The Renegat

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Crowe wasn’t going to make anyone watch what had happened to Stephanos. He would never be able to get that out of his mind, and he didn’t want others to be stuck with the same imagery.

  His gaze met Willoughby’s as she slowly brought up her hood. She agreed with Ellum, thinking that the precautions were no longer necessary. But she didn’t take it personally when Crowe overrode her argument.

  She gave Crowe a small half smile, as if reminding him that she was indulging his caution, and then sealed her hood.

  He looked around the bridge, making sure everyone’s environmental suit was sealed. As he did, he realized that this bridge looked nothing like Preemas’s bridge.

  This bridge was pristine, so clean that the cleaning bots would have had trouble finding a speck of dirt. Some of the surfaces sparkled. All around them, the large wall screens showed different parts of the sector—some focused on the solar system, others focused on individual planets, and still others showing the Scrapheap itself.

  The screens had become a backdrop to the work here, like screens usually were on a bridge.

  Crowe felt a lot less isolated with the screens on.

  He nodded at the bridge crew, then double-checked the interior of the anacapa container. All of the systems were on and blinking bright green, just like they were supposed to.

  He’d worked with containers like this in the past, so he knew how they should feel—what their weight should be, and how the interior should look. Even though this one had been cleaned deeper than any other container he’d ever seen, he still thought he could see the faint ghosts of Stephanos’s bloodstains.

  He also knew that was probably his imagination.

  He squared his shoulders, then braced his legs, and pivoted toward the travel case with the anacapa drive inside.

  This drive was smoother than the one they had found in that very first Ready Vessel. This drive had been cut from another, larger drive, which made Crowe believe this drive was newer—although he had no real way of measuring that.

  After each engineer had examined this drive, and had made certain it had no sign of being infected by the weapon, he and Willoughby had gone over it and over it, making certain that it functioned properly. Both of them were relying on training decades old, but they were the only two with training that extensive. They had done their best.

  And now, this was the test of everyone’s skill.

  He leaned forward, and wrapped his hands around the drive. It hummed under his fingers, and that humming went deep into his bones—like it was supposed to.

  He welcomed the feeling even as it made his stomach flutter just a bit. He hefted this drive upward and into his arms. Then he pivoted his torso again, and gently set the drive in place.

  The container was supposed to handle the hookup itself, something he had seen a few dozen times. He knew what the hookup should look like. He watched as each light went from green to white, and then shut off, just like it was supposed to.

  The drive was—theoretically—in place. But he wasn’t going to take any chances. He switched the knuckle lights on his gloves on, and examined each connection, making sure it looked proper to him.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement. Willoughby crouched beside him, holding a thin little light in her right hand. She shone that light on every connection, and as far underneath the drive as she could.

  The drive glowed golden, and had no trace of pink. The drive made an ever-so-slight humming noise as it settled in.

  And then, just like that, it looked like it had been part of the Renegat forever.

  Willoughby tilted her head just a little, as if to say, Well, that’s all we can do.

  “The computers say that the drive is functioning,” Tosidis said.

  “Actually,” Bakhr said, “our original drive did not have this kind of power. This drive is stronger than any drive I’ve seen before.”

  “Is that good?” Ellum asked.

  “I have no idea,” Bakhr said.

  And neither did Crowe. None of them did. The mysteries of the anacapa drive.

  The problem was that there would be no way to accurately test the drive before the Renegat went into foldspace. And Crowe had already vetoed the idea of traveling into foldspace as a test of the drive.

  If they decided to go into foldspace, they would be taking their chances—maybe even more than they had on any other trip.

  Or maybe they would be safer. He had no idea.

  He rocked back on his heels, and realized he was feeling better than he had for weeks.

  The Renegat could travel in foldspace again.

  He smiled at the crew. A few of them blinked in surprise—he certainly didn’t smile all that much.

  But Willoughby smiled back.

  “We did it,” she said.

  “We certainly did,” he said. “We certainly did.”

  The Renegat

  “You know they’re going to make us stay in this godforsaken sector forever,” India said.

  She was lying on her back on the top bunk of her cell. She shared the cell with two other mutineers, who spent most of their time trying to avoid any contact with her.

  Serpell had noticed that the very first week, after India had had the surgery that had repaired her hands—or rather, had mostly repaired them. India said she had lost a lot of function, and when Serpell got the chance, she had checked with the medic, Orlena Seymont. Seymont said that India had lost a lot of muscle and tissue in that attack, but with the right kind of treatment, it could all be replaced.

  India figured the right kind of treatment did not exist on the Renegat. Serpell thought maybe it did, but Seymont had her hands full, dealing with several people who had nearly died.

  India hadn’t, although she wouldn’t acknowledge that. She was convinced that she would have ended up like Natalia Stephanos, given enough time.

  The brig was mostly quiet. Serpell was the only person who visited the prisoners—at least that she knew of. And she was beginning to think she was only doing so because India had guilted her into it.

