Rebel Stars 1: Outlaw (18 page)

"Hail fellow and all that shit," he said, voice thick with sleep. He slumped toward the table. "I can't say we lived up to the standards of the Lords of the True Realm. Yet I refuse to call it a total defeat."

Rada seated herself. "Anything you've got is more than we walked in with."

He fiddled with his device. Numbers appeared on Merlin, the six-foot vertical screen who was parked beside the table. "We attacked this along multiple vectors. Everything you brought us. The subject. The mother. The sister. We found a trust. Cracking that trust was not easy."

"In fact," Nora said, "it wasn't possible."

"Okay, if you want to get technical, we didn't crack it. But we did…poke it. Pick it up and shake it. And a few grains fell loose." He gave them a bleary smile. "The trust was established six months prior to Lawson's 'death.'" Liam punctuated this with air quotes. "There was not one, but two sources of payments. We tracked one to Peregrine, the other to Jain. When Peregrine died, naturally, a large sum passed to the trust—his savings and life insurance."

"But it was smaller than it should have been." Nora called the figures up on Merlin. "More than can be explained by funeral costs and what have you. We believe the discrepancy is from the payments due to the organization who arranged his…" She sighed and air-quoted as well. "'Death.'"

The goateed man scratched his neck. "The discrepancy also matched the fees frequently charged for such services."

Liam rested his elbows on the table. "Here's where things get interesting. Following Peregrine's death, new payments only arrived from one source—Jain's. About six months after that, however, another source kicked in. This was set up to look like more insurance and things filtering through the system, but we traced this to a front. Then Merlin followed it through about six more fronts. That's where the thread started to get fuzzy."

"Like a ship full of tribbles," Nora said.

"You might say we lost it altogether. However, that's when Merlin unleashed his magic. And delivered us a name."

Rada grinned. "You got his name?"

Liam rolled his lips against his teeth. "Peregrine Lawson's? No. Instead, Merlin traced the payments back to their handler. A Universal Debt Services employee named Collin Winslowe."

"That's it?" Rada said.

Simm bolted from his chair with a scrape of legs. "Don't you see? Winslowe is handling Pip's account. If we find Winslowe, we get Pip. Do you know where he is?"

Liam grinned. "That's the best news—he's stationed at the Locker. Pirate central in Uranus orbit. As far as we can tell, it's a permanent post."

"Thank you," Rada said. "Not to test a gift blade on my thumb, but is this as deep as you can get?"

"You can always dig deeper. What we've got now is from dancing around outside the walls. To get more, we'd have to break into the fortress. Of UD-fucking-S. A project like that could take weeks."

Nora laughed. "Weeks? That's optimistic. Try a Jovian year."

Rada stood. "Then we're on our way to the Locker. Please, if you can, continue to investigate. We've already hit too many dead ends to count on any one lead."

Liam winked. "No worries. Merlin's on it."

Simm bowed from the waist so deeply his forehead bumped the table. "My lords. My ladies. You have secured my gratitude from now until the Big Rip. If I may ever be of service, you have but to ask."

Liam stood and bowed in kind. "The Lords are pleased to be of assistance in this most unusual case. Should your quest bear fruit, please return to drink and feast—and tell us of your story."

Simm's grin was wide enough to swallow Titan. Rada thanked them. As soon as she was outside the castle, she broke into a sprint.

~

Rada's eyes tick-tocked up and down the dingy street. On the flight in, she'd paged through countless pictures of the Locker. It had gardens, rooftop villas, an inhabited forest. Parts of it were a genuine wonderland.

This was not one of them.

People sat on stoops, rubbing powder on their gums. Others stood on corners, spitting sales patter at everyone who passed. Pedestrians kept their distance, careful not to get jostled and have their pockets picked.

"Explain," Simm said in her ear. "Why did he
choose
to meet you in what appears to be actual hell?"

"Best guess? Sales technique. This place is a reminder of what I, a potential debtor, am hoping to escape."

"That's outrageously manipulative. Well, please, please don't die."

"I'll see what I can do."

