The Worst of All Possible Worlds

by Alex White

  “You are Nilah Brio,” said the voice.

  After it said nothing else, she responded. “Well… yeah.”

  “Query and justification?”

  “What is the Athana, and what can you tell us?” asked Nilah. “We’ve only just heard of you.”

  “We are a secret repository hidden in the depths of space, funded by human governments across the galaxy, yet beholden to none. This facility was designed to withstand or avoid all catastrophe short of a false vacuum end-of-life scenario. It acts as a bulwark against the ignorance of its day, to provide leaders with answers that exist both in the context of their times and within the greater realm of history—though our wisdom is not for all. We can tell you anything.”

  “Oh, really?” Nilah said, looking up at her crewmates. “We should test that. Do you know where Origin is?”

  “Justification?”

  Nilah opened and closed her mouth a few times. “Uh… I’ve always… wondered?”

  “No.”

  “Where is the Athana located, then? Maybe it’s best if we inspect your archives in person.”

  “No.”

  Cordell pressed the bridge of his nose with one hand and pointed to the Mostafa Journal with the other.

  “Can you tell us where this video was captured?” asked Nilah, syncing the second crystal drive up to the Athana’s comms.

  “Justification?”

  Nilah cleared her throat. “There’s a madman named Henrick Witts depicted in those video files. He’s got a big space station named Bastion that can beat any armada, and he’s going to cast a series of glyphs that will steal all life in the universe and grant him unlimited power. I think that’s about everything.”

  The Athana cube pulsed with prismatic light. “Thank you for adding to the repository. These images will be archived for further use in the future.”

  Nilah gestured for the voice to keep going, even though it couldn’t see her. “And where was the video captured?”

  “Coordinates transmitting. You have reached your query limit on this crystal.”

  “Wait! You didn’t tell me there was a query limit!”

  “You did not ask.”

  The crystal went dark.

  “Really?” asked Cordell, scowling. “You wasted a question on ‘where is Origin?’”

  “It’s the source of all magical power! I thought it would be good to know!” She looked to the others for support.

  “Would’ve been my first question, too,” said Boots. “For whatever that’s worth.”

  “That query limit explains why almost no one had authorization to contact the Athana,” said Cordell, leaning over to look a little closer at its data cube. “I wonder if they even had limited queries in Task Force Sixty, or if that’s a new-user thing.”

  “Maybe,” said Malik. “We don’t even know who runs the repository.”

  “Probably GATO,” said Nilah.

  “That’s a big assumption,” said Boots. “There were a lot more governmental entities out there before this go-round. We don’t even know if the Athana belongs to a modern organization.”

  The crystal drive on the Mostafa Journal blinked a few times, receiving a transmission. Nilah traced her glyph and touched the base, weaving her magic inside to inspect the data—and found all of the galtags repaired, along with precise coordinates appended to the night scene.

  With this information, she could find the location of Witts’s expedition, and hopefully, the Vogelstrand.

  “I’ve got the coordinates, Captain,” she said. “But before we head that way, I’ve got a slight recommendation.”

  “What’s that, Miss Brio?”

  She smiled. “We need the ability to get far underground, fast, and I know who can sell it to us.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Focus

  The atmos bubble on the tiny asteroid stunk like the inside of a latrine. If galactic civilization only extended as far as its navies, Paprika was not civilization. It was a relic of a time before the Gate Cartel’s expansive network, when humans had to settle for the planetary bodies they could colonize—not the ones they preferred. A free colony in the tumbling asteroids of the Murphy Belt, Paprika was a known haven for pirates and anyone else who preferred to avoid the long arm of the law.

  “Well now, Captain Lamarr… I never took you for a man of such expensive tastes.”

  Checo DosSantos climbed down the side of their transport, leaping the last meter to the surface of the old starport. They’d taken the form of a short, muscular woman. Nilah admired the craft of their body, the natural look of the dark, freckled skin, the wiry curls of their long hair. She couldn’t imagine having the artistic talent to render herself from clay the way Checo could.

  Nilah glanced around the crappy spaceport to see how much interest their rendezvous had generated. Unlike Harvest, Paprika was more suited to whacked-out homesteaders and survivalists looking for an easy score.

