Traitor (Rebel Stars Book 2)

by Edward W. Robertson

  "That's not happening," MacAdams said. "I can't outpunch a gun."

  Rada drifted toward the side of the street. "So we head to the outer walls. Climb out and get to the car."

  "You can't climb over the walls!" Marcus said. He had a leonine face with a heavy jaw, but the rest of him was thin, giving him a top-heavy look. "That's the only place they use modern tech. Can't risk people getting in—or running off."

  "What else can we do?" Webber said. "Go through them? I volunteer MacAdams' big bald head for the battering ram."

  "That's only fair," MacAdams said, as calmly as ever. "Yours is much too soft."

  At the gates, a man detached from the others, heading in their direction. A bat hung from his hand.

  "I know another way out," Marcus said. "Over here."

  He cut down a side street. The air smelled like hot oil and fried fish. The street grew quiet, dark, small houses set back from the rutted dirt path. Marcus walked that way for three blocks, then swung back toward the fence separating Bartertown from the other districts. He headed to the front porch of a house set against the fence and swung open the door.

  Candlelight flickered inside. A burly man stood, his muttonchops thick enough to scrub a casserole pan.

  "What's the password?" he rumbled.

  "It's me," Marcus said.

  "You look like you. But how do I know?"

  "Buttermilk."

  The burly man stepped to the side, sweeping out one arm. "Was that so hard?"

  Marcus jogged through another door, crossed a dining room, then opened another door. This fed out the back side of the fence. The remainder of the city sprawled before them.

  "What now?" Webber said.

  MacAdams glanced behind him. "We should go see Tiant."

  "Think he'll get us out of here?"

  "To say goodbye. He's been a good host."

  Webber tented his hands over his nose and mouth. "So we'll send him a fruit basket, you sentimental—" A deafening, blatting noise grated across the night, causing them to flinch. Webber looked up at the sky. "What the hell was that?"

  Marcus gazed behind him at the fence. "A car."

  "Cars hum. That sounds like the world farting itself to death."

  "It's a very old car."

  "Legs," Rada said. "Use them."

  She took off at a dead run in the direction of the front gates. The others strung out behind her.

  "Marcus," she said. "Why does FinnTech want you dead so bad?"

  "No way," Marcus said. "I'm not telling you word one. Not until I'm standing in front of Benez. He's the only one who can keep me safe."

  Webber snorted. "Could have saved us a lot of trouble by coming to us rather than this place."

  Rada switched her device to net access and fired off a slew of messages. "Tell me you know how to get through the main gate."

  "That's easy," Marcus said. "All you have to do is forfeit all rights to ever return."

  "Fine by me. I regret ever coming here."

  The roaring, blatting noise picked up again, shredding the moist, warm air so loudly Rada couldn't tell if it was gaining. A gunshot went off, followed by two more, but she thought the sounds were emanating from Bartertown. In the several minutes it took to reach the gates, the thunder of the car faded behind them.

  Marcus summoned down the gatekeeper and told her they wanted out. Incredulous, the woman warned them they'd never be allowed back. They each provided their names. The woman flipped through a notebook, taking entirely too long to strike out their names, then let them outside. They ran down the road into the jungle, gates clanging shut behind them.

  "What now?" Webber said. "Please tell me Toman's about to airlift us out of here. With in-flight champagne."

  Despite the darkness, humid sweat dripped from Rada's brow. "Couldn't reach him. We'll have to run."

  "To the bikes? They're like two miles up the road."

  "Do you have a better idea?"

  "Yeah," he said. "Run faster."

  Their feet pounded the textured surface of the plastic roadway. Two minutes later, the archaic engine rumbled through the night behind them. It dwindled to a low, barely audible chug. Three quick shots rang out.

  "That would be the gatekeeper," MacAdams said, voice almost reverent.

  Rada ran harder. The engine revved up, screaming like a rocket. It was at least a mile away, but that wouldn't give them much time. She checked her device, pumping her legs as hard as she could.