A notification popped up on her device; he was near. She affirmed the meet, sending her location. A man in a long jacket and a short-brimmed hat emerged from the crowd.

"Ma'am." He touched the brim of his hat. "Shall we adjourn to my office?"

"Let's."

He led her up an echoing stairwell. The third-floor landing smelled musty, sweaty. His apartment was nearly as barren as the channeled surface of Ariel. He offered her one of the few chairs.

"Your paperwork looks good," he said. "Have you settled on a final figure?"

Rada cleared her throat. "I've lied to you, Mr. Winslowe. I'm not here about a loan. I'm here about Peregrine Lawson."

The man blinked. "I don't know what a Peregrine Lawson is. I do know I don't appreciate having my time wasted."

"He didn't die in that fall. He was relocated—new name, new ID, probably a new face to boot. Your company's been collecting from him ever since. For the home he bought his sister, the care she needs. I know everything except the final piece: his new name."

Winslowe stared at her. His expression was as unadorned as the walls. "If any of this were true, then you should know you'll never get that name."

"Wrong. It's only a matter of time. I'd prefer to skip that, however. If you help me, it will absolutely be worth your time."

"Are you trying to bribe me?" He laughed. "Do you have any idea who I work for?"

"Yeah, I know. And when you're UDS, U Don't Scare. What a saint you are, noble salaryman. By the way, dick, tell your masters 'U' isn't a word."

He leaned his face inches from hers. "One more word out of you."

"And what?" She held out her hands. "Here's the deal. If you don't tell me what I want to know, my people keep digging. Eventually, they'll find it. And when they do, they'll expose everything else they drag out, too. Every rag of dirty laundry UDS has in the hamper."

Winslowe's face had gone as hard as pallasite. "What is so god damned important about Pip Lawson? He's no-account. Detritus. If he died today, the universe wouldn't miss a beat."

"His mother's dead."

"Boo hoo. So's mine."

"A few weeks ago, she was murdered," Rada said. "She and Pip were estranged. But we have a final message from her."

"So tell me." Winslowe folded his arms. "I'll pass it along."

"Not an option. Your choices are to tell me a single name now. Or, in three months, the entire system will learn the names of everyone you've got."

"I see. And what if you were to disappear right now?"

"Then I believe my employer—Toman Benez—would make it his life's work to tear UDS to the ground."

Winslowe dropped his gaze to the floor and let out a long breath. "You haven't gone to all this trouble to deliver a dying mother's final message to her estranged son. Nobody's that pure. Tell me the real reason or we both walk away unhappy."

Rada clenched her teeth. "The truth is that I don't know. That's what I need Pip for. All I know is that it involves my employer's work—the study of alien life—and that it was worth killing Pip's mom to keep quiet."

"When I was a young man, I would have shot you and walked away. No matter how much money your bossman's got, a thing like that can't be undone. Take enough irreversible steps, burn enough of the fields, and that's how you win." He gazed into nothing. "But that's the problem, isn't it? You can't undo it, either."

"It weighs you down. Until you can't take another step."

He did some more staring, then fiddled with his device, turned it off, and pocketed it. "Outside."

Her device hadn't registered any bugs in the apartment, but she followed without a word. He headed downstairs and into the bustle of the street. People seemed to give him a little more room than most of the pedestrians. Rada kept one eye on Winslowe and the other on the crowds.

"I don't like threats," he said. "But I don't like touching off wars, either. You want Lawson that bad? You'll find him under the name Mazzy Webber." He gestured up at the dome enclosing the miniature world. "If you're telling the truth, though, you better hurry. Your boy's turned pirate. And his ship's on the hunt."

"I'm not here to hurt him," she said. "I hope you know that."

"If you were, doesn't sound like I could stop you."

She smiled, turned away, and hustled through the crowd. "Get that, Simm?"

"Indeed." Simm's voice was accompanied by frantic typing. "He's crewing on a ship known as the
Fourth Down
. When it isn't running up a black flag, anyway. They shipped out thirteen hours ago."

"Just our luck. They file a flight plan?"

"Naturally. But if they're up to no good, it'll be fake."

