Ada paled. “What do you mean, I almost got us all killed?”
“A motherload of Prophet, you little fool? Don’t you have any idea what that’s worth?”
She swallowed against a dry throat. “Our lives?”
Dianne laughed maniacally. “It’s worth the whole system. The entire system. Ceres was a drop in the bucket, sweetheart. And the people that blew it up? The man that blew it up? He’s not going to rest until either he has his fortune, or he sees everyone dead who made it disappear. Probably both.” She spit on the floor, glared at Ada, and left the cockpit.
Ada cursed.
Chapter 17
Lucas rubbed his eyes again. He was sitting at the head of the small conference table in his ready-room. Caspar, Adams, Randall, and Tompkins were with him.
“You get any sleep yet, Sir?” Caspar asked.
“After this. This can’t wait. Caspar, Adams, Randall, you’re my most senior crew onboard, so I trust you implicitly.”
Tompkins raised a hand.
“Kid, you’re here because I needed an odd number. Don’t let it go to your head.”
The hand went down.
“I’d like to have Mulligan as well, but because of her close association with Darren, and the fact that I don’t trust him, I’m telling you all to please keep what’s about to be said in this room, even from her.”
Nods.
“I don’t think Taurius was working for the Empire. Or for a crew. I think he was just trying to get out alive.” He paused to let that sink in and to gather his thoughts.
“And you have, Sir, some new evidence leading you to think this?” Adams picked at the cuticles on his left hand. Engineers. Always fiddling with something.
“Strictly deductive, but yes, I think so. The pirates we first encountered—the ones who killed Captain Harris and took all our missiles, which we later learned were stuffed full of Prophet. Anyone remember what the ship looked like?”
Blank stares all around.
Lucas swiped a command on the console in the center of the table, and an image was projected onto the wall. It showed one of the ships from Battleworld Zeta, a souped-up freighter loaded with guns, and sporting an insignia like a circling raven on its side.
“That’s it,” Caspar said. “That’s the ship.”
Lucas nodded. “Or at least, that’s certainly the outfit’s logo.” He zoomed in on the raven. It may have been a crow. “This is the emblem of a big outfit called Carmen’s Crews. They operate throughout the inner system, based out of the belt. They run all kinds of contraband, mostly drugs, and they specialize in high-value cargo.”
“Like Prophet,” Caspar said.
Tompkins let out a low whistle.
“That same raid,” Lucas said, “was when Taurius went missing. I don’t think they abducted him. I think he went willingly. Well.” He held a hand up. “There may have been coercion, if he thought going with them was the only way to save his life, or the life of his family, or escape some other threat. At any rate, he definitely left the Fairfax with the Prophet and boarded Carmen’s ship.”
“I’m missing the part where that inner-world shite isn’t in league with the bloody pirates,” Adam growled.
“Jeffrey,” Lucas called. “Four coffees, please. Black.” The dispenser beside the ready-room door pinged, and a few seconds later the room filled with the aroma of synthetic coffee beans. Lucas stood, stretching, and took one of the mugs, setting it down in front of Adams unceremoniously. “Drink,” he commanded, and resumed his seat. The others took their mugs and sipped.
“The problem isn’t Carmen’s Crews. In the end, it’s almost of no consequence whether they leaned on him or he was completely complicit. The problem is Rome.”
He pulled up another screen, a data-map showing all the outfits in the game. “Notice anything?” He let the others scan the interconnected web of names for a few minutes.
“No Rome,” Caspar muttered.
“That’s right. Not one mention.”
Tompkins raised his hand again.
“Yes, Tompkins?”
“Sorry, Sir, it’s just, uhm, didn’t we already know that? I mean, isn’t that pretty much what Jan told us?”
“Confirms it, yes. Take another sip of your coffee, though, kid. Your brain is still waking up. The last time we talked about Rome Inc., we were as yet unaware that the ‘perfectly legitimate’ trading operation for which we had pledged to run freight from Ceres to Mars was planning a massive attack on Ceres space. Which makes them not just a mystery player. It makes them the player. The hand pulling the strings.”
