A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe

by Alex White

“Like what?”

  Boots considered the question. Her miner’s account had been incinerated in the office attack, along with all but one of her images of the Harrow. Besides, Cordell had probably seen the common conspiracy pictures of the warship floating around the Link.

  “I’m waiting,” he said.

  “My office. It was burned down by a woman calling herself Mother.”

  “Bull.”

  “Oh, Mother burned down my office. There were eyewitness accounts. I’ve got the message from the insurance company where they won’t cover the damages.”

  “Where?”

  Boots shrugged. “You already have the record. It’s in Kin’s memory ban—”

  She drew up short. She’d never talked about Kin with anyone, much less a friend from his life.

  Cordell reached under his desk and pulled out Kinnard’s memory core, brandishing it like a precious stone. “I was a little surprised when I plugged him up. Sounds just like him.”

  She flushed. “Yeah. The mnemonimancers did a good job.”

  Cordell tapped a button on his desk, and a receptacle slid open. He gently placed the cube inside, where it slid into a snug fit.

  “Hello,” came Kinnard’s voice over the room’s speakers. “I’ll be ready in one moment.”

  “Worth every penny, I’d say,” said Cordell. “Nice to hear old Kin again.” When Kinnard had booted up, Cordell asked him, “Can you tell us about Boots’s office getting toasted?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Kinnard, “but I don’t recognize your voice. You’re not an authorized user.”

  Cordell looked hurt, but quickly stifled it.

  “Kin,” said Boots, “are you okay? Did they mess with your memory?”

  “My cores have not been breached, and my processing power is at one hundred percent,” said Kin. “Lizzie, would you like to make this gentleman an authorized user?”

  She looked to Cordell, who smirked at the name Lizzie.

  “Absolutely not. Can you play back the message from the Acclion Group?”

  As Kin read the message, Boots watched the change in Cordell’s face. When the words “Arcane explosives were involved, and there was a distinct resonance …” came over the speakers, he looked positively elated.

  “Stop the message,” said Boots. Better to strike while the iron was hot. “A few weeks ago, I sold the location of the Harrow to someone. Kin, who was that?” She started to tell him how she’d pieced the legend together, but thought better of it. Her mother had once told her, “Only liars get too specific.”

  “Arthur Castor,” said Kinnard.

  “Do you watch racing?” asked Boots.

  Cordell shook his head. He’d taken up a thinker’s posture, carefully puffing away on his cigarette.

  “Okay, so you may not know this, but Castor is the cousin of Cyril Clowe, a driver who was murdered yesterday afternoon on the track—right next to Nilah Brio.” This was her first outright lie, so she thought it was going pretty well.

  Kinnard chimed in. “According to the Link, Arthur Castor is also the name of a prominent Arcan senator.”

  Cordell set down his cigarette on an ash tray. “If this guy was a senator twenty years ago, that means he’d have to be at least in his fifties or sixties.”

  Boots’s heart jumped. She kicked herself for nailing down too much of the story instead of saying the two men were “connected.” “Not necessarily. He could be a second cousin once removed—like a grandfather’s cousin maybe.”

  Cordell grabbed his smoke to take a drag, then reconsidered and stubbed it out. “You’re lying.”

  “Then how do you explain the fact that the same crone hunting me tried to kill Nilah Brio?”

  “You’re lying about that, too.”

  Boots raised her hands. “I’m not. Silas told me, right after he said you were looking for me. Frankly, I’m just glad you found me first.”

  “Right.”

  “Look,” she said, “you don’t have to trust me, but you trust Silas, don’t you?”

  “I do, because Silas still remembers where he comes from. You forgot as soon as you took off the uniform and started up that stupid show.”

  “It was popular.”

  “Everyone likes watching an underdog go around begging for money. And Fallen are everyone’s favorite losers, aren’t they?”

  She crossed her arms, vowing not to take that bait. “You can say what you want, but if the Harrow is real, it’ll have enough eidolon crystal to buy a planet. It’ll make your last salvage look like a milk run.”

  His nostrils flared and his jaw tensed as he took a long, slow breath. “We can check out your lead.”

