Curse of the Iris

by Jason Fry

  As his children groaned, Mavry raised an eyebrow.

  “I take it you disagree?” Diocletia asked him sharply.

  Mavry spread his hands peaceably. “My dear Captain Hashoone, the way I see it, we’re whatever the solar system tells us it’s profitable to be.”

  “And you think it would be profitable to go chasing all over creation to take a peek at rocks and ice balls?”

  “No. I think the science lab isn’t worth investigating, and that rogue asteroid is awfully far away. But we’re due on Ceres soon anyway, and taking a look at that comet would only add a few days to the journey.”

  “We’re going to Ceres?” Tycho asked. “Why?”

  “There’s been a spike in pirate attacks on outbound shipping in the asteroid corridors,” Mavry said. “The consulate is calling in privateers who operate in the area for discussions.”

  “Does that mean Earth is up to its old tricks again?” Yana asked.

  “No, the Securitat thinks it’s something else,” Mavry said. “Exactly what, nobody knows.”

  “Could the men at Titan have something to do with it?” Tycho asked.

  “Like I said, nobody knows,” Mavry said. “That’s what we’re there to talk about.”

  Tycho nodded and turned back to his mother, who was gazing at the main screen, fingers steepled.

  Yana broke down first.

  “Mom, please,” she implored.

  “This isn’t a jaunt to Port Town, Yana. Let me think.”

  Mavry put a finger to his lips, his eyes bright with amusement.

  “Very well,” Diocletia said. “We’ll do it your way. Vesuvia, issue a recall order. I want crewers back by 1800 and engines lit by 2000. Yana, prepare the articles for a cruise to Ceres and from there back to Jupiter.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Yana said, suppressing a sigh at the pixel work she’d been given. Articles were documents prepared before each voyage and signed by all hands, setting out the rules of the journey and how any prize money would be divided.

  Then Yana furrowed her brow. “What should I say about the Iris cache?”

  “Nothing,” Diocletia said. “There’s enough superstitious whispering these days without throwing around that name.”

  “But if they find out what we’re doing en route—” Yana objected.

  “Then someone on my quarterdeck talked,” Diocletia said. “And that’s not going to happen, is it?”

  “Of course not,” Yana said.

  “We’re checking out a lead from a flight log,” Diocletia said. “That’s something we’ve done hundreds of times and would have done even if you’d never met Captain Lumbaba’s mother. If anyone has a problem with that—on whatever deck—they can find another ship.”

  The Comet’s crewers returned to the ship with a minimum of complaints, which Tycho knew meant they’d had little money to spend on shore leave and were impatient to be elsewhere.

  Meanwhile, five crewers didn’t return at all, and four of those had taken their belongings with them—clearly they hadn’t intended to come back. When Carlo asked if Diocletia wanted to remain in port to recruit new hands, she shook her head emphatically.

  “I don’t like the look of the spacers around here,” she said. “There are pirates enough in these parts—I don’t need them belowdecks.”

  But once the Comet extracted herself from her docking cradle and drifted gently away from Enceladus, Diocletia seemed to relax. They all did. The clang-clang of the bells, the squeal of the bosun’s pipes, and the familiar tumult of shouted orders from belowdecks meant normal life had resumed and the ship was herself again.

  “Green across the boards, Captain,” Carlo said. “Take her up to the fuel tanks?”

  “Not yet, Carlo,” Diocletia said. “Let’s loop through the planetary rings. Pilots assume it’s like flying through asteroid debris, but they’re wrong—there’s all sorts of magnetic anomalies that will throw off your steering. If you ever have to do it, you’ll be glad you practiced.”

  Carlo grinned, clearly eager to show off his skills. As one bell sounded, he engaged the throttles and aimed the Comet at the vast pale-yellow globe of Saturn.

  Tycho knew the rings were mostly tiny bits of ice and dust, rotating clouds of particles held in place by Saturn’s gravity. But it was hard not to believe they were solid—as the Comet accelerated away from Enceladus, it looked like she was on a collision course with a massive grooved circle, its colors shifting from white through tan to black and back again as the angle of their approach changed.

  “We’re past the F ring already,” Carlo said. “Now approaching the A ring.”

