The Worst of All Possible Worlds

Chapter One

Spectrum

Gentle waves washed over a beach of colorful glass pebbles. Impossible mountains rose across the bay, framing a golden sunrise. The prisoner stepped to the edge of the water and took a deep breath.

It was a beautiful execution chamber, illusions perfect and peaceful.

Nilah Brio had never been to a live execution before. She sat in the prison observation room alongside the crew of the Capricious, two GATO IGCC war crimes prosecutors, three Compass agents, and the crew’s handler, Special Agent Cedric Weathers. On the beach, prison staff waited just out of view of the imagers.

Nilah’s heart rested in her throat. She’d chased this monster across ten worlds before bringing her down. An execution seemed too simple an end.

The woman by the water nodded at her surroundings. “Pretty in here. It looks real.”

“We do try.” The chaplain walked into frame, rendered in precise detail for the offsite observers watching via projection. “Rebecca Grimsby, né Rebecca Fulsom, for your crimes against humanity, for aiding and abetting the Gods of the Harrow, you have been sentenced to death by spell. It will be instantaneous and painless. Your judgment has already been rendered; you may speak your mind without fear of reprisals. It now falls to you to say the things you need to say, so that you may pass into the next world unfettered by guilt.”

Nilah leaned forward to listen, trying to catch whatever Rebecca might reveal in her final moments. What excuse could she possibly give for the things she’d done? The chaplain gave Rebecca a kind smile and placed a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, dear. Go ahead.”

“I’ll tell my mother to kill you quickly when she gets here.” She placed her hand on him in return and mocked his sympathetic face. The guards were on them in an instant, pulling the chaplain away from her while she sneered.

“It’s the least I can do after you’ve been so sweet to me,” she added.

The chaplain smoothed away a strand of hair, which the guards had jostled loose. “Why don’t you decide how you’d like to make peace, barring a rescue?”

In the observation room, Nilah leaned over to Cedric and whispered, “We’re sure security is locked down tight, mate?”

“They always posture at the end.” Cedric crossed his arms and shook his head, features scarcely illuminated by the light of the projectors. “You’d have an easier time breaking into a bank vault.”

“We’ve broken into bank vaults,” said Nilah, “and the Masquerade. Look, this isn’t just some rando. This is Harriet Fulsom’s daughter.”

“It’ll be fine,” said Cedric. “Been to four of these since the Harrow, and it’s always a lot of bluster, followed by silence.”

“Four?” asked Nilah.

“You’re not the only one bringing down high-profile Children of the Singularity,” he said, glancing to the imager feeds to make sure he didn’t miss anything.

“I don’t think you’ve ever executed someone like her,” said Nilah, “the daughter of a god.”

Cedric smirked. “You’d be amazed.”

The woman on the imager took a deep breath and steadied herself.

“You have no idea how grateful you should all be to us. We sacrificed everything to give humans a future. But it’s fine. In a few minutes, this place will be a smoking ruin, and you’ll all be dead.” Rebecca let out a hissing breath through her teeth. “I can’t wait to see your faces when she gets here.”

As they watched the chaplain and guards walk off the wide-open beach, Orna Sokol’s fingers tangled up with Nilah’s and squeezed. Nilah stared down at the place where her dark skin met the lightness of her fiancée’s. They’d both gotten a bit weathered over the past two years fighting the Children of the Singularity, and watching executions scarcely lightened the load. Justice needed serving, but Orna’s look of dawning worry wasn’t soothing to Nilah’s heart.

She hadn’t wanted to see this, but Rebecca’s sentence—over a hundred counts including murder, racketeering, high treason, and currency manipulation—had been handed down by a secret court. That meant a group of state-selected witnesses had to attend, and Compass always nominated the arresting authority. Only one member of the Capricious was required, but everyone else came along for moral support.

The guards and chaplain pushed into the observation room through a side door, scooting around the gathered attendees to get to the back. They gave everyone solemn nods as they passed, and Nilah wondered how often they did this.

“Start the termination sequence,” said Agent Weathers, and the bailiff at the control console tapped a few buttons.

On the projections inside the execution chamber, the sun began to set, an orange burst on a purple sky. Lights swelled to life inside the smooth glass baubles composing the beach, and the clouds picked up their pace, vacating their perches for a mist of winking stars. Rebecca turned to look directly into the imager with anger in her eyes. “My mother is coming. Today is the last mistake of your short lives…”

Nilah glanced down the row of chairs in the observation room, taking in the expressions of her crewmates. The others were waiting for it, too—the sound of an alarm, a distant explosion, a flash of magic. If the Gods of the Harrow knew about the execution, surely they’d intervene.

