by J. S. Morin
The elevator door opened. “Well, look who Lady Luck brought me today.”
The penthouse apartment was decorated more tastefully than Janice’s room had ever been back home. Tanny had expected pink everything and plush pillows scattered around just for cuteness’ sake. Twelve or fifteen years had changed her cousin that much, at least. The decor was dark and glossy, with a cold look at odds with the 25°C climate inside. Janice lounged on a leather couch, dressed in scarlet. Her crop-top blouse was sleeveless, plunging down her front; it stayed in place by some clever, high-tech fabric trickery. The skirt she wore billowed into individual pant legs as she rose to greet them; heeled shoes clacked on the floor, hidden beneath the fabric.
Carl gave a lopsided grin. “Hey, Janice. Long time.”
She swayed over toward them. Gone was the grim jewelry she once wore, as was the skull tattoo that used to grace her left shoulder. Instead she wore a pair of dangly diamond earrings with a matching solitaire necklace against her smooth, clinic-fresh skin. Janice’s loose, flowing black hair stood in stark contrast to Tanny’s close-cropped cut.
“I forget,” Janice said, her attention fixed solely on Carl. “Are you and the princess currently married? I can never keep track.”
“Not presently,” Carl replied. With not so much as a hitch in her gait, Janice slunk up to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. The ensuing kiss lasted indecently long. It was all for her benefit, Tanny knew. Janice might have gained some class, and learned a bit of subtlety, but she was clearly still new at both.
Janice gasped for breath. “Hello, Tania,” she said, her arms still encircling a grinning Carl. “Finally decided to pay a visit? Should have come while we were still on Mars. It would have been like old times.”
“Who would’ve wanted that?”
“My mother, your father, probably a few hangers who still think you’re their ticket to the big time, but that’s probably about it,” Janice replied, disentangling herself from Carl. “No one else misses you.”
That last was bit probably an exaggeration, but not by much. Tanny had grown up a lot since leaving home. She could hardly look back on all the things she got away with in her teen years without embarrassment. Dealing with her on a day-in, day-out basis must have been exhausting for most of the family and the household staff, not to mention her security detail.
“Why Carousel? Why Poet territory?” Tanny asked. “Why not just stay cozy on Mars?”
“Cozy?” Janice scoffed. “Same reason you left, sorta. I wasn’t anyone’s plaything, and I wasn’t going to be second string. I put together my own crew, but your father didn’t like it.”
“Lemme guess, because you wanted to take it outside Sol?”
“No, because your father doesn’t trust non-humans in the business,” Janice replied. She shook her hair and walked over the expansive windows overlooking the city. The Rucker Resort had a high vantage in the rocky terrain north of Calliope, and nighttime illumination glittered in the valley that spread below them. “All this is mine, just because your father decided to let me go ‘crash and burn’—his exact words—trying mixed-raced crews.”
“My father’s no xenophobe,” Tanny protested, unsure why that exact moment felt like the time to show filial loyalty. It probably had to do with the source of the accusation.
“Like you know your father,” Janice said with a sneer. “Everyone else sees how he is around you. News-blurt: he’s not like that with anyone else, not even your mother. Sure, he’ll let a laaku do his accounting or draw up contracts, but he’s not letting them into the business side of the business, and he sure as hell isn’t letting any of the non-primate xenos anywhere near his operation.”
Tanny shrugged. “Not a lot of xenos can afford Mars.”
Janice snorted. “Yeah, like that’s an accident. ARGO relocation taxes anywhere in Sol are designed to keep xenos out. But you’re traveling with an azrin in your crew, I hear.”
“Yup,” Carl interjected.
“Figure that makes you at least a few neurons smarter than your old man,” Janice said. She drifted over to a side table cluttered with glass decanters and crystal-ware and poured herself a drink. “So tell me about the quiet one. What’s he got that I need to hire him?”
