A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe

by Alex White

  To Boots’s left, she found Cordell, his split lips twisted in an insufferable grin. “They all lived, girlie. We all made it through.”

  “Please don’t call me girlie right now, Captain,” she groaned.

  “Oh, I’m the captain again now?” he laughed.

  Boots answered him with a scowl. “Where’s Armin?”

  “On the bridge, with Orna. It’s his watch,” said Kin, cutting in. “He is the only uninjured crew member, though I’ve expressed concern for his emotional well-being.”

  Why, because his whole planet was murdered and he fought for a sham?

  “He’s tougher than we think, Kin,” said Boots, inspecting her left arm. A full cast covered it, but unlike her crewmates, hers didn’t glow with healing light. Either the med bots calculated her dystocia would be in the way, or they figured the arm was no good. She knew she didn’t want to see the condition of it.

  “I suggest you keep your arm still, Lizzie,” said Kin.

  “Don’t have to tell me twice,” she grumbled as a wave of dizziness bowled her over. “I …” She swallowed before speaking, for fear of losing her stomach contents. “I think we need to use the Harrow when we get to Taitu.”

  “We’re not opening fire on them, Bootsie,” said Cordell. “Besides, the disc is burned out.”

  Boots smacked her dry mouth. “That’s not what I said.”

  “Well, what did you mean?” Cordell winced as he shifted in his bed.

  “Kin, you’ve got records on the mutineers, right? Like, the prime minister of Taitu is one of those damned gods.”

  “Yes, Lizzie. Based upon age progression, facial geometry, available footage, and correlated public appearance sensor sweeps, Kendall Hopkins, commander of the Kingbreaker, is now Dwight Mandell, Prime Minister.”

  The head of a pudgy black politician materialized before them, his cheerful grin rendered sickening by the new context.

  “We could kill him,” said Boots, the rush of venom through her blood the first real pleasure she’d felt since awakening.

  Cordell looked at her sidelong, but said nothing.

  “What’s his spell?” asked Boots.

  “According to his military records, Commander Hopkins has the inveigler’s mark,” said Kin. “Public record states that Dwight Mandell is a falconer, though.”

  “Someone with mind control, posing as someone with flight,” grunted Boots. “Charming.”

  Cordell chuckled at the accidental pun. “So he probably has machines to help him fly when he needs to show the public his magic. That falconer’s mark is him covering up his god-level mind control, which makes him pretty well unbeatable.”

  “I want to gamble,” said Boots, and Cordell’s eyes lit. He didn’t smile, but she could see him fighting it.

  “What are the stakes?”

  “The public death of one of the gods who killed our world. We don’t just reveal what they did—we put him to death in front of the whole goddamned galaxy and get away with it.”

  He nodded. “And the odds?”

  “That depends on two things: how much video we have of Henrick Witts that we can feed to Kin for analysis …”

  “And the other?”

  “Whether or not everyone on the crew can still hold a slinger when the time comes.”

  What remained of the crew of the Capricious gathered on the bridge of the Harrow, streaking stars passing them by in the darkness. Boots, Cordell, Aisha, Orna, Armin, and Nilah stood in silence, watching the skies with bated breath. Running lights dotted the many terraces and stations, and overheads warmed their view as the ship returned to life.

  Aisha’s voice echoed across the cavernous space. “Arrival in three … two … one …”

  Streaks became pinpricks, and the surface of Taitu rushed to fill their view, its lush greenbelt a beacon of fertility to an entire galaxy. Here was a planet of gardens as far as the eye could see, with great magical wonders and a rich hub of galactic civic activity. It housed politicians and financiers, innovators and artists, its coffers swollen and talent overflowing.

  Boots reminded herself that only a few of the Taitutians were genocidal killers.

  She wasn’t there to kill everyone on the planet—just a major conspirator. But she couldn’t help imagining what would become of the Taitutians if that greenbelt started to die, if that water grew stagnant, if the shifting dunes of a rising desert swallowed all of those great works. She knew it was wrong; she felt certain all of these rich folks were innocent of the murder of Clarkesfall, but she wanted to see them suffer.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been more ready for a mission in my life,” said Orna, giving Boots a playful hit as she made her way over to the data station.

