Rebel Stars 1: Outlaw (14 page)

"Those on proximity?" Gomes said.

Taz didn't turn from the screen. "Do you need to ask?"

"Do you need to ask,
Captain
."

Taz glanced halfway back. "They are indeed on proxy. Captain. Pulling up effective range."

A translucent green circle expanded from the green dot of the other ship. The three rockets arced apart, each one chased by a number of the enemy interceptors. They began to spiral and juke, doing little to throw off their pursuit. The nearest rocket veered back toward the Cooper ship. Before it had crossed halfway to the wide green circle marking what Webber guessed was the range at which it became useful, one of the enemy missiles closed on it. The instant before impact, a white flash burst from the
Fourth's
rocket. Then both missiles exploded in a blue-white sphere.

Taz swore. The other two rockets continued on, nearing the translucent green boundary. The enemy vessel began to veer, but its forward momentum was so immense it was hardly changing course. A swarm of countermeasures hemmed in a second rocket. It went off, following the same burst pattern as the first.

Still several seconds from effective range, the third rocket neared the interceptors. Gomes glanced at Taz. Taz only had eyes for the screens. The red pinpricks denoting the enemy missiles closed on the
Fourth's
last rocket, blotting it out. Webber let out his breath.

There was no burst. The rocket leapt free of the screen of red and streaked toward the Cooper vessel. Red specks turned tail, trying to follow. The rocket cleared the translucent circle, streaked forward, and vanished in a white flash.

Taz leapt to her feet and pumped her fist. "Hell yeah!"

On screen, the enemy began to zigzag wildly, exactly the way a guy might if you were to box his ears and poke him in the eyes. MacAdams clapped once. Another missile zipped away from the
Fourth Down
, taking the straightest route toward the blinded ship. It wouldn't kill it—just knock out its engines.

"Let's suit up," MacAdams said. "The sooner we launch, the sooner we're out of here."

Webber followed him toward the exit. Jons fell in beside him and slapped him on the shoulder. "Go get 'em."

"There better not be any 'em to be got," Webber said. "Listen, if anything happens to me—"

"I know. Make sure to pull your pants back up before they see you."

He laughed, regarding the floor. "There's a file on my device. EOMD. Take care of it for me?"

Jons nodded slowly. "Of course."

The words removed a cold shard from his heart. He jogged to catch up with MacAdams and Taz on their way to the shuttle parked in the fore of the
Fourth
. They already had their suits on; before the excitement at the bridge, Jons had prepped the shuttle. Outside the airlock, they affixed their helmets and double-checked their seals. Webber hadn't worn one since he and Jons had been tasked with welding duty over a month ago, and inside the confined space, his breathing felt tight and loud.

"No worries." MacAdams tapped him on the side of the helmet. "Most likely, we get in there and stroll straight to the loot. If anything gets ornery with us, follow our lead. Remember all the hours you've simmed. And trust your team to get you home safe."

"Got it," Webber said.

They entered the lock. As they waited for it to cycle, Gomes piped up: "Engines down. It's all yours, marines."

"Damn right," Taz said.

Past the shuttle's empty cargo bay, the cockpit was as tight as Webber's helmet. Taz settled in at the controls, MacAdams at copilot. In all likelihood, they wouldn't have to touch a thing. Webber wondered what it must have felt like back in the days when autopilot had been the exception rather than the rule.

The shuttle clunked and eased forward from the
Fourth
, thrusters pushing it up and away from the mother vessel. A zoomed-in screen showed the Cooper ship drifting at high speed but zero acceleration. Its tail burned wimpily, debris tumbling into the void. The shuttle's computer registered each piece, determined their course, and adjusted its own route accordingly. The shuttle reached safe distance and blasted forward, jamming Webber into his chair.

They looped over the expanding debris field and came at the crippled ship from above. It was prettier than most, a teardrop of smooth curves. The hull even appeared to sport windows—almost certainly fake. The shuttle neared, hosing down the few remaining embers, then clamped tight, jostling them about.