"Do we have an e-sig to follow?"

"I'll see what I can do."

She took a tube line to the elevator up to the port. Simm launched the moment she was buckled in. There was a lot of wash around the port, but betting that the
Fourth Down
had launched along its initial flight plan, Simm followed this, soon picking up their signature. Rada accelerated as hard as they could tolerate, grunting against the strain.

"What are we going to say when we find them?" Simm squeaked.

"He may have had differences with Jain," Rada said. "But you'd have to be one cold SOB to not want to hear your mother's last words to you."

Despite the extra Gs, she was able to nap off and on. The engine signature grew clearer and clearer. The
Tine
coasted, then flipped around and began to brake.

A screen flashed and the
Tine
lurched, knocking her from sleep. "The hell was that?"

"Debris," Simm said. "Mechanical. It's all over the place."

"Did they hit their mark? Or did their mark hit them?"

"I don't—oh.
Oh
." He pulled up a new screen. In the far, far distance, the
Tine
registered two ships, the pieces of a third, and thousands of pieces of junk. As Rada watched, an explosion glowed from the darkness.

"Defense systems online," she said, though the
Tine
was already spooling them up automatically. "I've got the feeling things are about to get nasty."

As they gaped at the screens, the
Specter
juked again, impossibly quick, slipping another missile. It pasted the hapless rocket with one of its own.

"Orders?" Lara said.

"Too late to disengage," Gomes said. "We're up against a human-crewed ship that can maneuver like a drone. Ideas?"

"Fast and hard," Taz said. "You drag this out? Turn it into a dogfight? Their maneuverability will tear us apart."

"A modest proposal," Vincent said. "We could flee?"

Across the inky gap, the
Specter
dispatched the last of the missiles and began a frighteningly sharp turn. Rockets burst from its belly and soared toward the
Fourth
.

"Nothing doing," MacAdams said. "We've seen what they're capable of. They won't let us out of here with that intel."

Counter-rockets were already flying from the
Fourth
. The autopilot began a textbook three-plane break to get the ship out of harm's way while the missiles duked it out, but Gomes barked orders and Lara veered the ship back toward the
Specter
, which was curling away along a standard path. This left them flying on a more direct path to the incoming missiles, forcing the enemy rockets to tighten their angle of approach, drawing them nearer to the
Fourth's
counters.

Gomes ordered a second slew of missiles to fire on the
Specter
. A screen beeped, suggesting a new course; Gomes accepted and the
Fourth
zigzagged away, sloshing Webber's guts to the point of nausea.

Not that he needed abrupt momentum shifts to help him feel queasy. Sitting there as a helpless spectator while the two ships slugged it out, he finally understood how small he was, how vulnerable to the forces of nature and war. The band human bodies could survive within was so narrow: just the right amounts of oxygen, pressure, and heat. Meanwhile, the number of explosions, projectiles, and high-velocity crashes it could survive was stubbornly set at zero. Leaving Earth, strapping yourself inside a flying metal coffin, doing battle with another flying metal coffin—it was madness pie topped with a cherry of crazy.

The
Specter's
missiles encountered those from the
Fourth.
The two groups became a commingled cloud of heat, light, and dust. Seconds later, the
Fourth's
offensive flurry met the
Specter's
interceptors and disappeared in another cloud.

"Good news," Lara said. "Their missiles are Jex-9s. A few years older than ours. From what we've seen, I'm guessing they don't have as many as we do, either."

Gomes considered the screens. "War of attrition?"

"If that's how they want to play it, it's our best bet."

"Proceed. Stick as close as you can while remaining as cautious as you can."

Lara swung the
Fourth
about for another pass. The
Specter
hove about. The two ships approached along parallel paths and exchanged another volley of rockets. As they flew past each other, down to a very low speed compared to that at which vessels crossed the gaps between planets, the
Specter
curved into a fishtailing buttonhook. Lara peeled away as hard as she could risk. It wouldn't be enough to shake them.

"What are you doing?" Gomes said.

Lara glanced across the bridge. "They're going to have our six."