Curse of the Iris

by Jason Fry

  “Pinnaces are running,” Grigsby growled.

  “Tyke, where’s my course information?” Carlo asked.

  “Still calculating,” Tycho said. The temperature continued to climb—sweat was running down his forehead now.

  “Mom!” Yana yelped.

  Tycho’s eyes jumped to his monitor and the scan of the Comet’s surroundings. He could see the green circle that represented the Comet, with another green dot off to port and slightly astern. That had to be the Ironhawk.

  And on the other side of the Ironhawk, three red circles were closing fast.

  “Captain Garrett!” Diocletia warned. “Watch your port side! Bandits inbound!”

  “Sensors are down,” Garrett said through the static. “We’re trying to climb out of the A ring, but we can barely steer.”

  “We’re doing the same—I’ll try to cover you. Carlo, turn to—”

  Then they heard the rattle and boom of impacts over the private channel to the Ironhawk.

  “Absalom?” Diocletia said.

  A garbled snarl of voices trying to talk urgently over one another reached their ears, followed by screams. Someone was breathing raggedly into the microphone, almost panting.

  “Absalom?” Diocletia asked again.

  Garrett could barely whisper.

  “Mox,” he managed.

  Then there was static.

  “Vesuvia, rescan,” Yana said. “I see the Geryon, but not the Ironhawk.”

  “Scanned object has lost structural integrity. I have an incoming message.”

  “Audio only,” Diocletia said.

  “Hashoones! I see you!” a gravelly voice said with a terrible glee.

  Tycho stared at the scanner, watching helplessly as the three red dots drew closer.

  Diocletia adjusted her headset.

  “Admiral, this is the Comet,” she said. “We’ve lost the Ironhawk and have hostiles inbound. Requesting assistance.”

  “Cannot assist, Comet,” said Badawi. “Our mission objectives are no longer attainable. We are regrouping at the initial mustering point.”

  “What?” Carlo asked. “They can’t just abandon us!”

  “Of course they can, lad,” Huff said. “We’re privateers. Means we’re expendable.”

  “Mox is closing,” Yana said. “Three thousand klicks.”

  “With all the damage we’ve taken, I don’t think I can outrun him,” Carlo warned.

  “Try,” Diocletia said.

  “You can’t hide from me, Hashoones!” Mox said. “I’m going to catch that old tin can you call a ship! And when I do, you’re going to breathe vacuum!”

  Carlo mashed the throttles to the floor, and the Comet surged forward—but they all heard the hull groaning with the effort. Tycho wiped his sleeve across his forehead, and it came away dark with sweat.

  “Geryon is pursuing,” Yana said. “Twenty-seven hundred klicks and closing.”

  Carlo eyed his instruments and shook his head.

  “He’s going to catch us. And if I climb out of the rings, we’ll get shredded.”

  “I know,” Diocletia said. “Keep going—try to make the Keeler Gap.”

  “Twenty-five hundred klicks,” Yana said.

  “Mr. Grigsby, fire the stern chasers at the ring particles to aft,” Diocletia ordered. “It might slow him down.”

  “I’m coming to get you, Comet!” Mox yelled, his voice rising to a feral roar. “I’M COMING TO KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU!”

  “Come on then, Thoadbone!” roared Huff.

  “Twenty-two hundred,” Yana said. “That’s missile range. Why isn’t he firing?”

  “He wants the Comet for a prize, on account of the Hydra,” Huff said.

  “Dad, I need you and Mavry belowdecks to repel boarders,” Diocletia said.

  “Aye,” Huff said. “If Thoadbone comes knockin’, we’ll give him what for.”

  He nodded at his daughter, who nodded back, then thumped down the companionway toward the fire room.

  Tycho and Yana stared at each other through the dim red light. In a few minutes, if nothing changed, the Geryon would catch the Comet. The pocket cruiser’s gunners would melt the privateer’s gunports until she could offer no resistance, then attach a docking tube to her airlock. Then Mox’s Ice Wolves would swarm the ship. Tycho would be able to hear the firing from the quarterdeck, hear men and women who’d spent their lives as Hashoone retainers screaming and dying below them. And then, when the Comets belowdecks could hold out no longer . . .

  “Tycho, set up a communications link with your father,” Diocletia said. “Keep your heads.”

  “Two thousand klicks,” Yana said.