Tanny elbowed Bryce. She didn’t know if it was nerves or hormones that had his tongue knotted up, but he needed to speak for himself if he had any shot of impressing Janice. There was no confusing her with a delicate flower, despite her current attire. That act fell flat after a minute of her opening her mouth. She didn’t abide meekness. Never had. Probably never would.
Bryce cleared his throat. “I’m in data… digger mostly. I know you’re in the market for some mining gear; portable, nothing huge, but a good-sized haul in smaller chunks from a fleet set to come through this way. You’re set to start a mining colony somewhere bleaker than here; once you’ve got them though, you’re going to want them free and clear, and that’s where I can be of use.” He stopped to catch his breath, barely having paused in his introduction.
“Jesus,” Janice said. “Did you rehearse that or something? Where’d he find out about that job?” she asked Carl.
“Like I said,” Bryce said. “I’m in data.”
Janice bit her lip as she looked Bryce over for the first time since he arrived. Tanny turned aside so she could roll her eyes without her cousin seeing, pretending to notice the view of the grimy little town below filled with miners and the profiteers who supplied them with a livable world.
“Carl, I got you and the princess separate rooms on the tenth floor,” Janice said, picking up a second glass and filling it with an amber liquid from an unlabeled decanter. “Yours has a view of the landing field where you parked. I’m going to have a drink with Mr. Bryce Brisson, and tomorrow he can try his hack to clear your warrants. He has until then to impress me.”
Tanny had to learn where her own room was from Bill, who was waiting for them in the lobby. She was tempted to blow off Janice’s hospitality and go back to the Mobius for the night, but she just didn’t have the energy. It had taken all her focus and reserves of strength not to either pass out or vomit in front of her cousin. Instead, she thanked her lucky stars that her room wasn’t directly below Janice’s and proceeded to do both.
# # #
Mort sat beside Kubu, beer in one hand, a copy of Daedalus and the Art of Artifice in the other. Roddy had brought back a few essential supplies, along with spare parts for the ship, including several raw steaks. It had only taken two to settle the canine’s stomach, but he was still exhausted from his ordeal. Aside from Kubu’s snoring and the occasional mechanical clank from the bowels of the Mobius, everything was quiet.
“Mort,” Roddy’s crackly voice blurted from the shipwide comm. “Hey, Mort … push the goddamn button labeled ‘comm open,’ you Iron Age relic.”
Mort spared a glance up at the panel, rolled his eyes, and returned his attention to his reading. “You see, boy? There are things about being a wizard. You can’t just go letting regular folk drag you around by their gizmos and whatchamacallits. Just you wait and see.”
Daedalus and the Art of Artifice was an excellent resource. Mort’s copy wasn’t original, but it preserved the ancient Greek, making it both informative and a good mental exercise. It provided an escape into a world before technology, when artifice was more a product of imagination and willpower, and less a matter of money and robotic factories. Daedalus wouldn’t have built a ship that needed an overhaul after a bit of magic was performed nearby. Then again … he probably would have built it from a whale carcass with glued-on feathers, so there was a comfort factor to consider as well, not to mention that the Mobius passed a lot of suns.
In moments, the inevitable happened. The door to the cargo bay slammed open, and an irate laaku entered the common room. “I know you can work a comm panel, you bastard.”
“I’m not dropping everything I’m doing the minute you decide—”
“It’s Esper,” Ro
ddy said. “Call came in from local lock-up. They’ve got her in on charges.”
Mort snorted. “She get picked up trying to shop for Tanny’s misbegotten pills? Good Lord, that girl ought to have known better.”
“No, murder.”
Mort raised an eyebrow. Murder wasn’t the sort of thing you could just drop on the floor at someone’s feet without explanation. Even snide laaku mechanics had to know that.
Roddy sighed. “She went to some dung-bucket secondhand shop and got in a fight. Other guy ended up dead, and the local sheriff’s deputies arrested her.”
“I thought Mriy went along with her,” Mort said. Mriy’s only real job around the ship was keeping other people from having to kill anyone—or getting themselves killed.
“She’s locked up too, as an accessory.”
