The Worst of All Possible Worlds

by Alex White

  “Cool,” said Boots. “Got any leads on a spare starfighter?”

  The captain turned to stare out of the panoramic window at the bounty of stars beyond. “You know what? I think I do.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Rainbow

  The Capricious emerged from the Flow in the skies over Taligola, a frontier world with a few sparse settlements. There was a stable regional government, but for the most part, it was a place for people to be left alone, similar to Hopper’s Hope.

  “Planetfall in fifteen,” said Aisha. “All crew ready stations.”

  “Missus Jan,” said Malik, “please confirm our camouflage and counterfeit IDs were accepted.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the pilot. “Green across the board.”

  “Excellent!” said Cordell. “Let’s take him down and visit an old friend.”

  “Okay, we’re here,” said Boots from her scanner station. “Now will you tell me where we’re going?”

  “No dice,” replied Cordell. “I want to see your face when we arrive. You want to go put on some makeup?”

  “Sure, if you want my face to look like an abstract painting,” grumbled Boots, wandering to her crash couch.

  As they cleared the stratosphere and began their descent, Nilah immediately recognized their surroundings. She’d been to a party there just over a year ago, and within seconds, she understood exactly why Cordell was being cagey.

  This’d be good.

  Within a few minutes, they approached the landing grid of a decent-sized mansion with a couple of hangars ringing it. The place was like a tiny starport, complete with runways and a little racetrack. She strapped in next to Orna and Boots, trying not to show a little grin.

  “What is this?” whispered Boots. “Please explain why everyone is acting weird.”

  Orna started to answer, but Nilah punched her leg, and Boots scowled at both of them.

  “Skids down, Captain,” said Aisha. “We’re good to go.”

  “Then let’s go say hello,” said Cordell, heading for the cargo bay.

  The others fell in behind, and Nilah followed, a little giddy. Then she took a quick look at Boots’s stained shirt and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  She dashed up to Boots’s quarters, hacked the lock open (which was child’s play), and fetched her beloved Rook jacket. She arrived in the cargo bay just in time for the ramp to come down and held out the yellow monstrosity for Boots to take.

  “What the heck, kid?” griped Boots. “You went through my room—”

  Then Boots stopped dead, because on the other side of the cargo ramp, standing alongside his wife, was Jack Rook—the man who’d created the MRX-20 Midnight Runner starfighter. Boots worshipped him, and Nilah understood why; he was a hell of an aerospace engineer.

  Boots snatched the jacket and donned it like a spacesuit in a vacuum. Then she looked at her arms and crossed them over the elbow scuff as though said spacesuit had sprung a leak right there.

  “Jackie!” Cordell threw his arms wide and sauntered down the ramp to embrace the pair.

  “Captain Lamarr,” said Jack, smile sparkling despite his age. “It’s such a pleasure to see you. I trust you’re all in good health?”

  “Despite the best efforts of a few evil sons of guns,” laughed Cordell. “You remember everyone? Want me to reintroduce you?”

  “Oh, please,” said Jack. “Who doesn’t know your names?”

  Nilah had Boots at a disadvantage—she’d met Jack Rook during a soiree after they’d returned the Harrow. Boots had missed that one, preferring to go into seclusion.

  The old man was exactly as Nilah remembered, balding with a pot-belly, but a gleam in his eye he’d gotten from being a test pilot. He walked with a slight limp, the result of a crash and some limbs that never quite healed. He’d regaled her of the story over drinks at the veterans’ benefit, and she could’ve listened to him talk all night. Like her, he understood speed, daring, courage, and the need to push himself beyond any reasonable envelope of living.

  “Boots,” Nilah whispered. “Go say hi.”

  Boots’s eyes were positively panicked. “I can’t. He’s—well… you know, he’s…”

  Jack squinted into the cargo bay at them. “Is that Boots Elsworth?”

  The woman let out a breath like someone had punched her, and Nilah pushed her forward. “Yeah. I’m Boots. Elsworth. I’m her, I mean.”

  But despite the two steps from the push, Boots didn’t make it one more stride. Instead, Jack came ambling up the ramp and clapped her on the shoulder as he shook her hand.

