Rebel Stars 1: Outlaw (6 page)

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."

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 toward 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."