Rebel Stars 1: Outlaw

by Edward W. Robertson

  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."

  Huygens pushed out his lower lip, narrowing his eyes to slits. "You're supposed to meet. No idea why. But you do know it's so important that when she misses her meeting, you immediately track down her last known whereabouts and fly straight there. Have I got this right?"

  "On the nose."

  He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips. "I'll send someone out to do a sweep. In the meantime, if you can remember anything more, I would suggest you let me know. Assuming you want to learn the truth."

  He smiled and signed off.

  Rada swore. "Was he blackmailing me for intel?"

  Simm was nose-deep in his device. "It sounded more like the self-awareness that his institution would be unlikely to turn up any results without more of a lead. Also, he's a detective. Detectives can't stand when part of the story's being hidden from them."

  "Well, that settles it. We'll continue to look into this ourselves."

  Simm looked up from his screen and regarded her with naked amusement. "I wasn't aware you had any intention of stopping."

  "What's our next step? I say we follow whoever Jain was meeting while the trail's still hot."

  "Agreed." He gestured to his device. "Somebody on the net's got a line on the e-sig. The match isn't perfect, but the signature was decaying for more than a day before we got here. Could be our bogey."

  "Yeah?" They were currently at a dead stop, zero-G. She grabbed the handle on the ceiling and squeezed forward, activating its magnets; it skated across the ferrous ceiling, dragging her behind it. "What are they asking for the ID?"

  "Twelve point five."

  She snorted, halting directly above him. "Talk him down to eleven."

  "That would be exceedingly difficult," Simm said. "As I've already paid him."

  "Are you joking? Why?"

  "Because he had it, we want it, and that's what he was asking. Besides, what's fifteen hundred to Toman?"

  "Fifteen hundred he didn't have to spend. Running this ship across the system is comically expensive as it is."

  He stared up at her. "Well, there's good news, if you care to hear it. The ship's owner is right down the block. Less than a thirty-second lag from here. Want me to dial her up?"

  "Punch it in." She was already hand-skating back across the ceiling toward her chair. "We're going in person."

  Simm nodded and fed his coordinates into the ship. Rada pushed off the ceiling, got a hold on her seat, and buckled in. The ship accelerated gently, sticking her in place. For a moment, she felt guilty about burning time and fuel when they could speak to the ship's owner via radio. But there were advantages to seeing someone in person, even if "in person" only meant getting close enough to talk in real-time, without a minutes-long lag between each response. Having a conversation in real time meant there was no opportunity to perfect every response. If somebody was lying, it was far easier to catch them.

  Besides, so much of what the Hive accomplished was done from desks, screens, and private rooms, removed from the action by millions of miles. That's why Toman was paying to put them out in the field, right? To give the org a presence in the physical world to match the one they kept on the nets. This was their job.

  She dislodged her device from the armrest. "I'm going to put everything we've got into a Needle and zip it to the Hive. Sealed, for now—EOMD."

  Simm sat back from his device, eyeing the rocks dotting their course ahead. "Shouldn't that be in the event of our death?"

  "I assume you have a plan to back yourself up and live forever among the ones and zeros."

  He chuckled. "Trust me, if I could, I would."

  She rolled together everything they'd learned so far and Needled it into the darkness. She had a lot of faith in herself, and even more in the Tine, but if Simm was right about the sigs, they were on their way to see whoever had been with Jain Kayle at the time of the incident. And that was enough to plant a seed of doubt in her gut.

  Maybe it was the prospect of meeting with a potential killer. Maybe it was the lingering adrenaline of the pirate attack less than two hours earlier. Whatever the case, her biology was asserting itself in a major way.

  "So," she said. "Want to take advantage of gravity while we've got it?"

  Simm glanced her way, then did a double take. "Yes. Yes I do."

  She unbuckled her seat, stood, and walked toward his station, drawing down the zipper of her flight jacket. Often, she resented the urges of her biology. It rarely knew what was best for her. After what they'd been through in the last few hours, though? She was happy to be its servant.

