Supergiant (Gigaparsec Book 2) (11 page)

Roz forced herself to calm down for
a moment and consider the scene from Echo’s point of view. “I am honored beyond
words that you share your life with me. I pray to whatever force is behind all
these equations that my work helps extend your life centuries more.”

“We uplift each other,” Echo
replied, kissing her forehead.

Roz spent most of her time in Echo’s room, working on the
matrix and sleeping on the retractable furniture. She left twice a day to eat,
mainly because Echo did not wish to dine in front of her, and Roz still enjoyed
meat when she needed extra iron. During her morning break, she exercised with
Ivy. Roz showered once a week or when Echo complained. In the late afternoon, she
devoted time to teaching and playing with Jeeves.

As Roz sat in the dining hall on
the cargo level, Max approached her. “You haven’t responded to my emails.”

So little of her old routine
mattered in light of the Engima. “I haven’t read them.”

“Deke’s offered to brief us all on
Cocytus and the Bat realm beyond, so I scheduled a team meeting.”

Roz stroked her necklace. “I could
listen to the tape later.”

“I don’t think you realize how
important this is.”

She almost laughed.
More
important than the culmination of a thirty-thousand-year-old quest for an
entire race?
But his face was so sweet. “Fine. One hour.”

With the two of them, half the crew
was already in the dining hall, including Herb, Alyssa, and Grady. Max signaled
the remaining partners.

Ivy was first off the lift,
followed by Reuben and Kesh. “What’s up? We’re working on optimizing cargo
choices for the route.” When she saw Roz, her mouth dropped open. “You’ve lost
weight.”

“Since when is that a bad thing?”

“Jeeves misses you,” Max whispered.

“He can always come down and tell
me himself.”

Max shook his head. “Echo radiates
Collective Unconscious like a star. He’d never go near her. Besides, she never
sees more than one person at a time in the flesh.”

Deke stepped in next, wearing a
simple, metal, walking leg. “Ah, we’re all here. Good. The first thing to
realize about Bats is that we take offense easily. We’re very formal, and
respect is important. No whispering or playing on your computers while I’m
speaking.”

Reuben put away his game.

“The next topic is communication.
In Bat space, outside an embassy, expect Bat to be spoken, but don’t try to
speak it yourselves. I’ve heard noble Roz’s attempts, and they sounded like a
moron with a mouth full of mud.”

Roz started to rise to the bait but
recognized the test. No speaking out of turn.

Reuben fell for the trap. “How are
we supposed to interact, then?”

“AI translators are your only hope.
However, realize that microphones on those can easily be jammed. Those who deal
with foreigners often have mute buttons. They’ll claim it’s for national
security, but it’s really because you folks don’t know when to shut up. Ears
are always better. So you have to learn to understand basic Bat conversation,
but fake ignorance. If they’re going to insult, arrest, or rob you, they’ll jam
your AI first.” Deke proceeded to give examples of crude police orders like
Stop, Freeze, or Hands Up. Roz already knew Hello and how to count to eight.
“Fail to obey, and they will zap you until urine runs down your leg. The threat
of Phib invasion scared my people severely, and they increased security at all
borders and government offices.”

Max took notes in a journal app
with several tabs, proof he had taken her advice about nightmare therapy.

“The only two unforgivable crimes
would be to insult our religion or to threaten the Carousel.” The Carousel was
a sequence of six stars that formed the hub of Bat commerce. One could reach
anywhere in their realm from this loop. “Obstructing the flow on the Carousel
or flying outside approved lanes can result in a fine or confiscation of your
vessel. In congested areas, I’ll take the helm, Roz. You wouldn’t be able to
react fast enough.” As evidence, Deke brought up a video of two dozen vessels
in a holding pattern around a space station, swirling around like fish in a
school.

“Granted,” Roz said. “How do we
avoid giving offense in the religious area?”

“Ironically, you’re not allowed to
ask us about our religion, but Max has seen me practice. Our faith, like our
piloting, emphasizes listening.”

