The Worst of All Possible Worlds

by Alex White

  Cordell’s toothpick swirled on his lip as he chewed it. “So why did you call it ‘that old crap’?”

  “It’s like this,” said Boots. “She was in so many cults, and so many locations, with so many freaks… you can link her to almost any conspiracy theory. It’s all too far afield.”

  Alister scowled at his coffee, obviously tasting government issue for the first time. Nilah had learned to avoid any food in classified areas.

  “Kind of like us?” said Alister. “People make up conspiracy theories about us, but we’re the real deal. Maybe Mostafa has a past.”

  Boots smoothed back a stray strand of hair. “That’s… a surprisingly good point, Al.”

  “And if the Children of the Singularity want her old things—” Nilah began.

  “I’m starting to believe some of these theories about her.” Boots sat down on the edge of Cedric’s desk, much to his chagrin. “So Rebecca Grimsby was trying to buy one of Mostafa’s data cubes when we arrested her, which means the seller went to ground.”

  “After you shot up the place, yes,” said Cedric. “But never fear. We’ve been working on that problem. Grimsby and the seller were using an escrow service, and we just happened to arrest the owner for tax evasion recently.”

  “He ‘just happened’ to be cheating on his taxes?” asked Nilah, and Cedric chortled.

  “Everyone is cheating on their taxes, Miss Brio. We just keep that in our back pocket for when we need to arrest someone,” he said. “Here’s why this case is perfect for you: Miss Elsworth has knowledge of Sekhet Mostafa. You, Miss Brio, are already acquainted with the seller.”

  Her surprise was much stronger than her friends’ coffee. “What? I am?”

  “You are. It’s an old teammate of yours, apparently: Baron Valentino Gaultier. I thought, since you used to be friends, you could reach out to him, and—”

  Nilah gave him an incredulous look, caught between annoyance at his presumption and outright laughter at his ignorance. “Why the hell would you think Tino and I are friends?”

  Cedric looked at her sidelong. “Because you… used to be teammates? You were karting buddies, right?”

  Nilah crossed her arms, turning up her nose at him. “Do you know anything about racing? Anything at all? Your teammate is your worst enemy, chum.”

  “What? Why?” asked Cordell.

  Looking over her comrades, she expected one of them to chime in, but no one spoke. “Have none of you listened to what I’ve said about racing? For two years, I’ve told you stories of—”

  “Wasn’t particularly interesting before now,” Cordell mumbled, scratching his head and looking away.

  Nilah swallowed an indignant gasp and straightened. “Fine. When you’re in the same type of car, you’re rivals. Most years, a team will replace one of the drivers. You have to make sure that if they’re going to cut someone from the team, it’s not you, so…” She wobbled her head, as if she could shake loose the right phrase. “You know… you do whatever it, uh, takes.”

  “And what did you do to Valentino?” Orna asked without even a pause.

  Nilah gave her an embarrassed look; her fiancée knew her all too well. “I… may have, uh, caused the accident that ended the baron’s racing career.”

  “Are you serious?” Cordell shook his head. “First decent lead in months, and you already blew it?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t realize my karting days were going to decide the fate of the bloody universe!”

  “And yet, that’s a surprisingly apt description of what happened,” said Malik. “Because you raced, Mother attacked you, and the universe was saved.”

  Cedric recoiled. “Oh. I’ve clearly made a mistake, then. I’ll have another Compass operative assigned and—”

  “No,” said Cordell. “Give us this case. Been chewing scraps too long, and arresting Grimsby just made us want something bigger.”

  “But if Miss Brio has already fouled our chances…” Cedric trailed off.

  “Please,” said Nilah. “I can smooth things over. I know how to talk to Gaultier on two levels: as a racer, and as an elite. I’m sure it’s going to be fine. Besides, he likes to collect influential friends. I’m influential.”

  Orna made an “eh” noise, and Nilah elbowed her.

  “Okay,” said Cedric, handing over a crystalline data cube. “This is everything we have on the baron. You’re to acquire Mostafa’s effects using whatever means you feel appropriate, then rendezvous with Task Force Sixty. Do not take that to mean you can harm a Carrétan noble. Task Force Sixty has been conducting operations against the Children of the Singularity with some success, and they’ll want to analyze the goods for actionable intel.”