  “Great. I can coordinate from Gantry. I still have a lot of contacts in the archives, so—”

  “Girl, if you think I’m letting you out of my sight, forget it. You’re stuck with us.” He tapped the desk, and several sections of the grain pattern lit up under his touch. “Orna.”

  The quartermaster’s voice filled the room. “Yes, Captain?”

  “I want you to take Boots here back to the brig. She might be staying with us for a while, so take the long way.”

  “We’re letting her out of the cage, sir?”

  Cordell looked Boots over with a smirk. “Maybe. We’ll see if she can get that temper under control.” When the comm unit went out, he said, “It was always a pleasure to have you on my crew. You used to be such a loyal soldier.”

  “I was loyal to the ADF. That’s why I surrendered when ordered.”

  “So was I. That’s why I never surrendered.” He chewed his lip. “I’m cordially inviting you to play cards with us tomorrow.”

  “I can’t buy any stakes.”

  The door slid open and Orna entered, a massive slinger strapped to her side. She stood behind Boots, waiting patiently for her to rise.

  “I can spot you,” said Cordell. “Oh, and Boots?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been wanting to ask you this for a few years. On the show, you and Stetson busted your butts trying to get a ship that could make it out to the Chalice. You bowed and scraped for all those investors …”

  Boots winced at hearing her old partner’s name out loud. “Yeah. We did.”

  He sniffed and scratched his eyebrow with the thumb of his cigarette hand. “All the while, you could’ve called on me and the Capricious to take you anywhere you wanted. You didn’t have to lower yourself to show business if you wanted to go hunt treasure—flaunting your old uniform for a sympathy coin. I would’ve forgiven all those nasty things you said, and you know that.”

  “Why didn’t I?” she asked.

  “Yeah. We could’ve found the Chalice of Hana together.”

  She very nearly spit on his floor. “Because I’d rather be floating out in space than on this ship again.”

  He gave a sardonic chuckle. “Yeah, but unlike Stetson, I wouldn’t have murdered your crew.”

  “Not with your own hands, maybe. Never forget Laconte,” she said, and Orna elbowed her hard enough to leave her wheezing.

  “Get her out of here,” said Cordell. “See you at cards.”

  Chapter Five

  The Real Welcome

  At almost two meters tall, Orna Sokol wasn’t a woman to mess with. Her bare, muscled shoulders rippled at the edges of her tank top. Black tattoos slithered along her long, sinewy arms, marred in many places by old injuries. Her utilitarian frame matched her onyx hair, which had been clipped short for fighting. Her thick boots thunked on the deck as they walked, and Boots spotted a hidden recess for ejecting spikes on the toes.

  Orna’s huge slinger had a built-in magnifier that could amplify fire spells to melt steel, suck the air out of a closed room, and generally render everyone a crispy critter. Dozens of scars marred her young face, and her eyes glowed like light through ice crystals. The feature that made her the most terrifying, however, was her battle armor.

  Boots had seen hundreds of suits of battle armor during the Famine
War capable of multiplying the strength of their wearers, rendering them nigh indestructible. She hadn’t, however, seen battle armor that walked around beside its owner, following her every move. Boots had seen the armor at a distance, heard stories about Orna Sokol, but this was her first close encounter.

  “What’s the point of battle armor if you’re not going to ride in it?” asked Boots as they walked through the ship.

  “Be quiet,” said Orna.

  The armor was nearly three meters in height, made of duraplex and regraded steel. It stooped in the hall as it walked beside the pair of women. Serpentine plates covered each section, giving the whole thing a scaly appearance, and its hands ended in terrifying, serrated claws. The system’s eidolon crystal core vented glowing energy trails through the backplates, giving it the appearance of having two sets of fiery gills.

  Orna wore a silver circlet around her head, and Boots caught snatches of blue light from around its edges. Boots didn’t know much about mechanists, but she could guess that was how the quartermaster controlled her armor. Mental control wouldn’t have disturbed Boots, but Orna treated the armor like a pet. It tromped along behind the pair of them, polyspectral lenses blinking in curiosity.