  Carlo flung the control yokes sideways, and the Comet rolled sluggishly to starboard, engines sputtering, to miss a chunk of dark rock that had been hidden by a field of bright ice. But that carried them into the path of a massive blob of white. As Carlo yanked on the control yokes, it loomed ahead of them and filled the viewscreen. Yana gasped, and Tycho instinctively ducked his head as the privateer shuddered. He looked up and saw more tumbling ring particles—the Comet had flown right through the cosmic snowball, emerging intact on the other side.

  “Ready or not, here I come!” Mox roared over the channel.

  “Course calculations complete,” Vesuvia said calmly amid the chaos.

  Tycho looked at his display and saw that the Comet’s AI had obediently plotted a course out of the A ring—a course that was now useless, with Mox right behind them. He stared at the welter of objects on his screen, trying to conjure up a miracle.

  “Daphnis!” he yelled. “Carlo! The Keeler Gap is dead ahead, and so is Daphnis! Remember the magnetic lee behind the moon?”

  Carlo flung the control yokes left, then right, as a swirl of magnetic anomalies sent the ship spinning sickeningly, jostling the Hashoones in their harnesses.

  “I have been blessed,” Tycho heard Mavry say belowdecks, raising his voice above the thud of the guns. “Blessed to be born a Jovian. Blessed to seek my fortune among the stars. And most of all, blessed to serve aboard this ship, and alongside all of you. We are Comets. Thoadbone Mox has no honor, no allegiance—and no idea what a mistake he’s made.”

  “Three cheers for Master Mavry!” the Comets cheered.

  “Fifteen hundred klicks,” Yana said, then cried out: “Carlo! Down!”

  Carlo dipped the Comet’s nose, and the frigate dipped under a flurry of black boulders. Tycho could see Daphnis now—a bright hunk of frozen rock, orbiting in the gap in the rings carved out by its gravity.

  “This ship is our country,” Huff growled belowdecks. “An’ I’ve got a one-way ticket to hell for anyone who dares touch a centimeter of her deck. I ain’t afraid to die, boys—because I die hard.”

  “Three cheers for Captain Huff!” came the yells.

  “No one strikes the colors,” Diocletia ordered. “Tycho, if it comes to it, get the carbines from the equipment locker. You’ll defend the aft ladderwell.”

  “Aye-aye,” Tycho forced himself to say.

  “Coming up on the Keeler Gap,” Carlo said. “Hang on.”

  “Incoming audio message on all channels,” Vesuvia said.

  “Put it on,” Diocletia said, grimacing as Carlo pumped the throttle, searching for speed that the battered Comet couldn’t give him.

  “This is Hodge Lazander, addressing all officers of the Jovian Union,” said a calm voice. “By mutual agreement with Admiral Badawi, we are suspending combat operations. Cease hostile action and no harm shall come to you.”

  “Mr. Grigsby, stop firing!” Diocletia yelled. “Carlo, keep going!”

  The Comet shot out of the maelstrom of debris into the Keeler Gap—but Mox was right behind them, the Geryon now so close that the scanner showed just a tiny sliver of space between the red dot of the pocket cruiser and the green one of the Comet.

  “Captain Mox, suspend your pursuit,” Lazander ordered.

  “I got a score to settle with this one fir
st,” Mox spit.

  “That’s an order, Mox,” Lazander said.

  “NO!”

  Ahead, the frosty surface of Daphnis gleamed in the pale-yellow light of Saturn.

  “The magnetism will intensify near the moon,” Tycho yelled to his brother. “But then you’ll be in the lee and get control back.”

  “I remember,” Carlo said through gritted teeth. “Let’s just hope Mox doesn’t know about it.”

  “Mr. Grigsby, all guns forward,” Diocletia said into her headset. “We’ll have one chance to turn the tables on Mox. But nobody fires unless I give the order.”

  Daphnis loomed ahead. Then the shepherd moon’s magnetic field seized the Comet, sending her scopes spinning wildly. Carlo yanked on the control yokes, the muscles in his forearms bulging. Shuddering, the Comet rolled over to port—once, twice, then three times—and the mottled, pitted surface of Daphnis flashed by the viewscreen, so close that Tycho could see shadows at the bottom of its craters.

  “Come on!” Diocletia yelled, bringing one fist down on her console.

