Free Curse of the Iris by Jason Fry Page A

briefly in the darkness inside the wreck. Mavry activated his helmet lamp and squeezed through the hole. After one last look at the battle overhead, Tycho followed.
    They tramped through the lower deck toward the bow, pushing off the bulkheads to stay balanced on the uneven deck. There were bodies scattered throughout the ship, little more than skeletons wrapped in shrunken gray flesh. Some had flung up their arms in a last vain effort to shield themselves from whatever had killed them. Tycho stepped gingerly over the bodies as he followed his father to the forward ladderwell.
    â€œThis isn’t just crash damage—she took a beating first,” Mavry said as they climbed up to the quarterdeck. “I’m guessing the belly flop on P/2 finished the job.”
    The quarterdeck was interrupted by a meter-wide gash that had opened from below and to starboard. The edges of the hole were rippled, fringed with metal droplets still hanging where they’d cooled and solidified.
    â€œMissile impact,” Mavry said grimly, peering into the hole.
    The entire bridge was a shredded, blackened ruin. There were bodies here too, except these were in pieces, surrounded by bits of machinery. Tycho spotted a twisted headset, the half-melted backrest from a chair, and a shattered keyboard, surrounded by spilled keys like loose teeth.
    His father turned to look at him, his lamp dazzling Tycho’s eyes.
    â€œYou all right?” Mavry asked.
    â€œI’m fine,” Tycho managed.
    â€œGood,” Mavry said, gesturing down at the captain’s console. “The computer banks look like they survived the impact, but they’re pretty beat up—I’ll have to cut the memory core out.”
    â€œMavry,” Diocletia said in their ears, “Mox’s pocket cruiser is closing faster than we first estimated. I need you two back here.”
    â€œCan you give me five minutes?” Mavry asked.
    â€œAt most.”
    â€œIt’ll be enough,” Mavry said, unholstering his cutting torch again. “Tycho, go aft and look in the hold.”
    Tycho skirted that terrible hole in the deck and rushed down the aft companionway. Something glittered in the light from his headlamp, and he stopped, holding his breath. Then he scowled: the corridor was littered with gleaming foil packets that had been flung out of the open galley door.
    â€œCoffee,” Tycho read, kicking a packet out of his way. Some treasure.
    He passed the head, the cuddy, and the cabins reserved for the bridge crew. A few meters beyond the last pair of doors, the companionway vanished in a twisted ruin of crushed hull plates, shattered conduits, and dangling wires.
    â€œI can’t reach the hold, Dad,” he said over his headset. “Unless you brought mining equipment with you.”
    â€œAfraid not,” Mavry replied above the crackle and hiss of the torch.
    Tycho turned away from the tangled wreckage and poked his head into the captain’s stateroom. The ship’s starboard beam had been bashed inward as if by a giant fist, leaving the frame of a bunk twisted into an arrowhead shape and its mattress lying on the deck. Tycho looked through a dresser built into the wall, first carefully shifting the shirts and socks, then yanking them roughly out of the drawers and flinging them onto the deck. It wasn’t like their owner would ever need them again.
    There was nothing.
    â€œWe have to go,” Mavry said in his ears. “If there was anything in the hold, it’s destroyed or buried.”
    Tycho let his lamp play over the wrecked cabin one last time, then hesitated. He pushed the mattress aside. An iron strongbox about the size of his helmet sat beneath the captain’s bunk, attached to the cabin wall by thick metal bands.
    His headset crackled again.
    â€œThat’s five minutes,” Diocletia said. “Get moving, Mavry—Mox is almost within range.”
    â€œOn our way,” Mavry