A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy

by Alex White

  Boots took a long pull of her coffee and gulped it down. “How did the twins survive in there?”

  Cordell laughed. “Survive? They’d been reading their nanny’s mind without her knowledge. When the Harrow came home, a mole in the Taitutian Ministry of Defense called the chalet. Told the nanny to get ready. Jeannie found out with one of her regular mind readings. Opened all the cells. Set the banshees loose on unsuspecting scientists. Boots, I’m telling you, those two created a bloodbath.”

  A drop of whiskeyed coffee went down the wrong pipe, and she coughed hard. “So you brought them onto the ship? Why?”

  The captain looked away, his gaze distant as he finished the last of his cigarette. He stubbed it out and licked his lips. “Because they reminded me of a little kid I picked up on Clarkesfall once. Sokol grew up on this ship, and she’s a damned sight better for it.”

  Boots smirked. “You got a bad habit for picking up strays, Captain.”

  “Let me tell you about the worst one. This ungrateful Elsworth woman won’t stay on my dang boat.”

  They laughed, but fell silent a little too quickly, lost in thought. What if the Ferriers weren’t the only successes? There had to be hidden projects across the galaxy. Henrick Witts couldn’t just up and destroy the universe in a day, not without research and maneuvering on a level never seen before.

  His life’s work had already gone beyond the Harrow, to the PGRF racetracks, and now the Blixish chalet. Boots’s gaze fell to the stack of contracts before her as she swirled her cup.

  Her eye snagged on the word “cedar.”

  “What did you say earlier, sir? Before you needed a lawyer?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “You said something about trees.”

  His eyes had grown bleary with the story he had told her. “I did?”

  “Yeah, you mentioned some kind of exotic tree.”

  “Ancient tree,” he corrected. “The contract mentioned a cedar tree. Like in some of the old pictures from Origin.”

  Boots held out her hand. “Show me the page?”

  Cordell shuffled through the unruly stack, searching out the sheaf he’d cast aside. Eventually, he found it and handed it over. Boots scanned down the page, searching through the dozens of archaic terms, function calls, and conditional objects until she found the word “cedar.”

  It described an intense, branching root structure, dipping into thousands of encrypted entities. She grabbed the other page where she’d seen the word and found a lengthy programming loop that triggered until a cedar was fully grown. She couldn’t wrap her brain all the way around the complexities of the code—it held entirely too many different interlinked conditions and references to local weather at the branch level—but she understood the gist of it.

  She stood up. “I get it. Or, at least, part of it.”

  “What are we talking here?”

  “I think these might be payments,” she said. “This is a fee schedule. These roots could be galactic exchanges—thousands and thousands, if not millions, of different stocks.”

  Cordell shrugged. “Okay, so someone is earning from the stock market.”

  “No, these are repetitive triggering clauses for companies and stocks on a stock exchange, but I’m not sure which ones. The code takes percentage points off holdings, with the ability to dig deeper anywhere there’s fallow ground, like a set of tree roots seeking out more nutrients. Like … okay …” She searched for the best way to illustrate scale. “Let’s say each of these roots is a market model, generating one argent. The successful ones get stronger, the weaker ones die off to limit financial exposure to debt. At that scale …”

  She spent the next five minutes tracing down single variables back to their definitions. She waved up a calculator projection and rigged a weak simulation, glad that Armin wasn’t there to see her sloppy work. She played everything as conservatively as possible, only adding to the simulation when she was sure of what she was doing.

  As she tapped in the final numbers, the computer spit out a result into the air. “In a worst, worst, worst-case scenario, this is generating … uh … a hundred and eighty argents per cycle.”

  Cordell laughed. “Oh. Okay. Well, that’s not so bad. What’s the cycle time?”

  “Uh …” She shuffled through the papers to find any semblance of an answer, but it was too complex to get all at once. Then she caught a break—a shorthand reference that should’ve been deleted. She plugged it into the rest of the sim.

  The objects before them multiplied exponentially, exploding into glowing fractal root systems too multitudinous for the human eye. Boots swallowed hard and looked down at her captain, who regarded the curling sim like an all-devouring star about to consume his ship. He gripped his armrests and gritted his teeth.

  “What’s the cycle time, Boots?”

  “Nanoseconds.”

  “That’s …” Cordell looked on, thunderstruck. “But the gods are already rich. They’re all from major banking families, so this doesn’t change anything.”

  “No …” Boots stared into the dancing simulation, her jaw clenched. “You don’t understand the kind of capital we’re talking about here.”

  The sim spat out an astronomical figure, and they both regarded it as though it was a venomous snake in their midst.

  “This is it …” said Cordell. “This is the engine that runs the Money Mill.”

  Boots shook her head. “That’s enough money to finance a project beyond anything we’ve ever seen, Captain.”

  “What do you think they’re doing with it?”

  “Whatever they’re building,” she said, “it’s going to make the Harrow look like a toy.”

  Boots let that sink in as Cordell worried his lip.

  “Okay,” he breathed, clearing his throat. “How do we shut it down? Destroy the contract?”