  “I just want to personally welcome you to my home, Boots. I can’t tell you how happy I am to finally make your acquaintance.”

  Boots blinked. “I’m just happy to acquaintance you as well.”

  Jack grinned at Nilah, a warm, paternal expression she’d expect from a grandfather watching small children and said, “I like this one.”

  “Only because she’ll let him do all of the talking,” called Jack’s wife from the entrance. “I’m Ellie Rook, by the way. Please take him off my hands for a few hours.”

  “I’ve finally gone senile,” said Boots. “There’s no way this is happening.”

  Jack fingered the scuff on her jacket elbow and tsked. “Ellie, do we have any more jackets?”

  “I don’t know, honey. You’ll have to check the hangar,” said Ellie. “Now will you all come to the house? I’m going to catch a cold out here, and we’ve got hot toddies for everyone.”

  They ventured inside, all the while Boots staring at every memento adorning Jack’s rooms. There were medals, squadron pictures, family photos, and various bits of fuselage nailed to the wall. Nilah regarded them as art, but Boots’s eyes glistened as she absorbed the history of every piece. They paused before a golden plaque, engraved with hundreds of names: THOSE WHO REMAINED.

  Boots paused, peered closer, and pointed out one of the names for Nilah to see—“David Spalding.”

  “What is this?” Nilah asked.

  “Those are all of my employees who refused to leave Arca, despite being given evacuation orders,” said Jack, coming to join them. “Who were you looking for, Boots?”

  “David Spalding was my uncle, Mister Rook,” said Boots. “He was in the capital when the Kandis glassed it.”

  “I took a lot of flak when I offered to evacuate all of my employees and their families,” said Jack, folding his hands behind his back. “Those with young children took the deal, mostly.”

  “I remember,” said Boots. “At the end, maintenance techs got real rare, and we had to make our own repairs. It wasn’t the most popular decision.”

  “And how did you feel, as a pilot?” he said.

  “For a hot minute, I hated your guts, Mister Rook.”

  “Call me Jackie. The best we can do is struggle in our time, Miss Elsworth,” said the old man, ushering them onward into the lounge. “When we put our pasts on trial, the only verdict is ‘guilty.’”

  Inside the lounge, suspended from the ceiling, was the fibron monocoque of the Lang Hyper 8 in all its glory. It was Nilah’s turn to gape at the sweeping curves of her old race car, accented with those blazing magenta lines.

  “I saw it at auction, and I had to have it,” said Jack. “This one was Kristof’s, since yours was in bits at the time.”

  Her fingers unconsciously curled into a fist as she remembered him holding her colors, defending her honor during the Harrow conspiracy. She’d managed to forget his expression in the moment Harriet Fulsom had murdered him.

  “I suppose it’s worth a lot more, now that he’s dead,” she said.

  He placed a heavy hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry. When all this is over, I’ll have it sent to the Clarkesfall Heritage Museum.”

  “But he wasn’t from Clarkesfall.”

  “No,” said Jack, “but he deserves our gratitude. He supported you in your time of need and was murdered for it later. He’s a friend to our people forevermore.”


  She looked into his eyes, still bright despite their nest of crow’s-feet. “Thanks, mate.”

  After drinks, he ushered them to one of his many hangars, a spectacular archive of Arcan war machines. Six fliers stood on their skids—various troop transports and surveillance drones. At the end of the row stood a familiar sight, the MRX-20 Midnight Runner.

  “You know,” chuckled Boots, “I used to have one of those.”

  “Excuse you?” said Orna, cuffing her on the shoulder. “I loaned you mine, and you left it spinning in a debris field.”

  “Yeah,” said Boots. “My bad.”

  “Which brings us to why we’re here, Mister Rook,” said Cordell. “We were wondering if we could take it off your hands—for a fair price, of course.”

  Jack gave him a stunned look. “I’d never sell the pieces in my collection, Captain Lamarr. It’s taken me most of my life to accrue them.”

  They all stopped dead, and Cordell said, “But, on the comm, you told us…”

  “Of course,” said Jack, “I’d be happy to loan it to you until you’ve taken care of Henrick Witts. Please don’t soil our deal with something as silly as money.”

