Traitor (Collaborator Book 1)

by Krista D. Ball

“I have nine terrorists skulking around down in the cargo bays thinking they’re not under surveillance and now I have a Blackout captain looking over my shoulder. I’m certain I have more than a problem.”

  Katherine knew there were fourteen rebels on the base, fifteen counting herself. She didn’t know if Dags knew that or was testing her. They were all going to be off the station or dead anyway in a handful of days. This was information to gamble. “You have fourteen onboard.”

  Dags cocked an eyebrow. “Fourteen? How do you know?”

  “It’s my job. So, have your scans picked up yet that I’ve been speaking three different languages since I’ve arrived or do you have the biological scanner that is telling you my body temperature is off?”

  “Mother of the soil, I hate Blackout officers. I have both, plus an implant scanner. Looks like you’ve had some reconstructive surgery done. Most of your implants seem to be life-functional, not augments.”

  “I was in an accident several years ago on Earth.”

  His bushy eyebrows rose. “You were on Earth?”

  She inclined her head. “I was badly burned in an attack on a deportation office. It took several surgeries to repair my face and the rest of my skin, but well, they can never get that quite right. Some of my original implants fried in the explosion and they removed others to make way for more boring ones.”

  “Like restoring your eyesight?”

  She gave him a humorless smile. “Ocular nerve damage. They decided a nano-chip would be better than a full implant.”

  “And?”

  “It’s been itchy for seven years,” she said, deadpan. “We have credible intel that there will be a breakout attempt from Ward Eleven in four days.”

  “I don’t…Ward Eleven?”

  Dags was a terrible liar. He worked so hard trying to make his face not twitch that he just made it twitch more. “Captain, let’s cut the balls off the cockbase. I don’t give a shit splatter about your illegal little prison in the basement of this very pretty station. What I care about is that I need those prisoners under Corps control and not out acting like a recruitment poster for a hundred different terrorist organizations in this sector alone.”

  Dags sat back down behind his desk, sweat beading on his forehead. It made his pale face look sickly. Did they have the UV filters on full blast in this place or were they all allergic to sun? “How do you know about Ward Eleven? Does Command know?”

  “It’s not widely known, if that’s what you’re asking,” Katherine said. Halifax resistance cell had known about Ward Eleven for over a year now. Too many fighters went missing upon capture. No official records. No trials. Just gone. It took them a while, but they were able to track it to Captain Dags. “As a hint for your next transfer, Captain, skip opening up such a facility. It’s how we figured it out.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Just a friendly hint between friends. After all, we wouldn’t want such a promising potential officer go to waste.”

  Dags scoffed. “Check your intel, Captain. I applied for Blackout three times. Failed the psych tests. Apparently, I am too much of a loose pulse rifle. That’s why I’m here in the middle of nowhere important.”

  “Pulse rifles can be cleaned, repaired, and utilized appropriately,” Katherine said, smoothly. She’d already known that he’d been turned down, but had hoped anyone who’d applied three times would want his ego stroked a little. “Now? Shall we root out the terrorist scum?”

  “It would be my pleasure.”

  Katherine smiled. As soon as she got full computer access, this murderous son of a bitch was going to find himself gasping for air in his own bed.

  Nightmare One

  “Hey, Kat? Look at this,” Rebecca called out to her girlfriend. She skimmed through the article on her laptop. “Apparently, they found some sort of underground bunker in Italy.”

  Kat didn’t leave the stove nor the pancakes she was making. She was still in her pajamas. If Rebecca had been cooking, she’d be covered in splatter. Kat, however, was a genius with cooking.

  “Says here it was found by some oil company.” Rebecca kept reading. She hit further down and deflated. “Oh. Never mind.”

  “What?” Kat asked, not looking up. She was busy sliding cooked pancakes on a plate. She added more batter to the frying pan. “Keep going. I’m listening.”

  “The anonymous eye witnesses are saying the bunker was so high tech that it must have been some kind of secret military installation.”

