Curse of the Iris (6 page)

4
THE TALE OF THE
IRIS

T
he
Shadow Comet
sat nestled in a docking cradle, one of dozens of starships moored in orbit above the gleaming white sphere of Enceladus. Workers in spacesuits swarmed over her hull, attaching fuel lines, cleaning fouled conduits, and patching damage from bits of space debris.

Yana was busy with her mediapad, leaving Tycho to watch as Carlo shut down the gig's engines, then tapped the maneuvering jets so the craft rose smoothly and latched into its socket in the larger ship's belly.

As he shut down his console, Carlo noticed Tycho's envious look.

“All in the touch, little brother,” he said with a waggle of his fingers. “Well, that and a few thousand hours of practice.”

They climbed up the ladderwell to the
Comet
's ventral airlock and found the lower deck silent and still—the crewers were away, enjoying a brief shore leave. But their parents were on the quarterdeck with their jumpsuits unzippered and bunched around their waists, revealing ratty T-shirts.

“Ah, able hands and eager young minds,” Mavry said. “Exactly what we need to finish recalibrating the fuel injectors!”

Tycho and Yana groaned—that was a tedious job, even as shipboard chores went.

“You might want to hear something first,” Carlo said.

Diocletia frowned at the account of their getaway from the refinery and the men with the wolf insignia, then asked them to go over what Japhet's grandmother had said again.

“Dad, you're going to want to come up here,” she said into her headset.

“Does this mean someone will finally tell me who Iris is?” Yana asked.

“Not a who—a what,” Diocletia said. “The
Iris
was a mailboat that made runs between Earth and its corporate outposts in the outer solar system. She mostly carried documents and bulk freight, but luxury retailers started using her for moving more expensive goods around. Somebody told somebody who told somebody else, and so about eighty-odd years ago, a flotilla of pirate ships ambushed her between Jupiter and Saturn. They cleaned out her hold, then scattered with the Defense Force on their heels.”

“The
Iris
?” said Huff, stomping onto the quarterdeck from the companionway that led aft to the engine room. “Arrr, that's a name I ain't heard in a long time. Father came to regret that particular escapade.”

“You mean your father? Johannes?” Tycho asked as six bells rang out.

“Aye, ol' Johannes Hashoone. He was one of the Jupiter pirates what hit the
Iris
. Some said he was the leader, though soon enough nobody much wanted that honor. Like yer mother said, they scattered in all directions after the raid. Wasn't the Defense Force chasin' their tails, though—it was the Securitat.”

“The secret police?” Yana asked. “Why would they care? Seems like a pretty routine bit of piracy to me.”

“Nobody ever figured out why,” Huff said. “There were rumors, of course—there's always rumors. The
Iris
was carryin' the ancestral jewels of the heiress to the Amalgamated Social Graph corporate fortune, things like that. Whatever the reason, Earth raised enough of a ruckus with the Union that the Securitat was sent after the raiders. The dumb pirates shot it out with them and died, while the smart ones went to the brig—Father spent four years locked up on 1172 Aeneas. The
Iris
cache was never found, but good riddance to it. They say it's cursed, an' from the history I don't doubt it.”

“Cursed?” Yana asked. “Cursed how?”

“Generations of fools 'ave hunted that treasure, and plenty of 'em 'ave come to bad ends,” Huff said. “We knew better than to discuss the cache around ol' Johannes—said he never wanted to hear about it again.”

Huff trailed off, his flesh-and-blood eye narrowing in suspicion.

“But why all this ancient history? What are you not tellin' me?”

Tycho watched his grandfather as Carlo explained what had happened. The living half of Huff's face registered shock, then dismissal. But in between, Tycho saw a flash of the last emotion he would have expected: fear.

“What a load of bilge,” Huff said. “Listen, boy, there's two kinds of people what never tell the truth, and that's Earthmen and prospectors.”

“But we have the
Lucia
's flight log,” Tycho said. “We know where she was headed. The old woman said Lumbaba searched his whole life for the treasure—what if he was following a lead when the accident happened?”

