Curse of the Iris

by Jason Fry

  “Arrr, fire on the comet, Dio,” Huff growled.

  Diocletia looked puzzled, then nodded and smiled.

  “Mr. Grigsby? Have all missile crews fire on P/2. Doesn’t matter where—just hit it.”

  “What good will that do?” Yana asked.

  Huff grinned. “Plenty. ’Tis an ol’ pirate trick.”

  “Wait—belay that last order, Mr. Grigsby,” Diocletia said. “Sending you specific coordinates on the surface. Direct your fire at that spot. I want nothing left.”

  “The wreck?” Tycho asked. “But if the treasure’s still down there, it’ll be destroyed.”

  “Would you rather it wind up in the hold of Mox’s cruiser?” Diocletia asked.

  The Comet shook as Grigsby’s crews launched a flight of missiles at the gray blob of P/2. Flashes marked the point of impact.

  “Keep firing,” Diocletia ordered.

  A moment later, jets of silvery light erupted from P/2’s surface, soaring kilometers into space—and shielding the Comet from the view of the enemy gunners.

  “That’s a pretty good trick,” Yana said.

  “See you around, Thoadbone!” Tycho called as cheers bounced up the ladderwell from belowdecks.

  “Won’t last but a few minutes, but ’twill be long enough,” Huff said, grinning at the fans of ice now drifting in front of them. “An’ besides, how many folks can say they’ve made their own comet tail?”

  6

  THE HUNTED

  When the Comet was safely away from P/2309 K1 and on her way to Ceres, Diocletia removed her headset, shook her hair out of its ponytail, and exhaled deeply. Her black hair was streaked with silver, Tycho noticed. When had that happened?

  “That could have been a lot worse,” Diocletia said, swiveling in the captain’s chair. “Because you all did your jobs, it wasn’t. Tycho, hopefully what you brought back from P/2 will make the trip worth it. Carlo, your piloting was excellent, particularly that maneuver to protect the gig. And Yana, if you hadn’t broken that jamming, we would have had to run for it and leave the crash site to Mox.”

  Yana dropped her eyes, then gave up being modest and grinned, enjoying the moment. Diocletia smiled back, but then her face turned stern again.

  “But remember, success will teach you as much as failure,” she said. “Analyze what you did, Yana, and make a note of it. Because something tells me we’ll encounter that kind of jamming again.”

  “I hope not,” Yana said. “I’ve never seen a signal that powerful that also affected every scanning frequency.”

  Diocletia and Mavry exchanged a quick look—one Yana didn’t miss.

  “But you have,” she said, leaning forward. “Where?”

  There was no sound but the shush-shush of the air scrubbers.

  “At 624 Hektor,” Mavry said quietly.

  Yana looked surprised at the mention of that normally forbidden name.

  “The Martian freighters on that day were carrying jammers, and the Securitat gave our pirates software to counteract them . . . ,” she began carefully.

  “Avast,” Huff growled, the flesh-and-blood corner of his mouth turned down. “Bad luck to speak of it.”

  “But I need to know,” Yana said. “The Securitat said the software was infected by Earth’s agents—”

  “’Twas an evil hour,” Huff said. “Leave it at that.”

  “Grandpa, we have to talk about it. This isn’t something from a long time ago—it just happened to us. I need to know how to stop it if it happens again.”

  “Next time, just do whatever yeh did this time,” Huff said.

  “Yana, Vesuvia should have a record of the jamming from back then,” Carlo said hurriedly. “Maybe she could help you find what you need.”

  “But—” Yana objected.

  “Good idea,” Diocletia said. “We barely escaped back there. If I know Mox, he and his pals hoped to use P/2 as cover but didn’t have enough time to set up a good ambush—the missile boat was the only thing fast enough to beat us there.”

  “What were a bunch of pirates doing out there, anyway?” Tycho asked.

  “Waiting for us, which is what’s really bothering me,” Diocletia said. “We didn’t set our course until we left Saturn’s rings. Which means someone, somewhere, slapped a tracker on us. When we get to Ceres, we’re going to have to search every meter of the ship.”

  “They put it on the gig,” Yana said, eyes wide. “At Kraken Station.”

