A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy

by Alex White

  “You’re wrong,” she slurred against Orna’s collarbone, then pulled back to rest a hand on her girlfriend’s cheek. “I will always be there.”

  Orna’s breath caught and her lip quivered. “You’d be the first.”

  Nilah shook her head. “No again. The rest of the crew loves you. You’re going to be okay, do you understand me? But if you need some reassurances … if you want me to prove I won’t disappear …”

  She swallowed, heart in her throat, Orna searching her face for some impending meaning.

  “Maybe …”

  In her career, she’d done dozens of press junkets. Stood on podiums across the galaxy. Headlined boatloads of events. Why was she having to muscle a lump out of the way of her words?

  “… we ought …”

  Deliberately jumped out of a moving starship. Helped kill a prime minister. Returned the single most powerful instrument of war to the right hands. Spent an evening drinking with Boots. Why was she so frightened?

  “… to get married.”

  Orna gaped at her in shock. She’d made the wrong move. Every line on the quartermaster’s face was about to spell out the word “no.”

  “You want …” Orna stammered, “to spend the rest of your days with a desert rat like me?”

  Nilah, now crying, stupidly wiped away her girlfriend’s tears instead of her own. “It’d be the greatest honor of my life, Orna Sokol.”

  “Deal.”

  And they sealed it with a kiss.

  “Nice landing, Pips!” Aisha radioed to the Scuzzbucket as Boots docked him at Harvest.

  They’d made multiple jumps in an effort to arrive at the same time, just in case someone was waiting on the other side. To Boots’s delight, shoddy docking clamps and a stench like an open sewer were the only threats Harvest offered up. They’d even managed to get a private, sealed bay this time, which they could use as a home base.

  Boots spent the next several hours on the comm with Aisha, learning how best to secure a larger spacecraft, as well as handle fuel-loading logistics, food, coolant, and all the things she’d never bothered with. There were seemingly endless forms to fill out. Now Boots understood why Aisha was always the last one out of the boat.

  “If you’re done with basic docking procedures,” chuckled Aisha, “the captain wants to see you in his quarters.”

  “Armin’s quarters are way nicer on the Scuzzbucket,” Boots replied. “Along with my cushy pilot’s chair, most of this place is pretty posh.”

  “He says just get over here,” said Aisha.

  When Boots arrived in Cordell’s quarters, she found a delightful spread of breads, cheeses, and fruit laid out, alongside a bottle of Flemmlian Ten.

  “You wanted to see me, sir?” she asked.

  He came swaggering out from behind a closet door, having just donned his casual clothes. She could probably count the number of times she’d seen him out of his jacket on ten fingers. “Yes, I did, Bootsie. I figure we need to have a toast.”

  She frowned. He was spending too much personal time with the crew, and Boots most of all. What if he was losing his edge, going soft in his old age? She’d seen far too many of the Fallen give up on their decorum, and later, their lives.

  “Why are you standing there like a fool?” he asked. “Get in there and pour yourself a glass. Pour me one, too.”

  She did as he bade her, and the scent of an uncorked Flemmlian was enough to set her mouth watering—smoky notes and a hint of cinnamon, with a vanilla finish. One for her, one for him, and she handed it off. As Cordell took it, a bit sloshed onto his hand.

  “And … what are we toasting?”

  “Dreams come true.” He clinked his glass against hers, and she saw the empty bottle of wine peeking out from behind his cycler. He must’ve missed when he tried to throw it away—which meant he was already way ahead of her on drinks.

  She crooked an eyebrow and snatched his glass, downing it and then hers right after.

  “Hey! That’s … that’s insubordination!”

  “To dreams coming true,” she huffed, booze burning on her breath. “Now, you mean to tell me why I’m up here and you’re piss drunk, raiding the ship’s stores for all our carbs?”

  “You can’t talk to me like that.”

  She gestured to the closet. “You’re not in uniform. How am I supposed to know what your rank is? Go put your crap on. I’ll wait.”

  “You just love any excuse to be … a punk is what you do.”