Rebecca drew her limbs in close, shivering in her silky robes. “She’s coming for me. No prison can stop a teleporter like her.”

That was when Nilah knew nothing was coming to save Rebecca. It was an odd feeling, the pang of sympathy that rolled through her bones. Rebecca was a killer who had used slingers and starvation alike to destroy people on her mother’s behalf. She’d created untold loss, and would’ve gladly done so again, had the Capricious not taken her out of play.

To Nilah, though, she looked like someone’s scared little girl.

“She’ll be here.” Rebecca took a breath and nodded quickly. A tear rolled down one cheek. “Today was the day you almost executed—”

A loud, charging whine was the only warning before the prison chamber’s autoslingers pelted Rebecca Grimsby’s body with paralysis bolts and a sleep spell. She froze midsentence, mouth agape, eyes rolled back in her head. Then, she fell backward onto the glass beads, relaxation taking over stiff muscles.

They watched for long minutes, listening to the prison doctor calling off oxygenation levels. Eventually, she said, “Brain death. One twenty-four a.m.”

“Flip it,” said Agent Weathers.

The bailiff threw a switch, and the projection filled with fire, burning Rebecca’s body away to ash. They watched until the orange light faded, leaving only the glowing glass beads and carbon-crusted metal walls. The lights came on, and relief washed over Nilah. Grimsby was officially gone for good. Nilah stood, her joints sore from sitting in that chair for the past two hours. The exact time of Grimsby’s transfer to the execution chamber had been kept secret, since that knowledge could help a prison break.

“Meet you at the ship,” Cordell mumbled as he went for a side door. In years past, Armin Vandevere would’ve been hot on his heels to sneak a smoke, too. It hurt Nilah to see the empty space beside him. He and the first mate had been inseparable, and she’d never noticed before Armin’s death at the Masquerade.

“Leaving so soon?” Agent Weathers called after them, and the crew halted. He reminded Nilah of a terrier—always steadfast whether anyone took them seriously or not. “I’ll need to see you in my office.”

Nilah sighed. She’d hoped to get off this depressing prison hulk of a planet and score a little vacation. If Cedric was flagging them down, he probably intended to send them somewhere unpleasant. He excelled in finding the worst places to conduct covert operations.

Cordell gave up on his smoke break, lumbered back to his crew, and cocked an eyebrow. “Surely it can wait a cycle? We only just arrived, and everyone busted their humps to get here.”

“Fresh intel. I’ve got something interesting for you.” At this, he gave the rest of those gathered a little wave.

“Well, well…” The captain fetched a dispenser from his pocket and pulled out a toothpick with his teeth. Nilah knew he’d have much preferred a cigarette and was secretly dying inside from the interruption. “‘Fresh intel.’ What do y’all say?”

“I’d say we haven’t caught a break in months,” said Boots, straightening her bright yellow Rook Velocity jacket. “We just put Grimsby down. Time to get the next chump in the hopper.”

“And what do the rest of you think?” asked Cordell.

“I was promised shore leave,” said Nilah. “So how good is this one?”

“Very,” said Cedric.

“We can sleep when they’re dead,” said Orna, throwing an arm around Nilah. “Lead on, Agent.”

The crew shuffled into Special Agent Weathers’s temporary prison office—a three-walled cubicle at the end of the last row of the admin ward, beside the custodial bot cleaning station. It was clear whoever was in charge of office assignments liked Cedric Weathers as much as everyone else. On the way in, Cedric made a quick pass through the rest of the cube farm, making sure there were no other staffers present. Since it was the middle of the night cycle, the only other folks in the prison were the guards, distributed through the various wings.

“Going to a lot of trouble to make sure we’re alone, mate,” said Nilah, cramming into his cubicle with the others.

“That’s because we’re going to run a private operation.” Cedric waved out a projection and tacked it to the wall. “Compass eyes only. Not even Special Branch gets this one.”

Cordell perked up, the epaulets sparkling on his captain’s jacket. Nilah noticed that he always took special steps to make sure his old Arca Defense Force clothes shined in front of Cedric. He maneuvered his toothpick from one side of his wide grin to another.

“Just us?” he asked. “What kind of budget?”

The Compass man chortled. “Do whatever is required. Send receipts.”

“Oh, I like those jobs,” said Aisha Jan. She, like her husband, Malik Jan, had been napping before the execution. Nilah envied their ability to sleep anywhere they wanted. “Nice hotels, good food…”

“If it’s a civilized world,” Malik added.