He rose to his feet and began pacing around the table.
“Now, why would the hand pulling the strings reign down death and fire on one of the most profitable crime syndicate and pirate bases in the entire system?”
Caspar rubbed her temples.
“Simple,” Adams said. “They were putting everyone else in their place. Getting a foot on the dog’s neck.”
“That’s what Darren thought,” Caspar added.
“That’s what he said he thought,” Lucas said. “I’m reserving judgment on most of what comes out of his mouth, for now. Until I know more about who he works for.”
“Who he works for, Sir?” Tompkins scrunched up his face. “Hasn’t he saved the lives of everyone in this room, like, a bunch of times?”
“He has, and I’m not ungrateful. I’m just not sure to whom I owe thanks. Remember the coup in Rust, and the unexplained presence of such a large force from the Empire?”
“The Arms of the Sons,” Caspar muttered.
“Bingo.” Lucas snapped his fingers and pointed at her.
“You think he’s a True Son. You think he’s a Son of Jupiter.”
Lucas shrugged. “I can only speculate at the moment. But if he is affiliated, in any way, with elite Empire forces, then consider this.” He leaned forward with his hands on the table. “The Empire had forces there, at Ceres. Top brass. A full-fledged Battleship. And they did nothing while Rome blew everyone sky-high.”
“Captain, you’re starting to give me the willies.” Tompkins sipped his coffee, grimacing.
“Don’t ever tell me what that means. Back to the Ceres bombing. If you’re the one pulling the strings, it sort of follows that you already have your foot on everyone’s neck, don’t you think? But there was something special about Ceres, something to which we in this room are perhaps uniquely privy, until about a day before Rome blew it up.”
“The hidden Prophet,” Caspar said, her eyes wide.
“And Lieutenant Caspar wins the game.” Lucas resumed his seat.
“So, let me get this straight.” Adams set his mug down. “You’re saying you think all this fuss, all this blowing up of space stations and nuking civilians and flooding out pods just to shoot them out of the sky, all of this was for some measly drug?”
Lucas scoffed. “You have any idea the market value of an ounce—an ounce—of viable Prophet?”
Adams shrugged, making a face.
“Almost enough to buy our ship, Adams. A couple of kilos and you’ve got yourself a fleet. A couple more, maybe a whole planet. But have you had a look in the logs since we got robbed? You have any idea how many missiles we offloaded for them, and how much Prophet they would have been holding, assuming they were full of the stuff?”
Adams looked around the table. Caspar’s face had drained of color. “Two-hundred missiles,” she whispered. “Or casings for two-hundred. Couple of kilos each, on a good day.”
Lucas bent his brow at them. “Now you begin to understand. We weren’t just unwitting drug mules for some mid-level cartel. We were holding an illegal fortune worth all the real estate in the system. A few times over. Our lives? Not even a drop in the bucket. Ceres? A necessary sacrifice. The orbiting station? Hardly an afterthought. Rome owns the world. They’ve misplaced the deed. And they’re burning down the house trying to find it.”
After a minute of silence, Tompkins scratche
d his ear and sighed. “So what do we do, Captain?”
Lucas smiled mirthlessly. “We go get it back.”
---
Traffic increased, predictably, as they entered Martian space. Mars was the Vice World, the second home of humanity, and the first extraterrestrial territory to have been settled by humans (discounting the moon, which had almost always been little more than a glorified amusement park for the super-wealthy). On Mars people had dug tunnels, not unlike those on Ceres, deep beneath the surface, and had mined invaluable minerals for the construction of tech, ships, stations, and habs. The surface itself was pockmarked with a vast web of interconnected shielded bubbles, most of them terraformed, and more than a dozen stations of importance flew in orbit. Industry and commerce thrived, including black market operations. So it was no great surprise that Taurius and the Prophet would head here, especially given Taurius’ diplomatic station on the planet.
