A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy

by Alex White

  Boots shifted, to better hide Orna’s face from John. “No, uh, I think we can remember it. Can’t we?”

  John cocked his head. “It’s not such a long trip to the main office. I can call you a Hansom Cab and let them know you’re coming. In and out, as they say.”

  He took a step down the stairs, and Boots’s mind raced for some way to get rid of him. John was polite, polished, and, most of all, professional. Time to test that.

  Boots’s face darkened. “John, I’m going to need a minute alone with my business partner. I’m concerned that she isn’t doing what she’s supposed to, like remembering the damned combination.” With this, Boots turned theatrically to Orna and gripped the sides of the console in anger. “We’re expecting to stash the goods today, Bertha, and I hope you understand the consequences of failure here.”

  Orna’s lips quivered with her efforts. “I’m … trying to remember …”

  “You had better, or it’s your job!” Boots barked.

  John went pink with embarrassment, nodded, and retreated to the lobby.

  As soon as he was out of sight, Boots relaxed her anger. Orna’s eyes had rolled back in her head, and her lips parted. Any second, Boots expected to see a strand of drool trickle out.

  She glanced back at the door, just to make sure John was gone, and whispered, “You okay, kid?”

  Orna blinked, her eyes focusing on Boots’s, and smiled. “We’re in.”

  The crawler bot spun its rails around the room, then rocketed toward the distant roof, disappearing into the light of the sun panels.

  “We’re VIPs now,” whispered Orna.

  Servos echoed through the cavernous space as the crawler snatched a box somewhere above.

  “What does that mean?” asked Boots.

  “I don’t know,” said Orna. “I saw a flag in the database and I flipped it. Figured it would be good to be important.”

  The bot plummeted down the rails before stopping suddenly above the ground and jutting out its pincers, box attached.

  “You don’t know for sure that’s what VIP stands for!” Boots hissed. “It might mean they consider us suspicious.”

  “Who’d use VIP for that?”

  “Spaceport security! Back in my day, ‘VIP’ was code for ‘customs is going to search your ship and take your smuggled whiskey,’” said Boots, heading over and grabbing the box from the pincers. The crawler chimed once and then shot away. “You’re supposed to know this, quartermaster.”

  “‘Back in your day’ was about a billion years ago, so stop complaining.”

  They hauled the box to the carrel and placed it on the desk. Glowing spheres arose from the lamps to give them more even light. Boots’s hand came to rest on the latch and she took a deep breath.

  “I swear to god if this thing is empty …” she muttered.

  “Why would it be empty?”

  Boots gave Orna a dire look. “Durand is dead. Maybe our intel is bad and the Children already looted it.”

  “Hurry up and open it, then.”

  Boots pulled back the lid and set it aside in a fitted recess on the desk. The first layer was a tray of brassy chits, meticulously laid out in a grid. Boots counted the rows and columns, then multiplied out the result.

  “Looks like a hundred and ten data chits,” she said.

  Orna lifted one to her eye, turning it over. “Software?”

  “Each one probably has an unsigned account,” said Boots. “These are untraceable cash for bagmen.”

  “Wasn’t expecting a payday,” said Orna, pulling a shopping bag out of her coat pocket and shaking it open. “By now, they know Durand is compromised, so there’s no harm in taking it.”

  “Every argent in our hands is one they can’t spend killing us,” muttered Boots, then nearly shrieked when John appeared inside the vault.

  “I apologize,” he said, “but another one of our clients has some urgent business and needs to access the vault. If you need the privacy screen, the button is right there. And I’m going to turn on a bit of music to cover your conversations.”

  “Nothing too frumpy,” said Boots, giving him a thin smile. Then she tapped the privacy control as the electric strings of a soaring concerto filled the vault. A screen slid across the opening of the carrel, and through its mesh, Boots saw another hidden room open up across the way. How many other surprises and secrets were folded into the vault?

  “Let’s get this done and scram,” said Boots, lifting the tray and dumping the chits into Orna’s sack. She set the tray to one side and peered into the rest of the box, disappointed to find only leather-bound papers awaiting her.

