Curse of the Iris (26 page)

Diocletia raised an eyebrow.

“You know what I find pretty?” she asked her daughter. “Retuned engine baffles. Longer-range bow chasers. And not thinking an unsuccessful cruise will send us to the poorhouse.”

“Longer-range bow chasers?” Yana asked, all thoughts of jewelry apparently forgotten. “Can we really get those?”

“We can discuss it, at least,” Carina said, smiling. “There are a number of things we can discuss now. But after dinner. And after we talk about tomorrow.”

After Parsons cleared away the dishes, Huff pulled the black stump of a cheroot out of a pouch on his bandolier and leaned back in his chair with a look of quiet satisfaction on the living half of his face. The cheroot smelled vile even before Huff lit it, but the other Hashoones didn't bother to argue, instead scooting their chairs back to what they'd learned was more or less a safe distance.

“Now then,” Carina said. “The Jovian Defense Force was badly embarrassed by the Ice Wolves' grand speech at Ganymede and further rattled by the attempted raid on Europa. There will be a considerable military response, one involving JDF warships as well as privateers.”

“What does that mean?” asked Tycho.

“It means we're going back to Saturn,” Mavry said.

“Yes,” Diocletia said. “We're getting our orders tomorrow at High Port and leaving immediately after that.”

“The Union wants to send us off to war again?” Yana asked. “They didn't exactly keep their promises to us after the hunt for the
Hydra
.”

“Our letter of marque is a military document—we're members of the Jovian Defense Force,” Carlo pointed out.

“Come off it, Carlo. We're members of the military when it's convenient for politicians,” Yana said. “When it's not, we're pirates that nobody wants to talk about—and who can have our rights taken away until the next time we're needed.”

“You sound like an Ice Wolf all of a sudden,” Carlo said.

“So what if I do? Maybe the Ice Wolves are right. We're not really that different from them, if you think about it—we're raw materials the Jovian Union makes use of but doesn't really care about.”

That silenced everyone for a moment. Huff puffed on his cheroot in contemplation.

“I'm not saying I disagree with what the Jovian Union stands for, or anything like that,” Yana said. “But if our government isn't working for the people of Saturn, why shouldn't they be allowed to go their own way? Isn't that what we did when we wanted our freedom from Earth?”

“But look at how they're doing it,” Tycho said. “Showing up with warships at High Port? Raiding Europa? That's not the way to convince people you deserve freedom.”

“Why does anyone have to convince someone else that they deserve freedom?” Yana asked.

“Arrr, politics,” Huff rumbled.

Carina held up her hands for peace.

“The Jovian Union can't afford to have its attention divided between threats from Earth and trouble at Saturn. So the Defense Force plans to hit the Ice Wolves fast and hard—to head off whatever they're planning next and to show Earth that we won't take such threats lightly.”

“Good,” Carlo said. “We can't appear weak at a moment like this.”

Yana rolled her eyes.

“So now what?” Tycho asked. “Do we vote on it?”

“Not this time,” Diocletia said, turning to Mavry. “Your little expedition to Europa has caused our loyalty to be questioned—and it will be questioned further if we don't join this mission. I've already ordered our crewers at Port Town to be ready to fly.”

Tycho nodded. Carlo was beaming, obviously excited by the chance to fly with Jovian warships. Yana scowled, but then she nodded too.

“Can I take you into Port Town tomorrow?” Tycho asked his mother. “I, uh, want to work on my grav-sled piloting.”

Yana was looking at him quizzically—and so, he realized, was everybody else.

“Now what are you up to?” Yana asked, peering at her brother. “Ah. I know what's going on.”

“And what's that?” Tycho asked, hoping he didn't look as nervous as he felt.

“You're still fretting about Loris Unger, aren't you?”

Tycho tried to look embarrassed, rather than grateful that his sister had accidentally given him the excuse he hadn't thought of himself.

“Fine with me,” Diocletia said. “Just be ready to go when we get back. And watch your step in Port Town.”

“I will.”

Yana shook her head sadly. “Tycho Hashoone, patron saint of sad old grog hounds and other lost causes.”

DeWise agreed to meet Tycho in Port Town, naming a nondescript café near the guild hall of the Most Honorable Union of Surveyors and Metallurgists. Tycho spotted the Securitat agent at a table near the back, hands around a chipped coffee mug, and couldn't resist grinning at the sour expression on the man's face.

He made DeWise wait while he got a jump-pop and a nutrient square, then sat down across from him at the dented metal table.

“So how was Europa?” Tycho asked with his mouth full.

“Cold.”

“Find what you were looking for?”

The Securitat agent sighed.

“I think you already know what we found—nothing. We spent two weeks below the ice with one of those scanners and our own equipment for nothing. So are you going to tell me how you found it?”

“Maybe,” Tycho said. “You first. Whose scanner did you have?”

“Muggs Saxton's.”

Tycho nodded. “Which he gave you in exchange for a reduced prison sentence.”

“That, plus access to his personal communications and everything he knew about the
Iris
raid and the Collective.”

“I'm listening.”

DeWise frowned, then shrugged. “I suppose it doesn't matter anymore. The Collective members all trusted Josef Unger because he was that rarest of things—an honest pirate. He and your great-grandfather were the ones who hid the
Iris
cache when the members of the Collective were forced to scatter. Moxley got his scanner and tried to dig up the cache, but we caught him and sent him to 1172 Aeneas—where we already had Josef, Johannes, and Blink Yakata in custody.”

“But you didn't get Moxley's scanner,” Tycho said.

