A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy

by Alex White

  “I’ve followed you most of my career, but today, we are equals,” Armin said. “So give me this, okay?”

  Cordell’s hands clenched and unclenched as he watched the vessel depart. Nilah took Orna’s hand, and the quartermaster squeezed hard before dragging Nilah into her arms and holding her tightly.

  “Orna,” Armin said, his voice quiet.

  “Yeah?” the quartermaster mumbled into Nilah’s hair.

  “I’m so glad Cordell and I answered your distress signal … all those years ago.”

  “You saved me,” she said, voice quivering, “but you’re not going to let me return the favor?”

  “I’m sorry for yelling at you so much when you were a teenager,” Armin chuckled. “And I’m so proud that I got to see you become a real sailor.”

  “And you got to be a captain,” she sobbed. “It’s just like we always talked about, right?”

  “Right,” he replied. “And duty calls.”

  “I’ll miss you, Captain Vandevere,” Orna whispered into her comm. “Thanks for always being there.”

  “Godspeed, Captain Vandevere,” Cordell added, tapping his heart with an Arcan salute.

  The Scuzzbucket picked up speed and faded from view, disappearing behind the veil of smoke obscuring the docking bay.

  “For Arca,” whispered Armin, his voice disappearing with a rush as his ship passed out of the bubble, venting into nothingness.

  Then a blinding pink flash penetrated the black clouds of smoke, painting their edges fiery gold like a sunrise.

  They waited for long seconds, watching the atrium overhead, and the dark warship that should’ve spelled their doom. Nilah kept blinking, trying to knock the jump strobe from her eyes so she could see into the great starscape beyond the bubble.

  Then came a distant, pale spark the color of a cherry blossom.

  Inside of Vraba’s warship, a star was born, leaving no survivors save for Armin Vandevere’s glory. Its brilliance expended, the star collapsed into nothingness.

  The station hallways coruscated with alert lights as blast shutters fell in front of rooms. The various animals of the Masquerade sprinted in panic for safe havens, completely ignoring the bleeding deer and the woman following in his wake with murderous eyes.

  “Attention all revelers: debris cloud detected,” said the station’s pleasant voice over the intercom. “A catastrophic event has generated a significant threat to the Masquerade. You have five minutes to reach minimum safe distance. Seek shelter in your quarters immediately.”

  Boots limped after Stetson, shouldering her way through panicked celebrants, slinger in hand. If he reached his apartment, he might be gone forever, and she’d be damned if she let him walk out of here.

  It wasn’t hard to find him if she ever lost sight. She just followed the trail of blood, fixating on his lumbering form, a wounded animal to be chased to a clearing for slaughter.

  He spun and popped off a shot, missing Boots, but not an unfortunate calico cat, who went down like a sack of bricks. He fired again, piercing a turtle through the chest. Boots shoved a reveler out of the way and shot back, and through some miracle, she actually managed to hit him in the arm, ruining flesh and splintering bone. Stetson cried out, and his slinger went spinning off into the chaos.

  Despite his new injury, the man continued attempting to flee. As they turned down another side passage, the crowds began to thin.

  “How does it feel, Stetson?” she called to him. “Losing an arm sucks, doesn’t it?”

  Her own shoulder tortured her; her prosthetic mounting screw was twisted at an odd angle, and frayed muscles burned underneath. She’d probably fractured her stump. She might find herself fighting off blood poisoning if she didn’t get significant medical help in a couple of days.

  “Attention all revelers, reactor containment at four percent. Seek shelter in your quarters and engage escape protocol.”

  Stetson stumbled to the ground, crying out in agony, and she waited patiently for him to stand back up. She couldn’t have him giving up and dying here.

  “That’s right, buddy,” she urged him. “Keep on going back to your safe, comfy room. You can make it through this.”

  “Go to hell, you dull-fingered—”

  She blasted the wall beside his head without thinking. Relief settled over her when she realized she hadn’t hit him by accident. Her track record with a slinger was less than stellar, and she didn’t need to press her luck.