  Kat chuckled. “You work for a secret government installation, don’t you?”

  Rebecca rolled her eyes and went back to reading the News section. She wasn’t allowed to talk about her job to anyone, not even her live-in. But Kat was military and knew a bit too much about where Rebecca worked. Her bosses, and Kat’s, probably had special meetings to discuss the security risks of the two of them being together. The lie of her being an admin assistant was holding for now. How much longer until it wasn’t, though?

  Rebecca glanced up at Katherine, her girlfriend of two years. She didn’t give a rat’s ass what they thought. She was in love. And, if Kat would marry her, she could tell her the truth.

  “What’s that look for?” Kat asked as she poured more batter into the pan.

  “I was thinking we should get married,” Rebecca blurted.

  Kat froze. “What?”

  She shouldn’t have said that. It had just come out, her mouth spurting out crap before her brain had a chance to filter it. Rebecca gave a small shrug of her shoulder, hoping that she conveyed far more casual indifference than she actually felt. “I was just thinking, we should probably get married eventually.”

  “What…what brought this on?”

  Rebecca went back to her tablet. “I know you want to wait, and that’s fine. It’s just that you’re helpful and shit, and I’ve always wanted a wife.”

  Kat was quiet for a moment before she came out from the kitchen in their tiny apartment and sat down in the arm chair across from Rebecca. “I just want to take things slow. We talked about this.”

  Rebecca touched Kat’s face. “I know. I was just saying.”

  “It’s tough, ya know?”

  “I know, love. It’s fine. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

  Kat got up from the chair, and a moment later, the stove clicked from where she’d turned the element off. She came back to sit next to Rebecca. “I don’t do commitment well. You know this. Moving in together was really hard for me.”

  Rebecca rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t roll your eyes at me,” Kat snapped.

  “Kat, hun, please. It didn’t mean anything. I’m sorry I even brought it up.” Rebecca was right about that. She did regret it, though not for the way she tried to inflect in her voice. She did want to marry Kat, who was so relationship-phobic that it was wearing on her nerves lately. Still, she wanted to wait it out. “Look, I have to book vacation for work and it just got me thinking about it. It’s nothing. Let it go.”

  “Fine,” Kat said, in a tone that said it clearly was not fine. “Where did you want to go?”

  “I’ve always wanted to see Australia.”

  “Rebecca, that’s more expensive than a damn wedding.”

  Rebecca chuckled and leaned against Kat. “We both have good jobs.”

  “You’re an assistant and I’m in the military.”

  Rebecca’s lying smile was easy. She was more than an assistant, but she wasn’t allowed to say that to just a girlfriend. Perhaps, eventually, her boss would give her the clearance to say what she actually did. “Fine. Scotland?”

  It was Kat’s turn to roll her eyes, but at least it brought a smile to her face. “That isn’t much cheaper for us.”

  “I have enough saved already. Let’s do it. Come on. I know you’re always wanted to hike in the Highlands.”

  “Fine. Whatever. The pancakes are getting cold.”

  Chapter 3

  Rebecca had been wide awake for hours before her pod’s alarm f
inally went off. She let the buzz continue for a few seconds before saying, “Alarm: off.”

  The buzz silenced immediately, but Rebecca made no attempt to get out of bed. She hated the happy, cozy dreams about Kat the most. For days now, images of her ex had plagued her sleep. If this kept up, she’d need to see the doctor for sleep aids. She resisted simply because that would end up in the reports to her superiors and could single her out as a potential risk.

  Rebecca wasn’t stupid; she knew she was under surveillance. Zain let it slip three months ago. Not to her, but she overheard him talking to one of the security techs. She’d eaten that night what she called the “spicy radish supreme” and the air circulators weren’t up to the task for the double fermented garlic sprouts she’d ordered. She’d cracked her door open to avoid suffocating in her cramped two-cube: a double cubic meter pod for people under two meters in height. The taller people got the two-halfer cube. That’s when she heard them outside her pod whispering. She didn’t hear all that they said, but she’d heard enough.