  “Any potential complications?” asked the captain.

  Cedric leaned back in his chair. “Probably not, though our civic anthropologists are tracking a host of new splinter groups after the Masquerade. Nothing that should affect you per se, but it wouldn’t be bad to spread the info.”

  Boots’s expression darkened. “New cults?”

  “Not exactly,” he answered. “Sympathizers. The more of Witts’s crimes come to light, the more the hard-line anti-GATO groups come out trying to orchestrate secession. The good ones use protests. The bad ones… well…”

  “That’s because they can all just jump up and say, ‘I love Witts,’ on the Link, and do everything short of swearing fealty to an enemy flag,” said Boots, cheeks flushing with anger. “Maybe if you criminalized being a freaking terrorist—”

  Cedric held up a hand. “I’d prefer to have free speech, thank you. We’re working through the watch list as fast as we can.”

  Nilah shook her head. “As long as we’re not taking any of those assignments, I’ll be fine. No more cult infiltration for this girl.”

  “You’re the tip of the spear, now. If I call you about a cult cell, I just want you to take them out, not talk to them. Most of these people are yahoos.”

  “That’s what your lot thought last time, though,” said Boots. “I want a dossier on all of the groups working with Witts.”

  With a snort, the special agent replied, “There are over thirteen hundred. It’d be a full-time job just to read today’s developments.” Seeing everyone’s annoyance, he added, “I’ll get you my intel on the top five orgs of interest, okay? It’ll take me some time, though.”

  “Can we get the short version?” Cordell rested his hands on his hips.

  “There is obviously the Children of the Singularity, but we’ve got the Bonded Haft—a secessionist militia; Aoyurei—a bunch of violent mystics; the Conservators—they made the list when our operative disappeared; the Alliance of the True Code—who like to bomb government buildings; and my personal favorite: the Last Gambit.” The man took a moment to bring home his disgust. “They have a thing against immigrants on Taitu.”

  Orna cracked her knuckles. “I might like to meet some of the Gambit punks in a dark alley.”

  “No one is as dangerous as the Gods of the Harrow, themselves,” said Cedric. “Our Fifth Fleet has been playing cat and mouse with their shipyards, destroying anything they can find… and uncovered a disturbing amount of resources and resistance.”

  Boots wrinkled her nose. “Like a big giant cult with dozens of insidious plots to destroy the galaxy for no discernible reason?”

  The bureaucrat soured. “No, Boots. Like billions in capital equipment and manufacturing tech—the sort of infrastructure required to maintain a standing military. There’s something big lurking out there, so you need to focus on Witts, and let us handle his oddball followers.”

  “They’re not oddballs, though,” Nilah interjected. “They’re everywhere, and getting more acceptable. That’s the problem.”

  “That’s a job for the politicians,” said Cedric. “Do you want the case or not?”

  Cordell took the cube and pocketed it. “We’re on it.”

  “Then we’re done here.”

  “Ready to get out of this place
,” said Boots. “Don’t like prisons.”

  The Compass handler straightened his desk set and folded his hands together. “I expect you’ve narrowly avoided them.”

  “It’s not that,” she replied. “It’s the prisoners.”

  “Oh?”

  Boots smirked. “A close friend of mine once said we should call them prisonees, don’t you think?”

  To Nilah’s surprise, Orna laughed at the corny joke.

  They loaded the Capricious in the rain and muck of an Agarwal hurricane. The planet was 90 percent covered by water and home to some of the largest storm surges recorded on any habited world, so it was the perfect place to have a prison. If the inmates escaped, where were they supposed to go? Directly into the frigid water, to be battered against the rocks surrounding the Ballantine Prison Complex?

  Boots idly contemplated the best way to break someone out of the place while the rain slashed her face and ran down the back of her neck. Anti-air towers stood vigil as she pushed carts of supplies from the prison’s garrison across the loading dock. The place was as well defended as the finest military installations she’d ever visited.

  “What are you gawking for?” said Orna, huffing past her with a cart of food cases. “I’d like to get out of here before I melt.”