  “What’d you say?” she taunted him.

  “Crazy!” he cried, hobbling for his room. “You hear me?”

  Boots considered the insult, not feeling like he was wrong. “You know what’s crazy, Stetson? Watching one of your friends murder another one of your friends. You remember doing that, you goddamned thief? You remember standing over me with your slinger cursing me with your first contract?”

  “Boots,” came Cordell’s voice, “this is Boss. We’re leaving if you care to join us. We’re in Bear’s quarters on branch twenty-eight.”

  “Get clear, sir,” said Boots. “I can find my own ride.”

  “Copy that.” His voice was hoarse. “Prince … said to tell you goodbye.”

  “Goodbye? What do you—” But she knew what he meant. “I’m sorry.”

  “See that you make it back to us, okay?”

  “I’ll finish things, and you’ll see me on the other side.”

  The brass plate nearest Stetson lit up with a stylized representation of a deer, and the lines untwisted to create a doorway. Stetson turned and flung the index down the hall, where it bounced into a burning pile of wreckage, leaving Boots with a choice: sift through the fire for the index and expose more of the conspirators, or take her revenge.

  There were ten paces between the pair, and Boots was drop-dead tired, but she charged him.

  When she slammed into Stetson’s body, they toppled through the portal into his room. He rolled onto his back, and she straddled him, bringing the butt of her slinger down on the bridge of his nose.

  She pressed the warm barrel into his forehead and said, “Hold still if you don’t want to die right now.”

  And he did, because he was a broken man. He’d lost so much blood, and his eyes lolled in his head, so she slapped him back to the present moment. Then, she pulled off his mask to see the hated face underneath.

  He hadn’t changed much. Wealth did that to people—kept them young and healthy. Though now, his rosy cheeks had gone ghostly pale, and one of his front teeth had been chipped away.

  “Welcome,” came an automated voice from the quarters as a hologram spun up in the far corner of the room. “Escape protocol is in effect. If your party is all present, and you would like to depart now, please select ‘acknowledge’ on the projection above.”

  Boots gestured to the opulent quarters, filled with trophies of adventures she’d never seen. “Is this what you bought with Gemma’s blood?”

  His lips parted so he could speak, but a splutter of crimson came out instead. After several aborted attempts, he finally managed, “How did you b-break the curse?”

  Boots stood, keeping her slinger on him. “Sheer spite, buddy. Where’s the cup?”

  She didn’t have to look hard. It occupied a place of honor among Stetson’s many lavish possessions: the centerpiece of a shelf full of relics. After the war, she and Stetson had bonded over their mutual love of history—that was why they’d been on the Link together. Once he’d murdered Gemma, Boots had been on Gantry Station scraping together enough argents to buy pieces of paper, and he’d been scooping up original paintings and sculptures. She limped to the bookshelf where the Chalice of Hana lay ensconced.

  Many of the priceless titles dated back to Origin, and she ran her fingers along the spines before returning her gaze to her enemy. He hadn’t moved a muscle and lay on the ground taking labored breaths.

  With only one hand remaining, Boots had to set her slinger down to take the chalice from the shelf; she’d forgotten how light t
he cup was. It made a resonant sound when she bumped it on the edge of the shelf—a tonal hum that refused to stop, even when she clutched it close. For the second time in her life, she held the instrument of empires and the genesis of the alliance that created Clarkesfall hundreds of years ago. She ran her thumb along its features; doves rose from a golden base in a long stem, encircling a pristine bowl.

  “She was twenty years old, Stetson. We were already grizzled veterans in our thirties,” she said, admiring the cup’s figuration.

  “Do you hate me because I killed her, or because I robbed you?” he rasped.

  “A whole lot of both.”

  She took the cup over to his bar, where she filled it with a generous pour of Humphrey ’62 whiskey. It wasn’t her favorite, but it’d have to do in a pinch. She swirled the whiskey around and around, watching as motes of light traveled through the amber liquid, bubbling up to the surface in glowing chains.