“I feel like I never get off the ship,” said Aisha. “It’d better have some good food. That’s my favorite part.”

“My favorite part is the deserving target at the end,” said Alister Ferrier, crossing his pale, freckled arms. His red hair stood up at an odd angle from where he’d been trying to nap, as well. Jeannie, his twin sister, came up behind him and smoothed it down.

“You’re doing this off-books because of the mole in the Special Branch?” asked Boots.

“Because you’re the right crew for the job,” said Cedric.

Boots cleared her throat and nudged Nilah. “Mole.”

Cordell smirked at Boots’s comment, then said, “Enough beating around the bush. We’re all tired, remember? Let’s have it.”

“I’m sure you all remember catching Grimsby at Mizuhara,” said Cedric.

The woman’s dead eyes were still too fresh in Nilah’s mind to recall much of their brief day in the Thousand Waterfalls resort. She’d been responsible for bringing Rebecca to the Intergalactic Criminal Court on Compass orders. At the time, they’d been excited to remove Harriet Fulsom’s daughter from the game board, but now it felt hollow. It was just an arrest—they hadn’t actually stopped anything that they knew of.

“Grimsby was there to buy something,” said Cedric. “A data cube from the estate of Sekhet Mostafa.”

Boots’s face lit up. “Ha! They’re going after that old crap?”

Cedric leaned back in his squeaky old office chair. “Of course you’ve heard of her.”

“Sure,” laughed Boots. “Used to be part of this group on the Link called the Graverobbers, where we’d swap stories about various historical figures. The place was a gold mine for me. Easy to sell a salvage map if you can stick some famous dead weirdo to the story and—” She paused to look at Cedric.

A smile crooked the corner of his mouth. “I’m not going after you for old frauds committed, if that’s why you stopped talking.”

“Just checking, bud. Anyway, one of the guys was obsessed with Sekhet Mostafa. Had like eight thousand murder theories.” Boots paused to grab one of Cedric’s clean mugs off the charger on his desk and drop a cube of government-issued coffee into it. The black shape melted into an oily splash, and hot steam filled the air.

Nilah couldn’t stand the stuff, but she watched as Cordell and Alister ducked in after Boots to fill mugs of their own. “Was she the murderer or the victim?”

“Maybe neither,” said Boots. “She was this kid from one of the smaller banking clans—rebel child, liked to adventure, obsessed with finding Origin. She’s basically forgotten now, but she used to be quite the scandal on Taitu.”

“I’ve never heard of her.”

Boots took a hearty sip and went to set her mug on the desk, but Cedric preempted her with a coaster before it could touch. “You wouldn’t have heard of her, Nilah. Had to be more than a hundred years since this went down. Mostafa was kind of like a professional cultist, too. She bounced around between about a dozen of them, and when her family threatened to disown her, she disappeared.”

Orna snorted. “What, Mummy and Daddy didn’t like all the liars and crooks dipping into their fortune?”

“She took it with her,” said Boots. “Cleaned them out, down to the very last coin.”

“I bet they disowned her after that,” said Cordell.

“There was nothing left, save for their land holdings, but with the family in arrears and cash-poor, they folded. Everything they owned was sold off—but there was a real market for Sekhet’s possessions. Lots of folks had a morbid fascination with her fate.”

Cordell’s toothpick swirled on his lip as he chewed it. “So why did you call it ‘that old crap’?”

“It’s like this,” said Boots. “She was in so many cults, and so many locations, with so many freaks… you can link her to almost any conspiracy theory. It’s all too far afield.”

Alister scowled at his coffee, obviously tasting government issue for the first time. Nilah had learned to avoid any food in classified areas.

“Kind of like us?” said Alister. “People make up conspiracy theories about us, but we’re the real deal. Maybe Mostafa has a past.”

Boots smoothed back a stray strand of hair. “That’s… a surprisingly good point, Al.”

“And if the Children of the Singularity want her old things—” Nilah began.

“I’m starting to believe some of these theories about her.” Boots sat down on the edge of Cedric’s desk, much to his chagrin. “So Rebecca Grimsby was trying to buy one of Mostafa’s data cubes when we arrested her, which means the seller went to ground.”

“After you shot up the place, yes,” said Cedric. “But never fear. We’ve been working on that problem. Grimsby and the seller were using an escrow service, and we just happened to arrest the owner for tax evasion recently.”

“He ‘just happened’ to be cheating on his taxes?” asked Nilah, and Cedric chortled.

