Supremacy's Outlaw: A Space Opera Thriller Series (Insurgency Saga Book 3)

by T. E. Bakutis

  Silence followed. Jan went back to his steak. Esparza was planning something big, and Jan was stuck here in the middle of it, trying to blend in with a bunch of zealous whack jobs. Honestly, being fucked over all the time was exhausting.

  “Hey, Jan,” Rafe started, but Jan silenced him with a raised hand. He didn’t need Rafe blurting sensitive questions where Esparza’s army of listening devices could hear them.

  “I’m eating,” Jan said. “You should too.”

  “Oh.” Rafe looked down at what remained of his kav stalks. “Sure, mate. Be a while until we can get food this good again.”

  And what did Rafe mean by that? Did Rafe know what Esparza was planning? Jan didn’t dare ask, not here, and honestly, none of this was his business or his problem. He needed to escape, find his crew, and lie very low until a few less people were trying to murder him.

  Jan took his time with his meal. He had no reason not to. The same soldier who had escorted them here stepped inside the room once Jan cleared his plate, and Jan rose and nodded.

  Jan let himself be led back down a number of hallways, past the laundry room, to what he assumed was the not-quite-prison wing of the facility. It certainly had only one way in or out. Esparza didn’t trust him that far, it seemed.

  It could be days or even weeks until Jan learned the Truther patrol patterns well enough to escape. Still, he’d spent five years in an orbital prison much less pleasant than this. With his nanos disabled, assuming Rafe wasn’t full of shit, Jan now had all the time in the world. Assuming the CSD didn’t find and nuke the place, he was safer here than anywhere.

  So long as Esparza had a use for him.

  “Stay in your room,” the soldier ordered, once they arrived at it. “I’ll be back for you in the morning.”

  Once Jan and Rafe were inside, the soldier closed the door. Jan didn’t have to hear the click to know it locked from the outside. All appearances aside, they were prisoners.

  Their square room had two beds, a sink, a toilet, and little else. Still, they had pillows and sheets, and the walls were solid. No cameras Jan could see, another small measure of trust. Small measures meant a great deal in a place like this.

  “So, Jan,” Rafe started again, but once more Jan silenced him. Time to test the limits of his captivity.

  Jan kept Rafe silent for the five minutes it took to find and remove the wireless listening device in the ceiling light, as well as the one in Rafe’s mattress frame. He held them up where Rafe could see, pointed pointedly, and said, in a normal tone, “We should probably get some sleep. Esparza may need us soon.”

  “Sure,” Rafe said, looking a bit green. “Let’s sleep.”

  Jan opened his pillow and carefully tucked both bugs into the foam, taking care to make as little noise as possible. He placed the pillow facedown on the bugs, put Rafe’s pillow on top of that, and piled both their sheets on top of that. That should muffle their whispers, unless the Truthers had amazing bugs.

  Jan walked over to Rafe’s bed and sat beside him, keeping his voice low. “Tell me everything you told Esparza.”

  “Not a lot,” Rafe whispered back. “Just what you just did.”

  “You did not tell him our trip to his warehouse was to rescue Bharat?”

  “Hell no, mate. He’d have put me on a pike if he knew I was involved in that!”

  So Rafe wasn’t entirely foolish. “I need you to tell me what’s really going on here. I get why you’re involved with these Truthers, and I want to help them, too, but I have to look out for my people first. Where are Kinsley and Emiko?”

  “Not here,” Rafe said. “I told you.”

  “That’s the truth?”

  “I don’t know where they are,” Rafe whispered. “But they’re not here. We left them behind when I, uh ...”

  “Rafe?” Jan prompted.

  “They wouldn’t understand,” Rafe said. “Not like you do. They’re not down with the cause, if you get me.”

  “I do,” Jan said. He squeezed Rafe’s thin shoulder to show his relief. “You did the right thing, leaving them behind, but I had to know they were safe before I could focus on our problems.”

  “Yeah,” Rafe said, smiling back. “I thought so.”

  “So what’s Esparza planning?”

  Rafe shrugged. “No idea. I just do jobs for them.”

  “Oh? What kind?”

  Rafe frowned. “Why do you want to know?”

