The goateed man scratched his neck. "The discrepancy also matched the fees frequently charged for such services."
Liam rested his elbows on the table. "Here's where things get interesting. Following Peregrine's death, new payments only arrived from one source—Jain's. About six months after that, however, another source kicked in. This was set up to look like more insurance and things filtering through the system, but we traced this to a front. Then Merlin followed it through about six more fronts. That's where the thread started to get fuzzy."
"Like a ship full of tribbles," Nora said.
"You might say we lost it altogether. However, that's when Merlin unleashed his magic. And delivered us a name."
Rada grinned. "You got his name?"
Liam rolled his lips against his teeth. "Peregrine Lawson's? No. Instead, Merlin traced the payments back to their handler. A Universal Debt Services employee named Collin Winslowe."
"That's it?" Rada said.
Simm bolted from his chair with a scrape of legs. "Don't you see? Winslowe is handling Pip's account. If we find Winslowe, we get Pip. Do you know where he is?"
Liam grinned. "That's the best news—he's stationed at the Locker. Pirate central in Uranus orbit. As far as we can tell, it's a permanent post."
"Thank you," Rada said. "Not to test a gift blade on my thumb, but is this as deep as you can get?"
"You can always dig deeper. What we've got now is from dancing around outside the walls. To get more, we'd have to break into the fortress. Of UD-fucking-S. A project like that could take weeks."
Nora laughed. "Weeks? That's optimistic. Try a Jovian year."
Rada stood. "Then we're on our way to the Locker. Please, if you can, continue to investigate. We've already hit too many dead ends to count on any one lead."
Liam winked. "No worries. Merlin's on it."
Simm bowed from the waist so deeply his forehead bumped the table. "My lords. My ladies. You have secured my gratitude from now until the Big Rip. If I may ever be of service, you have but to ask."
Liam stood and bowed in kind. "The Lords are pleased to be of assistance in this most unusual case. Should your quest bear fruit, please return to drink and feast—and tell us of your story."
Simm's grin was wide enough to swallow Titan. Rada thanked them. As soon as she was outside the castle, she broke into a sprint.
~
Rada's eyes tick-tocked up and down the dingy street. On the flight in, she'd paged through countless pictures of the Locker. It had gardens, rooftop villas, an inhabited forest. Parts of it were a genuine wonderland.
This was not one of them.
People sat on stoops, rubbing powder on their gums. Others stood on corners, spitting sales patter at everyone who passed. Pedestrians kept their distance, careful not to get jostled and have their pockets picked.
"Explain," Simm said in her ear. "Why did he choose to meet you in what appears to be actual hell?"
"Best guess? Sales technique. This place is a reminder of what I, a potential debtor, am hoping to escape."
"That's outrageously manipulative. Well, please, please don't die."
"I'll see what I can do."
A notification popped up on her device; he was near. She affirmed the meet, sending her location. A man in a long jacket and a short-brimmed hat emerged from the crowd.
"Ma'am." He touched the brim of his hat. "Shall we adjourn to my office?"
"Let's."
He led her up an echoing stairwell. The third-floor landing smelled musty, sweaty. His apartment was nearly as barren as the channeled surface of Ariel. He offered her one of the few chairs.
"Your paperwork looks good," he said. "Have you settled on a final figure?"
Rada cleared her throat. "I've lied to you, Mr. Winslowe. I'm not here about a loan. I'm here about Peregrine Lawson."
The man blinked. "I don't know what a Peregrine Lawson is. I do know I don't appreciate having my time wasted."
"He didn't die in that fall. He was relocated—new name, new ID, probably a new face to boot. Your company's been collecting from him ever since. For the home he bought his sister, the care she needs. I know everything except the final piece: his new name."
Winslowe stared at her. His expression was as unadorned as the walls. "If any of this were true, then you should know you'll never get that name."
"Wrong. It's only a matter of time. I'd prefer to skip that, however. If you help me, it will absolutely be worth your time."
"Are you trying to bribe me?" He laughed. "Do you have any idea who I work for?"
