The Worst of All Possible Worlds

by Alex White

  Boots angled her dispersers forward, but all the shots went sailing past her—straight for the hull of the Capricious. Cordell’s shield swung out and caught the spells, batting them away with its slick blue glow, but she heard the captain grunt over the comm.

  “They’re using anti-ship lancers!” he called. “Get them off us until we can evade!”

  Boots squeezed the trigger, savoring the rumble of her quad slinger pods. To her delight, she absolutely obliterated one of the drones.

  The other drones broke their attack formation, spiraling in crazed patterns to evade her other slinger fire. Her target lock sang in her ear.

  “Palm two! Palm two! Missile away!” she said, loosing a pair of seekers at the nearest drone.

  To her chagrin, the swarm launched chaff in sequence, creating a streak of false engine fire that easily led off the missiles.

  “Damn it!” she said, racing through the pack of drones like an ancient jouster. They reoriented, blasting after the Capricious without so much as a shot in her direction.

  Boots wrenched the Runner around and sped after them. “Fight me!”

  “Boots, thirty seconds to engine reboot,” said Orna. “Keep them off us.”

  The drones fired on the ninety engine in perfect synchronicity, their long lances darting at the pair of battle armors. Both of Cordell’s shields zipped around and overlapped the engine, cracks appearing in the energy field as needles struck home.

  “Get lost,” growled Orna, and Charger turned to fire a volley from its chain slinger, filling the sky with flaming spells. One of the drones went careening into a bolt before exploding into streamers of eidolon dust.

  High-energy warnings popped up across Boots’s console as Bastion’s complement of jump guns fired in their direction. Pink light flashed behind Boots, and like the afterimage of a lightning strike, twisting webs of light filled the space around her.

  Another ship had been blown up exiting the Flow—this time immediately behind them.

  The Capricious narrowly missed getting sliced to ribbons, but two of the drones weren’t so lucky, their metal exoskeletons neatly bisected by the fusing debris. Boots yanked her flight stick, popping her maneuvering thrusters to corkscrew through the glowing labyrinth. Strands of burning matter warmed her skin as she passed, and she caught a lucky target lock on the fifth drone.

  “Palm three!” she said, sending one of her precious smart missiles streaking after it.

  The drone launched chaff, but in the burning field, its steel fuselage stood out, making easy work for the missile.

  “Good kill, Boots,” said Malik. “One left.”

  “On it. Hunters, hang on to something,” said Aisha, and the Capricious rolled onto its back to expose the keel slinger. A single shot turned the drone into stardust.

  Boots maneuvered into the lee of her ship as they desperately navigated the burning webs. Welding sparks flew from the ninety engine as the Hunters did their urgent work, and Boots prayed they’d have enough agility to slip through—they were rapidly coming up on a tricky patch of space.

  “I need that engine now,” said Aisha.

  Both of the battle armors suddenly clung to the hull as Nilah called, “Ninety engine online!” and jets of energy surged from the nozzles of the wounded drive.

  Boots fixed the main drive of the Capricious in her view and followed it through the tumultuous field of fading cinders. Thankfully, the remains of the incoming battleship extinguished after a few seconds, leaving them an open pathway toward the planet below.

  “We’re getting a GATO transmission on encrypted channels,” said Malik. “I’m patching it through.”

  “All ships, all ships, this is Rear Admiral Li Bambang of the TNS Ponomarenko. I am assuming tactical control of this engagement. All fighters and gunships are hereby ordered to enjoin an attack on those jump cannons before the next capital ship arrives in ten minutes. I want them taken out immediately.”

  Boots tapped her console, scanning through the IFF list to the Ponomarenko—twenty-two thousand klicks away. It’d be a hell of a run just to get into the fight, much less participate.

  “Ignore them,” said Cordell. “We’re going straight to the Graveyard. Sleepy, drop the GATO energy survey into our feed so we can plot our landing.”

  It was sloppy work, nowhere near the quality of a good datamancer, but the target coordinates appeared on Boots’s HUD. Clouds swirled around the location pin, and Boots spied the telltale flash of planetary defense towers.