What Lucas didn’t tell his privy council was his one lingering doubt; that his source may have simply been wrong. She did seem ill-informed, after all. She had insisted that Taurius had been a passenger rather than a prisoner, and that, if he and the cargo were both missing, he must have taken it back to Mars for distribution. In light of recent events, Lucas wasn’t so sure distribution made sense. More likely Taurius took the drug and fled in order to have a bargaining chip to levy against some threat Lucas did not yet understand. But Mars made sense, so that’s where they would begin their search.
Besides, they technically had a job now. He curled his lip, thinking of the blue tubs of pirate cargo onboard. More than once he’d been been tempted to sneak down and have a peek at their contents, but he had convinced himself he was better off not knowing. The fact that there had hardly been a moment’s rest since it had been loaded helped.
Lucas sat up in his bunk and narrowly avoided banging his head on the bulkhead. He slithered down and did his best to stretch in the recently confined space. He was too tall for life on a spaceship. He chuckled at the thought, wondering if he would ever get used to that.
On the bridge he nodded to Mulligan and Randall. Caspar turned and caught his eye.
“Morning, Sir.”
“Morning.” His voice was thick and groggy. “You folks get any rest?”
“Aye, Sir. Ready for duty.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” He sat in the chair. “Jeffrey? Coffee.”
Beep. “No, thank you.”
Lucas raised an eyebrow. “For me, Jeffrey.”
“Oh, I suppose so. Since you insist.”
The dispenser dinged, and the aroma of slightly burnt coffee wafted out. Lucas grimaced, took the mug, and began sipping. “I take it you’re feeling back to your old self, now that we’ve safely escaped certain death and have made our way back into civilized territory.”
“Bingo.”
Lucas sighed. “I miss the scared, polite, obliging Jeffrey.”
“Sir?” Mulligan turned, her red hair bobbing behind her. “You have a request from the Ceres survivors for an audience before we reach Mars.”
“An audience?” He sipped more coffee. “Care to join me, Private?”
“Sir.”
Together they left the bridge and traveled down to the bunkhouses beneath the hangar deck. Down here in the belly of the ship, it felt ghostly, there was so much empty space, so much silence. Lucas wondered idly if they would ever make it back to the Kuiper Fleet and get staffed with a full, proper, fighting crew.
“Private,” he said as they stood together in a lift. “I know there are no words that can help right now. But I want to tell you how sorry I am for what happened on Ceres.” Mulligan had grown up in Rust, and had a lot of old friends there.
Used to have.
“Thank you, Sir,” she said quietly. The lift dinged, and the doors opened to a couple of familiar faces—Max and Sharky, two of her contacts they had met while in Rust.
“Thanks Angie.” Max pulled her in with one beefy arm and squeezed her around the shoulders. She patted his chest.
“Captain.” Sharky held out a hand. Lucas looked at it for a moment. The last time they had seen him, Sharky hadn’t been too happy to have them all in his establishment, asking after Darren. But Lucas supposed the situation had changed now. No one was worried about the warring mob families of Rust. Rust was gone.
“Sharky.” They shook hands.
“Please, call me Tom. Sharky was my street-name, from when we were kids.” He smiled sadly.
“Tom.” Lucas inclined his head. “I understand I’ve been summoned for an audience.”
“Thanks for coming. This way, please.” Tom led them through a series of empty bunk rooms, the enormity of the vacant space weighing again on Lucas’ mind. Finally, they came to the room inhabited by the survivors. Two civilian escape pods—for all Lucas knew, all the souls that remained after Rome had bombed their home—and they all fit comfortably in just one of the Fairfax bunk rooms.
They came to a mess table at the far end of the room, and sat.
“We understand we’re nearly to Mars,” Tom began.
“Just entered Martian space, that’s right. Had to slow down for the traffic, but we should find a station to dock with in the next hour or so.”
Tom nodded. “So, here’s the thing. Not all of us want to go to Mars.”
Lucas pursed his lips. “Ok. I’m hearing you. But this isn’t a pleasure cruise.”
“No, of course not, we know that. It’s just that, a lot of us have family back in the belt, not just on Ceres—habs and jobs and the world we know, it’s all back there. All we have on Mars is a dubious immigration status, and the possibility of either finding a job in the mines or slipping under the radar into the underworld.”