  Then the ship was floating in the calm zone of the lee.

  “I’ve got control,” Carlo said, snapping the Comet around so that her bow—and a good percentage of her weapons—pointed at the limb of the moon they’d just cleared.

  The Geryon tumbled around the curve of Daphnis, hopelessly out of control—and bracketed in the Comet’s gunsights.

  Diocletia lunged forward, eyes wild, one hand on her headset.

  “You so much as twitch, Mox, and I’ll blow you to atoms.”

  The Geryon shuddered to a halt as her pilot regained control and found his ship separated from the Shadow Comet by just a few hundred meters of vacuum—and helpless before the smaller craft’s guns.

  “Nobody fire!” Diocletia ordered. “Vesuvia, switch to video.”

  The video screen flickered to life. Mox glowered at them, teeth bared, the telescopic eye rammed into his skull whirring madly. He squinted at Diocletia, mouth working. Then he smiled, the expression swelling slowly until it split his face, like a terrible wound.

  “Go ahead then,” he said. “You can’t take out all my guns—and at this range you’ll be destroyed too.”

  “I’m willing to make that trade,” Diocletia said. “Are you?”

  Mox stared at Diocletia, who stared back.

  “Wait!” Tycho said. “What about his share of the Iris cache?”

  Diocletia looked back at Tycho, frowning.

  “The Iris?” Mox demanded. “What are you accursed Hashoones blathering about? That treasure’s in the hands of the Securitat!”

  “You’re wrong,” Diocletia said. “My children found it. And we’ve turned it into a tidy sum at the Bank of Ceres.”

  “We are not paying off that plug-ugly bilge rat!” Yana objected.

  “Shut that brat up!” Mox roared. “I’m entitled to my share of that treasure! You can’t bargain with what ain’t your property!”

  “Any court that would award it to you would also arrest you for murder, piracy, and treason,” Diocletia said. “You’ll never see that money without us, Thoadbone. Or, if you prefer, we can all die.”

  Three bells rang out on the quarterdeck of both the Comet and the Geryon. Tycho tried to wipe the sweat out of his eyes, then turned at the sound of footsteps behind him. Mavry stepped onto the deck, chrome pistols tucked into his belt. Behind him came Huff, the flesh-and-blood half of his face dark with soot.

  “Are you all right, Dad?” Tycho asked.

  “For now,” Mavry said gravely, gazing over Diocletia’s shoulder at Mox, who was screeching abuse. “But we’ve lost people belowdecks.”

  “Captain, I have three vessels inbound, following the Keeler Gap,” Yana said. “Cruising speed, displaying Saturnian colors.”

  “So what’s it going to be, Thoadbone?” Diocletia asked.

  “Only one thing better than being rich,” Mox said, leaning forward with his teeth bared. “And that’s seeing your enemies die.”

  “Fire on that vessel and I’ll destroy you myself, Mox,” said the voice of Hodge Lazander. “Shadow Comet, can you prove what you say about the Iris cache?”

  “We can contact the Bank of Ceres right now,” Diocletia said.

  “Very well,” Lazander said. “Please do.”

  “Vesuvia?” Diocletia said. “Contact Mr. Hohenfauer at the Bank of Ceres. Tell him Captain Diocletia Hashoone would like to speak with him.”

  “Initiating transmission,” Vesuvia said.

  “Lazander!” Mox roared. “What’s the meaning of this?”

  “The meaning of this, Captain Mox, is that you are relieved of command and stripped of your commission,” Lazander said as the two Ice Wolf frigates and a cruiser slowed to a halt behind the Comet’s stern.

  “For what?” Mox demanded.

  “Where to start? Dereliction of duty in launching your unauthorized operation at Europa, for one thing. To which we can now add disobeying repeated orders from a superior officer. I gave you every chance, Mox, but it’s clear your only allegiance is to money—of which you owe us a considerable amount.”

  “Me? Owe you money?”

  “For the ship you now no longer command,” Lazander said. “For the crews you used for your own selfish purposes. For fuel, and expenses, and so much else. I intend to collect that money, after which our relationship will be at an end. First Mate Southard, lock down Captain Mox’s console, please. You are in command now.”

  “Yes, sir,” said a pale, bearded man over Mox’s shoulder, looking more than a little unhappy.