  Headlights carved through the jungle a hundred yards ahead. Webber cried out. The oncoming car fishtailed, smoke boiling from its tires. It swung to a stop sideways in front of them. All four doors sprung open.

  "Thank god for technology," Rada said, piling behind the wheel of their stashed vehicle. She'd already called up its directions. As soon as the others were in, she ordered it to punch it. Behind them, the headlights of the Wrath car dwindled away to nothing.

  * * *

  Toman, it turned out, was no longer in Better Sands. Or on Earth. Stymied in the capital, he'd returned to the Hive to regroup. On hearing the news from Rada, he arranged a private shuttle to the spaceport. On their arrival, the Tine was all ready to go. As soon as the others were settled, Rada boosted away from the station, got to safe distance, and burned it.

  Marcus blinked at the screen, bracing himself for the extra gravity of acceleration. "What are we waiting for?"

  "We're on full burn." Rada pointed to the readouts. "The lack of inertia you're feeling is compliments of your former employer."

  He swung to stare at her. "You got a stabilizer from them? How?"

  "How do you think?" Webber laughed. "We stole it."

  MacAdams scowled. "We didn't steal it. It was a prize won through honorable combat."

  "Whatever, Lancelot." Webber slung his arm across the back of his seat to face Marcus. "So, Mr. Flee-to-the-Edges-of-the-Earth. What's so important that FinnTech would kill to keep quiet?"

  "At this point," Rada said, "what wouldn't they kill to hush up?"

  Marcus folded his arms, thrusting out his heavy jaw. "I told you. Nothing until I see Toman Benez."

  "Just a hint?" Webber said.

  "Finn's been in bed with the Swimmers for longer than you realize."

  "He's a tentacle man, eh?"

  Marcus stared at Webber a second, then shook his head. "It's about more than the aliens. This thing runs deeper than you know."

  "Why does it feel like I've been dumped into the middle of a spy movie?" Webber pushed himself up from his chair. "I'm gonna catch a snooze."

  Rada watched him go. After all that, his first instinct was to sleep? What about Marcus? Toman's efforts in Better Sands? Whatever was going on at the Locker? She knew Toman well enough to know they'd have a new assignment the instant he finished grilling Marcus. They'd gone into Absolution too unprepared. The only way to keep up was to never stop moving.

  Then again, she'd gotten to know herself a little better over the last couple years, too. For her, too much downtime, and the walls started to close in. As long as she kept plowing forward, the shadows couldn't catch up.

  Marcus excused himself to his bunk. They'd searched him before leaving Earth, but MacAdams eyed him anyway.

  "What do you think?" the big man said. "He came along mighty easily."

  "I've heard of that happening with fugitives. After being on the run for a while, looking over your shoulder every minute of the day, getting caught is a relief."

  "Didn't hurt to convince him an assassin was on his heels, either. How do you suppose he'll react when he finds out that guy's dead?"

  "By that point he'll already have told Toman everything he knows. Who cares what he thinks? MacAdams, didn't you used to be a mercenary?"

  MacAdams raised a thick eyebrow. "That means I can't have a conscience?"

  "I'm far less concerned with your soul than I am with the billions that will be affected by whatever FinnTech's up to with the Swimmers. That's why I'm not worried about lying to M
arcus. Besides, Toman will take care of him. Keep him safe from Finn."

  He watched the stars on the screen for a long moment. "Could be. But you got to be careful about what you're willing to do in the name of the cause. I bet Thor Finn thinks he's doing the right thing, too."

  Rada sat back. MacAdams looked like a pit fighter. A guy who could juice your head with a flex of his biceps. This was far from the first time she'd heard him talk like a monk, yet every time it happened, she was still surprised.

  It would be two more days before they arrived at the Hive. She leaned back her chair and stretched out, device propped in her lap, and called up the latest on the Locker. Facts were still thin on the ground, but enough tidbits had trickled out to confirm there'd been some kind of rebellion. Apparently successful. In response, the shipping market looked like a shot of the Himalayas, complete with glacial valleys. Some companies were taking advantage of the temporary lack of pirates by shipping all they could, free of Lane fees, but others had seen their stock prices tumble, money's natural response to any chaos in the world.