  Serpell sat on one of the benches outside of India’s cell. Serpell could see three other cells, with their prisoners sleeping or trying to amuse themselves with some kind of gambling, done with clothing.

  No one was allowed any tech at all. The guards—a rotating group of volunteers—could program some entertainment to play on a holographic screen in the middle of each section of the brig, but most of the guards didn’t.

  It seemed that no one wanted to coddle the prisoners at all.

  Serpell couldn’t tell if that was because Nadim Crowe didn’t coddle them, or if the rest of the crew blamed them for placing the ship in this position.

  “How would you know what ‘they’ are going to do?” Serpell no longer moderated her tone with India. In the past, Serpell had tried to avoid sarcasm.

  Now, she didn’t. She was a half step away from stopping the daily visits. She already had an excuse, saying she would have too much work to make seeing India regularly possible.

  India already hated Crowe and company. Making up that lie would only increase India’s animosity—not that it mattered. She couldn’t do anything from the brig anyway.

  “I hear the guards talking,” India said. “Everyone’s afraid that we’ll get court-martialed if we go back to the Fleet.”

  Serpell bit her lower lip. “Not all of us were involved in that fight,” she said, and then wished she hadn’t. It meant that India had won—India had engaged her attention somehow.

  “Some of us were on the right side of that fight,” India said. “If we do go back to the Fleet, you can bet I’ll make sure they know who fought with the captain and who murdered him.”

  Her voice rang out, louder than it needed to be. The guard, Vladislav Shelstein, gave her a sideways look, filled with contempt.

  Serpell let out a small huh of exasperation. None of this conversation had been for her benefit. It had all been about India, trying to make everyone
uneasy. Maybe even trying to let her out of the brig.

  Serpell stood.

  “You can’t leave yet,” India said. “You haven’t told me about your day.”

  As if India cared about her day.

  Serpell made herself smile. “We’ve just been cleaning the ship.”

  India laughed. “Why? Is someone expecting an inspection?”

  No, Serpell nearly said. But it is amazing just how disreputable the ship had gotten under Captain Preemas.

  If Serpell had said that to India, though, India would have chastised her for criticizing Preemas.

  India’s laughter faded as if it never was. She swung her legs off the bunk and jumped down, coming over to the clear nanobit enclosure that separated her from Serpell.

  “You don’t want to stay here, do you?” India asked.

  “I’m not even sure where ‘here’ is,” Serpell said.

  “We’re Fleet,” India said. “We don’t live in places where we’ve been before.”

  “We haven’t been here before,” Serpell said, but she felt uneasy. What was India trying to do?

  “You know what I mean,” India said. “The future is forward. We were told we could go home.”

  Not that India had had a home.

  But Serpell had. She had had friends too. And she missed them. She missed the Fleet more than she wanted to say.

  “What’re you going to do when Crowe tells you that you need to stay in this sector for your own good?” India asked.

  “He’s not going to say that,” Serpell said.

  But Shelstein gave her the same sideways look he had just given to India. Did Shelstein know something Serpell didn’t? Were they going to stay here?

  Why would they?

  Except the court-martial thing.

  She could understand why Crowe would want to stay. Crowe and all the people who helped him. But everyone else, they had no reason to stay here. They had been promised a return to the Fleet too, and now that the ship was back in order, they could do it.

  “You are so naïve.” India shook her head. “Sometimes I wonder what I ever saw in you.”

  Someone to do your homework, Serpell nearly said. Someone to help you with the job you couldn’t do. Someone to boss around.

  But she didn’t say any of it, and probably never would.

  “I have to get back,” she lied.

  Then she kissed her fingers and pressed them to the wall near India’s mouth. India raised her eyebrows as if she couldn’t believe she had just seen that, and then walked back to the bunks, hefting herself onto the top bunk as if she barely had enough strength in her arms to do so.

  Serpell frowned at her, wondering at India’s health, including her mental health.

  Serpell turned around, though, before India could see her. Because India’s words were ringing in her head.

  You know they’re going to make us stay in this godforsaken sector forever.

  Serpell didn’t want to stay here forever. She really didn’t want to stay here for another month.

  She wanted to go back.

  She wanted to go home.

  And she wasn’t sure she ever would.

  Part Forty-Five

  Arrival

  Now

  The Aizsargs

  The Aizsargs was only a day away from Starbase Sigma when Dauber made a discovery that took her breath away.

  She had been in her quarters, going through the Renegat records. Brett Ullman had developed some kind of program to organize those records and reconstruct them. He hadn’t really examined them, not after Dauber had told him that she was going to bring the Renegat’s crew to Starbase Sigma.

  Ullman’s gaze had met hers.

  I think that’s probably for the best, he had said.

  She had a feeling then—and it was compounded now—that he knew a lot more than he was saying. He probably would have told her if she had asked, but she hadn’t.

