“Ada,” he sighed, smiling. “Yer doin’ it again. We talked about this, ya remember? It ain’t just your ship. ‘Sides, who broke you outta Carmen’s brig, if it wasn’t old Crusher?”
“Don’t you smile at me, you giant lump, you—you—” His cheeks began to sag. “You big loveable lifesaver. That doesn’t give you the right to force me to haul mortal enemies around.”
“Mortal enemies?” One of their men, a little older and tubbier than the rest, stood next to Bone Crusher. He had somehow coaxed a tumbler of more alcohol out. “What have I missed, Captain?”
“That’s our fault,” their captain said. He stepped into the cargo hold. “We never wanted to hurt you, miss. You may recall, we spared your life.”
“You took my core.”
“You took ours first.”
“No, I wasn’t even on the crew when they first attacked you and…” He lifted an eyebrow as she petered out. “And don’t ‘miss’ me. Don’t you dare.”
“Been trying not to.”
She spat in his face. He closed his eyes, wiping it away.
“I don’t care that my man over there has taken a liking to you. I don’t care what fine words you have, or even that the pirates I ran with drew first blood. You might as well have killed me. The fate you left me to… I mean, what did you think would happen? You took my core, which wasn’t mine to lose, you let Taurius go, with the Prophet—”
“Now wait a minute,” he interrupted. “Fair is fair. We could have played nicer. But your crew was the one that took Taurius and the drug away from us in the first place, and it was your ship he left when he escaped. The only reason you ended up in my brig is that we were trying to track him down. We’re still trying.”
Ada scowled, then turned to Bone Crusher. “Crush?” She pointed at the captain. “These are the people that killed Captain Brant.
Brant had been in charge of the vessel that had apprehended the Colonials to begin with, and when they had met again in Ceres’ orbit, Brant had been shot while the Colonials were retaking their bridge.
Brant had also been one of Bone Crusher’s very old friends.
The fist made contact with the face before Ada had time to blink. Their captain dropped at Crush’s feet, the gash on his forehead splitting open and bleeding again. Ada thanked her stars Crush hadn’t been angry with her when they’d been forced to pit-fight. She wouldn’t have lived through it.
“Get up,” Crush growled. “Stand up.”
The captain rolled onto his stomach, his mouth hanging open. “Why?” he groaned.
“Wanna hit ya again.”
“That seems… very unappealing,” he said.
Another man emerged from the shadows. Ada started. She hadn’t seen him there before. It was their fighter—the one who had done the killing, the one who had wanted to kill her. She swallowed against a dry throat. The man came to stand over the captain.
“Took you long enough,” the captain said. He rose to all fours, then flopped back over on his back. Crush could hit a man when he wanted to.
“Stay down,” the man said. He locked eyes with Crush. Crush squinted at him. For a tense moment, they stood there, neither saying a word, each staring the other down, like a couple of dogs. Finally, and to Ada’s eternal surprise, Crush backed away.
“I don’t like this one,” he mumbled, pointing at the other man.
“Me neither, Crush,” Ada said.
“Well, he’s with us.” Another of them, a young woman with a shock of red hair, came to stand between the men. She rested a hand on Crush’s bicep. Ada rolled her eyes. “You saved us, Crush, and we’re grateful. All of us.” She looked down at their captain. “Even him.”
“Especially me,” he said, pitifully raising a hand.
Crush grunted and left, heading into the living area.
“Why did he save you?” Ada asked, after he’d gone.
“He told us he thought we were a pair of assassins he was chasing. When he saw that wasn’t the case, but that we were all about to die back there in that elevator shaft, he said he would help us.” The redhead shrugged. “Guess he’s just a good person. Nice to know one still exists.”
“Pity,” Ada grumbled. She turned to leave them. “Ship’s small. You’ll have to stay in the cargo hold for now. Till we can land safely. Then you’re out.”