  The device fell to her chest. She'd nodded off. She knew she should sit up, or at least set her device somewhere safer, but she couldn't convince herself to move.

  "Rada." A voice from the blackness. "Hey, Rada. What's this orange dot mean?"

  Her eyes flew open. A small orange wedge had appeared on tactical. It was far enough away that she couldn't get a hull profile yet, let alone an engine signature, but the readouts indicated it was going to get a lot closer in the next few minutes.

  "Well?" MacAdams said. "What is it?"

  "Small corvette of some kind." Rada pulled up more readouts. "At present course, we won't come within combat range."

  "We're in the middle of open space, not an Earth freeway. The only time you bump into somebody out here is when they're looking for you."

  "Could be a freighter. With the Locker temporarily out of commission, the shipping companies have been going to town." She frowned, head still fuzzy from sleep. "Except there are still plenty of pirates inside the Asteroid Belt."

  "Could it be one of them?"

  "Let's find out." She poured power into the Tine's engines. The readouts adjusted, widening the projected gap between where the two ships would come closest. The number stabilized. A minute after that, it began to shrink. "Go wake up Webber."

  MacAdams' face hardened. He jogged from the bridge toward the bunks. He could have roused Webber via comm, but he was a hands-on guy. Either that, or he knew Webber well enough to know that it would take more than a voice to roust him from bed.

  In other circumstances, Rada might have dared the UFO to come at them. She'd take the Tine against anything its size. Today, though, her cargo was too precious to gamble. She accelerated harder yet. Inbound at an obtuse angle, the other vessel picked up speed and altered its vector.

  "Screw you," Rada muttered. She opened the engines as wide as they would go, peeling away. The estimated intersection gap increased briefly, but began shrinking again an instant later.

  Boots thumped into the bridge. Webber slung himself into his chair. "What's up?"

  "We've got an admirer," Rada said. "And I can't shake them."

  MacAdams squinted. "I thought that little add-on of ours meant nothing could out-accelerate us."

  "You're right—unless they've got a Motion Arrestor, too. And bigger engines to go with it."

  "Oh shit," Webber said. "There really is a FinnTech assassin after us."

  MacAdams strapped in. "Should we split the ship? Triple-team it?"

  "We're not set up for that," Rada said. "Tell Marcus to strap in. We're headed for a dogfight."

  While MacAdams spoke into the comm, Rada fired a Needle to the Hive, including what limited information she'd gathered about the incoming ship. She angled to put her tail to the enemy. Flying ahead of a chasing enemy was a huge advantage: while their missiles had to catch up to you, fighting upstream, your missiles would be going downstream, working against the enemy's momentum and giving them less room to maneuver.

  She pinged the UFO, but nobody responded. It was now close enough to make out every detail of its V-shaped hull. It had the expensive look of a craft that could handle atmo if it needed. As it neared the green zone—the screen's translucent green sphere around the Tine that marked effective missile range—Rada sent a final warning. She got no reply.

  She gathered the records of her efforts and sent a second Needle to the Hive, then fired a salvo of missiles behind her.

  Green dots pricked the screen, speeding toward the orange representation of the oncoming vessel. A slew of orange dots materialized from its bow. On tactical, defensive solutions sprung into being; if Rada didn't select one manually, the Tine would do so itself. She opted for Blue-Nine, an ammo-conservative strategy that would maximize their advantage of flying in front.

  The two waves of missiles streaked toward each other. On a second screen with a live view of space, explosions blossomed in red and white tatters. Rockets lurched to avoid contact with the bursts. The change in direction left them vulnerable to counters, which darted forward, triggering a second wave of explosions.

  "Are we winning?" Webber said.

  "Haven't died yet." Unimpressed by the enemy's standard attack, Rada detached two missile drones. These arced to either side of the Tine, forcing the UFO to divert fire.

  Rada watched the exchange with a strange form of anxious boredom. In truth, you couldn't tell who was "winning" until the endgame. When somebody started to run low on missiles. Rada thought the introduction of the Motion Arrestors would make dogfights less about materiel and more about maneuvers, but so far, she hadn't seen any real evolution of tactics.