Max said, “The Voice of the Void.”

“Right. I’ve been tolerant, but
with other Bats, never speak during someone’s meditation period or question the
divinity of what you hear. Nearly all criminals scoff at this tenet. Therefore,
expressing such doubts will brand you as a criminal to my people. Listening to
the universe is more than the physical. We are also to obey the voice within
when it moves us to acts of charity and selflessness.”

“What about the law?” asked Reuben.

Deke scowled at the interruption.
“Priest judges make most of them based on centuries of precedent. Knights act
as the guardians of sky and space. Those with physical skills guard the ground
as police.” The air of distain in Deke’s voice for ground-based specialists was
palpable. “We all swear allegiance to a landed lord and keep the peace. Each
territory is fairly autonomous.” He projected a map of the various regions but
concentrated on the path they would be taking to the professor.

Then Max stepped in. He was a much
more dynamic and less pompous speaker. Roz immediately sat at attention.
“Traitors.” Max displayed a woodcut from Dante’s Inferno of men and demons
buried up to their necks in ice. “Are sent to the ninth circle of
Hell—Cocytus.”

“Why would they call their system
something so horrible?” asked Roz now that she knew what the name referred to.

Max switched to a map of the
system, complete with their intended flight path to moon A9, a generic label
for the ninth orbit around the first planet. “Legend has it that Blue Giant Gas
Corporation intended to call the ice moon Cerulean. All their other refueling
stations are named after shades of blue like Azure, Cobalt, Iris, Sky, and
Viridian. However, the clerk who filed the name had a grudge. Once a name is
logged with the central office, it’s permanent.”

Ivy said, “The terraformer who
built the colony betrayed everything Anodyne stands for.”

“What was the betrayal? That he
took money that didn’t go through the Llewellyn Corporation? Everyone wanted
this trade route to the Bats, and the three gas giants in the system generate
plenty of cheap fuel.”

Ivy shook her head. “His crime was
that he tunneled through the ice with a nuke without testing for native
microbes first. He violated the first principle of shaping—do no harm.
Furthermore, at the time Earth needed help the most, the corporation sold their
souls to the Bankers and used Earth’s line of credit to back them.”

Echo’s hologram appeared in the
dining hall. “Perhaps we should avoid these people.”

“We have no choice,” Kesh insisted.
“The wolf is at the door. Our next loan installment is due soon. The trades
here are the big score we’re relying on to carry us to the university. We won’t
get rich if we only trade with saints.”

Max cleared his throat to continue.
“Without Anodyne help, the terraforming project was supposed to take a century.
They turned ammonia and other gases from the giants into water and air, carving
huge tunnels in the ice of A9. They named the spaceport Ice Haven, but the
rebranding didn’t catch on. Very few colonists travel this far—only corporate
types. The war slowed the project, but they had the grand opening about three
years ago. I hear it’s quite lovely. The pay is good, the essentials of life
are cheap, but keeping warm can be tricky.”

“Which is why we brought the
solar-panel components,” Reuben said.

Kesh added, “Ice Haven is like any
other boom town: plenty of rich and bored workers looking for ways to blow
their pay. In addition to the alcohol, we brought a few novelty items from the
other worlds to sell to these fellows at a steep profit.”

“Where do the Bats come in?” asked
Roz.

Deke replied, “Ah, we have a base
on A14, which they call Purgatory. It’s primarily a set of warehouses for
storage and quarantine. Bats there trade with ships who visit the refueling
base.”

“So it’s called Purgatory because
it’s a staging place?” Roz asked.

“No, because the lord in charge was
exiled there,” Deke clarified. “He can see the stars of his home system but not
enter.”

“Lord Aviar isn’t suffering,” Kesh
said. “He takes a cut on everything passing to and from the Bat realm.”

Max finished up with photos of the
Ice Haven habitats and the unified schedule for refueling and cargo.

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.”

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.”