With physical contact made, Webber finally felt the full measure of what he was doing. He was scared—so scared that, although he was strapped down, he had to grip the arms of his chair to stop himself from trying to stand. But even more, he felt a sense of destiny, that his past was a pyramid and this moment was its peak.

A light on the main screen switched from red to green.

Taz punched her fist above her head. "Let's
do
this."

They were no longer accelerating, and as the Cooper vessel was a drone, it had no artificial gravity. The three of them unbuckled. MacAdams and Taz launched themselves toward the shuttle's hatch. Webber bunched his feet, admonished himself not to screw it up, and leapt after them, grabbing onto one of the rungs around the door.

MacAdams confirmed they were ready, then popped the hatch. The other ship hung not thirty feet beneath them, dark and still. With the skyscape of stars fixed behind it, it was easy to forget they were racing along at thousands of miles per minute.

MacAdams braced himself and fired a line toward the Cooper ship. Its magnetic tip struck the hull and held fast. He pushed off, secured to the line by a strap, and coasted across the gap, reaching the KO'd transport and locking his soles to the hull. He gestured.

Webber's turn. His heart had never beat harder. Nothing to do but to do it. He tied himself to the line, took three deep breaths, and pushed off.

Too fast. Coming at the hull like a meaty rocket. He clamped the hand brake on his strap and slowed with a jerk. He was afraid he'd lost too much, but he continued to slide forward. The ship loomed above/below him. He swung about and landed with a click. The world reoriented itself.

Taz zipped down, flipped over, and stuck. MacAdams consulted the device built into the forearm of his suit and led the way. Rather than attempting to enter the breach opened by the missile, he circumnavigated a quarter of the hull, stopped at a hatch, scanned it, planted a charge, and waved them back. The blast was hardly more than a puff of smoke. The hatch sprung open.

As usual, MacAdams was first inside. Webber followed into an airlock so minuscule that, if it hadn't already been open, would have required two cycles to pass the three of them through. MacAdams lobbed a thumb-sized black object past the lock and into the depths of the ships. The mini-drone scooted into the bay beyond.

Thirty seconds of exploration later, MacAdams gave a bulky thumbs up. "All clear."

Beyond the airlock, a shiny stripe marked a ferrous lane through the cargo hold. MacAdams walked along it into a room that would have felt large if not for the fact it was all but filled with modular cargo cans. The big man was halfway down it when a port in the far wall opened fire.

"You think," Rada said, "that the guy who everyone thinks is dead—including his dear, beloved sister, who he cherished above all else—isn't really dead."

"I don't
think
that," Simm said. "That would imply a level of confidence I'm nowhere near."

"But you think it's possible."

"It would patch a lot of the holes in the fabric. Like who's paying for Dinah's care?"

Rada laughed in disbelief. "I don't know, her mother's estate?"

"
Before
Jain died. Xixi said that Jain never gave enough. So during the years between when Pip died and now, who was paying for it?"

"His life insurance."

"I've been searching around. He did have life insurance, but the payment was nothing exceptional."

"There's probably a trust. They would have to make sure Dinah would still be cared for in case she outlived them."

"I might see that as further evidence that Pip had no intention of outliving her." Simm pressed his index fingers together and held them against his upper lip. "Regardless, I don't see records of any such thing."

She stared across the darkness of the ship, adjusting her weightless body within the straps. "Let's say your idea is worthy of exploration. How would you start?"

"Financial systems are going to be locked too tight to do much from the ship. I'd go to the Hive."

"Wrong," Rada said. "You'd ask Toman if he's okay with using the Hive to sneak into institutional financial data."

He stared at her. "We should probably do that instead."

He put his theory into a ten-minute-long message complete with sources and links. Just as he was ready to send it, Rada locked down the Needle.

"Are you crazy?" she said. "You're sending a message to
Toman Benez
. He doesn't have time to plow through ten minutes of your rambling nonsense. Summary first. If that catches his interest, then he can plow into the rest."

Simm bobbed his head, edited down a quick summary, and sent it on its way. They were currently working with about a six-minute lag (and closing), but there was no telling how long it might take Toman to get to the message. He replied within twenty.

