[Rebel Stars 01.0] Outlaw

by Edward W. Robertson

  Ten minutes later, iron-soled boots thumped belowdecks and ascended the ramp. Gomes showed up first. She was followed by the blue-suited bald man and the woman Webber had taken down with his homemade taser.

  "Whoa!" Webber bolted to his feet. "Captain, those are—"

  "Webber!" She snapped her fingers and pointed at him like he was a misbehaving terrier. "What did I tell you about shutting up?"

  The woman smirked at him. The bald man stared, arms folded. He was wearing sleeves, but his biceps filled them out to where Webber suspected he worked out in double gravity. Webber frowned and sat down.

  "I'll get right to it." Gomes walked in front of the two strangers. "This is MacAdams," she gestured to the man. "And this is Tzavioto."

  "Call me Taz," the woman said.

  Gomes stared straight at Webber. "These are the new members of your crew."

  A moment of silence enfolded the room. The others glanced sidelong at Webber and Jons.

  Jons clasped his hands behind his neck and arched his back. "Just curious, but what exactly are they here to do? I thought you were strapped."

  "That's right," Gomes said levelly. "That's exactly why they're here. This next delivery, I can't afford for anything to go wrong. Taz is here for logistics—that means she's working with you, Vincent. Got me? With you."

  As quartermaster, Vincent did his best not to look insulted. "Gotcha."

  "As for MacAdams, he's on electrical. That means he'll be poking around the ship. Maybe even opening parts of it up. All you need to know is to stay out of his way."

  Jons raised his hand. "While we're doing what, exactly?"

  "Delivery to Skylon."

  Gomes moved to the wall and waved her device across it, calling up a map of the system: Inside, including Earth, Mars, the Moon, and a few hundred stations of all sizes; Outside, which started at Jupiter's orbit and extended all the way to the Kuiper Belt; and the Lanes, the safe roads between the two divisions of the Solar System. Skylon was a dot in orbit around Triton, Neptune's only moon of significance.

  "Long flight," Jons said.

  "Thus why it's valuable," Gomes said. "Everything else, it's normal parameters. Do your jobs, keep your heads, and we'll be back on our feet in no time."

  Maybe it was the presence of the two new players, or maybe it was the hangovers, but nobody had any questions. The others filed out, headed back into Beagle to enjoy their last night of leave.

  As Webber stood, MacAdams eyeballed him. Gomes watched them both.

  "For the record," Webber said, "I had no idea what that was about."

  The corner of MacAdams' mouth twitched. "Funny thing to get involved in, then. You in the habit of sticking your hand into dark holes?"

  Taz stepped past MacAdams, putting herself chest to chest with Webber. "We're here on business. Business makes for short memories. But if there's any more bullshit, I will stomp you into something you can't scrub out of the floor."

  She turned and walked away, boots thudding. Gomes gave Webber an odd smile and left with MacAdams, jabbering about wiring.

  Webber went to the galley and had the machine dispense a double.

  Whole thing was puzzling. Captain was in money trouble, yet not only was she modding the ship, she was hiring new crew. On top of that, she was taking a Lane. As far as Webber was concerned, the Lanes were about the biggest scam in the system. At one point they'd served a purpose, yeah. Way back when you couldn't make it through the Belt without stirring up five hives of the unassociated pirates who'd taken to the area the instant it became feasible for a small-count colony. Plenty of real estate in the rocks hollowed out by decades of mining.

  Back then, the frontier had boomed. Intense as a gamma burst. Everyone had been so hell-bent on making sure there could never be another extinction-level event like the Swimmer invasion that they'd flocked to space like lemmings in bubble helmets. For the obvious reasons, Mars and the Moon had been popular destinations, but so many people had headed into the Asteroid Belt that nobody had a true count. There was no one government keeping things in order. People did what they wanted. What they had to.