"Yeah, I know. And when you're UDS, U Don't Scare. What a saint you are, noble salaryman. By the way, dick, tell your masters 'U' isn't a word."
He leaned his face inches from hers. "One more word out of you."
"And what?" She held out her hands. "Here's the deal. If you don't tell me what I want to know, my people keep digging. Eventually, they'll find it. And when they do, they'll expose everything else they drag out, too. Every rag of dirty laundry UDS has in the hamper."
Winslowe's face had gone as hard as pallasite. "What is so god damned important about Pip Lawson? He's no-account. Detritus. If he died today, the universe wouldn't miss a beat."
"His mother's dead."
"Boo hoo. So's mine."
"A few weeks ago, she was murdered," Rada said. "She and Pip were estranged. But we have a final message from her."
"So tell me." Winslowe folded his arms. "I'll pass it along."
"Not an option. Your choices are to tell me a single name now. Or, in three months, the entire system will learn the names of everyone you've got."
"I see. And what if you were to disappear right now?"
"Then I believe my employer—Toman Benez—would make it his life's work to tear UDS to the ground."
Winslowe dropped his gaze to the floor and let out a long breath. "You haven't gone to all this trouble to deliver a dying mother's final message to her estranged son. Nobody's that pure. Tell me the real reason or we both walk away unhappy."
Rada clenched her teeth. "The truth is that I don't know. That's what I need Pip for. All I know is that it involves my employer's work—the study of alien life—and that it was worth killing Pip's mom to keep quiet."
"When I was a young man, I would have shot you and walked away. No matter how much money your bossman's got, a thing like that can't be undone. Take enough irreversible steps, burn enough of the fields, and that's how you win." He gazed into nothing. "But that's the problem, isn't it? You can't undo it, either."
"It weighs you down. Until you can't take another step."
He did some more staring, then fiddled with his device, turned it off, and pocketed it. "Outside."
Her device hadn't registered any bugs in the apartment, but she followed without a word. He headed downstairs and into the bustle of the street. People seemed to give him a little more room than most of the pedestrians. Rada kept one eye on Winslowe and the other on the crowds.
"I don't like threats," he said. "But I don't like touching off wars, either. You want Lawson that bad? You'll find him under the name Mazzy Webber." He gestured up at the dome enclosing the miniature world. "If you're telling the truth, though, you better hurry. Your boy's turned pirate. And his ship's on the hunt."
"I'm not here to hurt him," she said. "I hope you know that."
"If you were, doesn't sound like I could stop you."
She smiled, turned away, and hustled through the crowd. "Get that, Simm?"
"Indeed." Simm's voice was accompanied by frantic typing. "He's crewing on a ship known as the Fourth Down. When it isn't running up a black flag, anyway. They shipped out thirteen hours ago."
"Just our luck. They file a flight plan?"
"Naturally. But if they're up to no good, it'll be fake."
"Do we have an e-sig to follow?"
"I'll see what I can do."
She took a tube line to the elevator up to the port. Simm launched the moment she was b
uckled in. There was a lot of wash around the port, but betting that the Fourth Down had launched along its initial flight plan, Simm followed this, soon picking up their signature. Rada accelerated as hard as they could tolerate, grunting against the strain.
"What are we going to say when we find them?" Simm squeaked.
"He may have had differences with Jain," Rada said. "But you'd have to be one cold SOB to not want to hear your mother's last words to you."
Despite the extra Gs, she was able to nap off and on. The engine signature grew clearer and clearer. The Tine coasted, then flipped around and began to brake.
A screen flashed and the Tine lurched, knocking her from sleep. "The hell was that?"
"Debris," Simm said. "Mechanical. It's all over the place."
"Did they hit their mark? Or did their mark hit them?"
"I don't—oh. Oh." He pulled up a new screen. In the far, far distance, the Tine registered two ships, the pieces of a third, and thousands of pieces of junk. As Rada watched, an explosion glowed from the darkness.
"Defense systems online," she said, though the Tine was already spooling them up automatically. "I've got the feeling things are about to get nasty."