"An exciting theory," his prerecorded response said. "If only because it's so outlandish. I suggest you make a cursory run at it. Before you use the Hive as the centerpiece of a criminal hacking spree, however, how about you try some legal methods first?"

In response, Simm sent, "Acknowledged. Do you have a suggestion for an alternate route of investigation?"

This time, Toman's response took fifteen minutes to come back. He opened with an eye-roll of epic proportions. "Oh, I don't know. Why don't you ask Little Pip's financial advisor?"

Rada gawked. "He had a financial advisor?"

"Yes, he had a financial advisor," Toman continued; the message was prerecorded, but he'd anticipated her response. "
Why
did a backwater wage-slave need a financial advisor? Well, how should I know? Isn't that what I hire you people to find out?" He bugged his eyes at the camera, then clucked his tongue. "Oh, interesting fact number two: Pip only hired said advisor six months before his death. Toman out!"

He signed off. He'd attached a bundle of files to his final response and Rada spent the next several minutes combing through it.

"Okay, back to his life insurance policy," she said. "It looks totally normal. Exactly what you'd expect from a guy like Pip."

Simm shrugged. "Perhaps that's because he didn't want to draw suspicion by taking out a massive policy right before his death. A thorough investigation would turn up his fraud. Dinah would get nothing."

"How much do you think that claim would last her? Five years? With a payoff that modest, why bother faking your death at all?"

"I couldn't possibly know how Pip's mind works."

She inserted her device in the arm of her chair and craned her neck to look him in the eye. "Simm, I know you pride yourself on your unassailable objectivity. But sometimes, you have an idea that you think is so great you start skipping past all the hints that you might be wrong."

"Whether or not that's true, do you have a better idea?"

Rada gritted her teeth. "No."

"So would you rather retire to the Hive and pass the case off to someone else? Or go back to Neucali and speak to Peregrine Lawson's financial advisor?"

She stared at her lap, removed her pad from the chair, and punched in a new course. The ship began the process of hooking back in the exact opposite direction. "When Toman sees our fuel bill, he's going to skin us alive."

~

"Mr. Tennymore, please." Rada smiled into her device.

On its screen, a young woman smiled back. "May I ask who is calling?"

"Rada Pence. He doesn't know me, but it's regarding one of his clients."

The woman's smile dimmed fractionally. "Hold, please."

The image switched to a gorgeous scene of dust spewing across a bloodily vivid Martian sunset.

Rada muted her device. "How much time do you need?"

Simm glanced up. "It's already in. His system's got virtually no security at all."

"Stick to the plan?"

"Don't see why not. Maybe he'll make it easy on us and tell us everything."

Two minutes later, the Martian sunset switched to a view of a moon-faced man smiling so warmly his eyes all but disappeared in the folds of his face.

"Swen Tennymore. How can I be of help?"

"It's regarding one of your clients," Rada said. "Peregrine Lawson?"

The man's smile began to fall. His eyes emerged like an unamused hazel sunrise. "You understand I can't release any information regarding clients. Past or present."

"I know Mr. Lawson was a client of yours. What I need to know is whether, after his accident, he remained a client."

His eyes were now completely visible. "I am not required to discuss such matters."

"This is regarding his sister Dinah," Rada said. "I'm just trying to make sure—"

"Anyone working toward Dinah's best interests would not need to speak to me." He smiled with as much politeness as he could muster. "Good afternoon."

He signed off.

Simm chuckled. "How much more suspicious can you be?"

Rada turned to find his eyes. "Is he wrong? He's not required to divulge anything. The weird thing would be if he
was
ready to spill his guts about Lawson."

"But as soon as you gave him the name, his whole affect changed."

"Since when were you so attuned to the emotions of regular people?"

Simm's face pinched. "I'm not an idiot. Just because I don't feel like a standard-issue person doesn't mean I don't understand these things you humans call 'feelings.'"

"That's not what I meant."

"Really? Because that's what you implied."

"I was trying to question your assessment of the situation," she said. "I stepped over the line. I'm sorry."