Rebel (Rebel Stars Book 0) (4 page)

"Law of the Inky Void," Rada said. "Do you lay claim to this as our captain, sir? Or do you waive your rights to it?"

"You people are serious, aren't you? You realize this is probably nothing more than an iron-heavy meteorite. And that your enthusiasm for it is nothing more than a way to vent the emotions stirred up by the attack."

"Like make-up sex," Karry said.

Rada snorted. "Except with more pirates."

"Speak for yourself."

"Answer the lady's question!" Stem barked. "You want it or not?"

"A couple hours ago, all you people could talk about was how we were about to die." He cleared his throat. "I hereby claim this find in the name of the
Box Turtle
and its present crew."

A cheer erupted in both carts. Rada didn't make a habit of ranking a sound's appeal, but it was without doubt the best noise she'd heard in days.

~

The rescue came on schedule. The ship was an old bastard—not in the sense that it was ancient and beat up, though it was, but in the sense it had been designed to pull double duty as both a mining/hauling barge and as a general recon/transport vessel. Its crew were independents like themselves. They asked nine hundred different questions about the pirate attack, sympathizing mightily. The
Box Turtle's
crew answered readily but kept mum about the shadow beneath the ice.

Triton had a few settlements, but they were in the market for a repair crew, so the OB delivered them to Skylon, the moon's major mining orbital. This had started life as a spin-gravity ring, but had been supplemented with a series of unsexy boxes as soon as it had gotten artificial gravity. They made port. While they thanked the rescue team, Parson paid up, which included a low upfront fee and a cut of their next few mining gigs. Rada sniffed the air. Skylon always smelled acidic, like a crude cleaning product.

Once the OB's people shuffled off, Parson turned to his crew. "I'm going to have my hands full overseeing the
Turtle
. Try not to get in too much trouble in the meantime, okay?"

"Any idea how long it'll take to patch it up?" Rada said.

"You know how engines are. Could be three days, could be three months."

Genner tipped back her head. "Their first estimate sounded optimistic. 'A few pinholes to plug up.'"

"Assuming those didn't cause any deeper damage." He held up his palms. "I'll keep you in the loop. Don't be running off. Not if you want to see what Nereid's been preserving for us."

Rada saluted informally, reaching across her body to touch the side of her hip where people had once worn swords. Parson returned the gesture and strode off, already making another call on his device.

Stem spread his feet and crossed his arms, gazing at the elevators that would take them down to the inhabited levels. "Feels good to have solid metal under your boots again."

"How is this different than being on the
Box Turtle
?" Rada said.

"For starters, the
Turtle
only has one bar. And it sucks."

He grinned and headed for the elevators. Rada wanted to protest it was too early, but her last "night" had been before they'd tried to leave Nereid with the ore. Besides, after the last 24 hours, she wouldn't have cared if it was six-thirty in the morning.

On their way to the elevators, they crossed a transparent floor that looked down on the upper layer of the station. The levels below it were your typical honeycomb, but the topmost floor could pass for a city on Earth: tight-packed apartments climbing toward the ceiling, their roofs a patchwork of gardens and (very small) swimming pools, the streets tight bands, most too narrow for cart traffic, stuffed instead with electric bikes, scooters, and boards. Walking above it was dizzying, but exhilarating, too, and it put Rada in the right mood for the descent to the more modest levels where people like her could afford to spend their time.

It was their first night on leave and unofficial rules insisted that everyone start the night together, including Genner, who almost certainly wouldn't be there for night two. Lately, Skylon had been the
Box Turtle's
de facto base of operations. Within it, Shine was their de facto bar. She didn't feel the slightest tremor of surprise as Stem ordered the elevator down to the eighth level.

After several stops, the door swished open to a plaza of relaxed dissipation. A handful of men sat on benches, enjoying the night, gazing into the trees and swigging from black plastic bottles. Down the maze-like streets, people yelled at each other, but it wasn't aggressive. Just people too drunk to care how loud they were being.