  “That’s right, sir,” she said, easing him into a chair. “A punk is what I do. Very sensible.”

  “I just wanted to start a new tradition,” he said, his head lolling back. “Starting by toasting you plugging that Stetson Giles.”

  “Yeah, except we haven’t done that yet, so—”

  His pointer finger shot up in objection. “That’s the ‘new tradition’ part. You see, if you have the toast while everyone is still alive, they get to enjoy it.”

  She put her hands on her hips as the whiskey’s warmth settled onto her bones. “With all the stupid crap we do, it’s amazing we made it this far.”

  Cordell smiled and mocked a pathetic face. “Would you come to my wake, Boots?”

  “Not on your life, reprobate.” She pushed his chair hard to one side, then pulled up one of her own. “Shove over, dead weight. I’ve got a whiskey to murder.”

  He tapped his brow. “You’ve got to admit, previctory toasting is a solid idea. Would’ve been nice to have one last party with old Kinnard.”

  She splashed a bit too much into her tumbler, but it didn’t matter since she had designs on the whole bottle. “Yeah. Maybe so. Look, you don’t have a plan, do you?”

  “What?”

  “You’re acting weird. Getting overly sentimental. You think someone is going to get killed, don’t you?”

  He scratched the back of his neck and sighed. “Any way you slice it, it’s going to be dicey. If word gets around that we’re there, Vraba will probably show up, or one of the other gods.”

  Boots took a thoughtful sip. “Why do you think they haven’t thrown more gods at us? By my count, three of them are dead, but they’ve got a lot more.”

  Cordell laughed. “Ain’t pissed them off enough yet. Destroying the universe is busy work—probably can’t spare their most important folks to come after us.”

  “So that means if we keep going …”

  “I’m not sure we want to be their top priority. We can barely handle one of them, much less two or three.”

  “Here’s to being unimportant.” She tipped her tumbler in mock toast. “So your problem is you can’t figure out how to extradite Stetson Giles without getting your face melted by autoturrets.”

  “Hell, I haven’t even figured out how we’re going to identify the guy. He’s going to be wearing a mask.”

  “What was it you always used to say? ‘One problem at a time.’”

  “Okay, so how do we get a positive ID?”

  Boots leaned back in her chair, swirling her glass to peer through the long, amber legs that formed on the sides. “Stetson will probably be wearing the same mask every time. If we had some imaging, maybe Armin could do some pattern analysis.”

  “Could … like … install imagers in the masks’ eye sockets. Let the crew fan out through the Masquerade for a few days. Just kind of walk around.”

  Boots blinked. Even drunk, Cordell was a decent strategist.

  “That’s good. Right then and there, we get a catalogued index of common routes for each mask.”

  Cordell’s smile faltered. “Yeah, but that’ll only tell us which masks go where on a regular basis. We still can’t know which one is Stetson without … you know … a lot of data. Behavioral data. If we could get into his personal networks, that’d be one thing …”

  Closing her eyes, Boots tried to think back to any way she might get ahold of Stetson’s stuff, but she hadn’t seen him in a decade. If he maintained a home outside of the Masquerade, she didn’t k
now where it was.

  “Like you said, we need behavioral data,” said Cordell, drunkenly mistaking his idea for hers. “Can’t train Armin’s models without—”

  “Except we have that,” said Boots, smacking her forehead. “We probably have a hundred hours of genuine surveillance on Stetson.”

  “How?”

  “The show. We make Armin watch Finding Hana.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Form Up

  The next day, Cordell emerged from his room crisp and tight, his captain’s jacket wrinkle-free. Boots, on the other hand, had to pay a visit to Malik for a hangover cure.

  With all prep complete, they crammed into the Scuzzbucket, bound for a never-ending dinner party of power brokers and wanton indulgence. Boots couldn’t believe she and Stetson had ever intended to work there; she couldn’t stand regular dinner parties.

  Also, Boots hadn’t known about the spikes.

  She’d never wanted to see Stetson Giles’s face again, unless she was putting her fist through it. Despite her best efforts, it now filled the viewing gallery of the Scuzzbucket, projectors rendering his devious image in perfect contrast.