  Nilah cleared her throat. “Actually, I’m the one with the expensive tastes, love.”

  Checo shrugged, their hair bobbing around their bare shoulders. It was a cute look for them, and Nilah had to stop herself from gawping in front of Orna. She didn’t want her fiancée thinking she was developing a crush on the shapeshifter.

  “I’m just glad you were able to get it for us on such short notice,” said Malik. “We recognize that it’s been a while since you were a Fixer.”

  “Ah, but I’m finding myself further and further from retirement,” said Checo, walking around to the back of their cargo crate and banging six times on the rear doors in a very deliberate pattern. Noting Cordell’s nonplussed look, they said, “Humans are much harder to hack than autoturrets, Captain Lamarr. I keep live guards for that exact reason, and they tend to shoot if I don’t knock the right way.”

  The doors swung wide to reveal a trio of armed guards, slinger rifles at the ready, standing before an enormous object in a white tarp. The guards were loaded up with some hard-core hardware, including scrying goggles to help them shoot through walls, so Nilah had every faith they were defending the real deal. Checo grasped the tarp and pulled it free, revealing a rugged fighting vehicle, its chassis low to the deck like a sleeping predator.

  The guards helped pull away the rest of the fabric: six autoturrets in various hull-locking configurations, renewable shield generators, pivot-head wheels for traction, hoverlifts for speed and jumping. One of the guards started it up, and the sound shook Nilah like a starship engine firing—which wasn’t too far from the truth. According to her spec sheet, the vehicle was powered by the same drive that was in a lot of fighters.

  It growled out the back of the container, coming to rest before the crew of the Capricious. Orna couldn’t stop herself from running her hand along the side and whistling.

  “An Element Devil…” Checo’s eyes traveled appreciatively over the front grille. “I can’t fathom how you knew about these ridiculous machines.”

  “That was me again,” said Nilah, raising her hand. “Did a publicity thing a couple of years ago for the Aior United Defense Industry show. Drove it. Loved it. Wanted one of my own.”

  Checo quirked their lips. “You drove… a Devil? Did you use all of the features?”

  She grinned. “Not the best one, no. Looking forward to it, though.”

  Nodding, Checo said, “Okay. Well, you’ve got your Devil now, Miss Brio. I’m not sure why you want this monster, Captain Lamarr, but you’ve fast become one of my favorite customers.”

  Cordell sauntered up and gently kicked one of the tires. “Oh?”

  “An abundance of wealth and a lack of respect for the law always make for a fun time. I’m surprised you didn’t buy the ordnance that came with this beast. No nukes or seekers, just heavy slinger rounds.”

  “No need to supply that,” said Cordell. “My quartermaster likes the custom stuff.”

  “This one is a, shall we say, floor model,” said Checo. “A few dings, some scratches… and quite stolen
. You don’t want to drive it anywhere in the vicinity of Prothero unless you’d like its former owner paying you a visit.”

  “With what?” laughed Orna. “We’ve got their Devil!”

  Checo removed a case with a cash pad. “Probably their other two Devils. Do be cautious. I’ve grown so attached to you all. This is quite the vehicle, Captain Lamarr. I hope you’re not intending to go to war.”

  The signature taken down, Checo held the Devil’s auth crystal aloft, looking expectantly to the group. Nilah held up her hands, and Checo tossed the crystal over. Tracing her mechanist’s glyph, Nilah checked it, finding tens of thousands of layers of encryption. She could imagine why—the Devil had more destructive capacity than most vehicles, even the armored ones.

  Cordell wrinkled his nose. “War would be nice.”

  “Just watch yourself,” said Checo. “A lot of dangerous sorts have been trying to buy your whereabouts on the Link.”

  “Like who?” asked Boots.

  They checked their fingernails and dusted them off. “The usual. Sock puppet accounts for the Children of the Singularity.”

  Boots frowned. “This better not be the part where you say you sold us out.”

  “Please.” Checo waved their hand like clearing away smoke. “I’m going to wait until you leave before telling them you were here. Then, I retain a loyal customer, and I get to collect the bounty for a credible tip. It’s win-win.”