  They’re still monitoring her.

  It’s been years. If she was going to turn, she’d have done it long before now.

  They don’t want to take any chances. Everyone’s on edge after the New Canton attack.

  They’re being paranoid.

  Paranoid or maybe she’s playing a long con on us.

  Not Rebecca. She’s here, she’s happy, more or less. That’s good enough for me. Would it help if I shoved my cock into her mouth and left the door unlocked for everyone to see?

  It would help you, if nothing else.

  She couldn’t trust Zain after that, and guarded every single thing that came out of her mouth. Her intuition always set off alarm bells about him, but that conversation sent shivers down her spine. The only person she remotely trusted in this damned prison was a man who knew that she was under the thumb of security. She stopped asking herself how he would even know that, or why he’d be talking to someone like Wilber Pitt, who looked like a seventies’ porn star. She decided she didn’t like any of the answers her brain conjured and, for the sake of her sanity, she stopped thinking about it.

  Except for now, of course. That’s what dreams about Kat did to her: scrambled her brains.

  She wasn’t a risk to anyone, except to herself. Who would care about her harming herself? No one, that’s who. Anyone who would care was either dead or well out of her communication reach. All she wanted was to carry on this half-life shell of an existence until she didn’t want to anymore.

  If she went to the doctors, would they gave her pills or injections? She could say she was afraid of needles. A month’s worth of sleeping pills would be enough to escape this hellhole.

  “Message for Rebecca St. Martin. Priority from Security.”

  Rebecca sighed at the computer’s interruption. She’d spent most of yesterday in security, after her medical work up declared her fit and non-distressed. She’d witnessed six self-decapitations yesterday. Of fucking course she was distressed, but what was the point of having lived in hell for seven years if she didn’t know how to fool the doctors’ sensors?

  They said she still registered to the scanners as suffering from “concerning” levels of depression, like that was any shock. Schemes to kill herself had become her own little game as of late, a way to blow off steam and remind herself there was always an out if the cage became too much to bear. She didn’t tell the doctors that; they’d just inject her with sedatives, label her at risk, and she’d never leave the cells again.

  Correction: treatment facility. Because locking her up against her will to rehabilitate her sounded so much better.

  So, she lied yesterday, like she lied every six months at her required medical evaluation. Her numbers hadn’t changed much in years. That was simply her baseline. As usual, they sniffed at her refusal of medication and intervention. What good would a few shots and some therapy do for her? She didn’t want to get better. She deserved to feel this way. Kat was dead. This was her punishment. Who was she to tell God he was doing a bad job of it all?

  She’d never been depressed until she’d come here, to this place where hope died. She should have stayed on Earth, with her own people, but that required a level of courage that Rebecca simply didn’t possess. She believed most people didn’t. Who wouldn’t take a deal to save their parents? Who wouldn’t take a chance to learn new things and live elsewhere? Who wouldn’t take the coward’s path?

  Reluctantly, Rebecca swung her legs over the side of her upper bunk bed. She stretched her dangling feet and then her neck before taking the few steps down the ladder to her floor. She grabbed her bra from the worn futon under her bed and tugged it on. The others used their money to replace their beds with special custom ones, but she needed her money. She didn’t make what Zain and the others made.

  A bitter voice asked her, save for what? To buy your freedom? You’re never getting out of here without someone putting a bullet in your skull. Go dump fifty credits and have a hot shower. Maybe you will drown yourself.

  Rebecca pushed the voice to the side as best as she could, even if it was right. She might never leave this place. When she’d originally agreed to leave Earth and work for the Corps as a tech, they never used the term “indentured servitude,” but that was exactly what this was. She’d watched enough documentaries with Kat…

  Goddammit, Rebecca. Stop thinking about Kat.

