[Rebel Stars 01.0] Outlaw

by Edward W. Robertson

  "So you've got something?" she said.

  "Yes and no."

  "Give me the yes first."

  He finished installing his device into his dash and leaned back. "I think I've cracked the code."

  "What's it say?"

  "Well," he said, "that would be the no. What it says is, 'Hey Pip: when the rabbit sees a shadow, where can he go?'"

  She drew back her head. "You're saying there's nothing embedded in it? So what is it? A lyric? A quote?"

  "I don't know."

  "So search it."

  A trace of annoyance colored his eyes. "That was the first thing I did, Rada. No matches. Some partials, but you can partial anything if you get vague enough."

  "Then where does that leave us?"

  He rolled his lower lip between his teeth. "Three possibilities. First, it is gibberish. Unlikely, but it could have been an accidental transmission."

  She narrowed her eyes. "It's a grammatical, parsable sentence. How could that be an accidental send?"

  "I said it was unlikely. The second is that it's a generic code phrase—you know, 'the condor soars at midnight.' The third possibility is it's the only type of code that's truly unbreakable: something that only makes sense to the sender and the recipient."

  "Except she sent it to us," Rada said. "And we've never even met her."

  Simm looked almost but not quite at her eyes. "That's why I thought we'd go ask her in person."

  "You've got a read on her."

  "On where the message was sent from, anyway. It's weird. It was routed around the entire system, like you'd do to disguise the source, but it wasn't hard to track at all."

  "Sounds like she wants us to come find her." She glanced at the countdown. Another thirty minutes to go. "Punch up the course."

  He did so. Not that this took any more effort than transferring the coordinates from his device to the ship. The Tine spat out a course. Closer than Rada had feared. Within the Belt. Simm pulled up the course's details, subjecting them to his usual rigor. Unlike Rada, who ran manual checks because she didn't trust them, he did so in order to learn to calculate such things himself.

  Wasn't much else to talk about until countdown. Eight minutes to departure, Simms started to get twitchy. She tried not to smile. Once the seconds hit single digits, he squeezed his eyes shut.

  She laughed and reached for his hand. "This isn't even the bad part."

  "It's all bad."

  There might come a time when she got sick of his flight anxiety, but that day hadn't arrived yet. With a lurch, the ship lifted, steadying itself with brief, automated blasts from its docking thrusters. She followed along in her head. The rear screen showed the platform of parked ships shrinking behind them.

  As soon as they tilted away from the station, Simm's breathing went from audible to frantic. He clamped hard on her hand.

  "Everyone was wrong about everything," he said. "We should never have crawled out of the ocean."

  Once they were clear, the Tine blasted away, thrusting her into her seat. As soon as their vector steadied, Simm's breathing calmed. Around the time Mars was a red dot in their rearview, he opened his eyes.

  Rada rolled hers. "We really need to get you an anesthesiologist."

  Simm muttered something and checked his device. Jain Kayle still hadn't replied. Rada's good humor fell behind her as swiftly as Ares Orbital.

  ~

  "Wake up," he said. "There's a problem."

  She inhaled sharply and tried to sit up but was arrested by her harness. She scowled at the screens. "What? I don't see anything."

  "Exactly. Our asteroid—it's missing."

  "We're sure there's supposed to be an asteroid?"

  He pulled up a navigational representation on the center screen. "See where it was supposed to be? And that's her engine sig. The Ship With No Name. When the Needle came in, her ship was in matching orbit with the asteroid's course."

  "Okay, but she could have gone anywhere since then."

  Simm eyed her sidelong. "We're just trying to find the asteroid. Once we've got that as a reference point, then we can see if we've got any vape trails to follow."

  "Sorry, still shrugging off the sleep." She unbuckled and walked closer to the screens. "Any debris?"

  "Some. But this is the Belt. Would be weird if there weren't any." He frowned over his device, which he'd detached from the dash so he could hold it on his knees. "Hang on. It's not gone. It's moved."