  Cordell hooked his thumbs into his trousers and rocked on his heels. “Such charity. One of these days, you’re going to ask us for a favor, Checo.”

  Checo smiled their enigmatic smile. “Pray I never do. Now get out of here before I change my mind.”

  “What a dump,” said Cordell, looking at the scanners.

  The trip to the final resting place of the Vogelstrand had been relatively uneventful, save for a brief refueling stop at a run-down freight hopper facility. The crew had kept their eyes on the Link, ever vigilant for signs of Witts’s ships attacking other armadas, though Nilah wasn’t sure what they’d do if there was news. It wasn’t as though they could jump over to the trouble and help out.

  The Vogelstrand’s tiny resting planet had no name in the Galactic Registry of Worlds, and Nilah hadn’t been able to ask if there was more information. The Athana wouldn’t respond to hails after that initial interaction.

  “What do you think we’re looking at here?” asked Aisha, squinting at the projection.

  “I can tell you what’s there: grass, corn, and six atmospheric transmutation reactors,” said Cordell. “So, I guess that begs the question—why aren’t there any settlements?”

  “I’m just going to take a guess,” said Boots, “a murderous colony ship like the Vogelstrand probably prevented any of its contemporaries from wanting to live here.”

  “You think it was the colony ship?” asked Cordell.

  “Almost certainly,” Boots replied. “Tell me you saw those amenities—at one point, it looked like Mostafa ran past a food court.”

  “Sort of an odd thing to observe when people are exploding into shrubberies right in front of you,” said Nilah.

  Boots shrugged. “People die every single day in all kinds of stupid ways. Heart attack, cancer, stroke… two thousand other preventable diseases. So when you’re going through historical records, you learn to ignore the death and focus on the context. When is the last time you saw someone get turned into flesh vines in the middle of a restaurant?”

  Sunrise orange suffused the canopy as the ship breached the atmosphere. A rattle passed through the bridge, which unnerved Nilah. The ship had been rock solid before the battle at Task Force Sixty.

  “Got some chop,” said Aisha. “Strap in.”

  “Contact. Unknown vessel. Scanners are picking up the hull of a large ship,” said Jeannie. She and Alister had gradually taken over the combat awareness station, and they did a pretty good job as far as Nilah was concerned. “We’re trying to get some kind of make.”

  “Everyone maintain your battle stations,” said Malik. “Captain, would you like to set jump coordinates in case it’s hostile?”

  Cordell pulled the skin under his chin and nodded. “We’d better be ready to hightail it back to the Murphy Belt if things go south. Honestly, if we still had the Runner, I’d just have Boots do a flyover.”

  “We were lucky Checo could get us a Devil,” said Orna. “They said there weren’t any airframes on the market because the Taitutians were buying them. Looks like they’re prepping for war. Prices are way up on all materiel, but ground vehicles are still pretty cheap.”

  “Won’t be much call for tanks unless things get bad,” said Cordell. “Where are we on that ship, scanners?”

  “It’s a few tons, sir,” said Alister, poking at Jeannie’s display. “Bigger than a marauder. Smaller than a frigate.”

  Nilah strode over to his station, checking out the outline. In her mind’s eye, she tried to match it up to her brief glimpse of the Rangan from the fateful night Witts had killed his own crew. The ship certainly wasn’t spaceworthy—it’d been snapped across one axis like a twig. As for the sort of shearing force that could’ve caused that, a datamancer and an advanced AI could’ve done some fancy forensics. Unfortunately, they’d lost both within the span of a year.

  “If I were a betting man—” Cordell began.

  “You are, sir,” said Nilah, and he smiled at her.

  “I’d guess that’s Witts’s expeditionary ship, the Rag… uh…”

  “Rangan, sir,” Nilah corrected. “It matches the coordinates we got from the Athana, so it’s a good guess. Anyway, it’s got a stonking big crack through it, so… probably not going to attack us.”

  “I’d suggest we put the Capricious down there,” said Malik, pointing to one of the topo scans, “in that gulch. It’ll be harder to detect us from orbit if we’re followed.”