  “Take her in until you start recording magnetic fields,” Diocletia said. “Then hand her off to Yana, who will pass the helm to Tycho.”

  The edge of the A ring expanded until it became a wall, and then the Comet was inside it, surrounded by motes of ice, dust, and rock that gleamed and flashed in the sunlight reflected by Saturn.

  “It’s beautiful in here,” Tycho breathed.

  “Watch your scopes,” Diocletia said. “There are ribbons of ring material that are quite dense, with debris big enough to wreck the ship.”

  Huff clanked down from the top deck and stood in his usual spot behind Tycho and Yana as Carlo banked smoothly through tumbling snow-white chunks of ice.

  “Magnetic readings increasing,” Carlo said. “Ready to take the sticks, Yana?”

  “Absolutely,” Yana said. “Vesuvia, I’ve got the helm.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  The control yokes beneath Yana’s console emerged with a whine, telescoping out to her waiting hands.

  “The magnetism throws off the yaw and pitch indicators,” Carlo said. “Trust your eyes and hands, not your scopes.”

  Yana rolled the Comet to starboard as a ball of snow five meters across shot past them. Dust and ice crackled against the privateer’s hull, leaving a shimmering tail behind the ship for a few moments before the whirling of the rings erased it.

  “I see what you mean,” Yana muttered, staring at her instruments. “It’s hard to keep her level.”

  “Arrr, this is old-fashioned flying—gotta look out the window,” Huff said, gesturing at the viewports with the blaster cannon built into the stump of his left arm.

  “Vaporizing the viewscreen is not advisable,” Vesuvia said.

  “All I’m doin’ is pointin’, you demented abacus.”

  Yana lifted her eyes from the scopes and gazed into the dazzle ahead of her, biting her lip.

  “You’re right, that’s better,” she said. “But I can still feel the yokes pulling all over the place.”

  “It’s a tangle of magnetic fields in here,” Mavry said. “Physicists have been trying to figure it out for centuries.”

  “They need to try harder,” Yana muttered, yanking back on the yokes to ease the Comet above a flurry of stones and gleaming dust.

  “We’re coming up on Daphnis, another of Saturn’s moons,” Diocletia said. “Tycho, take the controls. Bring us around Daphnis, then up and out of the rings.”

  “Aye-aye,” Tycho said, trying to sound confident. “Vesuvia, I’m taking the helm.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Tycho took hold of the control yokes with clammy palms. He had never felt at ease piloting the Comet, even when there weren’t dangerous magnetic ripples and whirlpools all around him.

  The yokes shimmied briefly in Tycho’s hands, warning him they were active. He felt the Comet pulling in all directions, her automated flight systems trying to make sense of data distorted by the forces around her. Blinking away sweat, Tycho glanced back and forth between the scopes and the viewport.

  “We’re fifteen thousand klicks from Daphnis,” he reported. “Should be entering the Keeler Gap in just a moment.”

  A minute later the Comet passed through a scree of dust and emerged in empty space—a brief gap in the rings carved out by the gravity of Daphnis. Once the ship was clear of the ring material, the controls
settled down and Tycho exhaled gratefully. The Comet still felt huge and unwieldy, but at least she wasn’t fighting her own yokes.

  Daphnis gleamed ahead of them, a chunk of icy rock perhaps eight kilometers long. Tycho stepped on the throttle, eager to finish the exercise, and the moon grew rapidly on the viewscreen, surrounded by a halo of ice crystals.

  “Easy, Tycho,” Mavry warned. “Daphnis is heavily magnetized—”

  Suddenly Tycho’s scopes spun, and the yokes felt like they were trying to fly out of his hands. He thrust them forward, struggling to regain control, and the Comet tumbled forward in a roll, spinning bow over stern. Shouts came from below, and Tycho felt his vision going gray. Vesuvia intoned a warning, but Tycho couldn’t hear it over the roaring in his ears.

  He eased back on the yokes, breathing hard, and managed to stop the Comet’s tumble and bring her upright again. Still fighting for control, Tycho heeled the ship over to port, aware of Daphnis hurtling overhead. Ignoring the nonsensical readings filling his scopes, he struggled to climb out of the moon’s magnetic field.

  Then he had control again, the yokes quiet in his hands.

