Rebel Stars 1: Outlaw (5 page)

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.

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 spacefaring 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."

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.