  “I’m inclined to agree, Mister Jan. Missus Jan, drop us five hundred meters from the wreckage.”

  The descent was interminable to Nilah. They were on the verge of seeing Witts’s original vessel, and she could only glimpse gray clouds and a hazy sunrise through the bridge windows. She keyed up a long-range imager, but its optics weren’t the greatest, and all she could discern were two slabs of slate-gray hull with a mildewed orange stripe running down the side.

  At long last, they settled onto the skids, the ship listing a bit before correcting. Nilah checked the exterior imagers to find a riverbed of broken shale supporting their weight. It’d take a few seconds to stabilize beneath them. On either side of the ship, canyon walls rose like natural battlements.

  When they came to a halt, Cordell said, “Okay, folks. We’re going to do this right, and that means all hands on deck, loaded for bear.”

  “I’m on another away team?” asked Aisha, fanning herself like a Carrétan noble. “My goodness, what an embarrassment of opportunities you’re giving me.”

  “I only bring out the best when it’s necessary,” said Cordell, and she nodded sagely. “Gear up, and don’t leave anything on the table. Miss Sokol, I want you and Miss Brio out there in the bots on camo duty. Get our ship nice and netted with a lot of leaves on top. When we leave here, I want it to look like a bush blasting off into space.”

  When they arrived at the bay, Nilah was stunned by the incredible array of weaponry Orna had laid out from their stores. It was a feast of death, with slinger rifles, high-caliber turrets, and every type of ammunition she could imagine sprinkled in. She waded in among the others, donning a pair of holsters and filling her bandolier with magazines. Beside her, Boots picked up a few boxes of flame rounds.

  “These from Checo?” asked Boots.

  “Nah,” said Orna. “Private reserve. You’ll love them.”

  Things were considerably more cramped in the cargo bay with the Element Devil’s frightful armored shell taking up the hold. She wished they could hang it from the rafters like the Midnight Runner. The fighter’s clamps sat empty at the top of the bay, l
ike a dog waiting for a master that would never return.

  “I’m not trying to be critical, love,” Nilah began, touching Boots’s arm as she picked up a long-barreled, high-caliber slinger, “but have you considered something less… precise?”

  “Oh, come on. I’m not that bad of a shot.”

  “You absolutely are,” said Cordell, striding past to fetch a pair of pistols and an assault slinger. “Remember when you shot me in the Battle of the Harrow?”

  “Okay, fine.” Boots picked up her own assault slinger. “Where are the scattershot rounds?”

  “If I may,” said Orna, bringing over a weatherproof case and popping it open to reveal a vast array of golden casings with swirling, smoky tips. She affected a luxurious Taitutian accent as she said, “This particular hand-crafted model has notes of flashlight and incineration, with a strong disintegration finish. It pairs nicely with small organic targets like flesh vines and cultists. And, of course, it’s this year’s vintage, made by yours truly on this very vessel.”

  “Not a bad pitch,” said Nilah.

  “I’m the sommelier of slaying,” said Orna, “and these spell rounds are called shadowflash.”

  Boots said, “I’ll take as many as you’ll give me.”

  “Why did we buy that Devil thing if we’re not going to ride in it?” asked Alister, striding to the cargo bay door and looking over the rushing gray rapids outside.

  “That’s for the Vogelstrand,” said Cordell. “The Rangan should be easy pickings.”

  “Why not drop us at the top, then? You know, before you landed the ship,” asked Alister, strapping on a holster.

  “And leave me to climb alone?” Aisha called across the bay. “Thanks a bunch, Alister!”

  Malik snapped on his cargo vest. “Now you’ve done it, Mister Ferrier.”

  As they finished gearing up, Orna and Nilah went out in Charger and Teacup to oversee the camouflaging of the ship. Charger dragged a huge netted tarp across the surface to confuse scanners, then proceeded to cannibalize several nearby trees. It fitted long branches into the mountings to create the illusion of an unbroken forest canopy. Nilah followed in Teacup, just trying to keep up with the new pathing module Orna had given her. It was a lot jerkier than the code she’d written for Teacup, and it didn’t conserve momentum the way she liked—but it worked with perfect reliability, and there was something to be said for that.