by Scott Rhine
Roz frowned. “I’m not on the schedule.”
“No,” Max said. “You were identified by the Phoenix CEO as a suspected conspirator.”
“What?”
“While you flirted with Royce, the rest of the tellurium felons escaped his security forces—at least that’s what he broadcast for the news cubes while we were preparing to leave his system. They’ll be dispatching cubes with his version of the story to every outpost. You’re going to be infamous soon.”
“I didn’t flirt.”
“Mrs. Royce swears otherwise in the police report, claiming you kept referencing beds and complimenting her husband. Regardless, your picture in that killer dress is going to be sent out on law-enforcement libraries all around the sector.”
The phrase “killer dress” made Roz smile.
Ivy slugged her in the shoulder. “Vixen.”
Even Alyssa grinned. “If you want some pointers on how to distract men more subtly, come see me some evening.”
“Why didn’t that work with Officer Herb?” Roz teased.
Alyssa wrapped an arm around her husband’s. “The essence of any good con is finding what the mark wants most and offering it to them. What Herb wanted was to retire with me.”
“She was worth the wait,” Herb said.
Roz felt a brief ache. She wanted that romance some day, looking back on a life with no regrets. She gazed at Max, who was holding a data fob out of Reuben’s reach. The young Goat was demanding to see the wanted poster, but Max refused. Ivy joined the fray, twisting Reuben’s ear to make him follow. Deke had gone as soon as the projector shut off. The Greenbergs silently cleaned the mess hall.
Roz turned to Grady. “You were awfully quiet. Having second thoughts?”
The old naval repairman said, “Not about you, missy, but about the Bats. There’s a reason we say ‘bat-shit crazy.’ Are you sure we want to head into their territory?”
Max overheard the racist comment but didn’t correct the man. “Good point.”
“Echo’s sure, and her goals are my goals,” Roz stated flatly.
“When Reuben checked the data stores on Phoenix, Professor Crakik hadn’t published any physics papers recently. We should scan the database at the Bat Embassy on Purgatory and see if he’s still alive before we cross the border.”
“By hacking?” asked Roz.
“No, but that’s the first thing a criminal mastermind like you would consider,” Max teased. “As a knight, Deke should be able to get access to public death and employment records. He can make up a story about looking up long lost relatives after his time away during the war. No one will know who we’re searching for.”
Chapter 15 – Blindsided
Glancing nervously at the gauges on her last late-night bridge shift before leaving subspace, Roz filled out the fuel and water requisitions early. She added requests from the rest of the crew before submitting paperwork to Captain Kesh for food, medicine, and gardening supplies. The Saurian trundled onto the bridge soon after to growl, “Don’t we have something more important to do than spend money?”
“We need everything but the photovores in order to reach Little Flowers,” Roz said. Their next port was the alpha star in a Bat constellation of the same name. “I buffer you from the day-to-day complaints. All you need to do is play captain on the radio once a month. I still have to be here to answer any technical questions the tower has.”
“Squeeze you,” Kesh muttered, grumpy at being up so early. Saurian sexual references didn’t translate well to Banker.
She grinned. The others had accepted her role on the ship. For the first time in her career, she felt important and respected. Wealth would come later.
As usual, the cargo team would quibble with Cocytus by radio on the trip inbound. Because of the mass of the giant planets, the nexus dumped them much closer to the refuel station than normal. Voice contact with the tower should have been almost immediate, but no one was responding to Roz’s calls. “This is Magi vessel Sphere of Influence. Come in Cocytus.”
Once Kesh made the request in formal Banker, Cocytus control replied, “You’re not fooling anyone, Inner Eye.”
“Say again?” asked Roz.
The controller raised his voice. “We do not bargain with criminals. Put the captain back on.”
Roz signaled Ivy to come up from the crew lounge where she had been brewing coffee.
Kesh said, “My crew is in need of food and water. Give us the docking vector, and we’ll discuss this misunderstanding like civilized men.”