  A map appeared in the 3D display above the main screens. It was off scale, with the asteroids represented far larger than reality. Two lines appeared across space: one red, one green. Toward the right side of the screen, the lines converged. The Tine was currently just a few thousand miles away from the end of the red line.

  "Red is the original path," Simm said. "Green is the new. Based on this, it altered course a little less than 36 hours ago."

  "Almost a day exactly before Kayle Needled us." She pointed to the green line. "Intercept the asteroid's new course. We'll see what's there, then follow the trail back to the inciting event."

  He nodded and fed the orders into the ship. Rada buckled in. Once she was secure, the ship flipped around—they'd been approaching the asteroid's previous location tail-first—and accelerated toward the head of the green line.

  "Should I upload the rock's new course to the net?" Simm said.

  "Not yet. I want a better idea of what we're getting into before we let anyone know we were here."

  "Getting traces of engine sigs. Wait much longer and they'll be gone."

  "How much longer?"

  "I don't know. That would depend on the sig."

  He meant no malice, but if you were the slightest bit less versed on a subject than he was, his explanations had the tendency to make you sound like an idiot. Mentally, she bumped his SUP to a 5.5.

  "We're operating on the assumption she sent the Needle so we'd come find her." As she said this, it struck her that it could also have come from someone pretending to be Kayle. "First priority is finding out whether she's here. She could be troubled. Disabled. For all we know, she's floating around with nothing more than a blanket and a plastic bag of O2."

  "Well, I think we know enough to rule out that much."

  Ahead, she saw nothing but stars. On the 3D map, the ship inched nearer the tumbling rock. It was gray, potatoid, rotating crazily.

  "There's some debris around," Simm said. "Might not want to get too near."

  That was about as close as he ever came to trying to give her orders. "Debris? What kind?"

  "The kind that will shred us like something you put on top of a burrito." He frowned. "Lot of heat on that rock."

  He flipped a map to infrared. The rock was largely a dull, deep red, but parts of its surface were a warmer orange. A few speckles were all the way to yellow.

  "Oh stars," Rada said. "She crashed."

  "We don't know that yet."

  Typically, she appreciated his refusal to jump to conclusions, his dogged maintenance of an open mind until all the facts were in hand. But this time, she knew Simm was wrong. The ship flashed a warning about micro-gravel and suggested a course change. Simm glanced at her. She nodded. He punched it up. The views shifted dizzyingly; the acceleration pushed her into her seat.

  Simm navigated to a clear spot above and to port of their initial approach, then parked the ship, matching the asteroid's trajectory. Rada floated against her straps. They were now close enough to see the heat signature for what it was: a messy crater. Scans confirmed the concentrated presence of minerals often found in starship engines and weapons arrays.

  "We still don't know it was her ship," Simm said. "Or that she was in it."

  "She's dead, Simm," Rada said softly. "Do you know what this means?"

  "Not necessarily. It could be an accident. Coincidence."

  "It means that whatever she was going to tell us was worth killing for."

  Simm looked abruptly uncomfortable. "Now should we alert the author
ities?"

  "First, let's pick up those e-sigs. Right now, we are firmly in the Middle of Nowhere. Even if we can find someone to take on the case, I doubt they'll be top of the class."

  He laughed and brought the Tine about, putting it on an intercept course with the red line that marked the asteroid's original course. As the scanner started scooping up the various ions left behind by the recent passage of other vessels—ions that were almost but not quite as unique as a fingerprint—Rada opened up a line.

  Not to the cops, but to the net. Their current location was far enough out in the black that the poky lightspeed communications made for a frustrating lag, but she wasn't headed for the usual channels. She was going to the Labyrinth. Even with her connections at the Hive, establishing access was going to take a few minutes. The sooner she had that going, the sooner they could follow up on whoever else had been here.