  She glanced away to see the newcomer enter the vault and found what she expected: a tall woman with slicked-back hair and an expertly cut suit. She nodded in greeting at them through the mesh before entering her code into the console. The system beeped in error.

  “Elsie,” whispered Orna, but Boots didn’t want to look away.

  The woman didn’t look like the sort to enter her code incorrectly. She shook her head as if a fool and began to type it once more.

  “Elsie!” Orna punched Boots on the arm.

  The error beep filled the vaults once more.

  “What?” Boots said through clenched teeth.

  Orna tapped the title of the leather folio: A PROMISSORY LETTER OF DEEDS AND SERVICES RENDERED IN EXCHANGE FOR CERTAIN COMPENSATION.

  “So?” Boots shrugged and glanced over her shoulder at the stranger once more. She pressed each key with maximum deliberation, making certain not to miss.

  “So look, you jackass!” Orna pulled her chin to drag Boots’s gaze to the folio. She held it up and pointed to an embossed seal at the bottom.

  Boots’s mouth went dry as her mind deciphered the shapes of the letters, rendering them into four words, transmuting into meaning.

  “Hereby Witnesseth, Stetson Giles.”

  Boots’s mind raced back through the mists of years to find a derelict starship, the Saint of Flowers. She saw a chalice, a corpse, and her old partner, Stetson Giles, with a smoking slinger. She remembered her own screaming and the stab of his betrayal at their moment of triumph.

  He’d ruined her.

  It couldn’t be him, but there was no other explanation.

  The error code sounded one last time, and Boots looked out through the mesh curtain.

  The stranger was staring at them.

  Chapter Nine

  Reverse

  At first, the elder had said nothing to Nilah and the twins. When more guards showed up, bristling at the murder of the gatekeepers, he stayed their attack and told them to prepare quarters for the new initiates. He also ordered them to mow down everyone still outside.

  At long last, he looked at Nilah with elated eyes and clapped his hands together. “We’ve proven who was strongest. No need to be cruel about it.” Then, to the guards, he said, “Treat the newcomers with care. They’re the most exciting batch in such a long time! I’m Elder Osmond, and it is my most, most, most distinct pleasure to welcome you to the Pinnacle.”

  Much to Nilah’s surprise, the guards’ anger dissolved, and they introduced themselves in a friendly enough fashion. They weren’t full-time members of the watch, but initiates in the Children of the Singularity, just like Nilah, Jeannie, and Alister. They were all clad in black uniforms of varying cuts—some in robes, some in pants and mag-snap shirts. Elder Osmond wore a long red sash, embroidered with interweaving geometric patterns, the only signifier of his office.

  One of the guards bore a small, silver shield badge upon his right breast, emblazoned with the same blank mask Nilah had seen in Elba Pool Station. The perfect cut and tasteful design of his uniform annoyed her—Nilah preferred her fanatics to be less put together.

  “Sharp,” he said, extending a hand to each of them in turn. “Head of security here.”

  Nilah accepted his greeting, and it was like shaking hands with a statue.

  The elder gave Nilah a quick pat on the shoul
der. “I’m off to help the lads clean up the stragglers outside. Mister Sharp will get you settled in. Save me a cookie, will you?”

  Nilah gave him a tight smirk to mask her confusion, then followed Sharp deeper into the stone halls of the Pinnacle.

  The scent of freshly baked, buttery bread snaked through Nilah’s nostrils to yank on her stomach. Other smells emerged: herbs and spices, roasting vegetables, frying onions. Then came the fat and salt of cooked animals, souring her appetite.

  At least, she wanted it to sour her appetite.

  In truth, her torture-by-protein-bar stay at the base camp had softened her vegetarian’s resolve, but she’d never eaten an animal before and wasn’t about to start. Taitutians didn’t eat meat—unless they wanted to spend the next five cycles farting.

  When she turned the corner to the main dining hall, her eyes nearly fell out of her head.

  A feast spread before them across a long, stone banquet table, a host of delicacies from across the galaxy: Blixish olives and caviar, salt-crusted bass from the streams of Yearling, meaty orchid petals from the jungles of Taitu. While she didn’t eat flesh, she’d attended enough state dinners on different planets to know the rarity of this regal spread.