  Boots glanced back as the armor sampled the air closest to her neck. They both flinched. “Okay, that thing just sniffed me.”

  Orna didn’t bother to look back. “Ranger will do that.”

  “Ranger? It has a name?”

  “All great weapons have names.”

  “Great weapons don’t sniff people.”

  “Mine do.”

  Boots thought she placed a bit of a Blixish accent in her escort, but it was hard to tell. The planets were all a mishmash of cultures, so a guess was often wrong. “Where’re you from?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Wow. They got nice weather in Nowhere?”

  Orna spun to face her. “You may be a celebrity everywhere else, but not here. I had to write the ration reports. I know how close we came to starving in deep space on your account.”

  Ranger rested a heavy, sharp claw on Boots’s shoulder. Its hiss dripped with malice, like steam through a long steel pipe. Ahead of her, human death. Behind her, a walking blender.

  “So, uh, how long have you been with the captain?”

  “I’ve been on this ship since I was a little girl. Came aboard after you deserted the captain.”

  Orna looked to be in her mid-twenties, so Boots did the math and ignored the jab. “Yeah, so I’m guessing that’s about fifteen years?”

  “Yes. No more questions about me.”

  Behind Orna’s back, Boots silently mocked the quartermaster’s gruff delivery.

  Orna paused. “You know I can see everything Ranger sees.”

  They wound through the ship’s foredecks until they came to the bridge. It was precisely as Boots had left it almost twenty years ago, with a fresh coat of paint over all the bits that made it an ADF ship. Unlike Cordell’s office, which had essentially been gutted and rebuilt, the bridge was a spotless, frozen set piece from the Famine War. Three terraces, each taller than a large man, housed stations and readouts. Overhead, starlight slipped through a tremendous bubble dome. Boots’s favorite shift on the bridge had always been the night cycle, when the lights were dimmed and she was alone with the vastness of space.

  She immediately recognized the marksman from the bazaar sitting in the pilot’s chair three terraces down. The pilot stood up and ascended the stairs at their entry.

  “Aisha,” said Orna. “This is Boots Elsworth. You’ve met.”

  The pilot smiled and took Boots’s hand in both of hers. “Aisha Jan. It is my utmost pleasure. Sorry for shooting you.”

  Up close, she was far prettier than Boots remembered in the bazaar, with smoky eyes and long brown hair that faded to pink at the tips like some bird of paradise. Triads of tiny gemstones rested on her cheeks, and Boots wondered if they were magical or merely fashionable.

  “That’s … a different greeting than I expected,” said Boots.

  “Don’t get too excited about the politeness,” said Orna. “Aisha is just more civilized than I am.”

  Boots shrugged. “Did you say Jan? Are you related to, uh, what’s his name?”

  “Malik, the ship’s doctor, is my husband.”

  That explained the freakish good looks. They were two of a kind.

  “Been on the ship long?” asked Boots.

  “Only for two years. Malik knew Cordell from the ADF. They went to boot camp together.”

  “But, uh …” Boots cocked her head. That couldn’t be right, because that would make Malik more than forty years old, and he didn’t look a day over thirty.

  Sensing her question, Orna said, “Malik has sleep magic. Keeps them young. Case closed. Come on. We’ve got to go waste everyone else’s time.”

  From the bridge, they went to a small office. Various cables and connectors littered the floor, several of them plugged into a central tower with a twinkling crystal ball at the top. Standing over this tower, fingers splayed across the surface of the sphere, was a thin, middle-aged blond man. His lips were locked in a scowl, even as his eyes flashed in time with the crystal.

  Boots recognized the art instantly. Aggregation—the art of arcane data sifting and corroboration—was one of the most sought-after skills in the galaxy, and those possessing it were always well paid.

  “Armin,” said Orna, “this is Boots. Boots, Armin Vandevere—our first mate.”

  If he was the first mate, his datamancy must’ve also made him the mission planner. If that were true, Boots’s treasure map had fooled him. In spite of her present situation, pride needled her heart.

  “Well, well,” he said, his eyes never focusing on her, “looks like the liar walks among us.”