  This was dangerous territory. “Just curious. You don’t have to tell me, but I know how talented you are.” Blatant flattery usually worked with Rafe. “They’ve kept you busy?”

  Rafe relaxed and smiled. “Hell yeah, mate. I’ve been doing all kinds of jobs for them since they brought me back. Database hacks, records manipulation, identity theft, the works!”

  “I’m sure that’s been very useful,” Jan agreed. “When did you start working for them?”

  Rafe looked away. “I, uh ... that’s not a happy story.”

  “Few are,” Jan said. “I’d still like to know.”

  Rafe looked somewhere far away, and Jan let him look. He let Rafe stew. In this one case, that was probably best.

  “After you got took?” Rafe whispered. “I want to say I went to a dark place, but really, I’d been there a long time.” His voice trembled as he spoke. His eyes actually glistened.

  The emotions Rafe was now in the process of revealing seemed serious, and real, so Jan nodded gravely and leaned close. “What sort of dark place did you go to?”

  “Anywhere I could get a fix,” Rafe said, as he stared somewhere far away. “I was fucked up back then. I’d do anything to score a little bliss. I did a lot of stuff I don’t even remember, and the stuff I do remember, I’m not proud of.”

  “Are you still addicted?”

  “No, I’m clean.” Rafe sniffled and met Jan’s gaze. “The True Sons got me clean. They’re good people, Jan, just like I said. I was a mess when they found me, but they showed me where I’d gone wrong. They helped me make my time useful. It was like it was when we were all a crew, when we were helping people.”

  Rafe really had bought into the Truthers’ bullshit, but Jan couldn’t be angry at him. If anything, he was furious at the Truthers for preying upon Rafe’s vulnerability to turn him into mass-murderer tech support. Jan hadn’t been here to keep Rafe on the straight and narrow, so Rafe had fallen in with whack jobs.

  This might not be Jan’s fault, but Rafe was Jan’s responsibility. So he would get Rafe out of here, one way or the other. Jan Sabato left no one behind.

  At least, no one who hadn’t sent him to prison.

  “Anyway, that’s about all there is to it,” Rafe said. “I fucked up. I really fucked up. But I’m better now, thanks to these people and all the good they want to do.” Rafe looked at Jan and smiled. “And now you’re back. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. I really missed you.”

  “I missed you too,” Jan whispered truthfully. “Now, we probably should actually sleep. I’ll unwrap the listening devices and put them back. From this point on, assume we are being listened to at all times. Understood? Say nothing you wouldn’t say in front of the Commander.”

  “I got it, mate.” Rafe smiled. “It’s gonna be so good to be working with you again.”

  “Yes,” Jan said, as he confronted the almost impossible task of getting both himself and Rafe out of an underground base filled with Truthers. “It will most certainly be interesting.”

  Bharat frowned at the expanse of dirty nothing visible on the feed from Marquis’s drone, which was currently hovering above a hill almost a kilometer from their current location. It did not look like there was anywhere for Jan to hide out there. It did not look like there was anything out there at all.

  He thought about saying something. After one glance at Fatima’s scowl, he decided not to. If he’d learned one thing from the past twenty-four hours with these people, it was that they worked best when he let them yell at each other.

  “Oh, lov
ely,” Fatima said, from where she stood at Bharat’s side. “There’s dirt! And more dirt. And a rock shaped like a dildo. I’m so glad we wasted a day driving to the ass end of nowhere. Such a wonderful use of our time.”

  “Such sarcasm is undeserved, m’lady.” Marquis stood on the side of the two-lane road, behind their autotruck. “I am not mistaken about the coordinates on my drone’s screen. My tracker transmits even now. Jan Sabato waits at these coordinates!”

  “Two meters under, perhaps,” Fatima said darkly. “Though I never figured Rafe for a killer.”

  “I’m almost entirely certain Jan’s not dead,” Kinsley said confidently, as she walked into view from behind the autotruck. “The signal from Marquis’s drone is coming from those coordinates, and what triangulation I could manage suggests it is coming from underground, far deeper than two meters.”

  Bharat frowned. “How does that tell you Jan’s not dead?”

