by Alex White
“We know what it does?” asked Cordell.
“It’s an encryption crystal. We call them and ask for help. If we have even one straw, we grasp at it,” Boots replied. “Am I the only one who knew we were idiots for taking this gig?”
“Yes,” said Nilah.
Boots deflated a bit. “Kid, I’m sorry about… I know you’ve been dealt a huge blow.”
She shrugged. “In a weird way… I guess it makes me part of the crew. All of you had to lose people. Was just… was just my sodding turn, is all.”
“The price of entry onto this crew is courage, not loss. And I don’t want to hear you call yourself anything less than my sister in arms ever again,” said Boots.
Nilah’s lips twisted in a pained smile. “Thanks, love.”
The others perked up at the sentiment. It was easy in the hustle and bustle of a warship to forget to be good to one another. Boots had been just as guilty as everyone else of focusing on the mission and forgetting the people.
“We’ve got one option here, Captain, because quitting isn’t in the cards,” she said.
“Which is?”
“We go to the Vogelstrand. Not as Compass. No backup. No chance of betrayals. Just us.”
After Boots’s initial analysis, they’d all reviewed the video playback. Everyone on that crew knew exactly what horrors lay in wait for them on the derelict craft.
“The Ambrosini didn’t give us the coordinates before the bastards blew it up,” said Cordell.
“But we can ask the Athana,” said Boots. “We have their key.”
Cordell nodded, a minute gesture at first, slowly swelling into a legitimate assent.
“Okay. How do we get started?”
“Thanks for what you said in there.”
Boots turned to find Alister jogging after her in the hall, his eyes brighter than she’d seen in a long time.
She smirked. “Yeah, well… I just said what you were thinking, then. Can’t stand all this defeatist crap.”
He fell in stride with her, and she secretly thanked her lucky stars. It was her turn to swab the head, and she might be able to press him into service. Life on a small ship always meant pitching in on custodial work.
“Man,” he said, “I’d love to get my hands around the neck of some of those cultists.”
“Like you did on Harvest?”
“On Harvest?”
She stopped and regarded him sidelong. “Yeah. You choked a guy and shot him in the face.”
He looked away. “Oh yeah. Right. That.”
But Alister was a terrible liar, and she knew he didn’t recall from the searching in his eyes. In the hot days of the Famine War, Boots had known a fellow who’d been injured in an airlock transfer. She’d seen that look on his face whenever he forgot something, too.
No matter what, Boots never forgot a single kill, and the face-to-face ones were particularly vivid. Anxiety ran its finger up her spine. Might as well face the music.
“You really don’t remember that guy?” she asked.
“Of course,” said Alister, looking a little offended. Or was he faking it? “I do. I promise. I’m fine.”
It was a soldier’s task to trust her comrades as much as care for them. No one came home from a war unfazed, and most of them still did their jobs just fine. He certainly wasn’t the first crewmate she’d had with mental problems.
“Just being sure, bud.”
Alister lowered his voice. “I don’t understand what’s wrong with Captain Lamarr. He needs to stay focused. We can’t let things slide even for a minute.”
“I get him,” she said, continuing toward her assignment in the bathroom. “Right now, he’s wondering if he needs to take his remaining days and do something nice with them. Maybe find a quiet place in the Murphy Belt and have a well-deserved rest while he can.”
“Must be nice, having that kind of privilege.”
“Excuse me?”
Alister shrugged. “I was born for one mission. Now I’ve got another. Seems like you would understand, too.”
“Whoa, Al. There’s more to life than hunting down gods.” Boots turned down the path to the bathroom sterilizer closet, mentally preparing herself for the smell. They used to call that piece of gear the “grime grinder,” and she hated it so much. “I’ve got a batch of whiskey maturing back home, and it’s going to take eight more years to get there. I plan to be alive for that. You’ve thought about what you’re going to do when this is all over, right?”
He drew up short, searching her face. “Why would I? I’m not going to make it through this.”
There was no mirth about him, no guile. The guy actually meant it.
