Curse of the Iris
Authors: Jason Fry
FOR MOM AND DAD,
WHO TAUGHT ME THAT A HOUSE
OVERFLOWING WITH BOOKS
IS A GOOD START
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 4: The Tale of the
Iris
CHAPTER 5: Mission to P/2093 K1
CHAPTER 8: The Mysterious Message
CHAPTER 11: A Princeling of Ganymede
CHAPTER 14: The Callisto Depths
CHAPTER 17: Showdown at Saturn
CHAPTER 18: The Family Is the Ship
T
ycho Hashoone went over the checklist in his head one more time before he stepped back from the cannon in the bow of the
Shadow Comet
.
Projectile loaded into drum. Charge set. Projectile transferred to loading cradle. Cradle status green. Barrel clear. Barrel status green.
“Good to go, Mr. Grigsby,” Tycho said.
The
Comet
's hulking warrant officer nodded, his white dreadlocks bobbing. He looked over at Huff Hashoone, who stood watching them in the gunnery bay. Grigsby raised an eyebrow, and Tycho's grandfather grinnedâor at least, a smile split the half of his face that was still flesh and blood. The right half of his head was gleaming chrome, his artificial eye a brilliant spark of white light.
“Ready to fire then, Master Tycho?” Grigsby asked. The tattoos on his powerful arms illuminated in response to some internal timer, sending green, orange, and blue fire snaking across his dark-brown skin.
Tycho looked back at the cannon. The firing console was silent, waiting for the command that would send a shell hurtling across space. He started to go through the checklist again, then shook his head. Huff and Grigsby were just testing him, trying to throw off his confidence.
“Ready,” Tycho said. “Fire at will, Mr. Grigsby.”
“Pow,” said Grigsby as he pantomimed tapping the gun's firing console with his fingertips.
“Yeh only forgot one thing, lad,” Huff said. “Too bad it was important.”
“What?” Tycho asked. “What did Iâ”
He stopped and went through the checklist again. Cradle status green, barrel status green, and . . .
Oh.
“I fired the gun with the projectile locked in the cradle instead of chambered in the barrel, didn't I?” he asked in a small voice. “You have to release the cradle and
then
fire. Glad I don't have to explain that one to Mom.”
“Wouldn't have been no explainin',” Huff said. “At that power level, the plasma arc would've melted the cradle, the cannon, and a few meters of the hull. Yeh been growin', lad, so you'd be at least a couple of handfuls of ash.”
Tycho paled. Grigsby grinned, then tapped the console, cycling back through the firing menus.
“Rest easy, Master Tychoâcannon won't fire with the cradle locked,” Grigsby said. “But it would dump the charge, and you'd have to recharge instead of firing. Not a great strategy with enemies about.”
Tycho nodded, angry with himself.
“Let's take it from the top then, Master Tycho,” Grigsby said. “Starting with the
Comet
's weapons complement.”
Tycho hesitated, knowing he could refuse. Though only fourteen years old, he was a midshipman who served on the
Comet
's quarterdeckâand he was a Hashoone. That meant he outranked Grigsby and anyone else from the lower decks.
Yes, he'd made a dumb mistake. But did he really need to recite weapons specifications like some eight-year-old who'd just been sent down the ladder to learn the spacer's trade?
Then he noticed his grandfather staring at him, the warning plain on his ruined face. When Tycho was born, Grigsby had already spent decades serving aboard the
Comet
. He knew the privateer's systems better than anyone aboardâmaybe even Huff. And Grigsby's father had been a Hashoone retainer before him, as had his grandfather, and so on back for centuries.
“My apologies, Mr. Grigsby,” Tycho said. “I was still mad about that blasted cradle release. This gun is called the bow chaser, becauseâ”
Alarms began to blare.
“Bridge crew to quarterdeck, all hands to stations,” said the clipped, calm voice of Vesuvia, the artificial intelligence program that the
Comet
's computer used to communicate with her crew.
The order left no time for polite conversation. Grigsby was already hurrying out of the gunnery bay, gold coins jangling below his holsters. Tycho ducked around his grandfather and ran after him.
The alert had come during one shift's midday meal, and crewers were still wiping their mouths on their sleeves as they rushed out of the wardroom. Scarred, hard-eyed men and women mumbled greetings as Tycho ran down the forward companionway and emerged into the lower deck, dimly lit and thick with smoke. Tycho dodged retainers as they strapped on pistols and swords, spun to avoid gun crews as they wheeled projectile cannons across the deck, and picked up a foot as the ship's cat shot by, seeking shelter.
The bosun whistled out orders on his pipes as Tycho reached the forward ladderwell and scrambled up the rungs. Four meters above, he emerged in a different worldâthe well-lit quarterdeck, whose broad viewports overlooked the emptiness of space. This was the exclusive province of the bridge crew, all of whom were his family.
His mother, Diocletia, was buckling herself into the captain's chair, closest to the bow. To her left and slightly behind her sat Tycho's eighteen-year-old brother, Carlo, the
Comet
's pilot, his handsome face creased by a pale scar across his right cheek that he'd received battling pirates two years before. The seat to Diocletia's right was still vacantâit belonged to Tycho's father, Mavry Malone, the ship's first mate.
On the main screen overhead, a cross marked the
Comet
's position deep in the asteroid cluster known as the Hildas. A flashing triangle indicated an unknown object, with a dotted line mapping out its current course. Tycho studied the rows of numbers on the screen. The object was moving too quickly to be an asteroid, but very slowly for a starship.
“Look out below, Tyke!” someone yelled. He took a quick step forward as his twin sister, Yana, hurtled down the ladderwell with only her hands on the outsides of the ladder, kicking her feet nimbly to land with a thud on the quarterdeck.
“Don't call me Tyke,” Tycho protested.
Diocletia gathered her black hair into a loose ponytail and looked over her shoulder with a scowl.
“Yana, must you arrive on my quarterdeck like a supertanker missing its dock?” she asked.
Yana ignored the criticism, peering at the main screen. “Is that a ship?”
“Sensors are your jobâstrap in and take a look for yourself,” Carlo said. “But so far there are no ion emissions or responses to our hails.”
The Hashoones were privateers who made their living by seizing cargoes carried by freighters and other civilian craft. Any ship that came their way was a potential prize to be capturedâand a payday for the
Comet
's crew.
But they had to be careful. As privateers the family had to obey the laws of space. They held a letter of marque authorizing them to attack enemy ships on behalf of the Jovian Union, which governed the nearly two dozen inhabited moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. Only Earth's ships could be considered enemies; those crewed by neutrals or their fellow Jovians had to be allowed safe passage.