  His face was a map of his checkered past. Stetson had a long, broad nose that terminated just above his extremely large, white upper teeth; both teeth and nose had been replaced after a bad scrap in a Gantry Station bar. Since his mouth could scarcely contain his ivory array, his lips were always pulled back in good-natured smirk; that smirk had charmed a dozen investors. His apple-red cheeks swelled with each smile, crinkling his eyes like a cowboy squinting into the sun; Gemma, the show’s producer, used to love that look.

  “I can’t believe you ever trusted this guy,” Armin muttered as Boots entered. They’d rigged up his datamancer’s throne in there so he could better parse through footage of Stetson.

  “Thank you, Admiral Hindsight,” Boots said, crossing to the bar to pour herself a drink.

  “Are you on duty?”

  “Would I drink on duty?”

  He sighed. “You might. Remember, I recruited you because I have trouble predicting you.”

  She toasted Armin and downed the fiery liquid. “But you can predict Stetson just fine.”

  “You know,” said Armin, “I normally give myself a twenty-five percent tolerance for predictions. Every once in a while, I’m wrong. With you, it’s like a thirty percent chance.”

  “Just five percent more?” Boots wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “You made it sound like I was some unknown mathematical mystery!”

  Armin shrugged and gestured to the playback. “But with Stetson here, I think I can give myself a seven percent margin of error. Watching him is like looking through a porthole. I swear it’s like I can see the gears turning in his head.”

  Annoyance fluttered in her stomach like a match flame. “He’s not that simple. It’s not like we could’ve seen it coming.”

  The first mate glanced back at her and keyed up a few panes of transcripts. “This,” he said, running a finger down the display, “is every instance of someone talking about finding the Chalice of Hana.”

  “So?”

  He tapped one of the lines, and playback jumped to a much younger Boots saying “chalice.” Armin paused the feed, then pointed to Stetson’s eyes.

  “So what?” asked Boots. “He’s looking at Gemma, the producer. She’s pretty. A lot of people looked at her before he shot her.”

  “Again, then,” said Armin, keying up the next instance of discussion.

  This time, Stetson’s eyes were firmly fixed in the center of Gemma’s back.

  “Okay, so you have two,” said Boots. “That doesn’t mean—”

  “Let’s look at another.”

  The playback jumped to Stetson speaking to Gemma about what they’d do the moment they held the artifact.

  “You can’t count it if he’s talking directly to her—”

  “Watch his index finger,” said Armin.

  And sure enough, it twitched. He keyed up another and another, and every time someone on the show brought up finding the chalice, Stetson would look at Gemma and stretch the fingers of his right hand—almost like holding a slinger.

  “Okay,” said Boots, plunking down her glass, “okay, I get it! We were dense and now she’s dead. Thanks! You made your point!”

  “That’s not why I showed you that,” said Armin.

  “Okay, well I feel like crap now, so maybe you could tell me the upside?”

  Armin sat up in his chair and gestured to the buffet service. “Pass me that bottle, would you? And a glass?”

  Boots did as he asked her, and he poured himself a burbling serving of liquor.

  “People crave absolution, Boots. A crew morale metastudy from 2987 showed that soldiers performed far better when—”

  “You sound just like Kin sometimes,” said Boots, “which is nice, but skip it.”

  “I liked that little cube,” said Armin. “My point is this: there was never a question in Stetson’s mind that he was going to double-cross you. He always intended to murder Gemma. His plans may have evolved over the course of the search, but it was always going to turn out the way it did.”

  She chewed her lower lip. “If I’d known, I would’ve shoved that slinger so far up his ass …”

  “But you didn’t, and what’s done is done. Still, I almost envy you.”

  “Envy me? Yeah, we had a real blast right up until the murdering.”

  Shaking his head, he said, “No. I envy you because you have everything you need to achieve righteous justice. Our quarry’s behavior reveals that he’s subhuman. He always was, but he hid behind a mask of camaraderie strong enough to fool the two of you. And where we’re going, he’ll be hiding behind a mask once more. The difference is that this time …”

  He paused to take a swig of his glass.