“No—and none of the pirates we'd already caught would cooperate,” DeWise said. “We had agents follow Johannes and Josef when they were released in 2815, but they slipped our grasp. We tried to keep an eye on the Collective members, but never got a hint that the treasure had been found—by them or anybody else. And no message came from the Bank of Ceres for eight decades.”

“So there was no signal to follow,” Tycho said.

“Right,” DeWise said. “We tried looking anyway, and pursued every kind of crazy theory—that the treasure was encased in the ice beneath the Unger homestead, or buried in the side of a smoker, or moving around in a robot sub. Eventually we had other priorities, and all we could do was wait. We're good at that, when we have to be.”

Tycho smiled. “Too bad you were looking in the wrong ocean.”

“Don't be a brat, Tycho. It was Callisto, wasn't it?”

Tycho nodded. “Right beneath Darklands.”

DeWise considered that for a long moment, and Tycho could almost see his mind calculating. Then he cocked his head, and the corners of his lips twitched.

“That's very interesting,” he said in a way Tycho didn't like at all.

“Why is that interesting?” he asked.

“It just is,” DeWise said. “Now, we have other matters to discuss. Do you have it?”

“Yes.”

“And does anybody know?”

“No,” Tycho. “What would happen if they did?”

“Things would be more complicated. I'll take it now, if you please.”

“It's not that simple.”

“What you have is dangerous, Tycho. We're all better off if it's in the right hands.”

“I'm not sure I believe you. What do I have, exactly?”

“Like I said before, information. Information that could help the Union in the current crisis.”

“And if I don't give it to you? What happens then?”

“It would go badly for your family,” DeWise said, face expressionless.

Tycho considered that.

“I want something in return,” he said.

DeWise smiled.

“In addition to everything I just told you? And the fact that you weren't jailed for piracy after your little stunt at Europa?”

“The information was a trade,” Tycho said. “As for the rest, spare me. If we were in the brig on 1172 Aeneas, you'd have one less ship to take to Saturn.”

DeWise's eyes leaped around the café.

“Be quiet,” he said. “But point taken. What is it you want?”

“The
Hydra
—free and clear. No more of this nonsense in the courts.”

“That's not my department, Tycho. It's out of my hands.”

Tycho nodded. “I had a feeling you might say that.”

He reached below the table into his jumpsuit's hip pocket and brought out the black data disk, holding it in his hand. DeWise's eyes leaped to it, then shifted to the carbine in Tycho's other hand.

“Oh, so now it's an old-time pirate drama. What are you going to do, kid? Blow a hole in me?”

“In you? No.”

Tycho cocked the carbine, careful to keep it pointed away from the Securitat agent, then held the muzzle against the disk.

“The
Hydra
,” he said.

DeWise took a sip of coffee. It spilled down his chin and he wiped irritably at his face with a dirty napkin.

“All right, Tycho. I'll do everything I can. In recognition of your family's services to their country during the current emergency and all that.”

“And will that be enough?”

DeWise sipped his coffee.

“I can't promise you it will be, but I would think so. Plus I won't forget that you were helpful to us. Don't give me a look like that's nothing, kid. Didn't I already bring you a prize when both you and your family needed one? Couldn't help like that be useful to you in the future?”

Tycho bit his lip. He had been certain that his tangled relationship with DeWise was ending, and with it the need to keep secrets from his family. Now DeWise himself was suggesting otherwise.

But DeWise's tip about the
Portia
had been a good one, and its capture had been a big help to the Hashoones. And his account of the
Iris
cache fitted with what Tycho and his siblings had discovered. What if he was telling the truth about the disk too? Could Tycho really deny his country an advantage now, when it was caught between enemies?

“All right,” he said reluctantly, and handed over the disk.

“You've done your country a considerable service,” DeWise said, getting to his feet.

“I hope so,” Tycho said. “But I want to know what was interesting about the cache's being right under Darklands.”

“You're out of information to trade,” DeWise said over his shoulder—but then he paused and turned back.

“I like you, Tycho—so here's one more freebie. It's impressive that you found the
Iris
cache—we didn't, after all. But have you asked yourself how it got there?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“To tell you the truth, I'm not completely sure,” DeWise said. “But I've got a pretty good guess.”

Before Tycho could ask, DeWise shook his head. “You've figured out harder puzzles than this one, kid. But this time you might not like the solution.”

16
WHAT VESUVIA KNEW

N
ow that is an impressive sight,” Carlo said.

Ahead of the
Shadow Comet
, the rust-colored, oblong moon Amalthea hung in space against the seething mass of Jupiter. Arrayed around the moon was a quintet of Jovian warships and their long-range tanks. The crescent-shaped destroyers
Godfrid
,
Ingvar
, and
Ingolfur
were in the lead, ahead of a pair of angular, hammerheaded cruisers: the sister ships
Hippolyta
and
Antiope
.

Off the port wing of the formation, Tycho spied a pair of privateers—Spotted Jack Almedy's
Steadfast
, garishly painted with red-and-orange flames, and the graceful
Izabella
, captained by Garibalda Marta Andrade. Carlo maneuvered the
Comet
into place on the starboard wing, beside Absalom Garrett's needle-nosed
Ironhawk
—the same privateer that had joined the
Comet
in pursuing Mox two years earlier.

“Two cruisers, a trio of destroyers, and four privateer frigates,” Tycho said. “Can't say we lack firepower.”

“Arrrr,” Huff said from his usual place near the ladderwell, metal hand clamped to a rung and feet magnetized to the deck. “Ain't the weapons what counts, but knowin' what to do with 'em. Seen plenty of fancy flotillas come to ruin, on account of bein' led by a fool.”