Stem crossed the plaza, stepping over crinkled food wrappers and spent vape cartridges. Residential holes surrounded the park, but within blocks, it was all bars, restaurants, theaters, and shops. The air smelled like perfume, stale sweat, fried soy, and spiced prot. Just as the crowds of miners, crewmen, and locals grew thick enough to require weaving through, Stem swerved inside the Shine.

The interior was the same as the last time she'd seen it. Dim. Small trays on the tables to keep your device safe from spilled beer. For those who liked to know exactly what they were ordering, it had a dispenser, but the Shine drew its name from the prodigious quantity of home-distilled spirits it carried behind the counter. Everyone but Genner ordered the nightly special.

The nightly special tasted a lot like pig with a splash of generic citrus. Not the maker's finest effort. Rada didn't care. For a while, their table didn't talk much, or if they did, it was about what they thought they might do later in the night.

She could see it on Stem's face, though. She knew, long before he did, what his question would be.

"So," he said, flicking a shot glass across the table with a rattle. "Do you really think that thing's Pre-Virus?"

Rada shrugged. "That's not what I told Parson, is it?"

"Nope. But sometimes when you think a thing but you're not one hundred percent sure, you pretend you don't
really
think it. That way, if you're wrong, no one will see it."

She stared across the table, aware of the other three watching them. "I forget, which school did you get your psych degree from again?"

He took a moment to decide whether to get angry or to laugh, then waved his hand. "All I want to know is whether I'm about to be so rich I need to buy a suit."

"Chances are it's an old freighter. But I think it's worth taking a look."

"So there is a chance," Yed said. "That means the PVs got into space? Then how'd the aliens nearly wipe them out?"

She didn't know if he was interested in the subject or in watching her talk, but her last drink had promoted her to Professor of All Subjects. Beyond that, it astounded her how little most people knew of the era. Sure, it had taken place a thousand years ago. But the Panhandler virus and the invasion had answered one of the biggest questions of all time: was there intelligent life outside Earth?

The answer had been yes. And it had wanted humanity dead.

"Pre-Virus, they explored for decades." She held up her glass, pointing at the ceiling with her index finger. "But they hadn't settled anywhere. All the Swimmers had to do to knock them out was hit Earth."

Yed frowned. "If they were in space for that long, why didn't they inhabit it?"

"Nobody knows for sure. Records show their enthusiasm to explore dwindled fast. There's some indication they might have been headed for a collapse even if the Swimmers hadn't arrived—their economies were still oil-based, and their financial system was in ruins. Most historians think this sapped their will to embark on colossally expensive colonization efforts."

"Didn't anyone ever tell them about the thing with the eggs and the baskets?"

"It was a completely different time, Yed. No one knew that aliens were out there. The Swimmers haven't been back since. You could argue that all the expansion we've scrambled to do has been a giant miscalculation."

He took a drink. "Yeah, but we're here, aren't we?"

"Expanding was good process," Genner said. "No matter what the results have been."

Karry smacked down his glass. "I don't give a shit if the idiots from a thousand years ago were only kind of idiots or if they were real big idiots. Here's what I want to know. Say that thing under the ice
is
a PV ship. What would it be worth?"

"There's nothing else like it in the system," Rada said. "It would be literally priceless."

"And we all got a share."

The crew exchanged looks.

"Or," Stem said, "it could be a prehistoric PV cesspool. We'll dig it up and walk out with nothing but shit."

Rada laughed, but he was right. She was getting ahead of herself. She didn't know what they'd found. Until they got out there and started digging, the only reasonable course was to go on as if her life wouldn't change at all.

Some time later, as she was getting antsy to move on to another bar, she went up for a refill. The bartender was a few years younger than Rada, with smoky eyes and lean, hard-cut arms. As Rada waited for the woman to deliver her drink, a man in a tailored yet casual suit leaned beside her on the bar.

"This will sound strange," he said. "But are you Rada Pence?"