  Stressful as their current conditions might be, she found nothing more meditative than drifting through space, the stars steady on the screen, the engine humming like a whale in the middle of a note that would never end. It felt right. Like destiny fulfilled. In the long, troubled history of human existence, no one had ever made it to another star (excluding Weirdness, anyway, but he didn't count). It wasn't for lack of trying. Ships got out there, deep in the nothing, and then they just…disappeared. Not a word returned to tell their fate. Any rescue efforts, any drones dispatched to their last known coordinates—those too vanished into the eternal night.

  Even so, Rada thought that someday, she might give it a try.

  "Contact."

  Simm said it the way you'd mention where you bought your new shoes, and for a moment, the word meant nothing to her. She glanced up from her pad, annoyed with everything, and stared at the unlabeled dot winking on the local map.

  "Oh," she said. "Tell me that's a cop."

  Simm shook his head. "They're not broadcasting any signal at all."

  "Weapons hot." Rada checked her straps and found them firm. "Let's show them our teeth are more than paint."

  4

  Webber staggered, blinking against the stars dazzling his vision. He cringed, attempting to brace himself for the man's second punch.

  Someone grunted. Webber was no gruntologist, but it sounded like a surprised grunt. The knockout punch did not arrive as expected. A second person grunted. He recognized that grunt. It was Jons, performing something physical and unpleasant. The first man grunted a second time. His tone was pained.

  Thudding noises, capped off by a large and final one.

  Abruptly, Webber came to. Jons stood in front of him, breathing hard, hunched over the immobile body of the bald man. Only one of the bald man's crew was conscious and he was too busy grabbing his blown-out knee to think about continuing the fight.

  Webber rubbed his thudding jaw. "Where'd the sprite go?"

  "He ran off as soon as I foiled Mr. Rock of the Scarred Dome here." Jons grabbed his collar. "And running is the best idea I've seen all day."

  They dashed through the gawping bystanders. When they were halfway to the door, the crowd burst into applause.

  Outside, the streets of Midnight-One were the typical scene of drunken laughter, shouting, and people depositing precious fluids into the gutters to be dutifully recycled by the machinery of the station. Jons settled into a no-nonsense jog toward the elevators.

  "What the hell, Webber?" His face was clenched like a fist around the hilt of a knife. "I mean, damn!"

  "I thought brawls were your idea of a good night."

  "You didn't even know what it was about! For all you know, you just helped out the bad guy!"

  "I don't care." Webber rubbed his face. Was already swelling. "You swing on a guy four to one, that makes you the asshole."

  Jons laughed, looking angry with himself for doing so. "Next time, at least wait until day two to start throwing punches, okay?"

  They found a room on Twilight where such things were cheapest. It was obvious neither of them would be able to sleep for a while, so while Webber held down the fort, Jons headed to the corner for a case of condensed beer. Webber took two, drinking one and pressing the other to his jaw.

  When he woke in the morning, Jons was gone. Webber sat on the end of his bed and spent a long time reaching the conclusion he shouldn't start the day with one of the remaining beers. Last night made him feel like a giant idiot, but he knew that was just the hangover talking.

  When he got around to checking his device, he found a dozen messages waiting. Most were from the crew, demanding the details firsthand, but two were from Captain Gomes. The first was dated four hours earlier. The second was from an hour after that. Both demanded his presence—on the ship.

  Figuring he was already hours late, he took a blip of a shower, turning off the water as he soaped up to keep his meter down, then dressed and hit the street. Around him, Twilight partied on. He descended to Beagle's foyer and got into the elevator for the long ride to the docking platform.

  The Fourth Down was dim, silent. He made his way to the bridge. There, Gomes was barking into her device. She glared him into a chair and went on with her conversation.

  Five minutes later, she pocketed her phone and stood across from him, staring at him like he'd driven the Fourth into the nearest rocky body. "Don't you dare make me drag this out of you."

  "Well, you see," he said. "There was drinking."

  "I was drinking, too. You see me starting a brawl?"

  He didn't say: Nope, but I've never seen you spend more than five minutes with the crew off-ship. "If you had, I'd be disappointed in the others for not having told me the story."

  Gomes' jaw flexed. "Why, Webber? Did they spill your drink? Call your mother mean names? Or were you just pickled and looking to hurt someone?"

