Rebel Stars 1: Outlaw (2 page)

As her heart stopped, and stayed stopped, a new Needle spoked between the comset and the ship. Within an instant, the ship relayed a prerecorded Needle of its own. It was capable of sending a packet containing the totality of human literature, but the information it delivered consisted of just twelve words.

Try as they might, the crew of the indistinct ship couldn't pierce Jain's computer. In the end, they had to do it grim and dirty: grabbing hold of her ship manually, towing it out a few hundred thousand miles, then flipping around and flinging it directly at the asteroid.

When it made impact, the others turned away, struggling with their expressions, but the man who'd shot her couldn't tear his eyes from the screen. A minute earlier, she'd been nothing but dead meat. Now, she was vapor, the tail of a comet being dusted across the Solar System.

Was there anything more beautiful?

Midway through the job, with all the struts welded in place and the panels still on their way up, Webber puffed over to the wing to tie down and have lunch. Not that it was much of a lunch. All-Paste, and watered down to keep it flowing through his tube. It wasn't much of a break, either. Mummied up in a suit that looked and felt forty years old. That always smelled like stale breath (him, probably) and even staler piss (definitely
not
him—faulty recyclers, most likely). It was crummy enough that he would have been happy to shell out for his own suit.

But if he could have afforded his own suit, he wouldn't have signed up for the
Fourth Down
.

Then again, as bad as the lunch and the breaks were, he wasn't much of a worker, either. Not a welder, at least. In his defense, he hadn't signed up as one. He'd signed up as the sweeper. Sometimes literally. All the shit work, also sometimes literally. Porter, low-level maintenance, custodial. Nothing that should have put him anywhere near a torch.

It sure was pretty out on the hull, though. All that darkness, all those stars. The
Fourth Down
had a lot of charm to it, too. Apparently Captain Gomes didn't think so—the new struts and panels were purely aesthetic, there to smooth over some of the ship's more jagged, artlessly utilitarian patches—though for Webber's money, the fact it was old and showed as much made the boat far more handsome than something fresh out of the yard. A little heavy in the butt to account for the original engine design, yet more than compensated for by the fact it had wings. Extremely useless, but that's what made them extremely cool.

A figure detached from the skeleton of struts, puffed itself clear, then boosted over to the wing. A half moon glared from the forehead of his suit, slanted into an evil eye. Jons. He drifted over the wing, stopped on a dime, then pirouetted, spraying Webber with propellant.

He drifted down, clamped the soles of his boots to the surface, and grabbed some wing. For reasons known only to Jons, he transmitted the sound as he slurped down a sizable mouthful of All-Paste.

"Man," he said, flicking a hand at the view. "Does that ever spook you?"

"Every time," Webber said. "Like the eyes of a million ghosts who won't quit staring at you."

"That's not at
all
what I meant. Ghosts ain't real. I'm talking about what
exists
."

"Aliens."

"They could be looking down on us right now. Watching us on this wing, thinking, 'Man, they don't even
know
.'"

Webber sipped paste. It tasted mealy and beany with a slight tang of fermentation and a heavy aura of generic spice. "If they are, they're pretty good at keeping silent."

"That's the scariest part of all, isn't it? What have they been up to all these years? What are they preparing for?"

"Maybe we haven't heard from them because they're dead."

"Okay, turns out I was wrong about what's scariest. You know what's even worse?"

"If they're dead, what killed
them
?"

Jons laughed. "Exactly. If it wiped them out, what chance do we have?"

~

They finished a day and a half ahead of schedule. Because Gomes was a just officer, she decreed the extra time would be added to their leave, then hove away from the shipyard at Keens (which was more of a garage than a port) and toward Beagle Station, which was about as big as settlements got between Inner and Outer.

Most of the crew was ecstatic to be on the verge of nine and a half days among civilization. Webber was less sure. Civilization meant the chance for Gomes to increase or replace the crew, and as far as the current alignment went, Webber was the very bottom rung of the ladder.