  The quartermaster plunked down next to Nilah, who looked ghastly. Boots wasn’t sure if it was the artificial blood or the fact that they were trying to assassinate the prime minister, but she didn’t have time to ask. The two mechanists would be thoroughly occupied with information security while the Harrow awaited its prey.

  “Don’t let them hack us,” said Boots. “Counting on you girls.”

  Nilah gave her a mock salute, but she could barely keep her hand up.

  “ID codes have been accepted by Taitu’s planetary defense grid. They still work,” said Aisha.

  Cordell ascended the platform of the commander’s station as its seat folded into the floor. An armored sling covered much of his arm, and glowing splints still secured his ribs, but he maintained something of his old regal posture. “Perfect. Missus Jan, I think we’re done with you for now. Good flying.”

  Aisha somberly nodded her assent and strode away, disappearing into the bowels of the ship.

  Klaxons sounded, red lights flashed, and the image of the Harrow swirled into being above the first level of the bridge. Two warships, the Kaga and the Magistrate, plotted an intercept course, fighters scrambling from their decks. Within minutes, the Harrow would be surrounded by an unstoppable army. Between the ship-to-ship engagement and the defense satellites, the legendary Harrow wouldn’t last thirty minutes in combat with a burned spell disc.

  “We’ve got someone trying to hack ship systems through the comms, Cap,” said Orna. “We can hold them off for a few.”

  “They’re hailing us, sir,” said Armin. “Telling us to stand down.”

  Cordell looked to Boots. “Well? Your plan. What do we say?”

  Boots smiled. “Tell them we’re standing down, sir. They can scan our weapons and see they’re offline. Kin, how’s your neural analysis of Henrick Witts’s speech patterns coming?”

  Kin chimed. “I have eighty-six percent of the 171,246 standard language words computed. The most common word I have been unable to interpolate from the Witts video record is ‘diaphragm.’ I have a ready list of other words that might be signifiers to our enemy, if—”

  Boots snorted. “Yeah, yeah, Captain, if you could refrain from discussing breathing with our prey.”

  “Ain’t here to discuss his breathing,” said Cordell. “Just here to stop it.”

  Boots cut a glance to Nilah, who winced, but said nothing. Nilah knew just as well as the rest of them that Dwight Mandell was a mass-murdering planet-killer who intended to destroy everything if given the chance. They’d done the calculations: the grand glyph, if carved with the racetracks, would wipe out all life in the galaxy. The only missing piece of the puzzle was motive. Sure, killing Clarkesfall had scored them more juice than magi of any prior age, but what would they have in a lifeless galaxy? Who was left to rule?

  “I’ve hailed the Green Palace using the private encryption of the conspirators,” said Armin. “No response as yet.”

  Cordell sighed. “Hey, Kin, if they take so much as one shot at us, you need to start broadcasting everything we know. I want every journalist in this sector in possession of unencrypted records. Give them names, dates, schematics, any and all video. I’m not going down without everyone knowing what happened to our world.”

  �
�What if he’s not here?” asked Nilah. “What if he’s offworld?”

  “Please concentrate on your duties, Miss Brio,” said the captain. “He’s here.”

  “Captain,” said Armin, “the Green Palace is responding. They’re ready to connect.”

  “Please ready yourself, Captain Lamarr,” said Kin. “It will take me a few moments to prepare the skin.”

  Boots and the captain exchanged glances, and his throat bobbed with a hard swallow. “Wasn’t ever much of an actor. Hope I’m ready for this.”

  “Don’t act, then,” said Boots. “Be the authority you are.”

  Cordell squared his shoulders and assumed a stock-straight posture like the one they’d seen on the videos. He and Boots had spent the past two days reviewing each and every mannerism of Admiral Henrick Witts. She’d come to be intimately familiar with his horrid face: slashes of wrinkles stretched across a severe bone structure. He spoke to his crew without love or compassion, with no sense of familiarity—only ownership. For costumes, they’d selected the robes Witts wore on the night of the mutiny.