  "Captain, what's going on here? We get into fights all the time. As long as we take care of the fallout, since when did we get called in here to be whipped?"

  She pressed her fists against her eyes, speaking through gritted teeth. "I don't like to go into this shit, because it's as depressing as it is none of your business. This next delivery, it's make-or-break. As in, if we don't make it—"

  "You'll break me."

  "So we understand each other."

  "Perfectly." He made to stand. "It won't happen again."

  "I'm sure of it. Because you're restricted to ship until departure."

  His jaw dropped. This hurt so much he snapped it shut, which hurt even worse. "Captain!"

  "Shut up." She stuck a finger in his face. "And if you ever want to leave this ship, stay shut up until we're on our way."

  Right then, he wanted to do some yelling, but he'd been on a streak of bad decisions lately and anyway, he knew he wasn't about to change the captain's mind. Not in the heat of the moment.

  "Whatever you say." He tugged up his pant leg to expose his ankle. "Want to fit me for my bracelet?"

  "Fuck off, Webber." Her language was hard, but he spotted a flicker of guilt in her eye. "Don't step off the ship. Otherwise, it's leave as usual."

  He saluted. She ignored him, getting out her device and exiting the bridge. He felt like some pouting was in order—this was his first leave in weeks, and right after he'd pulled extra duty refitting the hull, too—but right then, he was too tired. He headed to the galley, ordered it to approximate him some bourbon on ice, then took the glass to his bunk.

  After he'd added one third of its contents to his bloodstream, he started to feel better. Not that the conversation made any more sense. He and the crew, they'd gotten in plenty of fights in the past. Gomes was rarely happy about their scuffles (although she sure enjoyed hearing about them), but she rarely did more than grumble about discipline. She'd certainly never sentenced anyone to quarters for a week of leave.

  And if it was the money she was mad about? If she was really as deep in the red as she claimed? Then what was she doing dropping tens of thousands of bucks on making her boat look marginally nicer?

  Captains. There w
as no understanding them. He thought it would be smooth to be one some day—to set your own rules and your own course, going and doing as you pleased, the master of a portable nation of you and your crew—but even in his drunkest dreams, he knew he wasn't the type who would ever own a ship.

  Ships cost millions. He couldn't afford a house. And if he couldn't come up with a way to pay it off soon, he wouldn't be around to be dreaming for much longer.

  ~

  Jons came to see him later that day to see what had happened and to do some mutual griping about Gomes. Other than that, Webber was left to himself. He didn't even see the captain, though he was sure she was monitoring the Fourth.

  He supposed it was a win that he wasn't out spending money he shouldn't be spending. But if it was a win, it was a real Battle of San Pedro. In exchange for his enforced financial responsibility, he was compelled to spend all day thinking about his prior irresponsibility. To visit his account, visualize his debt, and contemplate the gigantic gulf between the two.

  He spent a lot of his time drinking. He liked to think he wasn't doing so alone, though. That, despite his sentence of isolation, he was joining the crew in spirit. What could be more noble than that?

  Five days into his term, with three days to go until they shipped out, thumps emanated throughout the ship. When he went to investigate, he found longshoremen loading the lower bays with cargo and securing it tight against the upcoming journey down the Lane. As usual, they were more interested in insulting him than answering questions.

  The afternoon before departure, he heard voices in the common area. Webber wandered from his room, drink in hand, and found the crew draped over the couches, looking worn-out but relaxed.

  "What's up?" he said. "Don't tell me we're leaving early."

  Lara laughed. "Gomes called a meeting. Must have figured there was no sense telling the monkey when she can just knock on his cage."

  "Hilarious." He sipped his drink. "Let me guess, you've been out there curing hunger."

  "Nah. Just loving life."

  Webber found an unoccupied couch and installed himself in it. On a lounge chair, Vincent curled on his side and snored. Jons started telling Webber about a sholo singer down on Midnight-2. Webber didn't want to care, but it sounded amazing.