Thus why he was prone to accepting assignments to weld things to other things when his only qualification for doing so was that he'd once spent seven months in the Martian warrens repairing bikes. That, and it was never an oxford idea to say no to the person who had the final word on your food, water, and oxygen.

On the trip to Beagle, he tried not to spend too much time dwelling on how much he had and how much more he owed.

He was still new enough that coming into a station felt like an event, and as they arrived, he made his way to the bridge to watch. Beagle Station looked like two long-handled hammers connected at the end of the shafts. To make do without the artificial gravity its owners refused to purchase, they'd spun it up to a sickening speed. Drone-piloted ships could dock at either head of the hammers without any trouble, but trying to come at them with live people onboard was a good way to run up your aneurysm bill. To solve this issue, one of the hammer-heads had affixed a long, long, long cable leading out to a platform reachable by a much gentler approach. Gomes was currently staring at that platform, slouched in her chair, swiveling side to side.

"You know how the Beagle got its name?" she said.

Lara, the pilot, didn't look up from her terminal. Webber glanced across the bridge. "You're talking to me?"

"Anyone else here?"

He shrugged. "Darwin's ship?"

Gomes frowned. "Who?"

"Darwin. Charles. Guy who figured out evolution."

"Never heard of him."

"Pre-Panhandler scientist. He worked out the theory by traveling to some weird islands on a boat called the
Beagle
."

Gomes took a moment to stare at him. "And you learned a thing like that where?"

"The School of Hard Knocks. Fortunately, it has pretty low entrance requirements."

"Beagle Station," she said, "was named after founder Richard Danson's beloved pet."

"A beagle."

"That was also named Beagle."

Webber decided the captain was being serious. "People get weird out here, don't they?"

"It's the lack of social accountability."

"Just wait until the first person makes it to Alpha C," he said. "They'll rename it Mittens."

Gomes snorted. Given how few conversations they'd had, Webber was certain it was the first time he'd made her laugh. He decided to leave the bridge before he spoiled the impression.

Back at his bunk, he buckled in. The ship came in at an angle, squishing his guts across an uncomfortable vector. Distantly, things clunked and whirred. His body lifted against the straps, suddenly in free fall; then he plunked down, pressed into his chair by the spin gravity. He unbuckled and headed to the airlock. The others filtered in, Jons and Vincent, Harry and Lara, Deen. No sign of the captain. The lock opened, feeding them into a rubber tunnel connected to the terminal. Inside the station, Webber got his first look at the modified profile of the
Fourth Down
.

It looked like a different ship. The irregularities of its hull had been smoothed out, particularly near its front, which was now nearly as wide as its butt. Stern. Whatever they called it. The wings were still there, but these had been blown out into blocky thumbs that might conceivably be extra stowage or living spaces. He didn't like it.

The terminal smelled like algae and strangers. Less water in the air than they were able to sustain on the ship. From an external perspective, they were docked on the underside of the auxiliary platform and the view past the station roof was dizzying: a thick cable climbing straight overhead, disappearing on its way to the two hammers a few hundred miles away. These appeared fixed in space, but beyond them, the stars streaked past like they'd just split their pants in front of their crush.

After passing security, which made a big deal of collecting everything remotely weapon-like, the crew piled into the elevator, which was fully transparent, obviously designed by sadists. As it whipped them upwards, they appeared to be floating in street clothes through empty vacuum. Webber closed his eyes, but that only made it worse.

Minutes later, with the head of a hammer looming above them, they braked to the point of free fall. The elevator entered the base of the station and glided to a stop.

The doors parted. A whiff of chlorophyll and loam whirled inside the elevator. Beyond, the ceilings were twenty feet high, a waste of space you could only afford in a foyer. Sunny light dispersed from the pale blue ceiling, showering down on the manicured shrubs and vines that pulled triple duty as park greenery, oxygen generators, and food.

"Gross," Jons muttered. He strode through the semi-circle of people waiting on the elevator. Webber followed.

Instead of a 24-hour Earth-style light cycle, Beagle kept each of its layers at a permanent level of illumination. The highest layer, with a skyward view of space, was deep night. After that, the second-highest layer was full "daylight"; as you descended toward the bottom of the hammer-head, it got progressively darker, until the second-lowest layer was back in full darkness.