“Why would you say that?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” he replied. “I’m a resource, and resources get used. That’s just like any soldier, honestly. In the end, it’s all a game.”
“People dying is never a game, Al, and it’s wrong to treat yourself like a number.”
“That’s what all soldiers are. That’s why they have serial numbers.”
“No,” she said. “No, no, no. You head down to the mess, and I’ll meet you there.”
“It’s not time to eat.”
“I’m going to grab my cards and teach you to play sixteen clouds. You need to know what a real game is.”
“We don’t have time for—”
Boots shushed him with a hand. “You don’t sign up in the military to die. No one does. You sign up so everyone can live, and right now, you haven’t done enough living. Let’s go, cadet. Get your sister, too.”
Within ten minutes, the three of them were seated around the mess hall table with Boots laying out a frayed stack of cards. Jeannie picked one up and looked at the back.
“Royal Waterman?” asked the sister, reading the branding on the back of the cards.
“It was a doomed megayacht. These cards spent a hundred and eighty-six years in the vacuum of space before being rescued. The jewels, artifacts, and all that crap were snapped up when he crashed, but I managed to grab these cards from an auction house.” She held up the thirteen. “Listen up: clouds is a guessing game—you get to see five cards and I shuffle them. We draw three facedown and take bets on who has the best match with what’s in their hand. If no one makes a hand, we leave the card out, faceup. Whoever wins the hand gets to take the card and use it again. It’s called ‘clouds’ because you’re betting on what treasure lies behind the cloud, okay?”
Jeannie and Alister looked at each other.
“Sounds boring,” he said.
“It is,” said Boots, pouring herself a drink, “until you start wagering real money. We’re all multimillionaires here. Surely there’s nothing wrong with a little action on the table.” She narrowed her eyes as she took a drink to drive home a bit of mischief.
Alister raised his eyebrows and pulled out a credit chit. “All right. So what do we start with, like a hundred thousand?”
Spluttering, Boots put the cup down. “I was thinking like a hundred. Two zeroes, not five. You’re just learning, sport.”
“I can handle anything,” he replied.
As it turned out, the Ferriers were terrible, guileless little players with no sense of risk or reward. They’d bet hard on sure things and couldn’t bluff to save their lives. Alister developed a nervous fidget whenever he was unsure; he’d bob his foot under the table, sometimes hard enough to accidentally kick her. It took Boots no time at all to win their money—not that she had anything to spend it on.
Orna poked her head into the mess. “Hey, Boots, I thought you were on head duty. Was I… What are you doing?”
“Teaching these kids to play clouds,” she replied.
“Why? Are they a hundred years old and waiting for death in a retirement community?”
“We’re having fun,” said Jeannie.
“I’ve lost five hundred argents,” said Alister. “But I think I’d do better with higher stakes.”
The quartermaster looked down
the hall, as if to make sure no one was coming. “Count me in.”
The hands rolled by, and Alister kept hemorrhaging cash like a stuck marpo. Jeannie began to bet far more conservatively and was able to recoup a bit of her losses. Before long, Nilah joined them, boasting about her time in the casinos of the Verdance. She made certain Orna knew sixteen clouds was a classy game, played by Taitutian clan heads, not just smoky old grandmas in dumpling parlors. In retaliation, Orna heated up a plate of dumplings from the ship’s stores and set them out for everyone.
Each of them had their own style. Nilah had an elegance to her play, a long-term strategy born of high-class living. She frustrated Boots, because she didn’t go for the risky stuff and backed out of hands. Orna was a natural-born killer, able to scent out anyone feeling weak. Whenever she became a problem, Boots could put her on Alister’s tail. Jeannie was simply careful. Boots figured her own strong suit was being a con artist.
Before long, Alister’s luck turned around. He learned to pull back when he had nothing and go in heavy when Boots was bluffing. The stakes went up, and after a while, Alister was sitting on about twenty grand worth of everyone else’s cash. He came to a particularly brutal blow where he took the full remainder of Orna’s buy-in, and she looked up at him with murder in her eyes.
