open, and behind it, the shipyards of Harvest. Nilah spotted the familiar faces of the Arcan mechanics, and was happy to dock among friends. She’d had a lot of fans in her time as a racer, but they could be strange and unpredictable. The men and women who worked the Harvest docks had suffered untold horrors at Henrick Witts’s hands, and she couldn’t imagine them betraying the crew of the Capricious.

  Sharp stood at the top of the ramp, hands in his pockets, and Nilah clapped his shoulder.

  “Those ladies and gents are all ex–Arcan military,” said Nilah. “They may look like inmates, but you can trust them. Still, you sure you don’t want us to drop you somewhere more remote?”

  He shook his head. “To be honest, I’m pretty eager to get back to work. For that, I need a modicum of civilization. I should be able to coordinate some things from here.”

  “About that: how will you know who to trust back home? Any one of those people could’ve sold you out.”

  He worried his lip. “Well, I’ve been thinking about that. If the operation was scrapped, but I wasn’t killed … that probably means my handler is dead. He was a good guy—would’ve taken my name to the grave sooner than blow my cover.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He gave her a dangerous smile. “I’m going to kill every last mole I can get my hands on. Might want to steer clear of Taitu for a bit, because some people are going to start disappearing.”

  Cordell came clomping down the decking in his captain’s boots, hands in his pockets. “Well, Mister Sharp, it’s been interesting having you on board. We certainly do appreciate you letting us debrief you for hours on end.”

  The agent shrugged. “Least I could do after Miss Brio rescued me. If it wasn’t for her, I’d have been chewed to bits. I’m just sorry I didn’t have any more data cubes to give you. That has to be frustrating for your datamancer.”