  Another voice came over the transmission. “ADF Capricious, this is Ponomarenko CIC. All ships means you, too. Converge at the rally point and link up with an attack wing.”

  “I’ve always wanted to do this,” said Cordell. “Ponomarenko, please convey our regrets to Rear Admiral Bambang, as we have a prior engagement.”

  “Tactical command supersedes Compass authority,” said the voice, probably an analyst pleased to smack down a captain. “Stand by for missive.”

  “Nah,” said Cordell.

  “Captain Lamarr, you will be court-martialed if you do not comply immediately!”

  “Cool story,” said Cordell, and with a click, the other voice vanished. “Boots, be advised, we have to shut off GATO comms and IFF. We’re not wasting our time on an attack run when we’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  “They’ll shoot us if they can’t ID us, Boss,” said Boots.

  “I’m disobeying a direct order in a battle, so they’ll shoot us anyway. Besides, they’re too busy getting shot to worry about us.”

  They weaved through the remainder of the debris field and into open space. As Boots and the Capricious cleared the battle zone, activity dropped off almost completely, save for a stray spell here and there.

  Behind them, more ships poured in out of the Flow, surrounding Bastion with an overwhelming assault. The battle station had a few unorthodox tricks, but it was defending, not attacking.

  “Boss, Bastion isn’t using its full power,” said Boots. “We haven’t seen a single godlike spell out of it.”

  “Okay,” said Cordell. “What’s your point?”

  “I think Witts might already be on the surface.”

  “Then we’d better get down there and find out.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Beacon

  The cargo bay shut behind Nilah and Orna as they clambered inside. Making repairs to the outside of a ship during a battle had been more excitement than Nilah had bargained for, and she prayed it wouldn’t get any worse. Teacup relayed the data feeds from the bridge, and they looked promising.

  “We’re about to breach the atmosphere,” said Cordell. “Get up here and be ready to advise.”

  Nilah jumped out of Teacup and ran, reaching the bridge just as they pierced the planet’s clouds. Now that they were the closest to the surface, how long would it take the grid to focus on them?

  It took her four seconds to realize the answer was four seconds.

  An explosion smeared across their forward shields, briefly blackening the windows with greasy smoke. It rattled her teeth, and Nilah braced for the telltale screech of rending metal. Thankfully, there was only the bass thump of magic against the melodic deflection of Cordell’s shields.

  Then Alister’s imaging station went bright red.

  “Unknown glyph detected!” he called, then glanced at his screen. “Six unknown glyphs! Wait—no, three!”

  “Make up your mind,” said Cordell, eyes darting over the projection for the unknown threat. “Boots! Fall in behind us. Use the Capricious as a shield.”

  “Copy,” came Boots’s voice over the comms.

  “Look!” Nilah pointed to the central projector where a tendril of crimson energy burbled up toward the tiny image of the Capricious. She slid in beside Alister and looked down the keel imagers to find a murky projectile, spewing sickly iridescence as it rose. She double-checked the readout.

  “It’s made of more than one glyph!” she said.

  “Alchemy!�
�� grunted Cordell as the spell splashed against his shields. “Evade, Missus Jan.”

  “Trying!” said Aisha. “The spell is tracking us—”

  The ship lurched, and instead of dissipating or bouncing off, the murky magic spread over the shield, growing into it with jagged black roots. They penetrated the shell, glowing crimson like an infection, and Cordell’s shields looked like filthy glass, caked with gore.

  “There’s something wrong,” said Cordell. “Something’s coming through my shields—”

  Then the captain’s screams drowned out the alarms.

  Nilah looked to find Cordell, hands raised in agony as the skin peeled away like dried leaves. Puffs of blood burst from his forearms, and he swooned as his shields shattered. He fell to his knees, wheezing through clenched teeth, holding out his arms like they were aflame.

  “Captain!” Malik jerked a first-aid kit free and rushed to his bleeding comrade. “Evasive action, now!”