---
Their pilot was good, Ada had to admit. She took to flying Cupid like a fish in water. They tore up red dust, hugging the surface and careening through the outskirts of the massive settlement they’d come down in, finally breaking out into open Martian desert. Tactical showed most of the fighters had eventually let them be, keeping a patrol around the towers and then evacuating. Bombing runs had followed. No nukes this time, but the settlement was devastated all the same. Explosion followed explosion. Cupid ran.
“Where’d you get the AI?” she asked Ada.
Ada shrugged. “Family project. Started as a mining program. Tinkered with him over the years.”
The woman turned, eyes wide. “Mining program? Flies pretty well for, ah… mining.” She held out a hand. “I’m Caspar, by the way.” Ada looked at it.
“I don’t want to know you. I want you off my ship.”
“You’re welcome. For all the work I did back there to get us out of that.”
“Whatever. Where can you get off?”
Caspar scratched her head. “That was our comet-hopper you saw blown up back there. Came down from orbit in it. Best way to get rid of us for good would be to take us back up to the Fair—to our freighter.”
Freighter, right. Ada smirked. “Fine. Make it happen, then you’re gone.”
“Aye, aye.” Caspar gave a mock salute and resumed subvocalizing with Moses.
As they gained altitude, Ada tried to distract herself from her anger by taking stock. Umbrador was dead. Ada had planned to come here anyway to start hunting for her father’s trail, but now the army of evil druglords that seemed to be following her around the system and blowing everything up was demanding precedence. Find Taurius, find the Prophet. Find the Prophet, pay off the druglords. Pay off the druglords, and maybe she could live long enough to find out what had happened to her dad.
She was tired. She hadn’t stopped running since the day the hab had been bombed. But she couldn’t stop yet. She was like a tiny bird, one that couldn’t glide, and had flown too high. She had to keep flying, or she would fall.
She climbed into a bunk, wincing at the soreness in her limbs. Her back felt like one big bruise. She tried rolling onto her side, and something dug into her hip.
Right. Umbrador’s data stick. She pulled it from her pocket and turned it over in her hand. “Moses?” she subvocalized. She waited a full five seconds before remembering she wasn’t wearing the earpiece. Then she sighed, put the stick back in her pocket, and dozed.
---
She was back on Carmen’s hab, strolling down the corridor, when a wiry little man stepped out in front of her. “Quit yer runnin’!” he said. She turned to run, but stopped when she heard Moses’ voice.
“Ada.” She looked left and right, and saw an army of mining diggers surrounding her. She reached for a weapon, but all she found was a blanket. Desperately, she held it out in front of her, as if to ward of the diggers. “Ada!” Moses called. “ADA!”
“NO!” She flung the blanket off and sat up, slapping Joyce in the face. She was in the bunk on Cupid. Joyce frowned, holding a hand to her cheek.
“What was that about?” she asked.
“Sorry.” Ada ran a hand over her short hair and rubbed her face. “Nightmare. What’s up?”
“We’re on their ship.” Joyce held out her hand, and dropped Ada’s earring into her lap. “Gear up. We can leave as soon as you’d like.”
Back on the cockpit, Ada snapped the earring into place. “Moses, you there?”
“Hello, Ada. Nice to hear your voice again.”
She snorted. “You didn’t enjoy your hall-pass with Cassian?�
��
“Her name is Caspar. She’s a fine flyer. But you are my friend.”
Ada sat still for a moment. That was a weird thing for a computer to say. She wondered how close to sentience her mining program had come.
“We’re docked in a hangar, I assume,” she said.
“That’s right. Clear to leave as soon as you say. But you should have a look at something first.”
“Why don’t I like the sound of that?”
Her console screen flared up, showing a tactical scan. The ship they had docked with was surrounded by battleships.
Ada cursed.
“Ada, I’m receiving a request from the ship’s AI to show you a livefeed from the bridge.”
“Go ahead.”
The Colonial captain appeared on her screen, his face satisfyingly bruised and swollen. “I’m afraid we have a problem,” he began.
