“Seven percent,” Far countered. The black market mogul cocked his head at the number. The air around him sharpened, and Far found himself wondering what a halo was called when it did not shine gold. “I want seven percent of the cut, plus enough fuel for a free trip every heist we complete. Also, I get to choose my crew.”
Getting away with highly illegal, unregulated time travel was enough of a challenge. Doing it without souls Far trusted—and liked—would be impossible. He already had a running roster in his head.
“Why should I be inclined to give you these things?” Lux asked.
“If the forfeit is equivalent to the loss, the reward should be equivalent to the gain,” Far reasoned. “I’ll be making you millions. Another two percent and a few vacations is an even trade.”
“We have ourselves an agreement, Mr. McCarthy.” Lux gestured to the figure in the corner. The hooded man moved between them, pulling out a sheet of parchment very much like the one tucked in Far’s waistcoat.
I hereby enter into the service of Lux Julio under the agreed-upon terms, it read, followed by a blank dotted line.
“I like sealing deals in writing,” Lux explained. “That way if you rat, you burn.”
The stationery felt awkward in Far’s hands: too heavy and there. Though pen to paper was a dead art, he’d learned handwriting during his first year of Academy—just one of the many strange skills they had to learn to fit into other eras. Along with horseback riding, operating an automobile, cooking with a microwave, and loading a rifle.
He held the pen over the document, fingers cramping with muscle memory. There was just one more request…. “I get to christen the ship.”
Lux nodded, trying his best to appear benevolent. The look didn’t suit him.
Far’s pen was too close to the paper. Its ink seeped out, a disturbing red, pooling at the base of what would soon be an F. He scrawled out the rest of his name in an unpracticed hurry. The whole thing looked off-kilter.
Lux accepted the signature, rolling the paper into a scroll. He nodded at the TM. “What will you call her?”
Why were ships always hers? Imogen would know. Far would have to ask his cousin when he got back to the flat. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“Make it good.” Lux’s fist closed over the document, covering the spot where Far’s name had bled through. “You’re stuck with it, Captain McCarthy.”
Captain. I am the captain….
Far looked back at the ship. Its holo-shield plates swallowed the overhead light, made it mesmerizing. He could still hear the parchment wrinkling against Lux’s palm as he stared at the hull: plain bright bursting into pink, green, blue shimmer.
“There are worse things to be stuck with,” he said.
PART II
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn TO-MORROW, and dead YESTERDAY,
Why fret about them if TO-DAY be sweet!
—OMAR KHAYYáM, AS TRANSLATED BY EDWARD FITZGERALD
“THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYáM”
6
PRETTY, PRETTY PLUNDER
INVICTUS SHIP’S LOG—ENTRY 2 (THOUGH TECHNICALLY IT SHOULD BE ENTRY 345 IF FARWAY WEREN’T SLACKING ON HIS CAPTAIN DUTIES)
ANCHOR DATE: AUGUST 22, 2371
CURRENT DATE: JUNE 11, 2155 (HOW ELSE WOULD WE LAUNCH OUT OF OUR TOP SECRET DOCK LIKE SUPERHEROES?)
CURRENT LOCATION: SOMEWHERE OVER THE ATLANTIC? PROBABLY?
DESTINATION DATE: APRIL 14, 1912
DESTINATION LOCATION: ATLANTIC OCEAN, RMS TITANIC
OBJECT TO ACQUIRE: A PRETTY, PRETTY BOOK
IMOGEN’S HAIR COLOR: AQUAMARINE WITH A HINT OF BUBBLE-GUM PINK
GRAM’S TETRIS SCORE: 354,000
CURRENT SONG ON PRIYA’S SHIPWIDE PLAYLIST: “EVERYDAY PAST” BY ACIDIC SISTERS
FARWAY’S EGO: AVERAGELY INFLATED)PAL.NX^&54LLLLLLLLLL
IMOGEN’S VIEW OF THE SCREEN WAS invaded by cuteness in the form of fur, four paws, and BOUNCING. The red panda danced across her digital keyboard, paws lighting up random letters. Decades of domestication hadn’t prevented these ginger fluffballs from dying out in the twenty-third century, nor had extinction deterred Imogen from acquiring one. Saffron: cutest pain in the tail there ever was.
“Off!” She clucked at the animal, which proceeded to rest his rump exactly where Imogen did not want it. AW;EOFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFJNSKMMMMMM She picked Saffron up by the scruff and set him on the floor, surveying the damage. Nothing a good, long session with the Delete key couldn’t fix.
Delete. Delete. Delete. Back to AVERAGELY INFLATED.
Imogen nibbled at the end of her aquamarine-with-a-hint-of-bubble-gum-pink hair and stared at the entry, trying to scrounge up adjectives to describe her cousin’s most defining trait. Maybe she should create a sliding scale: size-of-a-pinhead-pride to dictator-of-the-month all the way to RED-ALERT-the-wax-of-your-wings-is-melting-and-we’re-all-going-down-in-flames.
“What are you doing?”
Speak of the devil! Imogen twisted around her chair—it was her one nonnegotiable request in joining the Invictus’s crew, a seat that spun—to face Farway. One look and she could tell her cousin wasn’t actually angry. When he was fake-mad his eyebrows trembled. Actually pissed and those suckers would be stock-still.
“I’m writing a ship’s log,” she told him. “Which, incidentally, is the captain’s job. I’ve told you I don’t know how many times that the Invictus’s logs need to be kept. Keeping track of birthdays is hard enough with one timeline, but when you start mixing our cover lives with our historical gallivanting it’s hashing impossible.”
Due to the less-than-legal nature of their activities, the crew kept up with their old jobs in Central time. The result? Three months of life as they knew it—long shop hours and family dinners. Almost thrice that had been spent aboard the Invictus, which made a proper mess of their biological calendars. It’d take more than math, however, to keep Imogen from celebrating a birthday.
“I keep records!” Farway waved at the wall beneath the ship’s vistaport—as dark as the chalkboards of old, covered in descriptions of their missions. Imogen’s hair chalks had been press-ganged into the effort. They weren’t meant for writing with, but that hadn’t stopped her cousin from spelling out his successes in silver and blush, white and aqua. Farway’s highlight reel was bright indeed.
1945: RESCUED GUSTAV KLIMT PAINTING FROM EXPLODING NAZI CASTLE.
1836: BRUSHED ELBOWS WITH DAVY CROCKETT. DUG UP GOLD AT THE ALAMO. HEAVY AS A THREE-HUMPED CAMEL.
1511: EVADED THE SWISS GUARD TO RETRIEVE MICHELANGELO’S PAINTBRUSH FROM SISTINE CHAPEL SCAFFOLDING.
There were thirty such descriptions, each a testament to some treasure and the trouble they’d gone through to get it. Imogen appreciated the list’s multihued aesthetics, but in terms of record-keeping it was… smudgeable. A brush of Saffron’s tail had turned Blackbeard’s name into Bla—rd and cutlass into cut-ass. Imogen giggled whenever she saw it.
She choked back the laugh as she addressed her cousin. “We need something more bona fide than your brag wall. Records that capture our comings and goings, the day-to-day spirit of the Invictus.”
“Oh.” Farway leaned in to read the text. “Bubble-gum pink? Looks more coral to me.”