“Negative. We’re transmitting rendezvous coordinates with Marco Polo in twelve days. They have a search-and-seizure warrant for your ship. Once the stolen merchandise has been removed and Shiraz Mendez is in custody for questioning, you can approach. Until then, we won’t sell you spit.”
It was Roz’s turn to curse. Several raised eyebrows at her colorful language as Ivy and Reuben climbed onto the deck from the ladder. Roz sounded a ship-wide alert, lowering gravity everywhere but the sleeping areas and galley in order to have power to maneuver. Over the intercom, Roz briefly explained the situation.
“They can’t do this,” Ivy whispered. “We’ll tell everyone. It’ll cause an interstellar incident.”
Kesh shrugged. “Which will blow over in a few years. Besides, we can’t tell anyone without an ansible.”
Oops. Almost blew Ivy’s cover, there. “We can’t repel boarders,” Roz said.
“Not more than eight of them at least,” Reuben said. “Boss can take four. Ivy and I can each take two.”
Ivy wiggled her hand. “Eh, I’m better at infiltration than defense.”
“You have weapons?” asked Roz.
“Sure,” Reuben replied. “Even Herb has his service pistol, but he won’t interfere with someone serving a warrant.”
They all clamored for a few moments until Reuben asked, “Can we just avoid the ice base altogether?”
Roz shook her head violently. “We won’t have enough fuel to escape the sun’s gravity well at Little Flowers. We’ll need to call the Bat station for help, but help won’t arrive in time to prevent us from burning up unless we called them ahead on an ansible … which we don’t have!”
“The third gas giant in this system is unoccupied. Why not just scoop up gases with the shuttle or something?”
“That’s called a field refuel, which can permanently damage your shuttle and its pilot due to high gravity. Commercial tankers require specialized equipment. Even if we succeeded, we wouldn’t have enough time for fuel filtration before Marco Polo catches us. The carbon from even a wisp of methane would plug our injectors. You’re better off throwing those parts away after that happens. How would we replace them?”
Ivy asked, “What if we jettison cargo?” Kesh opened his frills in challenge. “Or sand from the oasis biome. Work with me here. We could use a different fuel, like water.”
Roz rubbed her temples. “No. Even if I were willing to remove the safety apparatus, ripping apart water molecules releases x-rays and causes sympathetic resonance in water-based life … meaning us. The side-effects would kill us inside ten years.”
“We’ll be dead a lot sooner if we don’t,” Kesh said. “We need to make a loan payment soon. Blue Giant won’t let us sell anything here until we hand over the shuttle and her highness.”
“Which won’t happen,” Ivy stressed.
Punching the intercom, Roz said, “Echo, vector us to Purgatory as soon as possible. We need to kiss some diplomatic butt at the embassy to see if we can find a way out of this mess.”
Roz ordered a sleepy Deke to the bridge in order to sweet-talk the Bats. To the others, she said, “Ansible warrants and sky wardens are expensive and take major clout. Who did I piss off?”
Echo replied, “This might be about me. Check whether anyone from our crew visited the Bankers at our last stop and hinted about our mysterious star drive.”
“Just the Greenbergs,” Reuben said. “They needed a little extra
cash from their retirement account to buy some incidentals.”
Ivy’s head whipped around. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“It could be nothing,” Reuben said. “We don’t know we’ve been betrayed. I mean, no one told the felon who we were looking for in the Bat realm.”
Roz raised her hand. “Actually, I may have let it slip at that all-ship meeting I didn’t want to attend.”
“Track the Greenbergs from the bridge until I can get a visual.” Ivy slid down the ladder.
Reuben nodded. “I’ll start sweeping for bugs and explosives. Boss, you’ll need to check the whole ship for sabotage.”
Roz raised her eyebrows. She didn’t know whether the possibility of betrayal or being called “boss” surprised her more.