“I don’t see it,” Mort said. “Spend five minutes talking with her and anyone with half a wit in his head’ll see that she hasn’t got it in her. She won’t shoot anyone, and she’s hardly the sort to break necks. How do they think she killed someone?”
“Cancer,” Roddy said.
“So wait, some wretch keels over and they pin it on the nearest offworlder?” Mort asked. “That doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“They said she used magic on him.”
“Bah, Esper can’t create cancer in …” Mort’s words drifted, swirling into nothingness as a new thought contradicted what he would have said. He spoke aloud, but to the universe at large, more so than Roddy. “He already had it. She sped it up, same as she speeds up healing. Body’s natural processes. What’s cancer but those processes run amok?”
“Nasty business,” Roddy said. He shrugged and pulled a beer from the freezer. “Anyway, figured you’d deal with it.”
“Me?” Mort scoffed. “I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not her captain. Why would they listen to …” Mort chuckled silently. “Of course. This place is run by pirates. They don’t care, as long as someone pays them off.”
Roddy cocked his head, pausing mid chug. “You holding out on us? Thought pretty much everyone was scraping terras out of the couch cushions.”
“Of course I am,” Mort replied. “But that’s not the point. Shakedowns work both ways.” He stalked off to his quarters to change.
# # #
Esper sat on the edge of a cot, chin resting on her hands. A lone, dim panel in the ceiling lit her cell, which was all of two meters by two and a half. The scant light was enough to see by, but allowed the disreputable features of the cell’s uncleanliness to remain concealed. There was a toilet and water spigot within arm’s reach; the latter didn’t work, and she hadn’t dared try the former in case it was likewise out of order. The cushion of the cot was some rugged synthetic leather with lumpy stuffing; there was neither blanket nor pillow. All she had were her boots and the form-hugging armor Tanny had insisted she wear in dangerous places like Calliope. Without the concealing shapelessness of the jacket she usually wore with it, she felt displayed, but embarrassment was the least of her shames.
Yesterday she could have said she never killed anyone, and the question would have struck her as preposterous. Now she could not. There was no malice in her use of magic, but she had not known about the miner’s illness, nor had she imagined that her healing spell could nurture malignant growths. Kenneth Eugene Shaw. That was the name they had told her, the man she had murdered. Idly she rubbed her hand on the cot cushion, the hand she had touched him with, the hand she had killed with. There was no wiping away the unclean feeling though.
In time, Esper would pray for forgiveness, for understanding, perhaps even to wipe the incident from her memory. But for now she had no business asking anything from the Lord but mercy upon the soul of Kenneth Eugene Shaw, a man taken before his soul had a chance at redemption. Her encounter with him had lasted only minutes from their first fleeting eye contact, and he had left a sour feeling in her stomach. But she had to imagine that far worse than Kenneth Eugene Shaw had been brought back into God’s grace. She had denied him the opportunity for salvation. Even if she could forgive herself for causing his death, she could not shirk that responsibility.
She had gotten Mriy arrested, too. Aiding and abetting—what a curious turn of phrase. All she had done was run when Esper told her to run, and drawn a weapon she hadn’t used. Had Mriy actually managed to aid or abet, they’d have gotten away. But azrin weren’t given the benefit of much doubt. If the sheriff’s deputies hadn’t known her species, five minutes with a connection to the omni would have been long enough for them to realize she was dangerous.
Worst of all was Esper’s deep certainty that she was going to get away with it. The tidal wave of guilt wasn’t enough to wash cold logic out of her. Carl was a master of talking his way out of things, and would talk his way around any punishment Esper might be in line for. Barring that, Tanny’s cousin was a high muckety-muck in the local criminal clique. Tanny and her cousin didn’t get along, but somehow strings would get pulled, someone would owe someone else a favor, and she’d get released.
Esper slumped back onto the bed with her arms crossed. One full wall of the cell was glossy black, mirror perfect. She knew it was see-through from the far side, and that the guards were watching her every second. As a prisoner, she had no expectation of privacy. Even her grief and guilt were subject to the amusement of her captors.