  Rebecca zombie-shuffled through her pod as she dressed in her standard work overalls and protective boots. “Message: play.”

  Rebecca St. Martin, you are requested and required by Security for further interviews. Your duty officer has been notified. For questions, contact Ensign Minsk in Security through InComm.

  The message ended just as Rebecca finished brushing her teeth in the tiny water dispenser. The display flickered that she had just under two liters of free private water available to her at her sink for the next twenty-six hours. After that, it was two credits a milliliter. That would add up fast.

  Some of the workers had private showers installed in their pods. She didn’t know how they could afford it, nor how they managed to fit them in. She showered in the communal showers with everyone else. After the eavesdropping incident, she’d noticed Zain had taken to going with her to the showers. She’d started showering in the middle of the night whenever she couldn’t sleep. Maybe he’d been doing it before just as much, but it seemed more obvious. Was he monitoring her for security? Was he undercover? She didn’t want her washing habits and loose skin to be on display any more than necessary.

  Most of the others laughed at her and called her several variations of the word prude, but she had always struggled with the all-genders free-for-all bathrooms. And there was Zain and the way he stared at her naked body when he thought she couldn’t see him out of the corner of her eye.

  “Rebecca, you have one new message. It is titled, Happy Belated Birthday.”

  She frowned at the message but said to her virtual assistant, “Play it.”

  Rebecca grabbed her tablet and unhooked the clear silicon ear piece from the cover. She dumped the ear piece into her breast pocket. It would vibrate if she had a call. She stuffed the hand-sized tablet and its case into her thigh pocket on her coveralls. The tablet and case were basically her phone, wallet, and laptop rolled into one.

  “It has no audio recording. Would you like me to read it?” the feminine voice of the VA asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Rebecca, I thought you might like this.”

  Rebecca wrapped her utility belt around her waist and pushed the metal through a makeshift hole in the too-big fabric belt. “That’s it?”

  “There is an attachment.”

  Rebecca picked up her mug from her sink, gave it a quick rinse, and collapsed it. Then she clipped it to her utility belt. “Open it and tell me what it is.”

  “It appears to be the collected works related to Jane Austen, Earth author.”

  Rebecca froze. “What did you say?
”

  “Jane Austen, Earth author. The attachment contains copies of her novels, various audio performances, and several live-action recordings of plays and movies.”

  Rebecca gulped. Who would send her Jane Austen? Who even knew about Rebecca’s love of the author? In a very feeble voice, she asked her VA: “Who is it from?”

  “An anonymous address. What action would should I take?”

  “Save it all to my personal drive, please.”

  “Transferring now. Transfer complete. You are at six percentage of your free storage allotment.”

  “Thank you,” Rebecca replied, staring at the rest of her items that still needed to be packed up. Someone had sent her Jane Austen. Was it Zain? She might have mentioned it to him, but it would have just been in passing. Getting stuff out of Earth was still expensive and difficult. She’d checked many times on InComm for copies of anything Austen-related to help with her mood and the couple of things she did find cost more than a year’s salary.

  This folder would have cost hundreds of dollars on Earth, let alone out here where ExComm access was severely limited and updates infrequent. And someone had given it all to her and not even sent their name.

  She stuffed her remaining items into the various pockets on her overalls and grabbed her pass card. The others had ID implants under the flesh of a hand, or built into a biosynthetic limb, but Rebecca was a Rejecter: someone whose body violently rejected internal implants. That’s why she had the shitty external translator that gave her a permanent rash behind her ear and why she had to use a physical pass card.

  Who would send me Jane Austen?

  Rebecca stepped out of her pod into the communal living area for her wing. Some of the other sleeping pod doors were propped open. The door locked automatically behind her. A long table was set up in the middle of the aisle between the pods. Zain and a few of their neighbours were seated at the table. Zain was eating a bowl of goo, his favourite. She shambled over to the vendor and punched in the code for a hot paste bun. The timer displayed thirty seconds in reply to that and began a countdown.