  “Please,” said Sharp. “Help yourselves. Apparently, we made too much.”

  Nilah gave him a nonplussed look. “Sorry?”

  Sharp quirked his lips and replied, “We were expecting a party of ten.”

  Nilah wanted to trust in the food, to thrust her hands deep into the plentiful dishes and gorge herself by the fistful, but it made little sense. If this was some sort of extreme monastery, they shouldn’t be indulging in such extravagance. What if it was a test?

  “You should join us, then,” said Nilah. “It’d be a shame for all of this to go to waste.”

  He shook his head, though he took a moment to decline. “We’re not into sharing here. You earned it, you eat it. This is your achievement.”

  She glanced at the twins, who’d already sat down and begun to stuff their faces. She couldn’t blame them; after all, she’d been getting double their rations every day after beating Heather Ashburn. It was a wonder they hadn’t collapsed from exhaustion.

  “I’m not sharing,” said Nilah. “I’m buying. I earned this meal. You can tell me how to keep my edge in a place like the Pinnacle. Let me trade for information.”

  Sharp smirked and pulled up a chair. He then ladled out a pair of golden filets of arrowfish onto his plate—the most expensive item on the table behind the caviar. To it, he added rare cheeses from the farming worlds, some of the fish eggs, and a dollop of crème fraîche. Nilah took note of his plating skills. This wasn’t his first experience with such wealth. Jeannie and Alister, on the other hand, made Nilah want to slap their hands and teach them how to properly eat. They’d always been overeager with the food on the Capricious, but this was even worse.

  “What would you like to know?” asked Sharp.

  Nilah helped herself to one of every vegetable there, scoring a double serving of the jewel-toned bean curd. “What will we do here?”

  He took a bite of the arrowfish, savoring every moment. “You’ll become greater than you could’ve imagined. You’ll take back your destiny from mediocrity.”

  She popped a bit of succulent orchid into her mouth and chewed away the sweetness. “That sounds great in the abstract, but I’d like to know the real scoop.”

  He shrugged. “Training. Preparation. Some of us will go on to fight in the most important war ever waged. Others of us will be writing the rules of the very near future. It starts with taking back our homeworld from the interlopers.”

  Nilah had heard enough of their conspiracy theories to know where this was going. “You want to overthrow the prime minister of Taitu?”

  Sharp grimaced. “That’s only the start. We’ll have to work on your ambition.”

  A much younger-looking woman entered with a jug of wine, pouring generous servings for the four diners. A small light blinked under her hairline, just at the base of her skull, and Nilah craned her head for a closer look.

  “Those who fail will stay on and serve,” said Sharp. “We can’t exactly send them home, considering what they know. I’m sure you understand.”

  The woman leaned across her to pour her wine, and Nilah restrained a gasp. She knew the device implanted in the waiter’s spinal column—illegal on almost every world: the neural spike. She’d follow any orders given her, but remove it, and she’d die of shock.

  Nilah tried to play it cool, but her insides burned with righteous fury. “You’ve … enslaved her? Why not simply kill her? Aren’t you risking execution if you’re caught by the authorities?”

  Sharp carved off another flake of arrowfish, admiring its sheen before savoring the meat. He patted the waiter on the shoulder. “Fritz here arrived at the Pinnacle because of her substantial talents. She might not be much of a free thinker nowadays, but don’t let that fool you—she’s a teleporter of the highest order. She could probably go from one side of this moon to the other in a single leap. We basically have the greatest anti-invasion force possible: a bunch of talented magi with no fear of death.”

  With that, Fritz’s lips curled into a forced smile.

  Sharp toasted her as she walked away. “Fritz was a commodities trader until she beat someone to death in a drunken haze. She came to us and thought she could get a new start. From the moment she set foot on Hammerhead, she consigned her body to whatever fate we decided. She wasn’t good enough, and now she pours wine. But don’t let that bother you. For the moment, you’re an elite—a true Child of the Singularity. You made it up here.”