  She stepped forward and offered a hand, but Orna stepped between them.

  “No, thank you,” said Armin. “I’m busy.”

  “I can see where I’m not wanted,” said Boots, turning to leave. “Trust me, I don’t want to be on this ship any more than you want me here.”

  The scintillating lights from the crystal rendered Armin’s face gaunt. “For what it’s worth, I was against kidnapping you.”

  “Funny story: me too,” said Boots.

  He craned his head. “We’re never going to get back our expeditionary expenses from you, because you’ll never be worth three hundred thousand argents. We should have called it a loss. However, the captain demanded satisfaction, so I told him to shoot you on Gantry. It’s cheaper than having another mouth to feed.”

  Boots frowned. “Efficient one, aren’t you?”

  He blinked, his eyes coming into focus and locking onto hers. “You’re not worth the oxygen it’d take to blow you out an airlock. Good day.”

  Orna guffawed and patted Boots hard on the back. “How about we get out of here and let the nice man work?”

  They headed back into the mainline corridor, toward the lift to lower decks.

  “Cordell wouldn’t shoot me,” said Boots.

  Orna slapped a palm to the lift door, and it slid open. “No, but I would. Let’s get you fed and back to your hole.”

  Boots shuffled into the lift; then Orna and Ranger ducked in behind her. They didn’t face the door, like sane people do, but scowled at Boots the whole time—insofar as a robot could scowl.

  “We should’ve taken the stairs,” said Orna, resting her hands on her hips.

  “You don’t look like you need the exercise.”

  “It’s the only place on the ship with no cameras.”

  The lift moved beneath their feet, and Boots’s stomach dropped. Platforms on smaller military ships didn’t use motors, but very small changes to the artificial gravity. In her ADF days, the soldiers would say “lightfoot” to go up and “heavyfoot” to go down. They had all kinds of strange phrases like that: inksticks instead of pens, zipperjocks instead of cargo pilots.

  The door slid open to reveal the mess, and Boots gasped.
The place had been a large dining area for up to ten people during Boots’s time in the service. There was no cook to speak of, just a person in charge of invigorating the rations. Tear open a pack, throw it in the radiator, and watch your meal writhe around until it became the high-carb, high-fat diet soldiers loved.

  Now sunboxes wreathed the mess, where all species of plants grew under the light of accelerators. They waved in their cages, bent and twisted with swift growth as they reached toward the lamps. Accelerators were generally considered unsafe aboard combat vessels, because a stray round could cause a leak. Humans hit by their rays often developed nasty tumors or splintered bones. The Kandamili Military Special Service had gotten busted after the war for using the lamps as torture devices.

  Cordell had added a kitchen, removing the old radiator in favor of a top-of-the-line range of appliances more appropriate to a yacht or luxury liner. The table running through the center was the same one from Boots’s time, but polished and repainted across the surface with a shining enamel the color of the half-moon of Arca.

  Music blared through the kitchen, a classic Kandamili tune from Boots’s homeworld, and an older man came dancing out of the pantry, three huge silver bowls in hand. He slung the bowls onto the countertop with a flourish and ripped off their wraps, spinning once to chuck the balled-up plastic into the cycler. Still oblivious to Orna and Boots, he wheeled about, clapping his hands and gyrating. The guy had moves.

  “Didier!” bellowed Orna, and he turned to see them, a bright smile on his face.

  He shimmied around the table, clapping in time to the music before striking a pose, his hand extended. “Didier Thomasi, cook.”

  He had silver hair, worn in a swept-back style that Boots hadn’t seen since she was a little girl. Freckled cheeks led to friendly eyes nestled in the cliff of a bushy brow. A broad, curled mustache alighted on a stiff upper lip, as though the man was in a continuous state of sniffing the air around him. He had a few muscles, which stood in opposition to his pot belly, but Boots guessed he could fight like the rest of them. He was Boots’s kind of guy: lumpy, a little goofy, with muscles in all the right places.

  Finally, a decent human being on this ship. She tried not to blush as she shook his cracked and calloused fingers. He had a chef’s grip, firm and thorough.