  She’d wanted this for so long. She could have magic if she desired it, powerful and real, far beyond that of any of her contemporaries.

  “But you know,” she sighed into the cup, “after a decade of thinking, I’m starting to realize something: this stupid thing shouldn’t exist. It’s the kind of garbage that makes a person turn on their friends, that gives rise to evil empires, that can be used to enslave a free people.”

  His hoarse laughter filled the apartment, and he descended into a coughing fit. “What did you think was the point, you sparkless fool?”

  “To enforce trust.”

  “If you have to enforce trust, it don’t exist, Boots.”

  “We were supposed to build something together.”

  Blood tinged his derisive snort. “I built better without you slowing me down. So, what, you’re going to destroy the cup?”

  She held it aloft so she could look one more time at the sheen traveling along the sweeping line of stylized doves. In the era of the Landers, this chalice had secured their homeworld.

  Now it had been a tool of those who devoured Clarkesfall.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I am. But I’ve got something to do, first. You’re going to swear to me that you’ll never cast a spell for the rest of your life, nor will you ever willingly allow a spell to be cast upon you.”

  She drained the scintillating liquid from the bowl in a single shot, and it burned all the way down her gullet. She’d seen how it worked when Stetson cursed her aboard the Saint of Flowers. It’d been like his very soul exuded golden fire through his hands, and he’d cast a huge, masterful glyph. Boots set down the cup and stared at her calloused fingertips, waiting for the glimmering magic to work its way through her veins.

  But her flesh remained flesh.

  Her magic remained dead.

  To everyone else in the galaxy, the Chalice of Hana was a life-changing artifact, the beginning of a new era. To her, it was a fancy cup, wet with a whiskey she didn’t even like. As she stared into the bottom of the basin, one of her tears joined the droplets, infusing with magic.

  Even her teardrops were too good for her, able to absorb the power of the chalice that she could not.

  Stetson’s vile, wracked laughter echoed in her ears, drowning out her own shaking breath.

  “Once a sparkless dull-finger, always a sparkless dull-finger …”

  He coughed once more, and the air caught in his throat. His fingers began to shake, then he fell dead still, eyes wide in surprise and fear.

  “Attention all revelers—”

  Boots tossed the cup aside and grabbed the bottle of Humphrey. “Yeah, yeah, you nag.”

  Then she slumped out from behind the bar and over to the projection, where she placed her hand against the “acknowledge” button. The blast shutter slammed shut, and the countdown began.

  Sitting down cross-legged on the floor, she took a generous swig, then lay down and waited for whatever hand fate decided to deal her.

  With the Scuzzbucket destroyed, their only way off the station was inside Bill Scar’s former apartment. In the event of catastrophic damage, all the apartment modules were designed to separate and seal, protecting the wealthy clientele and ejecting them from the station. They buckled in and launched, Nilah’s heart in her throat as the room hurtled away from the doomed structure.

  When the Masquerade’s reactor went up, it filled the stars like a supernova. Whatever remained on board was instantly turned to carbon or fused into a ball of molten metal and gas. One or two small pieces of debris struck the escape pod, but they’d been lucky for the most part. The apartment next to them had been crushed by an errant server cluster.

  Much like a Fixer contract, every apartment pod had an insurance policy, entitling them to individual extraction to the destination of their choice. Jeannie and Alister were able to keep the Jans stable while Nilah and Orna checked the apartment pod’s internal systems. For a house, it had a considerable amount of guidance and navigation intelligence. The party had enough food and supplies for three weeks, though their ride was due to arrive within the day.

  While the marooned residents of the Masquerade waited for pickup, their apartment pods drifted in formation in relative peace and stability. Of the five thousand pods on board the Masquerade, Nilah estimated some three hundred had successfully jettisoned. Perhaps the other residents had died in the explosions. Perhaps they simply hadn’t been on the station at all during the fire.