  “You useless snake! You politician!” Mox roared. “You stole my property! Without that there would have been no victory today. You’re a thief! A double-dealing thief!”

  “You will be compensated for your contributions,” Lazander said.

  “And after our business with Mox is concluded, what of us?” Diocletia asked Lazander.

  “I give you my word that you will be accorded safe passage.”

  “Bank of Ceres is receiving transmission,” Vesuvia said.

  “Onscreen,” Diocletia said.

  Chimes sounded over the Comet’s speakers, followed by the sound of someone scrabbling at a communicator’s controls. Vesuvia divided the main screen in two: Mox on the left, the Bank of Ceres’s logo on the right.

  “Bank of Ceres, Mr. Hohenfauer speaking.” The teller appeared onscreen, eyes wide.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Hohenfauer,” said Diocletia. It took a couple of seconds for the transmission to make its way to distant Ceres and back.

  “Captain Hashoone,” Hohenfauer said, face turning hard. “You lied to me—you’re no friend of Sir Armistead-Kabila’s.”

  “I did lie to you, Mr. Hohenfauer. Poor customer service makes a woman do crazy things. But I’m not here to talk about the past.”

  “We have nothing to talk about whatsoever, Captain Hashoone,” Hohenfauer said.

  “The balance in my family’s account would indicate otherwise. Don’t waste my time pretending it won’t. I am authorizing a transfer of 1.68 million livres from that account to Captain Mox here. He’ll be in your records as Thaddeus Moxley.”

  “My name is Thoadbone!” roared Mox.

  “Antifraud systems verify that the man onscreen is Thaddeus Moxley,” Hohenfauer said.

  “THOADBONE!” Mox screeched.

  “But this is highly irregular, Captain Hashoone,” Hohenfauer said. “Transfers of this size between personal accounts are approved only in person. I won’t authorize a remote transfer, no matter how big your balance is. And don’t try to threaten me with tall tales about Sir Armistead-Kabila either, since we both know you can’t back them up.”

  Diocletia glanced back at the ladderwell.

  “Dad, come up here for a moment?”

  Huff clanked slowly across the quarterdeck until he stood by the captain’s chair, glaring at the viewscreen.

  “I believe you’ve met my father,” Diocletia said.
>
  Hohenfauer stared at the half-metal pirate, his eyes jumping from Huff’s blazing artificial eye and blackened face to his pistols and cutlass. One hand went reflexively to his throat.

  “Have to be there in person, eh?” Huff rumbled. “Jus’ how personal do you want it? I don’t know this Armistead-Kabila either. But I do know you, Hohenfauer. I know where you work. An’ I can find out where you live.”

  “I suppose I could allow a one-time exception to our policies,” Hohenfauer stammered.

  “That’s the spirit,” Diocletia said. “You’ll be employee of the month before you know it.”

  “An’ this way, you get to stay alive,” Huff said.

  18

  THE FAMILY IS THE SHIP

  Attached to her long-range tanks once more, the battered Comet limped in the direction of Jupiter. Before she was an hour out of Saturn, the life-support systems had been restored and the damaged linkages to the engines reknit. Far more was needed—the ugly rents and melted gunports in her portside would remain isolated by bulkheads until she reached dry dock, and the damage to her propulsion systems had robbed her of much of her speed. And nothing could replace the nine retainers and crewers who had died in battle. But little by little over that first day, the ship came to feel like her old self again.

  Tycho found those hours oddly comforting—all of the Hashoones were busy in the fire room and at their consoles, prioritizing repairs and performing diagnostics to check that those repairs had been successful. It was dull, but it let them delay facing the questions he knew they couldn’t escape for much longer.

  With the major repairs complete, Diocletia called for a meeting. Fortifying themselves with tea and coffee and a carton of jump-pop Yana had squirreled away somewhere, the Hashoones sat quietly at their consoles on the quarterdeck, waiting to hear what their captain would say.

  “The important thing, to state the obvious, is that we’re alive,” Diocletia said, leaning on the back of the captain’s chair. “We’ve lost people, but you kept your heads when a poor decision might have meant the end of all our lives. And that’s more important than the Log, our letter of marque, or anything else.”

  “And what’s going to happen to our letter of marque?” Yana asked. “I can’t imagine the Jovian Union will be pleased when they find out how we bought our freedom.”