“Everyone is cheating on their taxes, Miss Brio. We just keep that in our back pocket for when we need to arrest someone,” he said. “Here’s why this case is perfect for you: Miss Elsworth has knowledge of Sekhet Mostafa. You, Miss Brio, are already acquainted with the seller.”

Her surprise was much stronger than her friends’ coffee. “What? I am?”

“You are. It’s an old teammate of yours, apparently: Baron Valentino Gaultier. I thought, since you used to be friends, you could reach out to him, and—”

Nilah gave him an incredulous look, caught between annoyance at his presumption and outright laughter at his ignorance. “Why the hell would you think Tino and I are friends?”

Cedric looked at her sidelong. “Because you… used to be teammates? You were karting buddies, right?”

Nilah crossed her arms, turning up her nose at him. “Do you know anything about racing? Anything at all? Your teammate is your worst enemy, chum.”

“What? Why?” asked Cordell.

Looking over her comrades, she expected one of them to chime in, but no one spoke. “Have none of you listened to what I’ve said about racing? For two years, I’ve told you stories of—”

“Wasn’t particularly interesting before now,” Cordell mumbled, scratching his head and looking away.

Nilah swallowed an indignant gasp and straightened. “Fine. When you’re in the same type of car, you’re rivals. Most years, a team will replace one of the drivers. You have to make sure that if they’re going to cut someone from the team, it’s not you, so…” She wobbled her head, as if she could shake loose the right phrase. “You know… you do whatever it, uh, takes.”

“And what did you do to Valentino?” Orna asked without even a pause.

Nilah gave her an embarrassed look; her fiancée knew her all too well. “I… may have, uh, caused the accident that ended the baron’s racing career.”

“Are you serious?” Cordell shook his head. “First decent lead in months, and you already blew it?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t realize my karting days were going to decide the fate of the bloody universe!”

“And yet, that’s a surprisingly apt description of what happened,” said Malik. “Because you raced, Mother attacked you, and the universe was saved.”

Cedric recoiled. “Oh. I’ve clearly made a mistake, then. I’ll have another Compass operative assigned and—”

“No,” said Cordell. “Give us this case. Been chewing scraps too long, and arresting Grimsby just made us want something bigger.”

“But if Miss Brio has already fouled our chances…” Cedric trailed off.

“Please,” said Nilah. “I can smooth things over. I know how to talk to Gaultier on two levels: as a racer, and as an elite. I’m sure it’s going to be fine. Besides, he likes to collect influential friends. I’m influential.”

Orna made an “eh” noise, and Nilah elbowed her.

“Okay,” said Cedric, handing over a crystalline data cube. “This is everything we have on the baron. You’re to acquire Mostafa’s effects using whatever means you feel appropriate, then rendezvous with Task Force Sixty. Do not take that to mean you can harm a Carrétan noble. Task Force Sixty has been conducting operations against the Children of the Singularity with some success, and they’ll want to analyze the goods for actionable intel.”

“Any potential complications?” asked the captain.

Cedric leaned back in his chair. “Probably not, though our civic anthropologists are tracking a host of new splinter groups after the Masquerade. Nothing that should affect you per se, but it wouldn’t be bad to spread the info.”

Boots’s expression darkened. “New cults?”

“Not exactly,” he answered. “Sympathizers. The more of Witts’s crimes come to light, the more the hard-line anti-GATO groups come out trying to orchestrate secession. The good ones use protests. The bad ones… well…”

“That’s because they can all just jump up and say, ‘I love Witts,’ on the Link, and do everything short of swearing fealty to an enemy flag,” said Boots, cheeks flushing with anger. “Maybe if you criminalized being a freaking terrorist—”

Cedric held up a hand. “I’d prefer to have free speech, thank you. We’re working through the watch list as fast as we can.”

Nilah shook her head. “As long as we’re not taking any of those assignments, I’ll be fine. No more cult infiltration for this girl.”

“You’re the tip of the spear, now. If I call you about a cult cell, I just want you to take them out, not talk to them. Most of these people are yahoos.”

“That’s what your lot thought last time, though,” said Boots. “I want a dossier on all of the groups working with Witts.”

With a snort, the special agent replied, “There are over thirteen hundred. It’d be a full-time job just to read today’s developments.” Seeing everyone’s annoyance, he added, “I’ll get you my intel on the top five orgs of interest, okay? It’ll take me some time, though.”

“Can we get the short version?” Cordell rested his hands on his hips.