  “I’m okay,” he said, wondering if that was true. “Are we clear?”

  “No,” Mavry said. “We’re still in soundings—Daphnis is less than a kilometer to stern.”

  Tycho twitched the yokes to starboard, and the Comet rolled that way, as obedient as if this were a basic simulation. Curious, he cut the throttles and gently spun the ship to face the way they’d come, until the surface of the hulking moon filled the viewport.

  “Am I going crazy?” Tycho asked. “Instruments register no anomalies whatsoever.”

  “That’s my reading too,” Yana said.

  “We must be in some kind of lee—a place where the magnetism drops to zero,” Mavry said.

  Tycho raised the Comet’s nose and accelerated away from Daphnis. A moment later, the yokes began to flail against his hands. This time, though, he was expecting that. He kept his eyes on the viewscreen and his hands steady, correcting the Comet’s course until the magnetic readings shrank to nothing.

  Two bells sounded. Nobody said anything for a moment.

  “Well, Tycho,” Diocletia said in a small voice, “I’m not sure if that was the worst piloting I’ve ever seen or the best.”

  Tycho let his breath out and shut his eyes for a moment. He heard his father chuckle.

  “I think maybe it was both,” Mavry said.

  5

  MISSION TO P/2093 K1

  All on the quarterdeck were relieved when the Comet drew close enough to P/2093 K1 to detach from her long-range tanks. For the Hashoone kids, the voyage had been seventeen endless days of homework and flight simulations interrupted by boring watches. By the time they approached P/2, Tycho was certain Vesuvia had taken a dislike to him: her critiques of his homework struck him as borderline vicious, and she filled his flight simulations with clogged fuel lines, tricky docking maneuvers, and magnetic anomalies.

  “Processing data on P/2,” Yana said, fingers flying over her keyboard as her scopes filled with information gathered by the Comet’s sensors. “Looks like a typical cosmic snowball—just enough ice, loose rock, and organic compounds for gravity to hold together.”

  “Arrr, we better not ’ave come all this way for nothin’,” growled Huff.

  “Any anomalous surface features?” asked Mavry, peering at the main screen. It showed nothing but the darkness of space, sprinkled with stars—comets like P/2093 K1 were practically invisible without the bright tails they sprouted when buffeted by the solar winds.

  “You’ll have to get me closer,” Yana said. “At this range I can only resolve surface features larger than a hundred meters.”

  “Closer it is,” Carlo said. “Finalizing intercept course. Captain?”

  “Take us in,” Diocletia said.

  “Aye-aye,” Carlo said. He activated his headset microphone and alerted Grigsby as he angled the Comet to port and accelerated toward P/2093 K1.

  “Building spectrum analysis of organic compounds,” Yana said. “Appears to be basic primordial ooze.”

  “Maybe the treasure is buried inside P/2,” Tycho said.

  Six bells sounded.

  “Hold on a sec,” Yana said. “I’m picking up something. Looks like . . . wait. Vesuvia, sensors just went blank. What—”

  Something slammed the Comet to starboard, the impact driving Tycho’s neck and shoulder into the tough leather of his harness. There was a flash of brilliant light and a thunderclap of sound that left the Hashoones instinctively clamping their hands over their ears, spots dancing in their vision. The enormous noise faded into a low, rolling groan, accompanied by the shuddering of the quarterdeck beneath their feet.

  “What was that?” yelped Yana.

  “Impact,” Vesuvia said in her emotionless way. “Port engine support.”

  “Damage report?” Diocletia demanded.

  “Damage assessment initiated,” Vesuvia replied. “No data at present time.”

  “Carlo, evasive action,” Diocletia said. “Yana, what have you got?”

  “Nothing!” Yana said. “I’m totally blind!”

  Carlo yanked the left control yoke back and shoved the right yoke forward. Acceleration pressed the Hashoones back in their chairs as he spun the Comet to port, trying to shield the damaged section of her hull from their attacker. Tycho heard the wail of the bosun’s pipes belowdecks, ordering the gun crews to their stations.

  “Damage consistent with a missile impact,” Vesuvia said. “Hull breach contained. Power feeds severed in affected area. No further diagnostics available. Calculating trajectory of enemy projectile and sending data to gun crews for target acquisition.”