  She smiled to the quartermaster, rain dripping into her eyes. At least she was dry under her polybuff Rook Velocity jacket. “Truth be told, I was trying to figure out a way past their defenses. Got a taste for those sorts of puzzles after Mercandatta.”

  The quartermaster nodded her approval. “I was going to chastise you, but… I’ve been thinking about it, too. Gets in your blood.”

  Boots gripped the handle of her cart and put some muscle into it. “We’re turning into weirdos out here, Orna.” Then, she considered the statement. “Well, I’m turning into a weirdo. You were there a long time ago.”

  “Yeah, Boots.” Orna gave her own cart a hefty shove. “You were real normal before we got you.”

  They secured everything in the cargo bay, and Boots headed to her quarters to dry the water from her tired bones. The others had been complaining about a lack of action on the ship, but every mission had pushed Boots harder than the last—and she’d recovered a little less every time.

  Malik Jan, the Capricious’s doctor, had noticed, too, and he’d prescribed a workout regimen, which she’d promptly ignored.

  “Good morning, Lizzie,” said Kinnard, his voice richly rendered through the new speakers Boots had installed in her room. She hadn’t been ready to live in her mansion on Hopper’s Hope, but she’d grown accustomed to the lap of luxury and made some adjustments to her military accoutrements.

  “Morning, Kin. Hang on a sec,” she said, and was momentarily deafened by her shower’s flash-dry function. Her hair fluffed comically large, before the antistat ionized it back onto her head. “What’s up?”

  “The time is oh-four hundred.”

  Her stomach dropped whenever he said the time. That was all Kin was allowed to say to someone without admin rights. It was a silly fear, but when she’d surrendered him on the Harrow, it’d hurt. “Uh, thank you?”

  “Which means it’s time for your prescribed run.”

  Boots scoffed, digging into her drawers for a bra and panties that had seen better days. She had all the money she could ever want and no time to shop for replacements. “I just took a shower, Kin.”

  “Understood. I’ll remind you tonight before your watch.”

  She pulled on her pants, hopping intermittently to keep herself from keeling over. “Or we could skip today. I’m all traumatized after witnessing an execution and stuff.”

  “Okay. I’ll mark today as a miss for Doctor Jan’s logs.”

  “Kin, come on. Don’t do that.”

  “I’m afraid you don’t have proper authorization to override Doctor Jan’s orders.”

  Boots’s arms flopped to her side midway through putting on her shirt, turning her torso into a bag of defeat. Compass had adjusted Kinnard’s authorizations to give access to the whole crew and make him the ship’s official AI. Despite the many years Kin had taken care of Boots, she was no longer the top dog in his user directory.

  “You don’t have to put it like that.” Boots poked her head through the collar of her shirt, then smoothed the stray hairs back into her bob.

  “Let me be blunt, Lizzie. Doctor Jan knows what’s good for you, and it’s not whiskey and donuts.”

  “You didn’t tell him about the whiskey and donuts, did you?”

  “No, Lizzie. Are you going to run, or do I need to record your fourth miss this week?”

  The first lap wasn’t so bad. Well, the corridor to the stairwell wasn’t so bad. The Capricious, being a small ship, only had a few halls and a short track around the cargo bay—which meant that she’d have to jog it dozens of times to make a reasonable daily workout. Malik had a treadmill with projectors in the med bay, so Boots could’ve pretended to run outside during a country evening near her distillery, but then she’d have to deal with the ship’s doctor criticizing her form.

  I’m simply trying to make you the best you, she could almost hear him say.

  Boots had said they were turning into weirdos, but the crew of the Capricious was strange long before Henrick Witts and his Harrow conspiracy entered their lives. She passed the bridge, where Cordell and Aisha plotted out the next jump to Carré. The captain was a shieldmaster who’d survived crashing directly into the side of a mountain, and Aisha had managed to become a killer ace pilot behind the sticks of a cargo ship. Boots passed Nilah and Orna’s shared quarters; one was an ex-championship race car driver, and the other was a former slave pit fighter turned responsible quartermaster. What’s more, they were two mechanists who didn’t bicker constantly, which Boots had never seen.