  Kinsley stared at Bharat like he’d just asked the dumbest question in the world. “Because Rafe lacks both the time and focus to dig a grave that deep.”

  Emiko hopped out of the passenger seat of the autotruck and stared at the distant hill. “So Rafe built an underground bunker down there?” She asked like she really wanted to believe it.

  “I doubt Rafe could build a pillow fort,” Fatima said, and she kicked the autotruck bumper. “God! I spent the past five years evading surveillance from a moron.”

  “I don’t think Rafe built anything,” Kinsley said. “I think, instead, there’s a large commercially built structure hidden beneath that vast expanse of flat dirt on the feed from Marquis’s drone. It may even be a military installation.”

  Emiko glanced her way. “You heard those rumors too?”

  “It’s not just rumors,” Kinsley said confidently. “Shortly after the armistice, Ceto’s government undertook a number of reconstruction projects. Those included building a network of redundant underground command and control structures. The thinking was that if the Advanced cannot see it, and if they do not know where it is, they cannot drop a rail slug on it.”

  “Wait,” Fatima said. “Where did you find all this?”

  “In CetInt’s database. In Star’s Landing.”

  Fatima stared at Kinsley for a moment. “You got into CetInt’s database?”

  Kinsley looked momentarily concerned. “Is that supposed to be hard?”

  Bharat’s respect for Kinsley’s hacking skills jumped a notch. CetInt was the intelligence portion of Ceto Security Division, largely separate from the larger organization that it helped support. If Kinsley was capable of hacking into that database, she’d been dramatically underselling her talents.

  “What did you find in there?” Fatima asked hungrily.

  “Building permits,” Kinsley said. “Work orders. It is impossible to keep a project involving this many people fully secret, but to their credit, CetInt did a passable job.”

  “Yet you still found it,” Fatima said.

  Kinsley shrugged. “Even with the access I gained, I never discovered the locations of any of the bases. I could only intuit their existence from those documents I could access, in increasingly redacted form. It seems we’ve now found one base.”

  Fatima was now grinning like a woman who’d won the lottery. “Can you get me in there later?”

  Kinsley beamed in response. “Sure!”

  “So here’s my question, then,” Emiko cut in. “If you’re right, and Rafe and Jan are in some secret underground military base, what are they doing in a secret underground military base?” She scowled. “Think that Coffman asshole caught up with them?”

  Bharat nodded thoughtfully. Lieutenant Coffman was the soldier who’d led the CSD searching for Jan back at the Greasy Bowsprit, in Duskdale. If Rafe had gotten careless during his escape — and Rafe was nothing if not careless — it was possible Coffman’s forces caught Rafe during his escape, took him and Jan into custody, and renditioned them here for interrogation.

  “I’ve seen nothing in the Duskdale arrest reports,” Kinsley said. “And the drone footage I’ve reviewed still shows plenty of active CSD elements searching Duskdale for Jan.”

  “Jan’s bounty remains active as well,” Marquis added helpfully. “You are aware, of course, that the Network has a strict policy against falsified data! I doubt even the CSD would risk their access by breaking the rules.”

  “CetInt doesn’t report to CSD,” Kinsley reminded everyone. “They’re intelligence. It is possible that people from CetInt picked up Rafe and Jan and simply haven’t told the CSD yet.”

  “Perhaps,” Fatima said. “Marquis, you know who is currently pursuing Jan’s bounty, don’t you?”

  “Madam, please!” Marquis sounded genuinely offended. “I could never divulge such information. I would be breaking a sacred trust bequeathed to me!”

  “Right, sure.” Fatima waved his concern away. “So Jan’s bounty remains open, and the CSD continues looking for him in Duskdale. Would CetInt pay out this much overtime for a hoax?”

  No one spoke. They were probably thinking it over.

  “Jan isn’t that valuable,” Fatima continued as her expression darkened. “But Tarack’s disc is. If CetInt knows about it, they’d have all the reasons to lock Jan up.”

  Marquis broke the awkward silence that followed. “Pollen reports nothing past the expanse I’m surveying. She’s heading back. Shall I recall my drone?”