A combat veteran, Deke rushed to the bridge, dressing in the lift. As he pulled on a T-shirt, the women noted how well-muscled his hairy torso was, as well as his four nipples. Ivy and Roz shared an amused “Did you just see that?” glance before Ivy left on her mission.
Roz told the Bat copilot, “The moment we’re in radio range of your embassy, find a subtle way to see if Professor Crakik has been assassinated.”
“You’re joking.”
“Unfortunately not.” More than anything, Roz dreaded telling Max about the turn of events.
****
Roz spent hours checking for signs of damage in critical systems and hours more examining secondary systems. As she verified each, she left behind tamper monitors to prevent having to perform all the checks again later. Only the badge reader in the cargo bay showed signs of abuse—scratches and clamp marks. Someone may have placed a skimmer on the main exit door. However, she would need to wait until they were orbiting Purgatory before she could run full-blown diagnostics.
When she met Kesh on the bridge and told him about the security reader, he cursed. “Any of our badges could have been cloned by now, except mine and Echo’s.”
“Great,” Roz said. “Probably the Greenbergs. From now on, all access to the quantum tubes has to be approved by Echo. Anyone who wants to leave the ship has to have your approval.”
Deke added to the bad news. “Sir? The professor has been charged with treason. There’s an ansible broadcast warrant out for his arrest.”
“Holy crap. Why? Has he been captured? Where is he? Can we get there before the trial?”
“You know exactly as much as I do,” Deke replied. “Do you think you should tell Max now?”
She grimaced. “I thought I’d give Alyssa a chance to come clean first. It’ll sound better coming from her as a confession.”
Kesh wrinkled his neck to examine the security console. “Ivy’s keeping watch on her in the mess hall.”
“Max scheduled his morning shower and shave about now, so you should have some time to crack her,” Deke said.
Roz rushed to the dining hall to find out exactly what the resident ex-con could tell her about their current mess. When she arrived, Alyssa was wiping a table clean. The cook’s face lit up in a smile. “I was beginning to worry about you. Sit. I’ll fix you whatever you like.”
Roz sat on the tabletop and said in a low, serious tone, “We need to talk.”
Alyssa tossed the rag on the counter and wiped her hands on her gray apron. “I know why you’re here.”
“Good.” Roz let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “I was afraid this was going to get awkward.”
The cook laid a hand on her arm. “Herb says Max can’t stop talking about how brilliant you are.”
“Yeah.” Roz let disappointment creep into her tone.
“But you want him to notice you in other ways.”
Oddly, the cook and Herb had the most normal relationship around. Letting this mistaken conversation proceed a little longer couldn’t hurt. “Max has noticed me, a little, but he’s shut down since …”
“Querida, men don’t talk about their feelings, especially when they’re not particularly aware of them. I can tell he cares for you because Max wanted me to confess some things.”
Roz fidgeted with her hands in her lap. “Oh, God. How did he figure it out already?”
“With your friend’s intelligence contacts and chatting with Herb, he knew the important parts before we left Prairie.”
“And he still invited you?”
“He’s sentimental. I admit that I played that trait for all it’s worth.” Alyssa shrugged shamelessly. “He scared me, though, when he guessed that your gift certificate for Just Desserts wasn’t an accident.”
“You wanted to spy on the ship?”
“What? No, querida. I wanted to approach you slowly. It was Herb’s idea to have the other restaurants on the surface snub you in order to force more interactions with me.”
Roz opened her mouth in shock.
Alyssa confided, “I would have told you sooner, but you rarely come to meals.”
“I thought you liked everyone aboard. How could you betray us?”
Alyssa tilted her head like a doctor listening to symptoms and trying to adjust the treatment. “This is about you and me, querida. Very personal.”
“Not the ship?”
“No.”
Struggling to make sense of what was happening, Roz rubbed the line of scar tissue over her eyebrow. “What did you say to Max to convince him?”
“He saw my scar and guessed some of it.” Alyssa lifted her hair and showed Roz a C-shaped scar at the base of her skull. “The prison infirmary did this.”