“You sure do,” she said. “You’ve trapped me on your ship again. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, I think I’ll kick your teeth out next time we’re breathing the same air.”
“Get in line,” he mumbled, bringing an ice pack to his eye. “At any rate, this wasn’t my idea. But the fleet that’s parked around us might make it a little difficult for you to get away.”
Ada frowned, her wheels turning. “Why aren’t they firing on you?”
The captain looked sheepish. “They, ah, well… they think we’re one of them.”
“They think it? Or are you? Seems awfully convenient, a new outfit starts making power grabs in the inner system, and a Kuiper Fleet flagship shows up in the middle of their formation. What aren’t you telling me?”
“It’s not what you think, honestly. It’s complicated.”
She cussed at him. “I think it’s exactly what I think.”
“Hang on, they’re calling us,” he said. The feed ended.
Ada sat in her chair, deflated. Keep flying, or fall.
Chapter 23
Randall swore up and down he’d done his best to avoid getting boxed in, but he’d been helpless; sit and let the Roman ships surround them, or turn tail, abandoning the captain and most of the bridge crew, and likely get shot out of the sky on their retreat? In the end it hadn’t been much of a choice.
Now they were in the middle of a posse of battleships, souped-up freighters, Gatling fighters, and bombers, each and every one signaling the Rome Inc. ID. More and more, Lucas was buying his hypothesis that Rome was no new player, but the key player finally revealing themselves.
A familiar, hideous face graced the view screen. Lucas sighed, holding the icepack to his eye. “Hello, Cyclops.”
“Captain Harris.” Cyclops’ grin grew wide. “They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” He gave a little bow. “Who has blinded you?”
“Nobody. To what do we owe the pleasure of a full escort of Eaters?”
“I’ll answer your question after you answer mine. How did delivery go?”
Lucas clenched his jaw to keep his mouth from falling open. In all the madness, they hadn’t gotten around to offloading the freight yet.
“Ah, I can see by the look in your eye you’ve been a bad boy, Captain. But we both already knew that, didn’t we?”
“It’s not how it seems. We have no intention of leaving Mars without delivering your cargo; it’s still onboard, safe and sound. The job’s still on.”
“No.” Cyclops’ smile fell. “You have failed me. Once. But I’m a gambling man, Captain. I’ll have another go with you. Fail me again, and, well.” The grin returned.
Lucas nodded. “We’ll just be on our way down, then, as soon as you give us berth to navigate.”
“No need. Plans have changed, and the cargo will now be headed to Earth.”
Lucas was stunned. “Earth? As in… Earth, Earth?”
“Indeed. Oh, do not worry your little Kuiper Colony heart, Captain, you will be perfectly safe from the Empire. You are with Rome, remember? Stay in formation. We will escort you.” And just like that, the feed ended.
Lucas threw the icepack to the floor. “This detour isn’t getting any shorter.”
“Sir.” Caspar set down the mug of water she had been drinking. “If Taurius wasn’t at the Embassy, it may be a logical assumption that he is avoiding Mars altogether, where he’s a known entity.”
Lucas nodded. “Hard to blend in when you’re the face of the government. You think Earth might be a better place to look for him, don’t you?”
“It had occurred to me.”
“I think you’re just trying to buoy my spirits with a silver lining.”
“First time for everything, Sir.”
The bridge doors slid open and Private Tompkins stepped on. He saluted Lucas, grinning at Caspar. “Captain, Sir, you didn’t happen to accidentally slip and fall onto a certain Lieutenant’s fist, did you?”
“I’m not in the mood, Private,” Lucas growled, picking up his icepack. “But if you must know, no.”
“Sorry, Sir. Didn’t mean to be impertinent. I just can’t help but feel as though you’ve all gone off and had some grand adventure without me.”
“That’s because we have, but don’t let it get you down. Grand adventures aren’t all they’re chalked up to be. Ours usually involve running for our lives and fighting to stay a hair’s length ahead of the grim reaper at every turn.”