  “Not yet,” Fatima said. “Let’s keep eyes on that slab of dirt. If anything pops up from under it, I’d like to know.”

  “Understood!” Marquis said, before turning to Emiko. “With your permission, m’lady, I’ll retreat to a higher vantage and surveil the region from all sides.”

  Emiko nodded. “I’ve got you for another day, right?”

  “That is when our contract concludes!”

  “Then yes,” Emiko said. “Surveil away.”

  Marquis bowed grandly, then spun with a swirl of cloak and strode off. Given the shrinking crowd, Bharat decided it was time to weigh in on the discussion and see how they reacted.

  “May I offer a theory?” Bharat asked.

  Fatima offered an appraising glance. “Please.”

  “It’s possible that Ceto Intelligence is hiding Jan in hopes he’ll lead them to Tarack’s disc.” Bharat took a moment. “It’s also possible the Truthers have him instead.”

  The others all stared at him dubiously, except for Kinsley. Kinsley tapped her chin in thought. “You think they’ve got the backing of Ceto’s government, don’t you?”

  “What?” Emiko blinked. “No effing way.”

  “Why not?” Bharat asked. “I’ll admit to being an outsider on your planet, but unlike many Advanced, I know enough to recognize that you thrive on being underestimated. Your CSD seems incapable of crushing the Truthers, and that is a ruse the majority of my people would swallow without question.”

  “And you don’t,” Fatima said.

  “Everything I know of your operations leading up to the armistice, and what I’ve learned and seen on my operations here, suggest you, your government, and your military forces are far more capable than you let on. It seems unlikely your Ceto Security Division would fail so utterly to crush the Truthers.”

  “So I’m confused,” Emiko said, with a frown. “Are you giving us a compliment, or telling us we’re assholes?”

  Fatima smirked Emiko’s way. “Why not both?”

  “Truthers abducted me directly from the Luxury District of Star’s Landing,” Bharat said, “despite the drones surveilling it. And from what you told me about your adventure at the warehouse, after I escaped, they even got their hands on an APC. And Coffman? He told me he was hunting Jan because he believed Jan killed his people. And wrecked the APC they were driving.”

  “Ohhhh,” Emiko said.

  “Why would Coffman mistake the Truthers in that vehicle for CSD?” Bharat asked. “Unless they actually were CSD? Perhaps Commander Esparza posted them there to backsto
p his cleanup squad, after we wiped out the Truthers holding me captive.”

  Bharat could see the others looking at each other for guidance. He could see the unease in their eyes. The possibility was sinking in, and Bharat saw no reason to let up now.

  “The Truthers’ so-called ‘insurrection’ has continued unabated for three years since the armistice, and they continue to acquire weapons and recruits despite your efforts. Given the ten years preceding the armistice, your military officers are extremely well-versed in guerilla warfare. You’d think they’d know how to stop a guerilla war.”

  Emiko’s brow furrowed dangerously. “But all the Truthers are Patriots of Ceto, or were, before they splintered off to start murdering Advanced. They know how to lie low.”

  “Perhaps,” Bharat agreed. “Yet if your people are as angry about our occupation as they seem to be, and if elements in your government wished to continue to harry us without risking direct retaliation, having a deniable force conduct operations against us while simultaneously denouncing that force as terrorists would be an excellent way to quietly take your vengeance.”

  The others, all save Kinsley, looked like they’d had some bad meat. For his part, Bharat was glad Pollen was off scouting the other side of the flat expanse. Otherwise, she’d probably try to strangle him about now.

  “It makes sense,” Kinsley said.

  “Yes,” Fatima said, with a heavy sigh. “It does.”

  “Really?” Emiko asked. “We’re the bad guys?”

  Bharat was surprised how easy it was for them to accept. Perhaps they’d always suspected, deep down. Or perhaps they had simply pulled enough scams that they recognized a good one.

  “So.” Fatima looped her thumbs through her belt. “What’s under the dirt out there isn’t just Jan. It’s a buried military base filled with Truthers, and its occupants can call upon the CSD for support the moment we trouble them.”

  Emiko angrily shook her head. “No, that can’t be right. It can’t be all of them! There’s no way that many people could keep a secret this big.”