  “Three more shots inbound,” called Alister, highlighting the trio of projectiles streaking up from the surface.

  “Brace yourselves,” said Aisha before yanking the flight stick to one side.

  The Capricious rolled, and even in combat gravity, Nilah scarcely maintained a hold on her station. Anyone and anything loose on the bridge went flying, including Cordell and Malik. The captain went bouncing off the ceiling, leaving a splotch of blood across some of the orange trim. He and Malik caught themselves on the lip of a console, clinging on for dear life when another explosion rocked the ship.

  Shearing metal sang in Nilah’s ear, and her heart sank.

  “Direct hit on the ninety engine!” said Alister.

  Orna jumped up and pulled herself into Charger’s open cockpit. “Damn it, I just fixed that!”

  Aisha furiously worked the controls, trying to keep the ship aloft and out of the path of any more spells. “We’ve got no power down that side!”

  “The spells are eating into our main grid!” said Nilah, checking the readouts. After what happened to Cordell, there was no way in hell she was going to link to the ship with mechanism.

  “I can get out there and jettison the ninety,” said Orna as Charger’s cockpit closed around her. “Should buy us time to stabilize.”

  “Losing power on the two-seventy, also!” said Aisha. “If our main drive goes, we are falling!”

  Charger puffed out its chest. “So, uh, let me get out there and—”

  “No,” said Cordell, pushing himself to his feet with dripping arms. He negotiated his way toward the captain’s station, dropping his shoes into the stirrups designed to hold him upright. “You can get out of here in the Devil. Jump to the ground.”

  “Sir,” said Nilah, glancing nervously at the others, “it’s going to take a while for us to get to the Devil, and we’re still taking fire.”

  “I know that. I can keep us intact while you escape.” Cordell whimpered a little as he traced his glyph; more rivulets of blood ran free with the exertion. There was something wrong with his spell—darkened veins running through his normally healthy ligatures. But the glyph still snapped into place upon completion, creating a weak, gauzy shield. “Boots, come in—the Devil will be jumping. Protect him. I’ll stay and—”

  “Captain, what’s happening?” came Boots’s voice. “Boss!”

  “Shut up, Boots,” said Cordell. “Just get ready to escort the Devil to the ground while I keep the ship aloft.”

  That was a death sentence. The man may have survived crashes before, but that was without spells eating up his shields. Nilah and Orna could sever the ninety engine and spare the ship. It’d be a long shot, but she knew she could handle it. “But, sir—”

  “I said abandon ship!” Cordell roared as another sticky web of corrupting magic splattered across his shields. Invisible barbs writhed under his skin, slicing flesh, cracking fingernails, spilling blood. His screams split her ears, conjuring the precise terror of the moment her father died.

  Nilah felt sure there was no way in hell Orna would agree to let him die. The quartermaster would fix this.

  Except Charger nodded at Cordell and, lenses flashing in time, said, “Aye, Captain.”

  Orna’s acquiescence was like a starter pistol being fired. The twins rose from their stations without another word, staggered through the unstable bridge, and arrived at the door for one last glance at their captain. There were worlds of meaning in their eyes, but Nilah could only read the sorrow.

  “Aisha!” barked Malik, making his way to the exit.

  The pilot looked from the captain to her controls once more. Anger welled in her features. “Damn it!” She mashed the console autopilot and raced after Malik. The first mate and the pilot stopped at the door to throw Cordell an Arcan salute.

  “Nilah,” Cordell hissed through gritted teeth. The corruption spell flayed him further, and she had to look away. “You ain’t going to waste this opportunity I bought you. Now get the hell out!”

  “Don’t you die here,” she whispered, taking Teacup’s hand and making her way toward the door, where she waited for Orna.

  “Nothing can kill me,” he replied, squeezing a smirk out of the pain. He looked to Charger. “What are you waiting for?”

  “You,” Orna mumbled, voice wrecked. “I’m waiting for you.”

  “I’m going to be here awhile.”

  Anguished breathing filled her speakers. “Do you have to?”

  “You know I do.”