  Often, "what they had to" meant capturing the cargo of any ship that passed through their territory. Particularly after so many corporations had discovered that it was cheaper and more efficient to employ autopiloted ships that didn't require human personnel or the life support needed to keep that personnel breathing. Drones, though? Drones were dumb. Trickable. You could correct that by assigning them remote human pilots, but unless those pilots were relatively close, the lag in communications meant the pirates could carve up their ships like gouda.

  Naturally, the corps had fought back, but the system was too huge for any one company to clamp down. And the fragility and expense of their navy meant that any losses put them in the red immediately. When they'd tried hardcore deterrents—nuking pirate enclaves, say—the PR fallout had been more lethal than their attacks. Two of the largest space-faring companies had been broken up and reassembled under new management. There had actually been a full-fledged revolution in the New Roman Alliance. Completely rewrote the corporate section of their constitution. Top executives had been executed for war crimes.

  Pretty cool stuff.

  Then some bigwig had gotten the idea for the Lanes. A series of stations in empty space that could serve double duty as defense bases and as remote-operation platforms for drone pilots. By staggering them across the void, you could provide a response to threats in very little time. The corps involved had recouped the massive expense by charging a toll for anyone who wanted to make use of the Lanes' safe passage beyond the Belt. Win-win.

  Except that, during downtime, Webber liked to feed his delusions of owning a ship by reading up on logistical issues. People didn't talk about it openly, but if you found the right corners of the net, it was clear that a lot of people didn't use the Lanes. And were just fine. Could be Gomes would rather pay the toll and play it safe, but the more he'd learned, the more Webber felt the Lanes were insurance for a problem that didn't exist.

  Whatever. Wasn't his call. Worrying about Gomes' problems was a much less interesting use of this time than getting tore down.

  Figuring he'd be more motivated to do his job while drunk than hungover, he made his first round of launch prep, stowing, securing, and tying down anything that wasn't bolted, locked, or magnetically sealed in place. Among his duties, this was possibly the most menial yet also the most crucial. Get a pen whipping around during takeoff, or a glass of water left loose during the transition to zero G, and that was the way somebody lost an eye or a computer.

  In the morning, he woke feeling groggy and crummy, glad he'd had the foresight to take care of most of his work the day before. There were benefits to having no illusions about your character.

  The others returned in ones and twos, taking on their responsibilities with bleary-eyed competence. After the last week of quiet, the clamor of their work was deafening. Hours later, Lara made her final check—her eagle eye for that which was out of place made her a natural—and reported to the bridge.

  A minute later, Gomes' voice reported across the ship. "Grab a chair or wave goodbye."

  Webber was already in position, strapped down, as always, to his bunk. He had no duties during launch, and he figured if he was about to die, he'd be happiest doing so in bed. The screen on the ceiling showed the feed from the Beagle control tower, centered on the Fourth Down.

  Lara began the count. At zero, flame and vapor swallowed the ship. It emerged from the flattened spheres of smoke and powered away from the landing pad. For several minutes, it operated solely on maneuvering thrusters. Safely removed from the station, it swung about and blasted toward the closest checkpoint in the Lane that would guide them to Skylon Station.

  It would be six days until they arrived. With no responsibilities for several hours, Webber stayed in his bunk and watched the stars shining on the ceiling. They looked vacant, like graffiti on a warehouse wall, but he knew this was
false. The illusion of a distance too far to grasp.

  Hours later, his eyes snapped open. He had just…moved. Abruptly. Yet their route had been set hours ago. A course change wasn't totally crazy—the ship may have detected some unplotted rocks or debris in their way—but that wasn't exactly comforting. The ceiling had gone blank. He tried to call up the view from the bow, but the screen refused to budge.

  The ship jarred again, pressing him into his bunk. Below him, Jons snored away.

  "Jons. Jons." Praying they weren't about to get jolted again, Webber unbuckled enough to lean way over the edge of his bunk and give Jons' shoulder a knock.

  Jons stirred, scowling in the darkness. "The hell?"

  "That could well be our next destination. We're juking around out there. Can you pull up the screen?"