  “… I have enough data on him to slice that mask to ribbons. No matter what else happens on this mission, Boots, we’re going to get some damned justice for what happened to you.”

  “You sure know the way to a girl’s heart,” she said, toasting him, but she felt an unexpected warmth. Perhaps it was just the whiskey.

  “All crew to the bridge,” Cordell’s voice interrupted over the intercom. He’d taken over command of the Scuzzbucket from Armin in an amicable, yet overly ceremonial, procedure.

  “You sure about that, Captain?” Boots called back.

  “What? Yes, I’m sure, it’s—”

  “Not a lot of room in there, sir. It’s a yacht for five.”

  “We should listen to Pips,” said Aisha, who’d become the main pilot after the two crews reunited. “She’s flown this big boy before.”

  “And where would you suggest we cram nine people on this boat?” asked the captain, his voice tinged with annoyance.

  Boots looked around the Scuzzbucket’s small yet luxurious theater. It was ideal for a tiny group of friends to get together and watch dramas, but it’d hold nine people. Armin saw her look and shook his head no—he’d taken over this room and wasn’t keen to give it up.

  She pretended not to notice. “Maybe the viewing gallery would work, sir?”

  Nilah hadn’t been so sweaty in a long time. They’d been in crew muster for ten minutes, and the Scuzzbucket’s climate control couldn’t keep up. Tracks of perspiration ran from her armpits and under her bosom, and she crossed her arms over her chest to hide the stains.

  “Whose idea was it to meet in this tiny box?” she grumbled.

  “Oh, that would be Boots,” said Armin, mopping his forehead. “Take a bow, Boots.”

  Cordell chortled, sauntering into the middle of the room with an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. “I told you lot that the Capricious is the best ship in the galaxy. Who agrees with me now?”

  No hands went up.

  “I mean,” said Nilah, “if the rest of you guys weren’t here, maybe it’d be nicer.”

  “Let’s just get this done,” said Cordell, and the twins
dragged in a transit case from out in the hall.

  They clicked it open, and the four masks from the ship’s master bedroom arose on a lit tray, their features effervescing with woven illusions. There was a wolf, an eagle, a rabbit, and a bear. Viewed at different angles, their fur and feathers shifted from metallic to opalescent.

  “Dibs on the wolf.” Orna repeated her previous claim.

  “That’s what we’re here to discuss,” said Cordell. “You probably noticed that there are nine of us and four masks. We can get the ship into the Masquerade, but we need to talk options for boarding parties.”

  He picked the eagle up and tried it on, and its cowl of feathers spread across his torso like a cloak, obscuring his body. In an otherworldly, genderless voice, he said, “Do I look as stupid as I think I do?”

  “Less stupid than usual, sir,” said Boots.

  He turned on Boots with what Nilah assumed to be a glare, but she couldn’t read his expression behind the raptor’s eyes. “As you can see,” said Cordell, “it changes my voice and height. It also”—he held up his arms, sheathed in luminous talons—“obscures any exposed skin.”

  “Wicked,” said Orna, seeming for once like her old self again. “Do you mind?”

  The eagle gestured to the lot of masks in their midst, and the quartermaster picked one up, turning it over to show Nilah a brilliant pink stone set into a copper headband.

  Nilah whistled appreciatively and said, “That’s a very flawless eidolon crystal. Could probably power the ship’s amps with one of these, and we’ve got four.”

  “Crystal crypto?” asked Orna.

  “Almost certainly,” said Nilah.

  “Okay, but for the rest of us fools, what’s crystal crypto?” asked Boots.

  Nilah held up the mask and turned it around so the others could see the embedded gemstone. “Powerful stones like this cause minor anomalies all around them—beneficial, of course. Reduced aging, small flashes of light, minor gravitational disturbances, tiny arcane bursts. The purer the gems are, the more reliable the disturbances. A stone like this probably generates a thousand small events a day in repeating intervals. So, if you had a sensitive sensor array—”