  Nilah glanced at the twins, who continued to devour their food. Since arriving, they’d seemed a little too much at home with all of the atrocity. Whatever they’d seen in their old lives, it must’ve been horrid.

  “No one forced Fritz to challenge Elder Osmond,” said Sharp, “but she was so eager for what comes next.”

  “And what’s that?” asked Nilah, hiding her scowl behind a wine cup.

  He shrugged. “Heaven. A sampling of pure bliss. Your true destiny. Whatever you want to call it. Everyone calls this the Pinnacle, but the truth is that it’s more like a diving board.”

  “Oh?”

  “From here, you leap off into the real universe,” said Sharp. “No boundaries, no limits, no rules, no safeties. Just you and your ultimate fate, traveling through the stars.”

  Nilah sliced apart a perfectly tender honey dill carrot and winced, imagining the person who cooked it was a slave, living in a nightmare. “Isn’t ultimate fate the one thing all of us have? Why would we need to come here to get it?”

  “Because you’re part of a system,” said Sharp, helping himself to more caviar and toast points. “You don’t know how freeing it is to live outside of that.”

  Of course I do, you git. Try going on the run for a few months.

  “So any tips for survival? I did, after all, ply you with my share of the feast.”

  Sharp gave her a wolfish grin. “Learn to be cruel. Learn to eat meat. I watched you out there, and you didn’t harm a soul, save for a light beating.”

  Nilah spread her palms over her plate as if blessing it. “I’m sitting here, aren’t I, mate? I’m cruel enough.”

  But her blustering lie became truth as it left her mouth. She’d told Courtney to kill all those people. She’d tricked the sad, forgotten boy and closed the door in his face, so he and sixteen others could die. In the pursuit of her goals—the promise of secret knowledge of Henrick Witts’s organization—she’d led a person to slaughter. Nilah couldn’t be certain she’d find the infiltrator in this place, so was there a reason to kill those people?

  But the cultists were going to die anyway, weren’t they? Most of them would’ve fallen to one another’s wrath on the hillside. Then a thought stole into her head so subtly that she almost missed it: ninety of them would’ve been murdered. She’d only bumped up the total to ninety-se
ven. The difference between those two numbers wasn’t so great, was it? They were all killers.

  But then, she didn’t personally know the seven extra dead. There could’ve been another among the supplicants like her, someone trying their hardest to stop the Children and the other Harrow conspirators. Maybe there was a police officer or spy dead on that icy hill, eyes frozen open, their last thoughts of a family they’d never see again. Or maybe, those seven dead would’ve realized the error of their ways and quit the cult to help the side of justice. Seven extra corpses were too many; one extra corpse was too many.

  Nilah had done exactly as the Children of the Singularity wished—she’d let people die without question in pursuit of her own goals. Were they getting to her? She hadn’t personally killed anyone. The Children orchestrated the murders.

  She’d only acted as they wished, which was cold comfort.

  Blinking, Nilah realized Sharp was talking to her.

  “I’m sorry?” she asked.

  “Tired from your battle?” he asked. “I can only imagine. I’ve seen at least a thousand men and women pass through here. I was one of them, you know, a pilgrim, but I can’t beat Elder Osmond, and I know it.” Sharp took a bite of caviar, obviously relishing the feeling of popping the eggs against the roof of his mouth. “Better to remain a guard than to have a spike in my neck.”

  “That depends,” said Jeannie, and Nilah nearly dropped her fork with surprise.

  Sharp cocked his head. “On what, my dear?”

  Jeannie took a bite of bloody marpo, its skin fried tight and crispy. “Whether or not you’re the folks we shanked at the gate. They were guards, too, weren’t they?”

  Sharp nodded. “Yes, they were, and I’ll be sure to keep my eye on you.” Then he said to Nilah, “My statement stands: the only way out is up, and the only way up is to defeat Elder Osmond in a challenge. You lose? You get the spike.”

  “We won’t lose,” said Alister between bites. “Came too far.”

  Nilah took a large gulp of wine. “You’re gathering a lot of people up just to kill them. Not particularly efficient.”