14
As they gaped at the screens, the Specter juked again, impossibly quick, slipping another missile. It pasted the hapless rocket with one of its own.
"Orders?" Lara said.
"Too late to disengage," Gomes said. "We're up against a human-crewed ship that can maneuver like a drone. Ideas?"
"Fast and hard," Taz said. "You drag this out? Turn it into a dogfight? Their maneuverability will tear us apart."
"A modest proposal," Vincent said. "We could flee?"
Across the inky gap, the Specter dispatched the last of the missiles and began a frighteningly sharp turn. Rockets burst from its belly and soared toward the Fourth.
"Nothing doing," MacAdams said. "We've seen what they're capable of. They won't let us out of here with that intel."
Counter-rockets were already flying from the Fourth. The autopilot began a textbook three-plane break to get the ship out of harm's way while the missiles duked it out, but Gomes barked orders and Lara veered the ship back toward the Specter, which was curling away along a standard path. This left them flying on a more direct path to the incoming missiles, forcing the enemy rockets to tighten their angle of approach, drawing them nearer to the Fourth's counters.
Gomes ordered a second slew of missiles to fire on the Specter. A screen beeped, suggesting a new course; Gomes accepted and the Fourth zigzagged away, sloshing Webber's guts to the point of nausea.
Not that he needed abrupt momentum shifts to help him feel queasy. Sitting there as a helpless spectator while the two ships slugged it out, he finally understood how small he was, how vulnerable to the forces of nature and war. The band human bodies could survive within was so narrow: just the right amounts of oxygen, pressure, and heat. Meanwhile, the number of explosions, projectiles, and high-velocity crashes it could survive was stubbornly set at zero. Leaving Earth, strapping yourself inside a flying metal coffin, doing battle with another flying metal coffin—it was madness pie topped with a cherry of crazy.
The Specter's missiles encountered those from the Fourth. The two groups became a commingled cloud of heat, light, and dust. Seconds later, the Fourth's offensive flurry met the Specter's interceptors and disappeared in another cloud.
"Good news," Lara said. "Their missiles are Jex-9s. A few years older than ours. From what we've seen, I'm guessing they don't have as many as we do, either."
Gomes considered the screens. "War of attrition?"
"If that's how they want to play it, it's our best bet."
"Proceed. Stick as close as you can while remaining as cautious as you can."
Lara swung the Fourth about for another pass. The Specter hove about. The two ships approached along parallel paths and exchanged another volley of rockets. As they flew past each other, down to a very low speed compared to that at which vessels crossed the gaps between planets, the Specter curved into a fishtailing buttonhook. Lara peeled away as hard as she could risk. It wouldn't be enough to shake them.
"What are you doing?" Gomes said.
Lara glanced across the bridge. "They're going to have our six."
"Fine by me," Gomes said. "Buy us a few minutes, though. MacAdams, Webber, Jons! Get to the rear lock and fill it with everything that isn't bolted down. The harder and smaller, the better."
Webber grinned. "We're going to nail 'em?"
"If they're dumb enough to tail us, I'm happy to teach them a lesson."
The three men unbuckled and popped to their feet. Webber activated the magnets in his soles just in time to avoid being flung across the bridge by a sudden turn. He reeled downstairs toward the aft airlock. This abutted several cabinets of hardware for low-tech repairs. They dumped it all into the airlock, bright steel bolts and pins blanketing the floor, then closed the door.
"Locked and loaded, Captain," MacAdams said.
"Skin of our teeth," she said through the comm. "Grab a seat ASAP."
The three of them belted themselves into the uncomfortable couch at the side of the hold. The ship swayed and veered. Jons messed with his device, pulling up the feed from the tail just in time to watch the Specter peel away. As it did so, a tower projecting perpendicularly from its cylindrical body was shredded to raggedy bits.
Whoops filtered through the comm. The Fourth began to turn, firing a handful of rockets after the retreating ship.
"She's out of here like we just bit her," Lara said. "Pursue?"