  Jons sighed as if Webber had just asked to be taught how to put on a pair of socks, then got his device from its nook and began fiddling. The ship lurched again, squeezing Webber's stomach.

  The screen on the wall flared to life. Space. Stars. And what appeared to be a burning ship.

  "What the—?" Jons tapped his pad, to no effect. "Is this an SOS? What are we doing on it?"

  Webber squinted at the array of stars. "Because there's no one else. We're out of the Lane."

  "Are you still drunk? What would we be doing out of the Lane?"

  "Man, I don't—" On the screen, a new star blazed from the darkness. The ship turned again, sloshing Webber's guts around. "Oh."

  "What?"

  "Shit."

  "What?"

  "We're out of the Lane," Webber said, "because we're pirates."

  5

  Inside the Tine, an orchestra of clicks, whirrs, and beeps announced the defense systems had just gone hot. To Rada, it announced something more: that she had a sword in her hand and it felt good.

  She punched the broadcast button. "I don't know who you are or what you're up to. But I have taken a peek at what you're flying. Back off or I'll open you like a can of tuna."

  Across from her, Simm frowned. "Why do you get fired up like that?"

  "Like what?"

  "Like you want to chew them up. That's not a drone. It's not a dot on a screen. There are real people inside."

  "That means they can be scared." She sat back, eyes fixed on the screen. "It's more humane to drive them off than to let them come at us, isn't it?"

  "Presumably." His hands hovered over the controls. "But it might work better to stick to the facts."

  "That would convince you. Most people? We're dogs. Ninety percent of the time, you can avoid a fight through attitude alone."

  A high-pitched boop indicated the unmarked ship was giving them a scan. It hadn't slowed down. They were nearing the threshold where Rada would need to launch the drones.

  "Could this be them?" she said. "The people who hurt Jain?"

  "I don't think so. So far, I've only got a partial e-sig on whoever was here with her, but whoever this guy is, he's way off."

  "But he could be affiliated."

  "I have no way of knowing that."

  The other vessel hadn't yet crossed the threshold, but she had a pretty good look at it now. The computers had it pegged as an old Serpent-base, but it had seen a lot of modifications, including a large, cylindrical structure grafted perpendicular to the ship's long body. The age of the vessel and its accompanying mods meant it was almost certainly unaffiliated. In the Belt, an unaffiliated ship refusing to ID itself pointed to one conclusion.

  "Launching drones." She tapped buttons. On the main tactical screen, four light blue dots materialized, inching forward from the larger, darker dot of the Tine. She braked, pushed forward against her straps, and guided the Tine to the computer-suggested safest spot behind her defensive screen.

  It was a long time from the days of single-fighter dogfights. The sad, unromantic truth was that, in tight spaces, unoccupied drones could execute maneuvers that would pulp a human pilot. Her role in this encounter was less pilot and more admiral, overseeing her unmanned combatants against whatever the enemy could bring to bear. If she wanted, she could take manual control of any drone at any time, but it didn't feel the same as being in the seat yourself. Anyway, that could get dangerous. Ensconced in the perspective of a single drone, it was easy to miss the forest for the trees.

  The drones spread out, staying close enough to support each other while covering enough space to put themselves in front of anything that came their way. The Serpent-class slowed. Light washed over its hull; a swarm of rockets appeared on tactical. As soon as these were out, the Serpent hooked and braked so hard its crew would be on the verge of passing out.

  Rada smiled tightly. "Think they're bugging?"

  "I can't read minds," Simm said.

  "Bet you four hundred they're bugging."

  He pressed his lips together. "No deal."

  On tactical, 23 discrete rockets spread like puffball seeds. Two of her drones moved to intercept. Probably overkill—the enemy's looked like dumbfires—but you never could tell. The line between missiles and drones had gotten pretty blurry.

  As the cloud neared, the three drones released dumbfire spreads of their own. These came in three waves. The first would directly engage the enemy rockets. The second would come in on the heels of the first, slamming into anything that slowed as it tried to outmaneuver the first screen. The third wave was comprised of high-explosive warheads that could zap huge chunks of space. Maybe not enough to damage a hardened spacecraft, but certainly enough to set off a fragile drone that was little more than a warhead with an engine on its tail.