She eyed him. "I am. And I'm not nearly famous enough to not wonder how you know that."

"I'm Rigel. Like the star." He was handsome, with a nose that might have been large if it hadn't been so well-proportioned to his face. "I represent Dison Concerns."

"You say that like I should care."

He laughed lightly. "Don't you? You applied for a job with us."

The bartender delivered her drink, allowing Rada a moment to absorb this. "Since when do you hunt down your applicants in person?"

"When we actually want to talk to them. Besides, I didn't
find
you. I'm stationed on Skylon. Local talent scout, if you will. Just happened to recognize you."

"Small world, isn't it?"

"Sometimes. So you want a job?"

"A week ago? Absolutely. Right now, I can't commit."

He raised an eyebrow, instantly turning himself into the archest thing in the Shine. "What changed?"

Rada shook her head and sipped her drink. "Could be nothing. But I have a job to finish for my captain before I contemplate hopping ship."

"Is that what you'd consider your greatest flaw? Your unflagging loyalty?"

"If I've got the job, why am I still being interviewed?"

Rigel held up a palm. "Because you haven't taken the job yet, have you?"

"Give me your contact, and I'll let you know as soon as I can."

He opened a line between his device and hers and sent over his info. "Good luck with your job, Rada. I look forward to speaking to you again under more formal circumstances."

She returned to their table. As she sat, Stem kept his eyes locked firmly on the bar. "Who was that?"

"Who was what?" Rada glanced toward the bar, where Rigel was still stationed. "Just some guy."

"Some guy who wants to get thrown outside?"

"You should be flattered, Stem. It means I'm desirable."

At the moment, she found his jealousy nothing of the sort, but that didn't stop her from wanting him when they stumbled to their apartment hours later. They'd been on the
Turtle
a long time. Anyway, the pirate attack had stirred up feelings that could only be dealt with through primal means.

After, though, with the hormones draining from her brain to leave nothing but pure thought, she knew Stem was a dead end. Something she'd fallen into and hadn't bothered to climb out of.

Which more or less described her entire existence.

It was time to make some changes. To reset the vector of her life. Whether or not the dig panned out, she had a new job in hand. Flush with sudden enthusiasm, she took her device to the other room and started to write Rigel a letter—and to begin a second one to Stem—but after a few minutes, she shut down her device.

This wasn't the way to do it, typing drunkenly and wantonly in the dark, trying to torpedo all her problems with one furious attack. She needed to approach them one at a time. If the dig
was
a PV spacecraft, she could take her share of the profits and retire. Strike that—she could buy her own ship. Go and do as she pleased.

If it turned out to be nothing, then she'd take the job with Dison Concerns. Changing ships would take care of the Stem issue. She could knock off the drinking, too. Study navigation, work her way up to a pilot's chair.

One thing at a time. Starting with the dig.

~

In the morning, she began a routine that would last her until the end of leave. When she woke—no earlier than late morning, and only then if she was too hungover to sleep—she hunted the net for all records of Pre-Virus spacecraft. These records, like all such things of the time, were incredibly spotty. Much of the era's history had transitioned to digital shortly before the plague and had been lost when the world's grid went dark. Between the wars, fires, and rot, paper records hadn't fared much better.

She didn't care how hard it was, how little knowledge her efforts produced. The discovery had the power to change her life for good. Every minute of effort was worth it.

Besides, it was the best way she had to kill the time.

When the hour crossed the boundary between late afternoon and early evening, she went out with Stem and whichever members of the crew were fit enough to drag their carcasses out of their rooms. The nights were blurry. Fun, though. Besides, it would all stop soon enough. Why not make the most of what time she had left?

During the rest of her leave, she watched Stem get in two fights, only one of which she deemed justified.

Captain Parson reported that repairs on the engines were going as fast as could be hoped. He wanted the
Box Turtle
operational and the repair team off of Nereid before starting work on the object in the ice, but he estimated that would take no longer than two weeks. He would have all necessary materials assembled before then.