  “Maybe,” Diocletia said. “Or they could have put it on the Comet at Enceladus.”

  “Shouldn’t we stop and find the tracker now?” Tycho asked.

  “And risk Mox catching us in deep space? No thanks. I don’t care if he knows we’re going to Ceres—not even Thoadbone would be crazy enough to try anything in a well-patrolled port. But while we’re there, be careful. Be aware of your surroundings, and watch what you say. Not one word about the Iris treasure, where we’ve been, or where we might be going. We’re being hunted. We have to start behaving like it.”

  She looked at each of her children in turn.

  “Now that that’s settled, let’s take a look at what we came all this way for,” she said, nodding at Mavry.

  “I’ll get the memory core from the wreck hooked up and see what data we can pull off it,” Mavry said. “But the really interesting thing is what Tycho found. Let me present you with the captain’s strongbox.”

  Huff clanked over for a closer look.

  “Now that there is a bona fide antique,” Huff said. “Ain’t seen one of them since I was a lad. An’ it’s still got power—will probably run for centuries. Back then folks made things to last.”

  “Makes me wish they hadn’t,” Tycho said. “How do we get it open without burning up whatever’s inside?”

  “Arrr, that’s easy,” Huff said. “You’ll want to stand back, though, Mavry.”

  Mavry gave Huff some room, and the old pirate bent down awkwardly, his artificial eye fixed on the seam between the self-destruct unit and the strongbox.

  Yana raised her eyebrows at Tycho, who shrugged. Maybe their grandfather was more familiar with such devices or had seen something they’d missed.

  Apparently satisfied with his inspection, Huff nodded, grunted, and raised his forearm blaster cannon, pressing it against the self-destruct unit.

  “Grandpa, don’t!” Tycho yelped amid the clamor.

  “This course of action is strongly discouraged,” Vesuvia said. “Desist at once.”

  “Be quiet, you bossy calculator,” Huff growled. “See, the trick is takin’ a clean shot. . . .”

  “Dad, absolutely not,” Diocletia said.

  “Nothin’ I ain’t done before,” Huff insisted. “Remember that time at the Hygeia roadstead? Avast, Mavry, I told yeh to stand back, not get closer. . . .”

  “I do remember Hygeia, in fact,” Diocletia said. “You incinerated half of what was in the box and blew a hole in a pressure dome.”

  “I did?” Huff asked, looking startled.

  Diocletia just nodded.

  Mavry, seeing his chance, put his arms around the strongbox.

  “Before we do anything drastic, let’s ask around belowdecks,” he said. “Some of our retainers have talents that are . . . let’s say, a little more exotic than what you’ll find on the quarterdeck.”

  7

  RETURN TO CERES

  Mavry was right. When Tycho and Yana showed the strongbox to Dobbs, the Comet’s master-at-arms grinned and summoned Celly, a crewer with a shaved head and a mouthful of black ceramic teeth filed down to points. She looked the strongbox over with a practiced eye and asked the Hashoones to give her an hour.

  As it turned out, she only needed half that time to drain the self-destruct unit of its power, detach it from the strongbox, and drill out the lock. Tycho and Yana hurried back to the quarterdeck with the box, only to find the rest of their family gathered around Mavry’s console, where their father had just connected the wreck’s memory core to his own com
puter.

  “Doesn’t look like there’s much left,” Mavry said as he typed. “Course data’s mostly gibberish, but the registration information’s intact, at least. I’m bringing it up now.”

  “The Foundling,” Diocletia read over her husband’s shoulder. “Registration last renewed by Josef Unger, 2808. That’s eighty-seven years ago.”

  “She was registered on Europa,” Mavry said. “You don’t see that anymore. Huff, do you know the name Unger?”

  Huff nodded.

  “Sure. Ol’ Josef was a Jupiter pirate back in my father’s day. Associate of his, even. But the Ungers quit the life long ago—last I heard, they was in Port Town somewheres.”

  Diocletia looked back down at the screen.

  “Anything else you can pull off it?”

  “Vesuvia might be able to help, but looks like most of the data’s trashed,” Mavry said. “Besides, I really want to see what’s in Tycho’s strongbox.”

  Carlo and Huff stepped aside so Tycho could set the strongbox on his father’s console. After Mavry nodded, Tycho bent down and opened it.