  The cloud of enemy dumbfires met the first cloud of drone-fired rockets. Two of the enemy missiles made it through the first wave. Zero made it through the second. Fire bloomed in round whorls of red and white. The exchange of fire was as sexy as it was expensive.

  It had bought the Serpent exactly what it was looking for, though: time to stomp the brakes and haul ass away from whatever the Tine was.

  Simm glanced over. "Should we pursue?"

  She had no doubt the Tine was physically capable of chasing down the Serpent-class mutt. Problem was that the Serpent was already pushing itself to the limits of human physiology. Computer thought they could run it down, but that would take four hours, and would probably involve another fight. Assuming they came out of that unscathed, it would be another four hours to make it back here. By then, the e-sigs could have decayed beyond recognition.

  "Fall back," she said. "No sense chasing. If they'd been involved, they would have taken the good stuff and bugged out long ago."

  "Got a steaming hot sample of their sig." Simm smiled. "Now should I call the cops?"

  "Get the other sig first. Then we'll worry about some two-bit pirates."

  He punched up a course to intercept the red path signifying the original path of the asteroid Jain Kayle's ship had crashed into. A gentle pressure held Rada against her chair as the Tine swung about.

  She sighed, staring at the exploded missiles' residual heat on the tactical screen. She had been born in the wrong era.

  ~

  Once he had the sig, she took them back to the asteroid, stopping when the rock was on the very fringe of the Tine's sensor range. While Simm began to navigate the ad hoc e-sig database on the undernet and the Labyrinth, Rada punched up the closest thing that passed for a government: the 371st Conglomeration of Associated Asteroids and Habitats. After delivering the summary to a receptionist, she was transferred to one Boyd Huygens, a lighter-skinned man with deep bags under his eyes and a smile that apologized in advance. It was a low-band vid link with just enough of a distance-lag to result in awkward pauses between each response.

  "Like I told your assistant, we didn't get a name," Rada said. "We did pick up a signature."

  She sent it over. After a second-long lag of blank staring, his eyes snapped to his screen. He punched something into his device.

  "We have records of that sig," he said. "Problem is, the vessel that sig
is attached to is unregistered. And after a squabble like this, you can be sure they'll have it altered."

  "You can't alter your engine signature."

  "Not whole cloth. But you only have to change it enough to argue in court that it isn't a perfect match." Huygens thumbed his hat up his forehead. "They'll change their profile, too. Either that or claim their comms were down and you were coming at them with hostile intent."

  "You would believe that?"

  "Hell no," he chuckled. "But I can't prove otherwise, can I? Take a look at what went down: two ships meet in blank space. You make a threat. They fire off enough missiles to cover their ass, then turn said ass and haul it away at suicidal speed. That sound like an act of piracy to you?"

  "Maybe they're just really terrible pirates." She pressed her lips together. "What about Jain Kayle?"

  The officer sobered. "That is unfortunate. Going to ask you the same thing: What do you see when you look at it from a remove?"

  "Two ships rendezvous in blank space. Get real cuddly. A short time later, Kayle's ship crashes into the rock."

  "But there's no evidence of gunplay. Nor of overt foul play."

  "It's hard to believe it's coincidence," Rada said. "Her ship wouldn't have let her crash into an asteroid."

  "Unless the nav conked out. Or she turned off the nav to fly manual. Or stars know what else." His apologetic smile took on a grim note. "I'm not saying we won't do anything. I'm saying there's little we can do. Unless you can give us something more."

  "Such as?"

  "What brought you out to that rock in the first place?"

  Rada shrugged. "We were scheduled to meet with Jain Kayle on Ares. When she didn't show, we checked around. Discovered her last known broadcast had come from the site. Went to check her out."

  "What was the subject of your meeting? The one she missed?"

  "I honestly don't know."