Curse of the Iris (20 page)

“We appreciate that, Your Lordship,” Carlo said. “Though we are familiar with the Gibraltar family. I believe they once gained . . . notoriety as some of the more successful Jupiter pirates.”

Lord Sicyon's back stiffened.

“Completely different side of the family,” he said. “Gibraltar Artisans has nothing to do with that rabble.”

“On that subject, Lord Sicyon, we wanted to ask about your own family,” Yana said.

“‘On that subject?' What subject do you mean?” Lord Sicyon asked. Beside him, the parrot made a disagreeable noise.

“Are you familiar with the
Iris
cache?”

“Never heard of it,” Lord Sicyon said as Carlo shot his sister an annoyed look.

“It was the cargo of a mailboat, seized some eighty years ago by a group of Jupiter pirates—” Carlo began.

“And what could such a thing possibly have to do with me?” Lord Sicyon said, hands clasped in his lap. His knuckles had turned white, Tycho noticed. “My family has no connection to pirates—none whatsoever.”

“Begging your pardon, Your Lordship, but you
do
,” Tycho said. “The pirate Muggs Saxton's eldest son was Carolus Saxton, who married Honoria Koenig. Carolus and Honoria were your parents. That's correct, isn't it?”

Lord Sicyon had turned an alarming shade of red. Matthias regarded the Hashoones impassively, sensors whirring.

“Stop recording,” Lord Sicyon said.

Yana lowered her mediapad.

“Let me be perfectly clear about this,” Lord Sicyon said through gritted teeth. “I have not the slightest interest in the ancestor you speak of, nor in any criminal schemes he might have pursued during his misguided life. I am a loyal son of Jupiter, as my mother and father were before me. And our deeds speak much more loudly than any gossip about the past.”

“I assure you, Lord Sicyon, that we don't doubt your patriotism in the slightest,” Carlo said. “What interests us is the story of the
Iris
treasure. Over the years, all sorts of crazy legends have grown up around it.”

“If this is a joke, it's in very poor taste. What do I care for some ancient connection to a shameful dirty matter? If you want to succeed making documentaries, young man, perhaps you should start by not spreading rumors and tittle-tattle.”

“Oh, but they aren't rumors,” said Yana. “Here, take a look at my mediapad, Your Lordship. We have proof that Muggs Saxton was a member of the Collective, the pirate band that made off with the
Iris
treasure. Which means you are heir to his share of that treasure, should it ever be found.”

“Look around you, young lady,” Lord Sicyon said. “Do I look in need of money?”

Yana sat back and sipped her jump-pop. “We wanted to talk with you, Your Lordship, because you're an heir to the Collective. A lot of Jovians will be fascinated to learn what's become of the Collective families since the days of Muggs Saxton.”

Lord Sicyon seemed to flinch at that name.

“I told you I've never heard of this Collective,” he said. “There's nothing whatsoever that I could add to your little project.”

“Oh, you have a great deal to add, Your Lordship!” Yana said. “Having found an actual heir to the Collective, we can't very well leave you out of the project, now can we?”

“You can and you will,” Lord Sicyon said. The parrot squawked again.

“We've found such amazing images of your grandfather to use too—there's even video of him in prison. The contrast between the two of you is amazing—there's his clothes, and his up-country accent. People will be so surprised to learn you're related.”

The noises Lord Sicyon and the parrot were making struck Tycho as oddly similar.

Yana bit her lip, then leaned forward. “Though I suppose if you were no longer an heir, there would be no need to include you in our project. Or to discuss your grandfather Muggs or his connection to the Saxton-Koenigs.”

“I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to stop being heir to some deplorable business arrangement I've never heard of,” Lord Sicyon said.

Yana peered at her mediapad, as if wrestling with a difficult problem. Carlo took a sudden interest in his sparkling water. Tycho forced himself to breathe.

“There might be a way,” Yana said. “As part of our research, we acquired some shares of the Collective—easy enough, since they're worthless except as historical curiosities. If you're really opposed to being discussed in our project, you could sign yours over to us as well.”

Yana offered Lord Sicyon her mediapad. The man took it and glowered down at the screen, muttering under his breath, then scrawled his signature and pressed his fingertip against it.

“There,” Lord Sicyon said, thrusting the mediapad back at Yana as if it were dirty. “Now let that be the end of this ridiculous episode—and our disagreeable interview.”

He got to his feet with such haste that the parrot fluttered its wings and emitted an alarmed bray. “Calvert will show you out.”

12
JUPITER INVASION

W
hen the Hashoones returned to Darklands, two large crates awaited them in the living area at the bottom of the ramp.

“From our cousins at the Water Authority,” Carina explained.

“You actually contacted them,” Yana said.

“I do keep my promises, Yana Hashoone,” Carina said sharply. “Now get this stuff set up—none of you is going near Europa until you've trained on it.”

With Parsons's help, the siblings opened the crates and extracted their contents. The first crate contained an impeller—basically a long sled, folded into meter-long sections, with a navigation unit and handles attached to an engine. The second crate held segmented pieces of ceramic armor, a waterproof suit made of reinforced fabric, air tanks, a jet pack, and a helmet whose clear faceplate was as thick as Tycho's little finger.

“Underwater's different from deep space,” Carlo said, seeing his brother tap on the faceplate in wonder. “The pressure's immense.”

“Right,” Tycho said. He'd never been immersed in water, unless the shower counted, and found it strange to think about a suit designed to protect you from an excess of matter, rather than its absence.

They carried the equipment up the ramp to the simulator room, a narrow chamber that had once been a break room for miners, with rectangles of blank iron marking long-sealed tunnels leading deeper into the rock of Callisto. There, a quartet of stations waited, similar to the ones aboard the
Shadow Comet
. Tycho and Yana had spent countless hours here as children—just as Carlo had before them, and their parents before him, and so on back through generations of Hashoone pirates.