  So when Cordell answered the call from the Green Palace, Kin overlaid his image with the accursed form of Henrick Witts—speech and body alike.

  As Dwight Mandell’s face materialized in the cloud of alerts overhead, Boots realized they had no idea how to address him. He was no longer the commander of the Kingbreaker, nor would he be considered a prime minister by the all-powerful Henrick Witts. Would Witts speak to him as an equal? Would he call him by his real name? Mandell’s jowls waggled as he struggled to find the words to say, and Boots realized that he was panicked.

  She glanced down at her outgoing comms image and saw Witts glaring back at her—not a call she’d like to receive.

  “My Lord Poet,” Mandell stammered, glancing off-camera for a split second.

  What the hell is a Lord Poet?

  “The time is at hand,” said Cordell, each word deliberate and distinct. “Join me at my side, and we will prepare.”

  Mandell inclined his head, carefully considering his words. “The final glyph isn’t for another three days.”

  Cordell’s voice had a seismic rumble to it—the promise of chaos. “I did not misspeak. Either you join me in the spoils, or I depart this system without you. If that happens …”

  The Henrick Witts on Boots’s screen narrowed his eyes.

  “… you will not live to see the coming cataclysm.”

  Mandell opened his mouth a few times, but no sound emerged.

  “You know my power,” added Cordell. “These warships are no challenge to me.”

  It surprised Boots how easily Cordell assumed the role—authority flowed from him. Clothed in Witts, he wasn’t a mere smuggler but an unstoppable force, a tidal wave of inexorable will. Though when she remembered his command at Laconte, maybe it wasn’t such a stretch; Cordell was charged with life and death, and disobeying him was an unconscionable act.

  “I will join you momentarily, my Lord Poet,” said Mandell, and awaited some sort of acknowledgment.

  Cordell barely cocked an eyebrow, but the effect was immediate. Henrick Witts wasn’t the sort of man to be pleased with compliance, only furious with failure. There could be no “very well,” or any other happy noises. Mandell, visibly shaken, severed the connection, and the crew turned to one another.

  “Well, I feel filthy,” said Cordell, shaking his head.

  “Don’t worry about it, Cap,” said Boots. “All in the service of a greater cause.”

  “What a bastard,” Orna added, and Boots noticed Nilah wince once again. It couldn’t be easy for the racer, seeing such a close family friend turn out to be the scum of the universe, but she’d be hard-pressed to find sympathy from the survivors of the Famine War.

  “The warships are standing down, Captain,” said Armin. “Six squadrons have been recalled to base. If they want to scramble against us, they’ll take at least fifteen minutes.”

  “The hacking attempts have stopped,” said Nilah. “They’re not bothering us anymore.”

  “Excellent,” said Cordell. “I think this might work.”

  “Let’s hope,” said Boots.

  “Launch detected,” said Kin, accompanied by a pulse of red light. “It’s from the Green Palace—the minister’s personal yacht is inbound.”

  Cordell smirked. “Phase two, then?”

  Waiting in the midship docking bay drained Nilah’s wooziness away, replacing it with a cold dread. In mere minutes, she’d be face to face with Dwight Mandell, family friend and monster. Her mind reeled as she tried over and over to reconcile those two truths. She’d played at the Green Palace as a child. He’d been at her first Ultra GP league race. He’d handed her the cup on the podium when she’d won the prior year’s Taitu GP at Wilson Fields. He’d always told her they were both champions.

  But he’d helped Henrick Witts drain the life from Clarkesfall, relegating its citizens to civil war. In five days, he planned to kill her, and everyone else too, unless they stopped the race.

  Nilah chided herself for letting her mind wander. She shouldn’t be thinking about this. She never let herself worry about nonsense on the grid—she only thought about how to win. This could be no different. Dwight had the inveigler’s mark, giving him the ability to charm his targets. Under the sway of that mark, she would feel a swell of love for him, but she wouldn’t necessarily follow orders; that wasn’t how love worked, after all. For a short period of time, she’d be consumed with the need to please him.