“If you kick me one more time,” she said, “I’m going to unzip your spine with a shucking knife.”
“Sorry,” Alister said, taking the kitty terminal and transferring his winnings. “Nervous habit.”
Boots caught the hint of a smirk on his face, and she knew what she’d see if she could look under the table: the minuscule flash of a reader’s mark from his index finger. With his spell cast, he only needed a touch to read someone’s mind.
Clever boy.
He wasn’t reading her every single hand—just the ones where he thought he could make a coin or two. Boots would’ve called him a cheater, but in her mind, cheating was part of the game. A fair fight was a stupid fight, as they always said. Besides, she could use his flexible morality against him.
She pulled her legs back so he couldn’t “accidentally” kick her and tried to recall what she knew about the reader’s mark. It was all top-of-mind stuff, right?
She spied her chance to strike—a strong match, and she relaxed her posture, pretending to let down her guard. Boots kept the one thought running through her mind like a song, Oh, no. Just a pair of silvers, and bet big. Orna was already out. Nilah folded next, correctly guessing that Boots actually had a hell of a hand. Alister pretended to sneeze and touched her foot under the table. He took the bait, and Jeannie, who’d probably gotten on the same wavelength many hands ago, copied his wager.
Then came the reveal, much to Alister’s shock.
“Sorry.” Boots hefted the kitty terminal, now swollen with nearly thirty large—basically all of the Ferriers’ earnings—and transferred it to her paragon crystal.
He leapt to his feet, turning red and shaking. He’d had a grand old time cheating everyone, and Boots knew he was pissed to have a good thing come crashing down. Jeannie gave him a worried look, like she thought he might take a swing, and Orna made the situation worse with a chuckling, “Oh, you got wrecked, son.” Nilah put a hand on her fiancée’s arm, watching for any sign of trouble, or maybe a table flip.
“That… you…” he stammered. What was he going to say? That he’d been cheated at cheating?
Boots quirked an eyebrow. “I told you it was more fun with money riding on it.”
He looked away. “That’s… yeah. Yeah, it is.”
When Alister’s green eyes met hers once more, they were practically sparkling with excitement. “That was amazing.”
“Let me tell you something,” came Cordell’s voice from the doorway. “I don’t care if you just lost a starfighter or the future of the galaxy, there is nothing that can’t be cured by the tender ministrations of lady luck. Deal me in.”
The others glanced around nervously, murmuring excuses and rising to leave.
“Our captain is a compulsive gambler, and an even worse liar. Nothing to fear,” said Boots, a little louder than she wanted. “Captain, we may as well grab the good doctor and our pilot. Maybe make this a casino night, hmm?”
Cordell hooked his thumbs into his pockets. “Caught them making out in the med bay like a couple of rookies. Better give them some peace. Y’all really breaking up the game?”
“Why would we?” she replied, giving everyone meaningful glances. “You’re here to give us all of your money.”
The others settled in for a long evening of drinking and joking around. For the first time in ages, Boots felt herself relax a little, and she got pretty boisterous—and more than a little hammered.
By the end of it, Cordell had robbed everyone blind, just as she’d known he would—
And he was acting like her old captain once again.
The ejector seat and survival package was all that remained of the Midnight Runner. Boots stood in the bay and stared at the chair, its back propped up like a tombstone, and sighed.
“You officially suck.”
Boots turned to find Orna sitting at her workstation, arms crossed, a pair of micro imagers hanging around her neck. “Oh, it’s official now? Did you file the forms with the appropriate authorities?”
“When you came on board my ship—”
“Your ship?”
“I’m the quartermaster. The captain pays me to make it mine.” She gave a slightly tipsy nod. Boots would’ve been offended, but everyone was somewhat drunk that night cycle. “As I was saying, when you came on board my ship, I had a starfighter. Now I don’t.”
“Yeah. I hear you.”