  It was empty.

  “Long way to come for nothing,” Carlo grumbled.

  Tycho peered into the strongbox unhappily.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “I see something.”

  He reached into the box and removed a thin plastic card with a pattern of magnetic dots on it—the kind of card used every day in data readers across the solar system. Lettering on the card said BoC in ornate script.

  “Bank of Ceres,” Mavry said. “What you’ve got there is a key card for a safe-deposit box.”

  Ceres was an airless, barren minor planet in the asteroid belt, neutral in the conflict between Earth and the Jovian Union and patrolled by warships from both. The little yellow world had evolved into a shipping hub, and its chaotic sprawl of half-buried pressure domes offered everything a spacer might need. Inside the tunnels and domes, naval officers rubbed shoulders with shipping-company bureaucrats, while tourists gawked at tattooed men and women with the rolling gait of veteran spacers.

  “We should hurry,” Tycho said after a near collision with a burly spacer, followed by a hard-eyed stare.

  “Stop being paranoid,” Carlo said. “You’re so busy thinking about treasures and key cards that you’re not watching where you’re going.”

  “Belay that,” Huff growled. “You lot heard yer mother—best to keep the matter dark.”

  When finally given the chance to inspect the Comet in orbit above Ceres, Huff had located not one but two trackers—one on the gig and the other attached near the frigate’s docking ring. Now he was muttering about sneaky Saturnians and gazing mournfully into the empty socket of his forearm cannon. Weapons were illegal on Ceres, but in Huff Hashoone’s view, no sane pirate ever went anywhere without his persuader.

  Tycho knew he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t resist patting the key card in his jumpsuit pocket to make sure it was still there. He didn’t relax until they’d followed the twisting passages from the chandler’s depot into the better-patrolled corridors that housed the admiralty courts and the consulates of the Jovian Union and Earth.

  The consulates and courtrooms had impressive entrances with real wooden doors, but the Bank of Ceres put them all to shame: its double wooden doors led to a vestibule decorated with twin trees, each perhaps six feet high with a trunk as thick as Tycho’s fist. Tycho wanted to stop and look through the thick glass that kept curious visitors from plucking off leaves as souvenirs, but Carlo insisted that there was no time for sightseeing.

  They emerged from the vestibule to discover a broad screen displaying the Bank of Ceres seal. On either side of the screen was an open doorway and a Ceres guardsman standing at attention. As the Hashoones approached, with Huff trailing along behind them, the seal rippled and was replaced by a man’s smiling face. The face was smooth and perfectly symmetrical—a giveaway that this was an AI like Vesuvia, not a real person.

  “Welcome to the Bank of Ceres, serving customers across the solar system since 2574. How may we assist you today?”

  Carlo elbowed Tycho, who stepped forward, holding up the key card. The AI’s eyes jumped to it, the artificial pupils widening. Tycho thought that was supposed to be reassuring, but it felt creepy instead.

  “We have a key card for a safe-deposit box,” Tycho said.

  The face on the screen smiled but said nothing. Tycho wondered if something was wrong, but a moment later the handsome artificial face began to speak.

  “Welcome back to the Bank of Ceres, Mr. Unger,” it said. “It certainly has been a while!”

  “I’m not—” Tycho began, only to get an elbow in the ribs from his sister.

  “Solar system was a better place without all these blabbermouth machines,” growled Huff.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Unger, I didn’t understand what you said.”

  “I, uh, just want to look in my safe-deposit box,” Tycho said.

  “Very well, Mr. Unger,” the face said. “Please proceed to the left and the line for special services, where one of our representatives will be happy to assist you.”

  The face faded away and was replaced by a schematic of the bank, with a green path. Then this too disappeared, and the screen displayed a large green arrow pointing to the left.

  Beyond the screen, five lines of customers waited to speak to tellers sitting behind a tall rampart of polished imitation wood and marble. The tellers wore navy-blue uniforms with gold braid and oversized black monocles, and their fingers were set in armatures of metal, trailing wires. A hologram over the farthest line said SPECIAL SERVICES in filigreed gold. A long line of people waited there, shifting impatiently from one foot to the other. The Hashoones took their places at the end of the line, behind a sour-faced woman wearing the uniform of a shipping lines pixel pusher.