Tompkins took a seat at an open station, wagging his finger. “Now that is exactly the kind of fun I’m talking about. We used to all have such great times together, such bonding.”
Caspar snorted.
“Message,” Jeffrey announced. Apparently he was no longer bothering to address Lucas at all.
“Onscreen, please.”
The small freighter pilot—Ada—appeared, looking quite put out. Not that he had much seen her looking otherwise. “You ready to explain yourself now?” she said.
“I’m not sure that I am. But I’m ready to try.” He put the icepack down. “You are welcome to join me on the bridge. I won’t even put you in the brig this time. If you play nice.”
She sneered at him, and the feed ended.
Tompkins cracked his knuckles. “I like her, Sir. No, wait. I think I’m in love.”
Lucas made a face. “Tompkins, you’re supposed to be in love with Caspar.”
“Ew! Sir!” Caspar made a similar face.
“Methinks the ladies doth protest too much, Captain.”
Minutes later Lucas was sitting at the table in his ready-room, Ada and Caspar with him. He brewed coffee. Ada glared at it.
“Here’s the thing,” he said. “I’ve known a few people. You strike me as sincere. I don’t know what put you in the middle of all of this, but I gather from a few choice overheard comments that you wish you were anywhere but.” He sipped his coffee. “Believe me, so do we. So I brought you up here for two reasons. One is that I believe you deserve an explanation as to why you are, for the second time, stuck on my ship. The other is that I think we may all stand a better chance of getting out of this alive if we help each other. So I’m going to bank on your sincerity, and I’m going to tell you what we’re doing here in the first place.”
He waited a moment. She didn’t say a word, but eventually lifted her eyebrows. Waiting.
He started at the very beginning, and told her everything. The mission. The barebones crew. The pirate raid that left them without missiles, which they didn’t know had been stuffed full of Prophet. Taurius’ disappearance. How they had stopped at Ceres to patch up the ship and find a core, and how they had met up with Darren, and survived a mafia war, and escaped the planetoid with their lives, only to find their ship boarded and commandeered by Ada and her captain.
“Brant,” she interrupted. “And he was a good man.”
“I’m sorry. He had taken over a military ship. He was a pirate.”
She smiled a little wistfully, gazing down at the table. “I know. But he was a good pirate.”
Things got more confusing when he got to th
eir encounter with Cyclops and the Eaters, and tried to explain Rome Inc. He told her they had taken the job as cover, and that seemed to resonate with her. When he got to the part where they met Lady Umbrador and picked up their cargo, she stiffened.
“You know her,” Lucas said.
“Knew. Briefly. She died on Mars today.”
“I’m sorry for that, too.”
She sneered. “Seems to me you have enough bodies on you without taking blame for those that aren’t your fault.”
“It might have been our fault. The only pattern we’ve discerned with these large-scale attacks we’ve been witnessing is that we’ve been present at every one.”
“Not every one. You weren’t there when they gutted Carmen’s hab.”
Caspar looked up and caught Lucas’ eye with a knowing look. Ada saw it, too.
“You think it’s me. That I’m the link.”
“No one’s saying that,” Lucas said. “I think we all know the link is the Prophet, first and foremost, and probably Taurius after that.”
“That drug is the most infectious disease to ever get loose in the system,” Ada said. “They only want Taurius because he’s gotten close to it. Umbrador got close too. So’ve I. So’ve you.” She looked at them in turn. “We might as well accept that nine out of ten odds say we’re all already dead.”
“You may be right. But quitting is a luxury she and I can’t afford.” Lucas gestured to Caspar and himself. “Inconvenient thing about flying a Fleet ship; you have this problem called duty.”
Ada snorted.
“What about you?” He narrowed his eyes. “What’s the problem that’s keeping you flying?”
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and shook her head. “I still don’t like you, Captain.”
“Call me Lucas. You’re not on my crew.”
“Fine. Lucas. I still don’t trust you. But I think maybe I understand you.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the data stick. “This,” she said, plugging it into the table console, “was Umbrador’s.”
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