  ~

  The e-sig of the ship Simm had identified at the crash site was registered to one Ophelia Major, resident of Taub's Pebble, one of hundreds of asteroids hollowed out for raw materials, then refitted as habitats. Entry to it was invite-only, and while it and eighteen other nearby rocks were organized within a loose confederation, Rada had her doubts that its police force would give a damn about her unofficial, outsider investigation of one of its citizens.

  She drafted a message and sent it off. Simm ID'd their ship to Taub's Pebble and was granted clearance to park a few hundred miles away. While Rada waited for a response, she floated to the galley, which was really more of a closet with nozzles, and dispensed herself a bag of espresso. As she did so, she glanced at Simm, who always asked why she didn't simply order pure caffeine—the answer being that she enjoyed participating in a cultural ritual that was now well over a thousand years old. But he'd fallen asleep in his chair, hands and feet drifting like the weeds in the shallows of a quiet pond.

  The call came in before she'd drained half of the little bag. She dropped the bag, clipped herself to the wall, and got out her device. The caller had no face or name attached, but it was the same address Rada had pinged.

  She enabled video of herself. "Ms. Major?"

  The woman's voice was gravelly and exasperated, as if she stayed up too many nights complaining about the laziness of her kids. "You said you're interested in the Piper?"

  "That's correct," Rada said. "If you don't mind—"

  "You're too late."

  "Too late? For what, exactly?"

  "To see it. Buy it. Whatever you had in mind. Six days ago, it got pounced. Pirates. Nothing but scrap."

  "Gods," Rada said. "But you're all right?"

  "Wasn't on it. If I had been, we'd be talking at those jackals' funeral."

  "May I ask who was piloting it at the time?"

  "Nobody," the woman said. "Flying drone. They hijacked it. Tried to ransom it to me. I did my all to negotiate, but sometimes I'm more stubborn than oxford. Yesterday, I gave them an ultimatum. This morning, they sent me a rather nasty reply." She laughed raspily. "So I pushed the button."

  Rada's jaw dropped. "You had it rigged to blow?"

  "And they were too damn dumb to shut down my comm to it."

  "When it was taken, did you report it to the police?"

  "For all the good I knew it would do."

  Rada chuckled ruefully, then let her expression grow serious. "Ms. Major, I'm afraid that while these criminals were in possession of the Piper, they may have done some bad things. If you can tell me anything about them, I can help prevent them from hurting anyone else."

  "Can't," Major said. "Completely anonymized."

  "Can I have a look at the files? Our software may—"

  "Can't and won't. Ma'am, I don't know you. For all I know you're working for them. Here's the facts: they took my ship, and now they're dead. Far as I'm concerned, I got my justice."

  "Ms. Major—"

  The line went black.

  Rada hurled her device across the cabin. It cracked into the wall and rebounded, skimming t
oward Simm. He cried out and ducked behind his chair. The device knocked against its back and spun away. Rada pushed off on an intercept course, snagging the device and inspecting it for damage, absently catching herself against the ceiling.

  Simm floated from behind the chair. "What did that accomplish?"

  "It successfully rebooted my emotional state. Now: dissect."

  "It's a plausible story," he said without a moment to reflect. "With lower-value ships, it can be more profitable to steal and ransom them than to reconfigure them. It's also logical to use a stolen ship in the commission of a crime you don't want connected to a ship you do own."

  "But?"

  "But she refuses to provide any hard evidence that this actually happened. Her story is extremely convenient. It then becomes possible she was somehow involved in the crash of Jain Kayle's ship."

  "My thinking exactly." Rada rubbed a scuff on the corner of her device. "But it's also possible the pirates stole the Piper with the express purpose of hurting Jain."

  Simm frowned. "Unlikely. Piper had some defenses, but nothing like Jain's Ship With No Name."

  Lacking adequate gravity to throw herself despondently into a chair, Rada settled for flinging out her limbs and flopping on her back. She spun slowly, gazing up at the ceiling.

