Majesty's Offspring (Books 1 & 2)

  Chapter 32: Luck and Loops

  Julius left the infirmary and set out to find Chorus. He searched the landing deck and then the observation lounge—and finally stopped when he found himself wandering the corridors aimlessly asking crewmen if they had seen her.

  On a whim, he decided to try Laina’s quarters—the current home of her conduit. He unlocked the door with his personal code and entered. Inside, boxes of Laina’s plunder were scattered about—but no Chorus.

  He approached her conduit and proceeded to yell at it. After emptying his lungs of hair, he stopped, trying to justify in his mind the stupidity of doing it in the first place.

  At that moment the doors opened—he expected to find Chorus or Laina walking in, but it was the trio of hackers.

  “What are you doing here?” he barked at them.

  Haylek—or Waverider, as Chorus had called him—led the three of them inside, and they stopped a few feet from Julius.

  “Chorus told us to come here,” Waverider said. “She said you would give us a place to work from.”

  Julius sized them up. Waverider, the seeming leader, stood there all pale and pudgy… with that purple Mohawk, to boot. The one to his left—tall, but bone skinny with long blond hair. The one on his right—a short Asian with a slight build. None of them looked like they could pose a threat to the ship or crew.

  “What are your names?” Julius asked, turning to the two next to Waverider. “You two, I mean. I already know he’s Haylek… or Waverider.”

  “Haylek?” one of them said. “That’s your real name?”

  “Shut up!” Waverider growled.

  The other two laughed.

  “Call me Waverider,” Haylek said. “This is Freeze—and this is The Doc.”

  “Very well.” Julius ignored their attempts at a handshake. “What are you planning on doing once I give you a place to work from?”

  Waverider looked at him. “Uhhh… do you know anything about hacking?”

  “Not really,” Julius said.

  “Well, then, you probably won’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “Okay,” Waverider said. “We’re going to connect an encrypted carrier wave into the Ocean, then probe it for a system broadcasting the signature hash with the hidden watermark of the Brotherhood. We will then use it as a zombie controller and establish a multidimensional web of interconnects so that we can masquerade our sessions from the PIG—”

  “The pig?” Julius interrupted.

  “The Passive Identification Grid,” Freeze explained.

  “Right,” Waverider said. “After that, we’ll probe the outlying systems for common flows of errant cells, running them through a parallel distributed program grid, run by the Brotherhood, that will demux the multiplexed endpoints for a polymorphic signature inside a special encryption algorithm—”

  “Enough,” Julius interrupted again. “What is the point of doing all of that? What is your goal?”

  Waverider looked thoughtful for a moment before answering. “To locate Chorus’ brother—without tipping him off.”

  Apparently, their stories were in sync with Chorus. He looked around Laina’s quarters. If a few of the boxes were moved into the storage closet, they could situate themselves here. Laina was not going to like it, but at this point Julius did not care. He wanted all of them—Chorus, the hackers, and even Laina, in one place where he could more easily keep an eye on them.

  “Welcome to your new office,” he said. “I will have the crew clear a space for you and set up some bunks.”

  Julius left the trio and headed to his own quarters. Along the way, he issued orders to Ramey to make the arrangements. It was going to be a couple more hours before the diplomats returned with their deal. In the meantime, he had nothing more to do—at least nothing that couldn’t wait. With the anxiety and lack of sleep from the past few days, he needed to take advantage of those hours and get some rack time.

  He entered his quarters, noting he had left them in disarray. The sheets in his bunk were unmade, datapads littered his desk, and clothes lay on the floor. It was uncharacteristic of him—he could not even remember leaving the mess in the first place.

  Exhausted, he kicked off his boots and dove into his bunk. Even the captain of the Sea Wolf needed rack time.

  He closed his eyes. Fleeting thoughts about Laina entered his mind. Was he being insensitive to her? Perhaps he should have given her a better welcome—he did almost lose her.

  Whatever. He was too tired to care right now. The thoughts and worries faded and he fell into slumber …