  “No. There could be duplicates. We need to figure out who the players are, but, Captain—this contract is incomplete.” She hefted the sheaf of papers. “It’s signed and functioning, but only the parties involved know the terms. We can’t decipher it, so we’ll never know the real names of all the businesses and brokerages involved in it. As much as I’d love to out all of these people for helping Henrick Witts, we can’t know who they are with this document alone.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I took a course in contract law. I was trying to start a business, remember?”

  “No, I mean how do you know we can’t decipher it?”

  She pointed to the list of “includes” in the contract header. “Because we need a special document called the ‘index’ to sort everything out. It’ll contain the real names of all the entities in here. It’s the part that makes the contract binding for a barrister’s mark. According to this section, if there was no index, this document would be unenforceable.”

  “So you’re thinking …”

  Boots crossed her arms. “Imagine you’re Stetson Giles, and you’ve just negotiated an unbreakable contract for the biggest, baddest people in the galaxy. Because you’re the contract executor, you already know too much. They’re primed to kill you the second they get the chance. How do you keep them from turning on you?”

  Cordell sat up. “You build a clause in the contract that renders it null if the index is destroyed!”

  “Exactly! And where would you store the index?”

  “In … a box?”

  “No. You’d keep it wherever you were, so that if they decided to blow you up, it’d leave their financial masterpiece in ruins.”

  Cordell drained the contents of his glass and slammed it onto the table. “So all we have to do is find Giles. With the index in hand, we can release a list of names to the galaxy: all of Witts’s current conspirators.”

  Boots grinned. “Then we destroy it and void the contract.”

  “And all we have to do is find Stetson Giles.”

  The sharp sting of Boots’s curse from Stetson was still fresh in her memory. C
ordell’s excited expression wilted when he saw the look on her face.

  She nodded. “And I really hope you do, but I can’t help you.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Frequency

  Nilah couldn’t stop thinking about how to get a signal to the others.

  She’d tried hacking the network through one of the security cameras, but found the cameras were only connected to one another and projectors, as well as a monitoring station somewhere below. She couldn’t get to anything external to the room: no door access, no power, nothing—and that meant it’d be hard to get a signal out while she was trapped inside. Frustrated, she began to secretly implant malicious code in anything she could touch. As a matter of course, she hacked the lights, electrical switching, climate control, and any other exposed systems. She introduced so many flaws that they’d never know exactly what she’d done until they reinstalled everything.

  But she had one real goal: she programmed the cameras to scramble when they received the right series of light pulses from her arms. She’d keep that bit of sabotage ready for later.

  Sharp returned a day later with food, but he left the thralls outside behind the thick bulkhead. He turned from the food cart and said, “Security is down for the time—”

  “Get him!” Nilah cried, pushing back her sleeves and charging straight for him.

  Without missing a beat, Sharp hunkered low, his hands outstretched and eyes narrowed. His fingers curled and uncurled, as though massaging the air. It wouldn’t matter, because he couldn’t grab what he couldn’t see.

  Nilah went in for a quick flurry of blows, fanning her left arm to dazzle Sharp’s eyes. Instead of trying to make sense of the pulses, he seized her lit arm with a rock-hard grip and twisted. She popped him in the jaw, but her balance was thrown, and she couldn’t put much power into her punch.

  The world spun on the wrong axis, and she found herself flying toward the stone floor, face-first. At the last second, he stopped her from breaking her neck by cushioning her fall—but then he twisted her up like a Harvest pastry. He yanked her arm in a direction it shouldn’t go, and she slapped the ground with a shout of surprise. He didn’t immediately release her, but pulled a little harder.

  “Read his mind, Alister!” she grunted, but when he rushed in with a lit glyph in his hand, Sharp ducked out of the way, releasing his grip on her.

  “Stop!” he shouted, but she wasn’t going to do this on his terms.

  Nilah sprang to her feet and switched both arms to a deep, throbbing violet, flowing through the forms with a dancer’s grace. Flow in and out, as inexorable as the tide, her teacher had once told her. She’d take her time on the approach, confusing him, blurring the lines of her limbs with exploits of his visual cortex. She flashed her dermaluxes white with each extension of her arms, creating a skeletal effect known as the Solar Storm.

  And, at first, it worked. She sank a punch into his unprepared gut, winding him, and blasted him across the nose with a surprise kick. On instinct, she flowed into the next form, rising rocket, shifting her dermaluxes to pounding white.

  He laid hands on her, and she knew it was all over before he even threw her. An eyeblink later, she lay on the ground, her shoulder aching and lips pressed into the gritty tile.

  The punk was sitting on her.

  Despite their viciousness on the fields of ice outside, the twins were about as helpful as a flat tire against a masterful combatant like Sharp.

  “Stop,” Sharp commanded. “I’m not going to let you hold me down. If you want to read my mind, let’s just get this out of the way.”

  “Do it, Alister,” Nilah grunted, her cheek pressed to the stone.

  The twins closed ranks with Sharp, tracing their glyphs and placing their hands to the crown of his head.