  "If anything, this just opened up more questions. Could be Major was involved. Could be pirates. The e-sig you picked up, were there any other matches?"

  "Nothing I would consider remotely probable. Bear in mind, however, that the databases are user-generated. Plenty of ships don't appear there."

  She was approaching a wall. She drew her limbs trunkward, getting her feet under her to absorb the coming impact. "Could it be IRP? Payback for the Rebel?"

  "We haven't had any problems with them since then," Simm said. "Besides, they'd have to know about Jain and her extremely recent and equally tenuous connection to us. It would be a highly convoluted scenario."

  "Well, keep it in the back of your mind. For now, let's dig up everything we can on Ophelia Major. Check in with the cops regarding local pirate activity. Offer a bounty for anyone who can ID our e-sig."

  Simm scratched the back of his head. "Alternately, we could quit."

  Rada caught herself against the wall and swung about to stare at him. "Simm, she was murdered."

  "We don't know that. We don't know her, either. We don't even know what she was going to tell us."

  "All signs are it was pretty damned important! We haven't even been on the case for two days. If Toman wants to recall us, he can recall us. Until then, I want to get hold of the local cops and—"

  Her device dinged. She blinked at it. "Speak of the devil." She glanced at Simm, then switched the feed to the receivers implanted in her ears.

  Toman Benez's face appeared on her device, which indicated they had an eight-second lag. "Hey Rada. I don't have time for an extended chat. But I wanted to let you know I got your message. And I read it."

  "What?" she said. "That was event of death only!"

  For eight seconds, he fiddled with a second device. When her words finally reached him, he looked up and grinned. "So imagine how relieved I am to see you're alive! Listen, I'm sure you're busy, but if you're not in the middle of anything too sticky, can you swing by the Hive? I'd like to discuss our strategy in person. See you soon!"

  He winked and blanked off.

  Rada tethered the device to her leg. "Change of plans. We're headed to the Hive."

  Simm raised his brows. "That was Toman, wasn't it?"

  "Sure was. And when Toman Benez suggests you drop by for a chat, you strap in and punch it as hard as you can stand."

  6

  "Pirates?" Jons leaned from his bunk closer to the screen. "Where do you get that?"

  "Because that ship is burning," Webber said. "And we're dodging."

  "Could be what we're dodging is burning pieces of ship."

  "This is what the mods were about. MacAdams and Taz, they're not electrical engineers. They're security. Marines."

  The ship juked again. Jons rocked and swore, grabbing at his back. "Okay, well, if you frame it like that, it makes kind of a lot of sense. Except for the part where it's totally fucking crazy."

  "It's only crazy to a sane person. Gomes is on the brink of losing everything. How cohesive do you think she is?"

  On the screen, a spread of rockets leapt from the bow, engines igniting in silvery starbursts, and spiraled toward the flaming vessel. Sparks fired from the rear of the wounded ship. Four flashes of light signaled the death of one rocket after another. One went off beside the crippled ship, followed by a second. Rather than being torn to shreds, however, the ship simply went silent. No lights. No launches. No nothing. Just a cape of flames that was already dwindling to nothing.

  "Pulsed out their power," Jons said.

  Webber inched to the edge of his bed. "Can't be that simple. What about backups?"

  "Judging by the way that thing defended itself? Full-on drone, baby. It's got its maneuvers, its defensive algorithms, but that's never going to stand up against a pirate who knows their way around a fight. Bet you two grand that's how Gomes' new crew is earning their keep."

  Webber's head bobbed down; they were accelerating. Nothing too intense. On the screen, the disabled ship slowly drew nearer, continuing to coast on its momentum even as the Fourth Down moved to close.

  "Gomes is more desperate than she's let on," Webber said. "Check it out. None of us are in on this, right?"

  "Can't be. I've played way too much poker with these guys to miss when they're bluffing. Nobody had a clue."

  "There's no alarms. No announcements. She hasn't even turned on the seatbelt light. We're not supposed to know this is happening."