The door opened. “Come on,” one of the deputies said. He was the slouch-gutted blond who had told her of the “amenities” when they put her in there, hours ago. His weapon was holstered, and his wrist-restraints dangled at his belt.
“Where are we going?” Esper asked, scooting out of the cell before he could change his mind and seal her inside once more.
“To see the Fleet Admiral.”
Esper’s head snapped around. Mort stood just a few steps away, dressed in his robes and chain, though he did not have his staff along. Standing beside two more of the Carousel deputies, he showed the sharp contrast between old and new. The local law enforcers had their kevlex uniforms and stun pistols, their bioactivated restraints and their ear-clip comm links. Mort was a peddler of fire and brimstone, a bottomless well of menace with a scowl and two day’s unkempt beard.
“You disappoint me, apprentice,” Mort continued, wagging a finger at her. “Kill when you must, but kill with intent, not lax control.”
“I just—” Esper began, but Mort raised a hand in a curt gesture and cut her off.
“Save it for the Fleet Admiral. I’ll not be subjected to hearing the story twice.”
“If you’ll just follow me,” one of the other deputies said. They brought Mort and Esper outside to a waiting shuttle. It was just an old Integra-Cruise Sparrow, but the exterior was painted sky blue with twisting ivy wound about. The painted ivy parted around the vessel’s name, the What Goes Down Must Come Up.
The air outside was biting, and the armor Esper wore was designed to dissipate heat, not trap it for warmth. One of the deputies handed her back her jacket, and she gratefully shrugged it on as she shivered.
The shuttle door popped open with a hiss of equalizing pressure, and the deputies stepped aside to allow them aboard. Mort slid his hands into opposing sleeves of his robe, never giving the slightest hint that he was cold despite there being no shelter from the stinging wind. He nudged her with an elbow and glared down at her arms, then wiggled his hands inside his sleeves.
Esper hadn’t been given much chance to figure out what was going on, but Mort had called her his apprentice—to call that a stretch of the truth was like giving Carl credit for an occasional exaggeration. She wasn’t quite comfortable with her own infrequent use of magic, which she had limited to life-threatening emergencies until today, and in retrospect, there had been a life at stake there as well, just not hers. But if Mort had gotten her out of that gloomy little cell (though to give it credit, it was much warmer in there), then she would play along for the time being. It was a snug fit, but she managed to get each of her hands into the jacket
sleeve for the other arm.
The interior of the shuttle was partitioned. There was no access for the passengers—herself, Mort, and two deputies—to interact with the pilot. Four seats faced forward, and four others faced them, oriented backward to the direction of flight. Esper sat in a forward-facing window seat, and Mort settled in right beside her. The two deputies, for all their niceties, sat in the opposite corner, as far from Mort as they could get. He set his eyes on them, and with no magic Esper could notice, held them silent in their seats.
There was so much she wanted to ask, but without quite knowing what was going on, she didn’t dare. Trust in Mort. It was all she had to go on. If ever there was one of the crewmembers whose plans she ought to trust, it was Mort. Tanny and Mriy were ruthless and might do more harm to her soul than good for her safety or freedom. Carl made up his plans as he went along, regardless what lies he might tell to cover the fact. Roddy, if he were ever to plan anything, the odds of him following through were no better than the flip of a coin—or the pop-top of a beer bottle.
Mort put a hand on her shoulder and leaned close. “Don’t worry. I’ll handle this,” he said, his voice low, but not a whisper. Esper should have been more nervous, but what little doubt she had that she would see this through was washed clean. Was this what magic felt like? Some spell, not even perceptible, just evaporating her worries like dew before the morning sun? If it was, then she could not even blame Mort for doing it. If it wasn’t, then she didn’t know why it was working. Mort was, by all she had been taught, a tainted soul. Should solace come wrapped in a black robe and bearing the ill-gotten forces of creation?