  But there was a second dimension to the problem: Dwight’s power would be on a scale heretofore unseen. How would his inveigler’s mark change with godlike energy? Perhaps he could detect those who didn’t like him and force them into love. Maybe he had an ambient field that caused everyone around him to have vague, pleasant feelings of trust—a useful gift for a prime minister. Then again, he might be able to wipe her personality from her body, forever replacing it with one more amenable to him. Nilah shuddered at that last thought.

  She looked to Cordell, Armin, Orna, and Boots. At least her friends were with her.

  “Two ships have joined the yacht as escort from the Kaga,” Kin said, his report echoing through the wide-open docking bay. “They’re marauder-class; looks like boarding parties.”

  “Damn it,” Cordell grumbled into his comm. He turned to Boots.

  “We have to let them come aboard, Captain,” she said, sensing his question.

  Orna checked her clip. “We could just have Kin blast the PM’s ship and be done with it. Might be the best chance we’ll get.”

  “No!” Nilah interrupted. “I mean, no. We can’t do that. I have to see him. The galaxy … needs to see what he is.”

  Armin nodded. “For what it’s worth, our chances of survival improve significantly if we let them board, but we’d best get in position.”

  “Agreed,” said Cordell. “All right, everyone—these men and women might be soldiers, but they’re innocents right now. I don’t want to see a single one of them shot. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, Captain,” the crew replied in unison.

  “Kin,” called Boots.

  “Yes, Lizzie?”

  “Start broadcasting video of these events the second Dwight Mandell steps foot onto the Harrow, not a moment before. We can’t risk him seeing the stream. Get imagery to the Kaga and the Magistrate. Once the prime minister speaks to us, begin simultaneously broadcasting everything we know on an unencrypted channel as far as it will go. Once the streaming is complete, you’re to surrender the ship to Taitutian authorities.” Boots turned to Nilah and winked. “And make sure everyone knows that Nilah Brio is on board. That ought to get us some attention from the journos.”

  Boots’s short smile fell away, leaving a hard expression. Nilah started to ask what was wrong, when Boots spoke again.

  “And, uh, just in case we all get, you know, brainwashed … I’m deauthorizing all users from your memory banks, myself included.”

>   “Are you sure, Lizzie? I’ll carry out my assignments, but you won’t be able to ask me anything except the time of day after that.”

  She wiped her nose. “Yeah. Hey, look, don’t make this any worse than it is. I ain’t supposed to have a military AI anyway. We’re all about to get arrested if we’re lucky, and uh …”

  Nilah only knew a little about Boots’s relationship with her computer; Kin had been her AI for nearly twenty years. She was friends with it. Nilah thought of Orna and Ranger, how he’d carried Orna through the dark times in her life.

  “Surely there’s another way,” said Nilah, but the others shook their heads.

  “Forget it, kid,” said Boots. “If the PM gets to us, we’ll hand him everything we got, Kin included. People have to hear this story. They’ve got to shut down the last race.”

  “Authorized user, Elizabeth Elsworth, please state the override code to deauthorize all users.”

  Boots looked up, as though talking to the dead, and Nilah backed away. She felt like she wasn’t supposed to be watching this.

  “We’ve been through a lot, Kin,” said Boots.

  “Yes, we have, Lizzie.”

  She pursed her lips. “Authorization code echo-echo-four-three- six-two.”

  Kin chimed in response, the long reverb of it dying against the steel walls of the docking bay.

  “Kin?” asked Boots.

  “The time of day is oh-nine-thirty-two, Taitutian standard time,” was his reply.

  Boots shut her eyes tightly, and Nilah wondered if she would cry. Nilah looked to Cordell, but he was already moving into position with Orna and Armin in tow.

  They fanned out, hobbling through the cargo bay, hiding behind anything thick enough to block most scanners. She knew, like the rest of them, that they’d be apprehended in short order. Nilah hid, too, for all the good it would do.

  Nilah glanced up into the rafters, where she’d welded the breastplate from Mother’s armor, hoping it held when the time came.