  “Mister Rook…” said Boots, but he held up his hand.

  “I made my living hawking weapons for a cause I thought was righteous,” he said. “When we were reduced to animals, scrabbling in the dirt for scraps, my fighters sent thousands to their deaths. When the situation was hopeless, I left, taking my fortune with me.”

  He grimaced. “I will never live that down. Please let me contribute to a truly noble cause.”

  “I’ll take good care of him, Mister Rook,” said Boots. “If he doesn’t come back, neither did I.”

  The old man looked affronted. “Don’t you dare say that, Miss Elsworth. A starfighter isn’t worth one tenth of a human life, or one millionth of yours.”

  “I can think of a lot of people I’d kill for that sweet piece of kit,” said Orna.

  “All right, folks, teatime is over! Let’s get him loaded up! You waiting for a hand?” called Cordell.

  “Elsworth, you’re excused. Please keep the Rooks entertained while we do our thing,” said the captain. “DosSantos will be here in the hour to drop off munitions, and I want us offworld by sundown.”

  Nilah hadn’t stopped admiring her new toes since they’d fitted her. While the others busied themselves checking over the munitions manifest, she inspected her new prosthesis’s firmware for any bugs or spy bots. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Checo—after all, they could’ve sold her out at any point in the past—but she still feared some rogue software riding around on her prosthesis.

  The robot leg was inspired design. When they’d fitted her for it, the appendage shrunk to match her other limb, contorting the powerful synthetic musculature beneath the skin—skin that started out ashen gray, shading to a deep brown to match Nilah’s. A couple of tasteful blemishes even appeared along the shinbone to round out the illusion.

  Where the cargo bay had been empty before their trip to Taligola, holding only the Devil, it now contained the tank, a Midnight Runner, stacks upon stacks of munitions, food stores, harsh-weather gear, and spare parts. It had cost a fortune—so they’d tried using their Compass account, first.

  To Nilah’s surprise, it’d worked, though that was probably because someone at Compass wanted them traced. When she’d asked Cordell about the exposure, he’d said, “We’ll be so long gone by the time those jackasses catch up. Origin ain’t exactly civilized space.”

  Nilah thought on this as she absent-mindedly worked on Teacup’s servos, replacing the ones she’d looted for her leg.

  “Are you going to let me secure all this by myself?” asked Orna, hefting one of the boxes into its snaplocks. Charger was handling the big crates, but that still left a lot of work to be done.

  “Sorry, love. Just enjoying having all my limbs again.”

  Orna winked. “I don’t know what was wrong with the giant stupid robot leg. Lopsided was a good look for you.”

  Heat rose in Nilah’s cheeks. It was irksome, really, how a playful crack in the quartermaster’s hard exterior could melt Nilah’s insides. As a racer and lover, Nilah had always considered herself a commanding leader, but Orna’s ice kept her on the back foot, always guessing.

  The quartermaster laughed, her neck sparkling with sweat. “You’re hilarious.”

  Nilah blinked. “What?”

  “First you’re staring at the leg, now you’re staring at me.”

  “Maybe I’m just trying to figure out”—she took a step forward, running her fingers up Orna’s décolletage and around her neck—“if you’d be able to tell where my prosthesis started if you saw me without clothes on.”

  Orna leaned in, touching her forehead against Nilah’s, and gave her a slow, delicious kiss. “We’re supposed to be getting everything organized so we can jump, babe.”

  Nilah pulled her in closer and whispered, “I’ll jump you.”

  Orna caressed her cheek. “You always get like this before a mission.” Then she took a handful of her hair, and Nilah gasped in delight as Orna murmured, “And I love it,” then bit her ear.

  Her knees almost gave out as Orna dropped her, stepping back and sticking out her tongue.

  “But we have work to do,” said the quartermaster.

  Nilah placed a hand to her chest, willing her heart to slow down. “You’re so cruel.”

  “That’s what keeps you coming back. I want to show you something.”