“Ain't you been listenin', boy?” Huff demanded. “I told you the
Iris
cache is cursed, and what happened to that ore boat proves it.”

“Come on, Grandfather—that's just superstition,” Carlo said. “How can the contents of a mailboat be cursed?”

“I bet Cap'n Lumbaba believed they was, there at the end. There in the dark.”

For a moment, all on the quarterdeck were silent.

“I don't believe in curses,” Mavry said. “But I also don't believe in wasting valuable time and fuel on prospectors' fantasies.”

“But Dad—” Yana began.

“That's enough, all of you,” Diocletia said. “We don't have enough information to make a decision—but we can change that. And Dad, your power indicators are red.”

Huff glowered down at the lights in his chest, which were warning that his cybernetic parts needed to be recharged. Still grumbling, he clanked laboriously up the ladderwell to the crew quarters on the top deck.

“Well, then,” Diocletia said, “get your consoles up and running. Mavry's loading the navigational data from the
Lucia
. Let's see if we can figure out where she was going.”

“We
know
that,” Yana said with a sigh. “It's the end point of her flight plan.”

“This should be easy, then,” Diocletia said. “Vesuvia, are you monitoring? We're going to plot some potential flight plans.”

“Acknowledged,” the ship's AI said. “Awaiting input.”

“Vesuvia, plot these points,” Yana said. “Here are the coordinates where we intercepted the
Lucia
, and here are the coordinates of her destination.”

“Plotting onscreen,” Vesuvia said.

The main screen lit up with the ellipses of planetary orbits and a pair of blinking crosses.

“There's nothing there,” Yana said. “Deep space.”

“That's not a surprise,” Diocletia said. “Who can tell me what it means?”

Tycho swallowed. They were being tested again, and even though they were in orbit above Enceladus and not in combat, their success or failure would become another note in the Log.

“What if someone found the
Iris
cache, put it aboard a gig or in a message capsule, and launched it in the direction of Sirius?” he asked. “Didn't the old pirates used to do that? They'd memorize the heading instead of writing it down, right?”

“Right,” Mavry said. “And then half of them would forget it after the next shindy.”

“If that's the case, the treasure's gone forever,” Carlo said.

“Wait a minute,” Yana said. “You said it wasn't a surprise that there's nothing at those coordinates.”

“Yes, I did,” Diocletia said, then waited.

Carlo's hand shot up.

“We don't care what's at those coordinates
now
,” he said. “We care about what was there twenty-four years ago. Basic law of piloting: you don't fly to where things are, but to where they will be.”

“Or in this case, to where they were,” Mavry said.

“Correct,” Diocletia said. “What we've got here is the kind of navigational problem every captain encounters. Wait a minute, Carlo. Tycho, how do we find the coordinates we want to fly to now?”

“You . . . you
can't
,” Tycho said. “We can determine where the
Lucia
was heading twenty-four years ago, but that doesn't help us, because we don't have the heading of what she was trying to intercept—the ship or message drone or whatever it was. The number of possibilities is basically infinite.”

Diocletia said nothing for a moment. Then, to Tycho's dismay, she nodded at Carlo.

“This is ridiculous, Mom,” Yana complained. “It's a piloting question. Of course he's going to know it.”

“Incorrect, as you might have realized if you'd been thinking instead of sulking,” Diocletia said. “It's a navigational question.”

That stung both twins, who sank deeper into their chairs as seven bells sounded.

“Tycho's assuming the
Lucia
was on an intercept,” Carlo said. “But what if she were going to a celestial body—one with a natural orbit?”

“That's a big assumption,” Tycho objected.

“Right, but you've got to start somewhere,” Yana burst out. “It's like Grandfather said the other day: pirating is half guessing.”

“Sometimes a lot more than half,” Mavry said.

“Let's plot those twenty-four-year-old coordinates against the orbits of charted celestial bodies,” Carlo said. “Pick an eighty-five percent confidence interval to start.”

“Three potential matches,” said Vesuvia.