Naturally, the bars, clubs, and hippest cafes clustered between Twilight and Midnight. Inevitably, the entirety of the crew (minus Harry) headed straight there.

First stop was the layer known as Sunset. Unusually wide streets between the buildings, some of which were painted to look brick. Webber was sure it was meant to evoke some Earthside city, but mostly it just looked Disney.

Jons had the best instincts for these things, so Webber followed him into a joint that was moderate in all ways: size, lighting, patronage. You didn't want your first stop too loud nor too dull. Could throw off the whole night.

Vincent, Lara, and Deen stuck with them. Even if he hadn't been the pup, Webber wouldn't have minded their presence. Deen was the hulking, quiet type; one glance at his forearms steered away trouble. Lara made it okay for women to approach them, and besides, she could match Jons shot for shot. Vincent had too many opinions about how the entire Solar System ought to be organized, and the drunker he got, the righter he became. But he was useful for running interference, and could keep the conversation going no matter the circumstances.

Jons, of course, was the one who made interesting things happen. Sometimes that meant trouble, but it was that or they might as well stick to their bunks and knit each other socks.

Jons insisted the first round of any stop be the local liquor. On Beagle, that meant something that tasted like licorice and bread mold.

"Next is on me," Vincent said, glancing across the table at the others. "Consider it my thanks for tearing through those hull mods."

"Wasn't much to it," Deen said.

"Right," Jons said. "Suit up, swim for hours on end, and do work that typically requires two certs and a diploma. No big deal."

"Must not have been," Lara said.

"Okay," Webber said. "Why?"

"
You
did it."

"I mean why bother changing up the
Fourth
in the first place? What did we accomplish with that?"

The four of them exchanged looks. Deen shrugged. "Bigger holds."

"Doubt it," Lara laughed. "Put anything heavier than a load of pillows in there, and the welds will rip off first time you try to turn. I say it's safety. A little more padding if we dock hot."

"You clowns," Jons said. "It's about looks. That ship is Gomes' baby. Her husband. Her ride. It's
her
. The way it looks reflects that. I cannot believe this is a serious question."

Webber looked around the table. A beat later, the others busted up with laughter. He smiled and bought the next round.

After that, they relocated to a place down the block, then dropped a level lower into Twilight, which was three times as rowdy. They were still feeling the cramp from the ship and quickly relocated to Last Light, where the ceiling was smudged with purple light and the people were downright demure, as if paying their last respects to the day. Vincent began to try his luck on the local girls. Next time Webber looked up, the man was gone.

When Jons suggested a descent to Midnight, Lara shook her head. "Not me. Too early in the trip for that."

Deen nodded his agreement. Jons raised his eyebrows at Webber. Webber was starting to get his stations legs under him and agreed without hesitation.

Midnight was actually two layers deep, but Jons stopped at Midnight-One, swinging into a bar Webber vaguely remembered from their last visit. Total crewman's bar where even the darkest-skinned people looked pale and nine-tenths of the crowd wore black clothes—not for fashion, but to better hide the stains. Jons plugged them into a booth, strolled to the bar, and returned with four doses of the moldy licorice-tasting stuff.

"What's up?" Jons said after the first was down.

"Nothing."

"Don't 'nothing' me. We bunk together. I can read you like you were my wife."

"I owe." Webber traced his finger around the rim of the full shot. "Money."

"Who doesn't? Why else would you be crewing?"

"On a house."

"A
house
?" Jons peered at him, brown eyes sharp with disbelief. "Tell me it's not on Earth."

He nodded. He hadn't meant to say it, but most of what got spoken in Midnight was that way. "It's not mine."

"Definitionally, I can't say I agree with you! Whose is it, then?"

"Complicated." Webber lifted the little glass. He knew the devil was inside it, but he drank anyway. "I've been doing a lot of reading. Back channels on the net. I hear that once you owe so much, when you pass the threshold…" He looked past Jons' shoulder. "You disappear."