  “He’s not hiding anything from us,” said Jeannie. “He’s the double agent.”

  “We’ll see,” said Alister. “What’s your real name, Mister Sharp?”

  The captain of the guard twisted free and hurled Alister against the stone with blinding speed before plopping back down onto Nilah.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “You know what you need to know.”

  “Get off me, you stupid oaf!” Nilah wheezed, and he let her scramble free. Once she’d put a respectable distance between them, she added, “Never seen moves like those.”

  Rubbing his hands together, Sharp replied, “Galaxy-class grappler, so you strobe, I grab. Being able to snap a neck helps me get where I’m going—quietly.”

  “Yeah,” Nilah spat. “Except out the front door.”

  The captain of the guard checked his wrist display and grimaced. “Eighty seconds left before the imagers come online. Do you have a rescue coming or not?”

  Nilah nodded. “Yeah, mate. But if we don’t get them a signal, they might assume we’re dead. Connect me to the radios, and we’ll call for help.”

  “Too dangerous. You’ll be detected, then I’ll get caught, too,” he said, offering her a tiny metal object. “I can plug this drive into the Pinnacle’s building management system and you can cause a disturbance. Put whatever code you want on it. Now when your ship comes, I want a ticket out of here.”

  “Of course you have a place on board, you sodding fool. You’re the reason we came!”

  He narrowed his eyes. “What?”

  “We intercepted a Child of the Singularity named Aaron Forscythe above Taitu. He had orders to buy the identity of a double agent at the Pinnacle. They know about you.”

  “Damn.” He checked the time once more. “Well, here I am. Don’t forget me when the ship comes in.”

  “Wait,” she said. “What’s the point of the Pinnacle? What are they doing here?”

  “Training recruits for Bastion.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “‘Bastion’? What’s that?”

  “No time,” he said. “I’ve got a list of every Child of the Singularity in active service. You get me out of here, you get the document.”

  Nilah’s mind raced through the possibilities of how she could get a message to her friends. It’d need to be more detailed than a mere malfunction, or an observer might mistake it for a system on the blink.

  Still, it wasn’t the worst opportunity. She could code and appear drugged. Hell, she already looked stoned when she connected to networks.

  “Come back in an hour,” she said. “I’ll slip you the drive. Plug it into the lighting grid.”

  Sharp turned to leave. “I hope your friends are as solid as they say.”

  She smiled. “Could be a lot worse, chum. At least we’re not as inept as the Special Branch.”

  Dread settled into every corner of the ship over the next two days. Boots had to pass the twins’ quarters every time she walked to her room. Their door wasn’t open, but she knew she’d find their things just the way they’d left them, frozen in time. Orna couldn’t have been much better, sharing quarters with Nilah. The quartermaster must’ve been drowning in worry when everywhere she looked contained a memento of her girlfriend.

  Boots couldn’t be sure if she was happy or sad when Malik’s call came in, and they were summoned to the bridge. Walking down the corridor toward the ship’s nerve center felt like walking toward a morgue to identify a loved one. She’d done enough of that in the Famine War.

  Orna muscled past her in the hallway, and Boots couldn’t blame her. When they entered the bridge, they found Cordell and Armin talking to Malik’s huge disembodied head on the projectors.

  “I’ve arrived at the rendezvous point, and something strange is happening at the Pinnacle,” said Malik.

  “But you’re safe?” asked Aisha.

  “So far so good, dear.”

  “Any sign of Nilah?” Orna cut in, and Boots looked down to find the quartermaster’s hands in tight fists at her sides.

  “No,” he said. “Not yet.”

  Orna nodded. “She’ll get us a sign before the extraction.”

  “And the weird thing you mentioned is …
?” Boots began.

  “The lights aren’t working properly,” said Malik, a shiver in his voice.

  Boots crossed her arms and squinted at Malik’s projection of the Pinnacle. Just as he’d been instructed, he’d hiked across frozen tundra and crossed a deadly chasm just to get level with the Pinnacle on a distant peak. His scope was powerful enough to see fine detail on the installation, the best view the crew of the Capricious had been granted yet.

  “Help me understand what that means,” said Cordell, hooking his thumbs into his belt loops as he stretched. “We’re coming out of the Flow in six hours, and I’d prefer to have some intel.”

  The projection blurred and shifted as Malik turned his imager around in his hands to face himself. The lens magnified his nose, giving them a three-dimensional projection of a pair of colossal nasal cavities.

  “I was up on the ridgeline, as instructed, observing,” said Malik. “And then the lights suddenly dimmed. All of the external floodlights are at half-capacity.”

  He turned the imager to face the facility again and zoomed in, pointing out the ring of lights around its perimeter with a huge, blurry hand.

  “These,” said Malik, “perimeter lights have been on the fritz. I think it’s safe to say that someone is interfering with them.”

  “It’s Nilah,” said Orna, stepping closer to the projection to peer at the white dots of the spotlights. “That’s our sign that she’s alive.”

  Cordell raised his eyebrows. “Lights on the blink? That’s a long shot, don’t you think?”