An X appeared on the diagram of the solar system, connected by a curved line to the coordinates the
Lucia
had never reached. “The first is a centaur, designation 356925 Powhatan. Records indicate it was the site of an Earth scientific facility that was decommissioned in 2874.”

“That's after contact was lost with the
Lucia
,” Tycho said before anybody else could. “No one would hide a treasure on a rock that had an inhabited science lab sitting on it.”

“I'm inclined to agree,” Diocletia said. “What's the second potential match, Vesuvia?”

“P/2093 K1 is a short-period comet inbound toward the inner solar system,” Vesuvia said, displaying a new X and a different loop on the screen.

“That's out beyond Ceres,” Mavry said. “Any data about P-whatever-it-is?”

“I have 6.2 terabytes of compiled observational data about P/2093 K1,” Vesuvia said. “Along with compositional—”

“Any
interesting
data?” Mavry asked.

“I do not know how to define ‘interesting,'” Vesuvia said.

“I'll consider that a no,” Mavry said. “And the third object?”

“The third object is an asteroid, designation 2144 ND1. Orbit is eccentric.”

“To say the least,” Carlo observed, peering at the screen. “Any interesting data?”

Vesuvia paused, no doubt assessing that troublesome word again. Tycho and Yana grinned at each other.

“No data reach sufficient confidence levels for presentation to crew,” the AI concluded primly.

“All right then,” Diocletia said. “Good work, Carlo.”

The Hashoones regarded the orbits on the screen.

“So what are you thinking, Dio?” Mavry asked after a few moments.

“I'm thinking that we're privateers, not treasure hunters,” she replied.

As his children groaned, Mavry raised an eyebrow.

“I take it you disagree?” Diocletia asked him sharply.

Mavry spread his hands peaceably. “My dear Captain Hashoone, the way I see it, we're whatever the solar system tells us it's profitable to be.”

“And you think it would be profitable to go chasing all over creation to take a peek at rocks and ice balls?”

“No. I think the science lab isn't worth investigating, and that rogue asteroid is awfully far away. But we're due on Ceres soon anyway, and taking a look at that comet would only add a few days to the journey.”

“We're going to Ceres?” Tycho asked. “Why?”

“There's been a spike in pirate attacks on outbound shipping in the asteroid corridors,” Mavry said. “The consulate is calling in privateers who operate in the area for discussions.”

“Does that mean Earth is up to its old tricks again?” Yana asked.

“No, the Securitat thinks it's something else,” Mavry said. “Exactly what, nobody knows.”

“Could the men at Titan have something to do with it?” Tycho asked.

“Like I said, nobody knows,” Mavry said. “That's what we're there to talk about.”

Tycho nodded and turned back to his mother, who was gazing at the main screen, fingers steepled.

Yana broke down first.

“Mom, please,” she implored.

“This isn't a jaunt to Port Town, Yana. Let me think.”

Mavry put a finger to his lips, his eyes bright with amusement.

“Very well,” Diocletia said. “We'll do it your way. Vesuvia, issue a recall order. I want crewers back by 1800 and engines lit by 2000. Yana, prepare the articles for a cruise to Ceres and from there back to Jupiter.”

“Aye, Captain,” Yana said, suppressing a sigh at the pixel work she'd been given. Articles were documents prepared before each voyage and signed by all hands, setting out the rules of the journey and how any prize money would be divided.

Then Yana furrowed her brow. “What should I say about the
Iris
cache?”

“Nothing,” Diocletia said. “There's enough superstitious whispering these days without throwing around
that
name.”

“But if they find out what we're doing en route—” Yana objected.

“Then someone on my quarterdeck talked,” Diocletia said. “And that's not going to happen, is it?”

“Of course not,” Yana said.

“We're checking out a lead from a flight log,” Diocletia said. “That's something we've done hundreds of times and would have done even if you'd never met Captain Lumbaba's mother. If anyone has a problem with that—on whatever deck—they can find another ship.”

The
Comet
's crewers returned to the ship with a minimum of complaints, which Tycho knew meant they'd had little money to spend on shore leave and were impatient to be elsewhere.