Orna stood and shambled over to Boots. “I don’t think you do, see, I want you to hear this.” She leaned in close, eyes narrow and breath stinking of… what had she drunk after the game? A quart of engine degreaser? “I want you to get it through your thick skull, okay? Okay?”
Boots’s pulse quickened. Orna threw a heavy arm around her neck, corded muscles easily capable of choking her out, and let loose a long, flammable sigh.
“You made the right choice, ditching him in that battlefield,” said Orna. “Coming home is… com—coming back is always the right choice.”
“Aw, now don’t get sentimental on me.”
Orna’s hug was like being wrapped up in a set of steel cables, and Boots grunted. “Not a sentiment. I love you. Stabbed that lady real good. You’re b… beautiful.”
The tension drained out through Boots’s feet, and she patted Orna’s hand. “You’re a regular poet, my dear.”
She looked over at Orna’s workstation, covered with tools and powered on. From the scent of cooked wiring sleeves, Boots felt certain she’d been crafting something.
“What are you doing? Should I stop you?”
“Trying to make a new slinger round. Got to outdo shadowflash,” said Orna with a tiny hiccup. “Can’t be a one-hit wonder, but… like… what spell am I supposed to copy, you know?”
“I always wanted to see someone get hit with the contortionist’s mark in person,” said Boots. “Can you make a bullet imbued with that?”
“Jellybones? I’m a lethal girl, Boots. I like a lethal round. Besides, I’ve got a better idea. Want to hear it?”
“Sure.”
“I’m dronk,” she snickered.
Boots shrugged out of Orna’s hold to inspect the Runner’s ejector seat, its mounting truss scorched by the firing of explosive bolts. Somewhere in deep space, her baby boy tumbled free, thrusters melted, chassis scarred, engine notched. He must be lonely out there, she thought, and found herself a little misty in the eyes.
“Hey, I made you something, too,” said Orna, slouching over to a cabinet to rummage through it. She handed Boots a data cube, wrapped in a copper cage with a rudimentary speaker strapped to it. It bristled with microcontrollers and various wires. “I told you I’d do my best.”
“Hello, Lizzie,” said Kin, cons
iderably smaller than when the computer rendered his voice.
Boots almost cried, and she hadn’t realized how relieved she’d be to see him again. When they’d been attacked, and Kin had been the catalyst, she’d lost hope of getting him back.
“The reason he has such a crap-sounding speaker,” said Orna, tapping the papery audio resonator, “is that the little punk kept frying all of the smarter acoustic projection systems. He got a bad virus, and it’s never going to go away.”
“What does it do?” asked Boots, examining what she could see of the cube’s surface through its enclosure, as if there’d be some visual evidence of the disease.
“Destroys anything on the network with it. Anything,” said Orna. “The chips attached to him were the simplest I could make—too stupid to be tricked into incinerating themselves.” Her breath nearly knocked Boots over as she leaned in and said, “Do not ever connect him to anything.”
“That bad?” asked Boots.
“Probably the meanest snake of code I’ve ever wrestled.”
“Sorry I tried to kill you,” said Kin.
“It’s not your fault,” said Boots, wiping her eyes. “And besides, you did a really good job. Thought we were goners for sure.”
“I aim to please,” said Kin. “I’m glad you’re alive, even if I periodically want to see all of your blood out of your body.”
Boots recoiled. “What?”
“’S the virus,” said the quartermaster. “Don’t listen to him; he loves you.”
“No one loves you,” said Kin.
“Kin! He’ll be like this sometimes. Just ignore it.” Orna thumped the device a few times. “Stop it! Bad!”
The data cube blinked inside its cage. “Sorry! I’m better now.”
Orna raised a finger. “Got a hotfix for his software, though. Just bang him on a tabe… table. You do that when… when he’s being a little b—”
“There you are!” called Nilah, striding into the cargo bay and rushing up to them. “We’re not threatening the nice lady, are we, love?” She gave Boots a look typically reserved for mothers apologizing for their children.
“I’m bein’ nice!” Orna protested, swatting Nilah’s hands away even though Nilah was hilariously faster and better at hand-to-hand.