  Nilah came bounding out after her in a tracksuit. “Lovely morning for a run!”

  Boots indicated she was very tired, language was hard, and this amount of cardiovascular exercise seemed excessive with the noise, “Ugh.”

  A set of servos whined in time with their run, and Boots glanced back, nearly having a heart attack at the sight: Teacup, Nilah’s new battle armor, had fallen in behind them, mimicking their jog.

  “Mind if she joins us?” asked Nilah. “I’m training her pathing algorithm.”

  “Uh, sure?”

  She had always considered Charger, Orna’s bloodred battle armor, to be a bit flashy, but she’d never seen anything like Teacup. Nilah had gotten her up and running two weeks ago, and Boots found it arresting. She kept looking back every time they took a turn to admire Nilah’s craft. Bone-white plates made up a polished exoskeleton, their glazed veneer covered in ornamental gold lines and floral designs. A pair of blue streaks wreathed the ocular imagers for a nice pop of color that reminded Boots of eyeshadow. Light poured from its arms in projected holograms, a stylized, luminous extrusion of Nilah’s dermalux tattoos.

  Then came a deafening bang as the bot smacked its head against a steel buttress so hard Boots felt the hit through the soles of her feet. The trio came to a halt, and Nilah rushed back to look at her robot.

  “Oh, sweetie, are you okay?” Nilah shushed the bot as it examined the offending steel beam, lenses flashing and motors whirring. She stood on tiptoes, and Teacup leaned down so she could polish its forehead with her sleeve. “Blast it, you’ve scuffed your faceplate.”

  “If you didn’t like that,” Boots huffed, “you’re really… not going to like… taking your battle armor into… actual battle.”

  Nilah cradled the bot’s head in her hands and baby-talked it. “Don’t listen to her, my pet. You won’t get scuffed, because you’re so graceful, no one will be able to shoot you.”

  “Charger gets shot all the time. It’s a regular spellcatcher.”

  Nilah replied with automatic racing bravado: “If Orna were as fast as me, it wouldn’t be a problem for her.” She remembered herself and gave Boots a serious look. “You are not to repeat that
to her.”

  Boots laughed and rubbed the fingers of one hand together. “Secrets cost money, kid.”

  With a rude gesture and a smirk, Nilah said, “Jog on, then.”

  “After you.”

  They resumed.

  But it was an ill match. Nilah established what she called “a reasonable pace” with the flashing of her dermaluxes. She kept apologizing for leaving Boots in the dust, and every time she did, Boots felt guilty for holding her up. Nilah was built better, and she needed to train better. After a while, Boots waved her and the bot onward, waiting until they’d rounded the corner to double over into a wheezing mess.

  She regarded the next leg of her path—an impending stairwell—with hands on her knees, and a drop of stinging sweat trickled into her eye. Wiping only seemed to make it worse until she’d rubbed her eye raw. She hadn’t jogged so much since flight school. Physical training reqs had fallen off in the war.

  “Screw this.” Boots headed for the mess. There’d be some water there, and after a couple of glasses, she could carb up with a beer. That was a thing she’d heard runners say.

  When she arrived, she found Alister and Jeannie tucking into their breakfasts, preparing to start their shift in the kitchen. The twins weren’t great cooks, and they relied on a ton of prepackaged food, but they got the job done. Boots wasn’t about to complain. She hated cooking. If they’d left meal prep to her, she’d have the crew noshing Insto and ration bars for every meal.

  “Morning,” said Alister. “You ready for a little breaking and entering?”

  Boots grimaced, pinching her tank top’s chest and fanning her sweaty collar with some quick pulls. “Like, today?”

  “When we get to Baron Gaultier’s,” said Alister.

  “You don’t know that’s the plan.” Jeannie pulled her thin lips into a disapproving frown.

  Alister balked. “We always steal stuff.”

  “We’ll just see,” said Boots, sliding in beside them. After the tough run, even the hard benches of the mess felt like fluffy clouds on her butt. “Looks like you two are settling into KP just fine.” She added, “Kitchen Patrol,” seeing their confused looks.