“There is obviously the Children of the Singularity, but we’ve got the Bonded Haft—a secessionist militia; Aoyurei—a bunch of violent mystics; the Conservators—they made the list when our operative disappeared; the Alliance of the True Code—who like to bomb government buildings; and my personal favorite: the Last Gambit.” The man took a moment to bring home his disgust. “They have a thing against immigrants on Taitu.”

Orna cracked her knuckles. “I might like to meet some of the Gambit punks in a dark alley.”

“No one is as dangerous as the Gods of the Harrow, themselves,” said Cedric. “Our Fifth Fleet has been playing cat and mouse with their shipyards, destroying anything they can find… and uncovered a disturbing amount of resources and resistance.”

Boots wrinkled her nose. “Like a big giant cult with dozens of insidious plots to destroy the galaxy for no discernible reason?”

The bureaucrat soured. “No, Boots. Like billions in capital equipment and manufacturing tech—the sort of infrastructure required to maintain a standing military. There’s something big lurking out there, so you need to focus on Witts, and let us handle his oddball followers.”

“They’re not oddballs, though,” Nilah interjected. “They’re everywhere, and getting more acceptable. That’s the problem.”

“That’s a job for the politicians,” said Cedric. “Do you want the case or not?”

Cordell took the cube and pocketed it. “We’re on it.”

“Then we’re done here.”

“Ready to get out of this place,” said Boots. “Don’t like prisons.”

The Compass handler straightened his desk set and folded his hands together. “I expect you’ve narrowly avoided them.”

“It’s not that,” she replied. “It’s the prisoners.”

“Oh?”

Boots smirked. “A close friend of mine once said we should call them prisonees, don’t you think?”

To Nilah’s surprise, Orna laughed at the corny joke.

They loaded the Capricious in the rain and muck of an Agarwal hurricane. The planet was 90 percent covered by water and home to some of the largest storm surges recorded on any habited world, so it was the perfect place to have a prison. If the inmates escaped, where were they supposed to go? Directly into the frigid water, to be battered against the rocks surrounding the Ballantine Prison Complex?

Boots idly contemplated the best way to break someone out of the place while the rain slashed her face and ran down the back of her neck. Anti-air towers stood vigil as she pushed carts of supplies from the prison’s garrison across the loading dock. The place was as well defended as the finest military installations she’d ever visited.

“What are you gawking for?” said Orna, huffing past her with a cart of food cases. “I’d like to get out of here before I melt.”

She smiled to the quartermaster, rain dripping into her eyes. At least she was dry under her polybuff Rook Velocity jacket. “Truth be told, I was trying to figure out a way past their defenses. Got a taste for those sorts of puzzles after Mercandatta.”

The quartermaster nodded her approval. “I was going to chastise you, but… I’ve been thinking about it, too. Gets in your blood.”

Boots gripped the handle of her cart and put some muscle into it. “We’re turning into weirdos out here, Orna.” Then, she considered the statement. “Well, I’m turning into a weirdo. You were there a long time ago.”

“Yeah, Boots.” Orna gave her own cart a hefty shove. “You were real normal before we got you.”

They secured everything in the cargo bay, and Boots headed to her quarters to dry the water from her tired bones. The others had been complaining about a lack of action on the ship, but every mission had pushed Boots harder than the last—and she’d recovered a little less every time.

Malik Jan, the Capricious’s doctor, had noticed, too, and he’d prescribed a workout regimen, which she’d promptly ignored.

“Good morning, Lizzie,” said Kinnard, his voice richly rendered through the new speakers Boots had installed in her room. She hadn’t been ready to live in her mansion on Hopper’s Hope, but she’d grown accustomed to the lap of luxury and made some adjustments to her military accoutrements.

“Morning, Kin. Hang on a sec,” she said, and was momentarily deafened by her shower’s flash-dry function. Her hair fluffed comically large, before the antistat ionized it back onto her head. “What’s up?”

“The time is oh-four hundred.”

Her stomach dropped whenever he said the time. That was all Kin was allowed to say to someone without admin rights. It was a silly fear, but when she’d surrendered him on the Harrow, it’d hurt. “Uh, thank you?”

“Which means it’s time for your prescribed run.”

Boots scoffed, digging into her drawers for a bra and panties that had seen better days. She had all the money she could ever want and no time to shop for replacements. “I just took a shower, Kin.”

“Understood. I’ll remind you tonight before your watch.”

She pulled on her pants, hopping intermittently to keep herself from keeling over. “Or we could skip today. I’m all traumatized after witnessing an execution and stuff.”