  Orna led her to one of the larger transit cases and opened it. Inside was a Hoxha Jeweler—an adaptive assembly bot that Nilah recognized from her days at Lang Autosport. Her engineers used them to assemble engines in mere hours. Nilah whistled appreciatively; those bots were more expensive than most supercars.

  “This ought to speed things along for you,” said Orna, patting one of the folded fibron armatures. “You know, rebuilding Teacup.”

  Nilah brightened. “What?”

  Orna hammered three of the crates with her fist. “This one, this one, and this one are all for you. I got you all the very best.” Orna gave her an odd, pleading look. “Would you please let me review your code repos? Teacup is great, but he could be a lot better.”

  “She’s a lady, you know,” said Nilah, glancing back at the white-and-gold armor.

  “That’s good,” said Orna. “I know how to treat a lady. Now will you let me help you prep her for the most dangerous mission we’ve ever done? Please? I mean more than just the pathing code now.”

  “Okay.”

  “‘Okay’? For real?”

  The surprise was sweet, and it touched Nilah’s heart. “Yeah, babes. Okay.”

  “I didn’t think you’d want that much help.”

  She bit her lip. “It’s been a shite couple of weeks if I’m being honest, and I’m trying to learn to accept it. I don’t have to be the best at everything. I love you, and I’m sorry I can be so—”

  “Annoying?” said Orna, smiling.

  “You know, darling… I thought we might work off some stress in bed, but maybe it should be a sparring match.”

  The quartermaster twitched an eyebrow. “No reason one can’t turn into the other.”

  “Bridge to cargo bay,” came Malik’s voice over the intercom. “Are we ready to jump?”

  “Almost,” Orna called back.

  “I want you both on the bridge in ten minutes,” said Malik. “Captain Lamarr wishes to address the crew.”

  Orna pulled a face. “Man, he got bossy after his promotion.”

  “He’s trying to act like Armin, I think,” said Nilah.

  “Yeah. I get that. Just wish he’d cool it a bit.”

  They arrived on the bridge to find everyone waiting for them, holding glass tumblers full of amber liquid. As they entered, Cordell handed the pair glasses of their own, pouring a light shot of whiskey.

  “This is a tradition I started with Boots before we took on the Masquerade,” sa
id the captain, clinking his glass against Orna’s and Nilah’s in turn. “We’re going to toast our victory right now, before the mission. You’re all the finest fools I could ever hope to have on my crew, and I’m happy to be on this insane journey with you. To victory!”

  “To victory!” echoed the crew, and each downed their shot in turn. Malik choked on his and was rewarded with a hearty pat on the back from Cordell.

  “And I have an announcement!” said Alister, and Jeannie shushed him with a slight panic on her face. He pushed past her and loudly said, “I will not, as the captain and first mate have privately requested, be remaining on the ship in my quarters during the mission.”

  That shut down the party almost immediately.

  “Oh, did none of you know about this?” asked Alister, sweeping his arm to gesture at everyone. “Of course, some of you knew. You talked and talked and now I’m benched, so I hope you’re happy.”

  Nilah and Orna looked to each other in confusion, and Boots palmed her forehead. Aisha sat down on the arm of her pilot’s chair, expression worried.

  Alister looked around the room, a strange malice in his smile. “You thought we weren’t going to discuss this as a group? Who all decided this without me?”

  “Mister Ferrier,” said Malik, “maybe now isn’t the time.”

  “I think it’s the best time,” he said, smile fading. “Today, I had to watch you people have your fun talking to the war hero, and now it’s my turn to have a conversation.”

  “We don’t take ‘turns’ in a regimented command structure, Mister Ferrier,” said Cordell, working his jaw to tamp down his temper. “Nor do we loudly declare intent of insubordination to the rest of the crew like we’re soliciting mutiny—unless you’d like to ride it out under sedation.”

  “I followed you without question for two years,” said Alister, setting his glass aside. “And the second I broke, you all—”

  “Don’t look at them,” said Cordell. “This is my ship. Every decision on it is my decision. You want to blame somebody, you come at me.”

  Alister steeled himself, gazing across the bridge at the captain. “I will, if you won’t pull rank and listen.”