“To take away your talent?”
“That was a side effect, but people who use our abilities develop tumors. That’s why they suppress our talent at an early age—that and we scare the crap out of most of the Union. If we take the meds, though, we can’t truly live.”
“Our?” The implications trickled in for Roz. “You’re a Probability Mechanic, too? That’s not possible.”
“My PM talent is how I eluded capture for all those years and became one of the richest women alive. When I was on my game, I became the person I pretended to be. The world fell in line with my stories. Women like us can create probabilities. The closest example I can give you from history is the goddess Frigga.”
“The wife of Odin?”
“Yes. She practiced an ancient Norse magic known as seidr, which enabled her to see and reweave the destinies of others. The trick is never to play at the casino yourself. Always be the good luck charm on the whale’s arm.”
“Did Herb corner you into surrendering?” The idea of brain surgery terrified Roz.
“No. I collapsed in my hotel room, and he saved my life.”
“Was Herb some sort of Simplification whiz?”
“He’s just a determined, brilliant normal. That’s what finally snared me. If someone could track me so far motivated by nothing but concern for me, it had to be real.”
Roz needed to know. If this woman could find love, anyone could. “Was it?”
“Yes. He visited me twice a week in the prison to bolster my hope. When he gave me a book about finding joy in the simple things, I treasured it more than the hundreds of diamonds in my trove. We pair-bonded a year into my sentence. My one regret is that I can’t give him a child. Between the tumors and draconian treatment, I’m sterile.”
She couldn’t help but like Alyssa, despite her flaws. “How did Herb recognize me as a PM?”
“He didn’t. He recognized you as family from the high-school photo of you I kept on my dresser.”
“Como?” Roz slipped into her native Spanish at the shock.
Without skipping a beat, Alyssa shifted to Spanish as well. “I didn’t hear about your harvester accident until four years after it happened, and it took me a year to travel back home to visit you. I would have warned you about the talent then, but I thought with the brain injury, you were safe. I guess you didn’t want something badly enough yet. Now that you’ve manifested, I feel it’s my duty to guide you.”
Roz tried to make sense of the armloads of disjoint
data. “When I was ten, the only person who visited me was my dad’s sister, Aunt Alicia. You look nothing like her.”
“The wonders of plastic surgery. After my last round, only Herb recognized me, by my walk and the way I said the word ‘God.’ I kept tabs on you after my visit, though. I did my best to help you escape that pest hole, Napa. I even went so far as to rig your scholarship test the same way mine had been.”
“You secured my scholarship?” Emotions warred inside Roz. Part of her hated this woman for interfering, whoever she was. The other part felt enormous relief to be free of her own guilt at cheating. “How?”
“I visited the exam proctor the day after I saw you. I reminded Niels of how my test had been given special consideration.” Alyssa didn’t specify how the scholarship selection had been rigged or why. Perhaps all the kind proctor had done was give Roz a chance to make up for lost time. “After you went to university, I tried not to stray more than a star jump or two away. After Herb caught me, I pulled in some favors and limited your choice of assignments so you would move closer to us.”
“You did that?” Roz had been certain the black-balling had been prejudice over her null status. “Are you trying to be some twisted guardian angel?”
“I’m the oldest of our kind that’s ever been. You need me, which is why your doctor friend brought me along. He worries about you, too.”
I’m related to a mutant supercriminal who manipulates people with no trace of guilt? “Why?”
“Max is afraid that bending probabilities will shorten your life.”
“So you’re not responsible for the search warrant issued for my ship or the arrest of the Bat physicist we mentioned in front of you?”
Alyssa put a hand over her chest. “Oh dear, I’ll be right back.” She disappeared into the kitchen for a few moments. The couple argued in hushed voices. When she returned, her mannerisms were more subdued. “Initially, the arrest warrant was probably for me because I violated my parole, but Herb worked another deal.”
“Another?”
“The Bankers took eight years off my sentence. Herb had to agree to work for them for at least as long.”