  The UFO knocked down one drone. As soon as the second vaporized, the ship unleashed a torrent of rockets. To conserve her own, Rada swerved across two axes, forcing the enemy missiles to line up behind her, where each of her counters could knock out several at a time.

  The enemy changed course, too. Far more sharply than Rada's broad turn. It closed on them. On tactical, patterns of red lights indicated they were being fired on—by kinetics. Bullets. Sprayed in an erratic yet sophisticated cluster that was chewing up a vast swath of space. Hemmed in by an arc of rockets in one direction and the kinetics in the other, Rada swerved down.

  The UFO anticipated her turn, shaving off yet more distance, firing another long, space-chewing string of kinetics, followed up by another round of missiles. Rada swapped to a highly aggressive defense, spewing rockets behind her. Explosions flashed on the secondary screen, blindingly close. Radiation-sensitive damage sensors perked up on tactical.

  "I know we're still alive," Webber said. "But was that one as close as it felt?"

  "Any closer, and you'd be gathering your component atoms."

  As soon as the explosions faded, she turned as hard as she could and fired a salvo in return, meaning to drive back the other ship. Open up some breathing room. Her rockets lanced forward with unusual speed. Around the FinnTech ship, its counter-rockets seemed to hesitate a moment before swooping to intercept.

  Rada ordered the computer to run an analysis of the last exchange. The numbers it kicked out were crude, but she didn't have time to plug in anything as advanced as she needed. What it did give her confirmed what she'd felt during the last exchange of rockets. The timing had been off. Wrong. Like when she was practicing on a sim and the graphics hung for a frame.

  She dribbled rockets at the enemy, then punched her engines, as if to flee. Like before, the other ship corralled her with a net of missiles, hemming her in on another side with a barrage of tiny bullets. She dived away; the enemy matched course.

  She fired minimal defenses. Lights began to blink on tactical, demurely at first. Suggesting her attention. A few seconds later, they were glaring, demanding her eye. A klaxon whooped. On tactical, the incoming missiles streaked toward the red sphere nestled beneath the vast, translucent green sphere surrounding the Tine. The red sphere marking the poi
nt beyond which Rada's defenses wouldn't have time to react.

  She flipped to starboard with everything the Tine had. A moment later, she reversed to port just as hard. Without the Motion Arrestors, the Tine would have broken itself into a million tiny pieces. With it, her tail lashed like a whip. At the height of its acceleration, Rada fired off all the remaining rockets housed there.

  From her fleeing position, missiles would normally have to fight against her terrible forward momentum. But these ones worked with its sudden, brief reversal. They leaped forward like they'd been stung. The FinnTech ship's counters hesitated, caught flat-footed. By the time they recalibrated their course, the first of Rada's rockets snapped past them, closing on the enemy.

  The other vessel vanished in a burst of blue light.

  "Nailed 'em!" Webber jumped from his chair, pumping a fist at the fireworks. "What did you just do?"

  "I learned something," Rada grinned. "You should try it sometime."

  She hung around just long enough to scoop up an engine sig and scan the debris, then boosted away, back on course to the Hive.

  * * *

  "You'll be safe here. For as long as you like." Toman folded his hands on the table in the clean white room. The screen to his left showed a view of what was outside of the wall: a silvery orbital ring attached to a tiny green and blue microplanet just a few miles around. "You could take my word for it, but if you prefer, I have also prepared a document so legally binding I can't even read it."

  He nudged his device across the desk. Marcus glanced at the document on the screen. "Which means I can't, either."

  "I'm sure my lawyers would be happy to interpret it for you." Toman smiled toothily. "I really don't mean to sound ominous. But FinnTech is after you. I'd like to stop them. If you can't trust me enough to work together, I'd be happy to drop you off on the nearest inhabited rock."

  Marcus' leonine face dropped. "It's too late. If you wanted to stop them, you needed to start twenty years ago."

  "They can't have been dealing with the Swimmers for twenty years. Someone would have noticed by now."