Lucas twitched. He was under the assumption that a number of the survivors probably had contacts in the inner system underworld already, being associated themselves with organized crime and piracy via Ceres. But he wasn’t going to say that out loud.
“If you choose to dump us on Mars, that’s your choice, and we can’t stop you. And we’ll still be grateful that you saved our lives. But you won’t have given us back our lives. You’ll have kept us from them.”
Lucas took a breath. He wanted to help. But the role of Fairfax right now was growing increasingly complicated. Assuming they did manage to find Taurius, and maybe even the Prophet, and assuming they were able to broker some sort of ceasefire with Rome, and end their temporary piratey obligations, they still had a mission to complete that would take them back to the outer worlds, to Pluto, and home.
Tom sat still, waiting. The room was silent. Lucas looked around and saw that all of the refugees were watching and listening. He sighed.
“We have an obligation, once we leave Mars, that will take us to places you cannot go.”
Mulligan shifted her weight, staring at the floor.
“But,” Lucas said, “if everything goes well here, we will be passing through the belt once more before that happens. So…” He rubbed his forehead. Well, why not? There was plenty of space. “Those of you who wish to return to the belt, you can stay until we pass through it again. But you’ll have to get off at that point, and I’ll expect you all to make arrangements for yourselves before then. We won’t have time to dawdle.”
Tom grinned, stood, and held out his hand again. “Thank you, Captain. Thank you! We’ll stay out of your way, I promise. You won’t regret keeping us on.”
Chapter 18
Ada’s head hurt. It was a classic tiger-by-the-tail scenario. The psychopaths who wanted their drugs also wanted revenge, and apparently she was one of the ones left holding the tab. She could turn tail and run back for the Kuiper belt. She might make it. But then she would never know what had happened to her dad. And it wasn’t as if things had been much better for her at home, where some other mysterious strangers had tried to kill her.
Or she could try to track down the Prophet and buy her freedom. She didn’t think much of questing around the i
nner system with Lady Umbrador, but she had to admit the woman seemed to know what she was talking about. So, in the end they called an unspoken truce, and kept their heading for Mars, with the new goal of finding the drugs to pacify the tiger.
They slid into Mars space uneventfully, slowing to account for traffic and to plan their next move.
“Where to, Milady Druglord?” Ada asked. Umbrador had peeked her head into the cockpit again as the planet had come in sight.
“The load should have a keeper. We just have to find that person.”
“The keeper wouldn’t happen to be Martian Ambassador Taurius, would it?”
Umbrador’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You’re well-informed, for a belt-rat. Too bad your track record for finishing jobs is so lousy to date. I might have found work for you.”
“Kill me now.”
Umbrador ignored the comment. “I imagine he’ll have gone to ground, so we won’t find him at his official embassy residence. Nevertheless it’s not a bad place to start picking up clues. Here.” She handed Ada a data stick, which Ada plugged into her console. “Address is under ‘Martian Ambassador.’”
“Very original. Moses, can you bring that up?”
“Yes, Ada.” A set of coordinates popped up, followed by a graphic showing a suggested course. They were only minutes away.
“Will there be docking space?” she asked, her eyebrows knitted together.
“For this little thing?” Umbrador waved carelessly, turning to leave the cockpit. “Honey, you don’t take out a reservation to land a fly on an airstrip.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Ada mumbled.
They were hailed with an audio-only livefeed from ground control as they approached the embassy. Moses pinged back an authorization code from Umbrador’s data stick, and were given permission to land at the adjacent docking structure, a multi-level elliptical tower ringed by hangars. Everything was bright and white or shined chrome. Statues adorned the foot of the tower, and a clear single-level hab covered a park with grass, trees, and park benches. Ada let Moses take over their descent, and watched, her mouth a little open. She had never seen such green grass. Everything back home had been dull, rusted, and always half-broken. So far life in the inner belt had seemed like more of the same. But Mars was different.
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