"On your second alignment," Gomes' voice came through. "Don't want them to pull the same stunt on us. Webber! Get another load in the lock, then buckle back in."
"Roger." He stood, leaning against the acceleration. Helped by Jons and MacAdams, they littered the airlock with another layer of screws, scrap metal, and raw solder. Webber grew heavier and heavier. By the time they finished and returned to the couch, he thought they must be pushing four Gs. And it was only growing stronger.
"Jeez, Cap," Jons said. "Trying to give us all spinals?"
"That's one way to retire early," she chuckled. "They're rabbiting. It's going to get worse before it gets better."
"Flood them, Captain?" Lara said.
"If they're gonna show us their ass, I can't think of a better idea."
A steady trickle of missiles fired from the Fourth, accelerating as hard as they could, inching toward the rabbiting Specter. Swimming upstream as they were, the missiles made for easy pickings for the Specter's defenses, but Webber had played enough video games and combat sims to know it didn't matter. What mattered was that Gomes believed she had more rockets than the enemy. Thus all she had to do to prevail was to keep firing hers until the others ran out (or, if the other guy could outrun her, use them to force him to dodge, slowing him down). Explosions dotted the starfield ahead of them like the lights on an airport landing strip.
Jons made a face at the basic visuals on the screen. "Think we can get upstairs without getting crushed?"
"You first," Webber said. "If you are crushed, try to ooze back this way so we know not to follow."
Jons smirked, then got a face like a little kid psyching himself to leap over a wide puddle of unknown depth. Before he could convince himself to unbuckle and dash upstairs, the ship veered, rocking Webber's head against the couch's absorbent supports. The fading bloom of an explosion whisked past the screen.
Hard, steady pressure resumed. Webber's pulse muttered wetly in his ears. All the while, they'd been keeping more or less even with the Specter. At once, they seemed to leap forward, closing fast. The Specter had flipped to point its nose toward them.
"Brake!" Gomes shouted. "Brake brake brake!"
The ship flipped; Webber's head slammed forward into the restraints. If not for the straps and tuff-foam arms holding him in place, he would have flown across the hold. He grunted. They hadn't put on a burst of speed. Rather, the Spe
cter was slowing down. Braking harder and faster than the Fourth was capable of. They should have seen it coming—the maneuver was as obvious as a mountain—yet deep in the split-second decisions of real-time combat, no one had given it a second thought.
Or maybe they had. The only alternative would have been to let the Specter get away. Gomes had taken the gamble. Webber had a bad feeling about the cards he was about to be dealt.
On screen, which was now a view from the Fourth's aft, the Specter loomed nearer. The Fourth began to swerve. The other ship dipped down the screen, then slowly climbed back toward the center.
"Launch it!" Gomes screamed.
Lara choked on the crushing deceleration. "Launch what?"
"Everything! Until we slow down, they can fly circles around us. Tear us to shreds."
"Panhandler Protocol engaged," Lara said. "Launching now."
Missile after missile shimmered on the screen, as bright and numerous as the fireworks at the finale of Evacuation Day. The front of the Specter strobed as it launched an ongoing volley. The missiles met between the two ships and burst across the heavens like the formation of a new galaxy.
"We've got penetration." Lara's voice wavered. "So do they."
Bright green dots appeared beyond the galaxy of explosions. Incoming rockets. Others lanced toward the Specter. Both ships launched a panicked cluster of counters. Webber wriggled his hands free of the couch's foam grips and, straining with every movement, pulled his suit's emergency hood over his head. MacAdams and Jons followed suit. Over the comms, the crew on the bridge all began to talk at once, questions and orders merging into a slurry of nonsense.
Missiles and counters slaughtered each other wholesale. A lone green dot sailed through the carnage. Someone on the bridge screamed.
Webber fought his arms back into their restraints. The entire Fourth shuddered and rollicked like a rock kicked down a cobbled street. Webber squeezed his eyes tight. A deafening bang roared through the ship, followed by the rising, eerie klaxon of a hull breach.
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