  Charger’s carapace popped open. Grief twisted Orna’s face, and the bot stepped forward, allowing Orna to touch Cordell’s cheek with her bare hand. “I love you, Dad.”

  “Been a good one, kiddo,” he replied. “Y’all get out there and do some good. Witts dies today.”

  “Aye, sir,” she said. She kissed his forehead, stepped back, and snapped the cockpit shut, rushing toward Nilah and the door.

  They fled. The awful noise of Cordell’s cries followed her down the stairwell, weakening as she leapt between floors in the rattling ship. She paused a moment to look down the hall toward her quarters when a bright light sliced inside, along with whistling wind.

  A huge chunk of the ship ripped free, dragging loose cables and shearing off struts, allowing icy winds to rush inside to steal Nilah’s breath. One moment, her home was there, secure inside a tough marauder, and the next, it was junk in Origin’s stratosphere.

  Teacup snatched her into its cockpit and sealed her against the loss of pressure. She hacked her lungs up, but at least she was still conscious and not falling limply through the atmosphere. She continued down the stairwell toward the cargo bay.

  Nilah got to the Devil as a huge hunk of the interior wall fell away. Teacup braced against the open door and Nilah jumped inside the tank. With everyone in the back, the two battle armors wouldn’t be able to fit, so they’d have to be jettisoned.

  With Nilah and Orna safely in the Devil, Teacup and Charger locked arms and jumped out of the giant hole in the bay. Their phantoplasm jets could easily carry them through the fall, and they could home in on their owners’ circlets.

  Inside the armored carrier, the others had donned rebreathers, and Orna settled into the driver’s seat. A series of readouts rolled past with thousands of data points, and Nilah recognized a jump calculation.

  “We’re in freefall, but it’s more stable than being outside,” Orna glanced at Nilah. “Lower rate of spin. Jump calc should be more accurate.”

  “You can’t jump inside the ship,” Nilah said, springing into the copilot’s seat. “You’ll blow it to pieces.”

  “It’s safer,” said Orna, pulling back a switch guard to arm the light jump drive.

  “But the captain—”

  “Isn’t going to make it!” Orna interrupted, fury in her eyes. “He bought us this safety with his life, so it’s what we do! Don’t even—”

  “We have to give him a chance!” Nilah traced her glyph, slapping her palm to the center console.

  She engaged the accelerat
or and the Devil’s powerful engine easily tore it free of the chains that bound it to the deck. It rammed the damaged cargo bay door before launching into freefall.

  The vehicle spun and flipped, its shape hardly aerodynamic in the buffeting winds of the atmosphere. Nilah’s stomach lurched with the lack of inertial dampening, and the spin glued her hands to her sides. Orna was right—it’d be a lot tougher to calculate the jump while in freefall, assuming she could reach the controls.

  “I could suggest a landing coordinate and attempt to jump, if that would be easiest,” said the Devil.

  “Yes! Just bloody jump!” said Nilah, straining against the spin.

  “Calculating… Jump ready. Execute?”

  “Yes! Now!” screamed Nilah, and weightlessness enveloped her body, along with the pinkish light of a short-range jump.

  Then they came barreling out of an explosion, their wheels bouncing along the rough surface. Nilah leaned forward in her chair, blinking as shapes resolved after the jump strobe: two black columns pointing into a gray sky. A thick coat of ash covered everything, and the shock wave of their entrance stirred a plume the size of a tsunami, slowly rolling away from them. She glanced down at the imaging station to get her bearings, but she wasn’t watching for Origin—

  —She kept her eyes peeled for the growing orange streak bisecting the colorless sky: the Capricious.

  The air defense towers stopped; the ship was well under the ceiling for an assault, so they could do nothing more. The Capricious’s blue shields, flecked through with crimson corrupting magic like a robin’s egg, peeled away from the ship’s exterior.

  The ninety engine was simply missing. A brilliant pilot might’ve been able to get the nose up and send the ship down a road for a hard landing. Outright airworthiness was out of the question. Inside, Cordell would be fighting to get to the pilot’s station, if he was conscious.