  “This is going to take forever,” Yana grumbled, which caused the woman to turn and fix them with a pitying smile.

  “Oh, honey, you have no idea,” she said.

  Tycho put the key card back in his pocket and folded his arms. Because of their elevated desks, the tellers’ heads were a full meter above those of their customers. The teller presiding over the special services line was a bald man with a little bump of a nose and a wispy mustache. His hands moved languidly through the air above the desk, pointing here, then pinching there, his fingertips lighting up with each gesture.

  After several minutes the spacer at the head of the line finished conducting his business, nodded to the teller, and strode away. The next person in line stepped forward, only to be halted by a glowing fingertip from the man behind the desk, which sent him scuttling back to his former place. The teller rose, shucked off his armatures, and descended a staircase behind the other tellers, vanishing from view.

  A red shimmer appeared over the special services line, and music began to play softly—cheesy orchestral synth grunge that had already been out of fashion when Tycho and Yana were babies. The shoulders of the woman in front of the Hashoones dropped, like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

  After a few bars the music stuttered briefly, then started again. Yana groaned. Carlo sighed. Tycho observed that the shoulders of the woman in front of them could, in fact, slump lower.

  “Arrr,” Huff said. “Think I’ll fetch a nip of grog while yeh all cool yer heels.”

  “We all know that’s not a good idea, Grandfather,” Carlo said.

  Huff’s living eye bulged dangerously.

  “Yer a mite young to tell me what is an’ what ain’t a good idea,” he said, jabbing a metal finger at his grandson.

  Carlo held up his hands apologetically as Huff stalked off, growling that he’d be back.

  “Great,” Carlo muttered. “Now he’s off to the grog shop and who knows what trouble.”

  “Trouble that will be your fault,” Yana said. “Why do you talk to him like he’s an old man, like he’s in the way?”

  “Because he is in the way.” Carlo sniffed.

/>   “He’s a Hashoone and a former captain,” Yana said. “Which means he deserves your respect.”

  “He’s a relic—a leftover from another time. Pretty soon the Comet will have a new captain. You think when that happens, Mom will hang around the quarterdeck with nothing to do, like Grandfather does? She won’t—she’ll retire to Callisto and let the new captain do his job.”

  “His job?” Yana asked. “Oh, because it’s so obvious that you’ll be the next captain. Right, Carlo?”

  “Isn’t it?” Carlo asked. “Why waste time being polite about it? I’m the best pilot in the Jovian Union, I’ve handled numerous boarding actions, and I can do every job aboard the ship. Neither of you can say that. Tycho can’t fly, and whenever there’s a boarding action, Mom makes you stay on the quarterdeck, where it’s safe.”

  Tycho looked away, his face flushing with anger and shame. His brother was out of line, but it was true that his piloting left a lot to be desired, and everyone in their family knew it.

  Yana didn’t look away, though. Instead she shook her finger in Carlo’s face.

  “I’m on the quarterdeck because I run sensors,” she said. “And I run them better than you.”

  “Cut it out, you two,” Tycho said. “People are staring.”

  Carlo ignored him.

  “There’s a lot more to being captain than running sensors,” he told Yana.

  “Yes, there is,” Yana said. “There’s respecting the crewers, and your fellow officers, and your family. None of which you understand.”

  They stood simmering for a minute while the synth grunge burbled mindlessly.

  “I’m getting a jump-pop,” Yana said disgustedly, turning and bumping into a burly cargo wrangler who’d joined the line behind them. Annoyed, the man fixed Yana with a warning stare.

  “What are you looking at?” she demanded. The man shrank back, then stared at Yana in disbelief as she stomped off.

  “Go ahead, Tyke,” Carlo said. “I’m sure you’ve got something to say too. Want to lecture me about not respecting my elders?”

  “Not really,” Tycho said. “I was just remembering something, though. It was back when Yana and I were still kids on Callisto, and you’d just made bridge crew. You came back and told us how you’d just gotten to fly the Comet for the first time. Mom didn’t think you were ready, but Grandpa insisted you could do it and told her how proud he was of your simulator work. That convinced Mom to let you try.”