  She wanted to dig for herself. After speaking to most of the survivors of the Renegat over the course of the journey back to the Fleet, she knew that her decision to bring the Renegat survivors to the legal arm of the Fleet was the right one.

  She just hadn’t realized how right until now.

  She stood up, then walked to the kitchen in her quarters, and made herself a cup of green tea. She held the cup in her hands, letting it warm her. Although she wasn’t sure anything really could warm her.

  Because she had finally found what the Renegat crew had been hiding—what they had been lying to her about.

  They had abandoned part of their crew. Just left them behind. The crew had been on a mission somewhere, and Raina Serpell, Yusef Kabac, and the others had activated the anacapa drive, and left the sector entirely.

  Dauber leaned against the counter, clutching the tea. She hadn’t taken a sip, wasn’t sure she could take a sip. Wasn’t sure her stomach could handle anything right now.

  She put the cup down and closed her eyes.

  No wonder the crew of the Renegat had lied to her.

  No wonder they had a matching story.

  They had left more than sixty people behind, with only small ships and no anacapa drive at all—and no way to hook one up. Sixty people who might or might not have found those supplies, who might or might not have made it through the next few weeks, let alone the rest of their lives.

  She rubbed a hand over her face, thinking about what she needed to do.

  She had planned to dump them on the starbase’s justice system, then give all of the records the Aizsargs had recovered to the proper authorities. She had wanted them to make a decision about what to do with these survivors.

  And if she were honest with herself, she had felt a lot of compassion for them. One hundred years in their future, their ship lost, their friends gone. Sent on a mission with no hope of surviving.

  But that compassion was gone.

  What they had done was horrifying.

  And because she found it so horrifying, she knew exactly what she needed to do.

  She let her hand drop, felt her resolve grow. Her stomach settled.

  She had a lot to do, and very little time in which to do it.

  Starbase Sigma

  Captain Dauber told Serpell she needed to leave the Aizsargs first. As the de facto leader of the Renegat, Serpell was the one everyone looked up to—or so Dauber had told her.

  Serpell stood in the Aizsargs’s docking bay, which, ironically, was where she had arrived on this ship. Behind her stood the 192 other survivors of the Renegat. They all shifted slightly, but there were no real conversations. Several people held mesh bags provided by the Aizsargs, filled with clothes that the ship had provided.

  The instructions the survivors had received before they were to depart had said that they could take the clothes or toiletries.

  Serpell chose not to bring anything other than the clothes on her back—a loose, long-sleeved tan shirt and matching brown pants. Nothing else here belonged to her. She would get new clothing on Starbase Sigma.

  The instructions also said that they would be provided with housing, clothing, food, and some income until their situation got sorted out.

  Clearly, the instructions were standard for all rescues of Fleet ships that the Aizsargs had participated in. Nothing in those instructions was specific to the Renegat, which made Serpell deeply uncomfortable. That meant enough other people had been in this situation that the ship had impersonal lists for everyone to follow.

  She swallowed hard, glanced at those bags in the hands of her colleagues—soon to be her former colleagues. This adventure, if she could call it that, was nearly over.

  As the Aizsargs got closer to Starbase Sigma, she had decided she would start her life anew here. She wouldn’t even tell people she was a widow. She might not mention the Renegat or the lost 100 years, unless things were so different on the starbase that she would seem clueless otherwise.

  She would get new clothing, and a new home, and maybe even train in a new p
rofession. She didn’t want to travel any longer. She would probably stay on the starbase, just so she could see different groups come through. Sector bases were too isolated for her, unless she worked in the sector base itself.

  And she was thinking that if she trained in a new profession, it would be something unrelated to the Fleet. Maybe some kind of service offered on the starbase. There had been retail stores on starbases she’d visited in the past, and restaurants, and bars, and all kinds of entertainment. There were literary societies and debating groups and organizations she didn’t entirely understand.

  She would investigate all of it.

  She would start moving forward again, only this time, the forward would be with her own life.

  She rubbed her hands on her pants. Her heart thumped hard against her chest, not with panic so much as with anticipation.

  She was anxious, yes, but it was a good kind of anxious. The kind that she got when she was looking forward to something special.

  And this would be special.

  She didn’t even mind going first, although it was not something she normally would have chosen.

  Her conversation with Dauber had been short. Dauber had appeared holographically in Serpell’s little cabin. Dauber had seemed even more imposing than usual. She had her arms crossed, and she had glared at Serpell.

  I need you to leave the Aizsargs first, Dauber had said. You are the leader of the Renegat. You get to lead one last time.

  Serpell heard something in Dauber’s voice that made no sense, some thrum of importance, or some emotion Serpell couldn’t quite identify. If Serpell had known Dauber better, Serpell would have said that Dauber was angry.

  But Dauber didn’t look angry. She had seemed very calm.