  Either way, Nilah couldn’t say she felt any real sorrow for those who’d perished. They were little more than slavers, rubbing elbows with some of the most horrid people in the galaxy.

  Cordell called Boots to check in and confirm the news about Armin’s death; Boots told them she was fine and simply wanted to be alone to grieve. Since they were several hundred kilometers apart, that was easily arranged.

  Nilah couldn’t say for certain how the galaxy would take the news of what they’d done. Certainly, there were gangsters and garbage humans on board the Masquerade, but some of them were bound to be notable diplomats, heads of major corporations, and other tossers the civilized universe considered “important.” Some of them must’ve died in the explosion … or become bystander casualties of the firefights.

  Would the truth about their deaths come out? Would they be reported missing? As the adrenaline faded from Nilah’s mind, only questions remained. Beyond caring, she laid her smoke-stained, blood-spattered body down on Bill’s pristine sheets.

  Within seconds, she was asleep.

  The shudder and clank of a docking clamp roused Nilah from her slumber, and she found Orna snoozing beside her. Nilah was cold—Orna had stolen the blankets.

  What if they weren’t being rescued, but kidnapped? She fetched her slinger from the nightstand and checked the clip: knock rounds. In truth, she didn’t have much fight left in her if the docked ship was hostile.

  The nearby projectors registered an incoming call, and Cordell pulled on his mask, gesturing for Nilah and Orna to join them in a private area—out of the view of imager lenses. An attractive man and woman spun into existence before them.

  “Hello, revelers!” said the man. “I’m Captain Kenichi and this is Navigator Koyuki of the Yamada, and we’re—”

  “Harvest. Ceresport Docks. Slip eighteen F,” interrupted Cordell.

  “Of … of course!” said Kenichi. “Right away! While you’re waiting—”

  Cordell repeated himself, and his voice sounded beaten even through the eagle’s distortion field.

  Koyuki gave them a worried look. “After such a difficult time, we hope you’ll consider joining us on the ship for some of our luxury offerings. We have a wide range of spells and salubrious company to soothe your—”

  “How many more times do I have to say it?” Cordell bellowed, jamming his finger at the projection. “Is no one going to follow my goddamned orders today?”

  Kenichi looked to Koyuki, his face swelling with embarrassment. “I assure you, sir, we take your orders very seriously.”

  Cordell took a step toward the
projection, seething. “Then Harvest. Ceresport Docks. Slip eighteen F. Right. Now.” Then he added. “We don’t want your drugs or your food or any of that other crap. Just leave us alone and take us where we want to go.”

  He terminated the call without another word.

  “Captain,” said Nilah, placing a hand on his arm as he skulked away toward the couch where he’d camped out.

  He stopped and pulled off his eagle mask, head hanging. “Please don’t ask me to be in charge right now.”

  She gave him a pained smile. “I’d say you’ve earned a vacation.”

  He pulled out his cigarette case and seated a smoke in his mouth before offering her one. She took it, rolling the delicate paper between her fingertips. It smelled a little like raisins, with the faint acidity of eidolon dust.

  “I’ve never smoked before,” she said.

  “Don’t tell Boots,” Cordell replied. “She’ll call me a reprobate.”

  Nilah’s laugh was louder than she intended. “Oh, I’ve had more than my fair share of mind-altering substances. Some of the parties at my flat on Morrison Station would’ve probably killed poor Boots.”

  “It just calms you down a little,” he said. “Makes you breathe evenly.”

  “In that case …” She handed it back. “Any calmer and I’ll be unconscious. But you go ahead.”

  He lit his cigarette and shook the lighter closed. After drawing a deep breath, he said, “Armin used to sneak a smoke with me on the bridge whenever we were alone.”

  She thought of them alone with the stars, passing a cigarette back and forth, and her mental image of Armin twisted a little bit. He’d always been so professional whenever others were around. The idea of the man cutting loose was antithetical to all of Nilah’s experience.

  “He was saving up for a ship of his own one day,” Cordell said. “Was planning on having a commission and running legit cargo.”