“Two Collective members down, one to go,” Yana declared as Carlo programmed the simulator. “When I get my share of the treasure, I'm buying myself a cage full of those pretty tangerines.”

Carlo and Tycho exchanged a baffled glance.

“Oh—you mean
tanagers
,” Carlo said with a laugh. “Tangerines are something else.”

“Fine. I'm buying myself a cage full of tanagers
and
a cage full of tangerines. What are you going to buy, Tyke?”

Tycho looked up from separating armor pieces into left and right.

“A statue of Muggs Saxton, to stand in the entry hall at Tros. Don't you think Lord Sicyon would appreciate the gesture?”

All three started to laugh, and they were still smiling when they got Carlo's armor strapped on.

“Speaking of Muggs Saxton, Carlo . . . ,” Yana said, handing her older brother the simulation goggles. “Do you still think he gave the scanner to the Securitat?”

Carlo pushed the audio inputs into his ears.

“I was wondering when you would ask,” he said. “I still want to know how he got out of prison early, but no, I don't think he did. I believed Lord Sicyon when he said he'd never heard of the
Iris
. Unlike, say, when he tried to claim his family had no connection to piracy.”

“Yeah, that was rich,” Yana said. “Good thing Grandpa wasn't there to hear his opinion of pirates.”

“Oh, it's not like he hasn't heard it before,” Tycho said. “It's not like we all haven't heard it before.”

“True,” Carlo said, taking the helmet from Tycho. “It's ridiculous. Every family in the Jovian Union has a pirate ancestor or two. Makes you wonder what our grandchildren will say about us, doesn't it?”

“That's obvious,” Yana said. “They'll say, ‘Yana Hashoone was the best captain ever.'”

“Hah,” Carlo said. “You know what? Sometimes I wonder if they'll be privateers at all. You heard Aunt Carina yesterday. And look at how the Saxtons changed in just two generations. Or the Gibraltars. Or half a dozen other families. Muggs was nothing but a small-time pirate, but his grandson's a financier and a respected nobleman.”

“And a stuffed-shirt blowhard twiddling his thumbs dirtside,” Yana said. “No thanks—I'd rather be a privateer. Wouldn't you?”

Carlo just grunted, twisting the helmet clockwise until it latched into the collar.

“You're green,” Yana said, checking the suit indicators.

“Good,” Carlo said, his voice muffled. “Fire up the simulator.”

For the next half hour Tycho and Yana watched their brother perform an odd pantomime, seeing and hearing imaginary things fed to him by the computer and reacting to them. With the exercise complete, he shed the suit and checked his scores while Tycho helped Yana into the equipment. Then, a half hour later, it was Tycho's turn.

The simulator showed him how to operate the suit's systems, from the helmet work light to the cutting torch, then taught him maneuvers. He discovered you had to work a lot harder than you did in the vacuum of space, where the slightest push against something would set you drifting in the opposite direction. But Tycho adapted quickly and found himself quite comfortable. He was smiling when the simulation ended and Yana snatched the goggles off his face.

“Ow!” Tycho complained. “What was that for?”

“Look at your scores,” she said. “You beat both of us.”

“By a pretty decent margin too,” Carlo said, not sounding nearly as unhappy about it.

“Huh,” Tycho said, trying not to grin.

“No fair,” Yana said. “You had an advantage because you went last.”

“Don't be a sore loser,” Carlo said. “Tycho can play fish all he wants; just the idea of being underwater creeps me out. Anyway, don't get too excited, Tyke—remember, we're not competing to be captain of a submarine.”

The door to the simulation room opened, revealing their father.

“Dad,” Yana said, “we've been training with the equipment. Believe it or not, Tycho scored the best.”

Tycho was too happy to object to that but stopped smiling when he saw Mavry's face.

“You three better come with me,” Mavry said. “Something's happening.”

Tycho, Yana, and Carlo hurried down the ramp to find the rest of their family standing around the dining table. Shimmering in the air above Carina's mediapad was an image of High Port, the space station orbiting Ganymede that housed key ministries of the Jovian Union.

“You need to see this,” Carina said. “They're live images from a passenger liner above Ganymede.”

Bright dots were racing toward the station.

“That's a tactical formation,” Carlo said. “Looks like a perimeter of frigates around a trio of cruisers. What's going on?”

“No one knows yet,” Carina said. “The ships just arrived—and they're not ours.”

“Earth's, then,” Huff said. “The scurvy bilge rats 'ave finally declared war.”

“They never would have gotten through Perimeter Patrol,” Tycho said. “We have warships covering the approach vectors from the inner solar system.”

“Which means they came from somewhere else,” Diocletia said as Parsons glided out of the kitchen to stand behind Carina.

“To get that close to High Port, they must have dropped long-range tanks up above and come in hot,” Carlo said. “Impressive flying.”

As the Hashoones watched, the mysterious ships slowed and hung glittering against the blackness of space.

“They're not attacking—they've realigned into a defensive formation,” Mavry said. “Looks like they're just short of firing range.”

“Wait,” Carina said. “There's a transmission coming through. I'll put it on speaker.”

She pushed a basket of fruit aside and poked at the mediapad.

“—the people of the Jovian Union,” said a calm, unhurried voice with a Saturnian accent. “My name is Hodge Lazander. I am the speaker of the group you call the Ice Wolves, but I represent many more people than that. We are not here to bring war. Rather, I hope we are here to make peace.”

“Arrr, some peaceful gesture that is,” Huff muttered.

“Shh, Dad—let's listen,” Carina said.