  Jons poked his head from the side of his bunk and met his eyes. "Where are you headed with this?"

  "Every one of us is in debt, right? Past the eyeballs and up to the scalp. Bet you anything her Plan B is that, if anyone figured her out, she'd buy them off." Webber pressed his palms together. "But what if we unionize?"

  "Is that a fancy word for mutiny?"

  "She just made us accessories to piracy. If she's going to expose us to that kind of risk? She'd better make it worth our while."

  Jons tented his fingers over his nose, eyes hooded. "Or we shut this off. Pour ourselves a drink. And pretend we didn't see a damn thing."

  "That sounds like a good way to stay stuck here for the rest of our lives. Getting put to use by someone who sees us as nothing more than human cogs. With nothing more to look forward to than the next time we can get drunk and, if we're really lucky, get in a fight with some other sailors." Webber swung his feet over the edge of the bunk, careful not to bonk his head on the ceiling. "I say we round up the others. Tell them what's up. And demand our cut of the action."

  Jons laughed and ejected himself from his bunk. "When did you start believing there was a future, you son of a bitch? One condition: before we rally the troops, we stock up at the galley. No way I mutiny without a cup full of grog."

  Their door was sealed—Webber was looking forward to Gomes' explanation for that one—but Jons delved into his device and went to work. Two minutes later, with the other ship filling half the screen, a cylindrical pod launched from the Fourth.

  Webber tapped Jons on the shoulder. "See that?"

  "Life raft," Jons said. "What do you want to bet Taz and MacAdams are on board? Ready to snatch up the loot?"

  "Better move fast. While Gomes is alone."

  Jons stuck his tongue between his teeth and resumed work. A minute later, the door slid open.

  "Let's get them one by one," Webber said. "Will be easier to win them over."

  Jons nodded. "Lara first. If we convince her, the others will fall like dominoes. While I work on her door—"

  "I know." Webber saluted. "The grog."

  The hallway was dark, quiet. He tiptoed to the galley, punched up an order of dark rum, and watched the thick, syrupy liquid pour into his plastic j
ug. Finished, he sealed its sippy lid and jogged toward Lara's quarters. The door was closed but opened to his touch. Inside, she stood with her feet planted shoulder-width, separated from Jons by three feet. She snapped to face Webber. Her expression froze.

  "Oh no," she said. "You guys are serious."

  He took a drink and thrust the jug Jons' way. "I don't like it any more than you. If you want to go back to bed, we'll pretend we were never here. But Gomes, she just put our future at risk. Our lives. Roll over, or come with us to the bridge—your choice."

  "Way to make me sound like I'm a pussy if I say no." She stuck out her hand. "Give me that bottle."

  Next was Harry. As their local fixer—a glorified diplomat—he saw which way the wind was blowing. He didn't even ask for a full explanation.

  After that, they went to Deen. To Webber's surprise, the big man shook his head. "Guys, you're talking about mutiny. We signed a contract."

  "Yeah," Jons said, "and Captain just flushed it down the tube. How can you stand behind someone who just made you an accessory?"

  "Because either way, this is pure dirt. I choose to wash my hands." Deen crossed his thick arms. "I won't back you. But I won't get in your way, either."

  Webber nodded. "Might want to lock your door until it blows over."

  That left Vincent. Appreciative of logic, but highly contrarian. Webber readied three different arguments. When they sprung his door, he stood on the other side, amused.

  "So," he said, twirling a knife. "Finally figured out what those mods are intended to hide? They're made of lead for a reason, you know."

  "I'm just the one who welded them down," Webber said. "You with us? Or would you rather mock us from afar?"

  "I'm assuming you saved me for last. Where's Deen?"

  "Switzerland."

  "Huh?"

  "He's decided he's above both sides."

  "That's because he doesn't understand that, when the revolution comes, standing back looks the same as standing with the enemy." Victor sighed and reached for the jug. "I'm with you on one condition: first, we negotiate. Gomes is no fool. We'd be wise to hear her reasons for her course of action before we fling her out the airlock."