  “Someone was waiting for us,” Diocletia said, then activated her headset. “Mr. Grigsby, sensors are down. If you see a target, take the shot.”

  “Our pleasure, Captain,” Grigsby growled. “Nobody takes a piece out of the barky without us having something to say about it.”

  “Tell the crews to make it count, Mr. Grigsby,” Diocletia said grimly. “Yana?”

  “Electromagnetic interference across all bands,” Yana said. “Someone’s jamming us. It’s more powerful than anything I’ve ever seen.”

  “Fight fair, you scurvy buzzards!” Huff roared, his forearm cannon jerking madly in response to its owner’s anger.

  “Initiating countermeasures,” Yana said. “Looking for where the interference is weakest so we can boost a signal and punch through it.”

  “How long?” Diocletia asked.

  “Can’t tell you,” Yana said. “I need some time to analyze the interference.”

  “Fast as you can, then,” Diocletia said, her voice brisk and businesslike. “Carlo, take us in so we can get a visual on our attacker. Dad, get below and assist the gun crews. Mavry, go aft and get me a more detailed damage assessment. Tycho, you’re on communications.”

  No one argued—a captain’s word was law, especially during combat. Mavry unbuckled his harness and rushed for the companionway leading from the quarterdeck to the fire room, arms out to catch himself in case the ship took another hit. As Huff clomped down the ladderwell, the Comet’s cannons began to roar, making the deck tremble beneath Tycho’s feet.

  Tycho stared at the main screen, on which the enemy ship was little more than a brighter point of light against the stars. At this range and without sensor data, the Comet’s gunners had no chance of doing real damage to their foe. Their best hope was to keep the enemy gunners off-balance.

  The bright spot on the viewscreen pulsed momentarily brighter.

  “Missile launch detected,” Vesuvia warned.

  Carlo yanked back on the control yokes and stomped on the pedals, lifting the privateer’s bow, then rolling her hard to starboard. The stars spun crazily on the main screen, and a streak of light flashed across their view—a projectile fired by the enemy ship.

  “Portside controls are sluggish,” Carlo grunted.
“But it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

  “Releasing chaff,” Huff growled over the comm. A moment later they heard a faint series of popping noises, and three bursts of light flowered in front of the Comet. The light faded, revealing expanding clouds of glittering particles—bits of metal launched into space to confuse the targeting systems of enemy missiles.

  “Who do you think they are?” Carlo asked his mother.

  “The ones shooting at us,” Diocletia said. “That’s all that matters right now.”

  Sitting at his station, Tycho found he had nothing to do but worry—there were no communications to monitor. His eyes jumped from his sister, hunched over her instruments, searching for a weakness in the jamming, to his brother and his mother, both busy at their stations with their backs straight as ramrods.

  Tycho understood his mother’s dilemma. Missiles were long-range weapons, and with the Comet’s sensors blinded, there was no way to tell what kind of ship had fired them. If the Comet’s attacker was small, the best strategy was to engage at close range, where the privateer’s cannons would make short work of their opponent. But if the enemy ship was larger and better armed than the Comet, drawing nearer could be a fatal mistake.

  “I’ve got it!” Yana said. “Punching through on the PKB band, oscillating within spectral harmonics . . . and sensors are coming back up. Nobody keeps Yana Hashoone blind for long!”

  “You can congratulate yourself later. What do you see?” Diocletia said.

  “She’s a Harrier-class missile boat, maybe twenty-five meters long.”

  “Not for long, she isn’t,” Carlo growled. A Harrier was no match for a frigate like the Comet—with her sensors restored, the ship’s heavier weapons would chew the enemy craft to bits.

  “Mr. Grigsby, the pirate that fired on us is a Harrier,” Diocletia said into her headset. “Yana’s sending the gun crews a target profile now.”

  “Mom, wait—” Yana said.

  “Send it!” Diocletia barked.

  “Done,” Yana said, spots of color flaring in her cheeks.

  “Thank you,” Diocletia said. “Now, what is it?”

  “There’s two more ships behind the Harrier. Still building sensor profiles, but one’s about seventy-five meters long, the other maybe twice that. Probably a frigate and some kind of pocket cruiser. They’ve shed tanks and are on course to intercept.”