Ronin (Rebel Stars Book 3), page 1

~ REBEL STARS, BOOK 3 ~
© 2016
Edward W. Robertson
THE REBEL STARS SERIES
REBEL (Book 0)
OUTLAW (Book 1)
TRAITOR (Book 2)
RONIN (Book 3)
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1
Most moments didn't matter. Others were everything. If you could recognize which was which, you had a chance.
Fifty faces watched from the gloom. A hundred eyes locked on his. Men and women who'd given up years ago. But for the last few minutes, they'd remembered how it had felt to hope.
The room seemed to surge, then to spin. Should have been the sign to quit, but MacAdams was holding on so tight he'd break the table before he let go. This was about more than him. It was about those fifty lives. About giving them a taste of something sweeter than the recycled air they were used to. He couldn't let go any more than he could stop his heart from beating.
He would give them their moment.
MacAdams cracked his neck and leaned forward. The crowd inhaled so loud you could hear it. He reached across the table, picked up the glass—in his hand, it was like a precious gem, glittering and small—and tipped it back. Hot liquor filled his throat. He turned the empty glass upside down and clapped it on the table.
The crowd thrust up their fists and roared.
MacAdams grinned, only partly to conceal his nausea. On the table, spent shot glasses lolled in a sheen of spilled booze. People hollered bets back and forth, typing them into their devices with drunken fingers. Across the table, his foe's trunk was as wide as a mountain, his head as bald as a snow-capped peak. The man picked up a full glass. The crowd hushed. The other man jerked back his head and drank.
The mountain slammed down his glass, cracking it. He smiled at MacAdams. The fifty watchers screamed fresh bets back and forth. MacAdams' gut was churning. He knew what came next like he knew his own name. The dream was over. One more and he'd be done. The only way was to walk away. Save himself some pain.
He swallowed and gazed down at the table, closing one eye to get rid of his double vision. He reached for the next glass.
The man across from him jolted to his feet. Shot glasses cascaded to the floor. The mountain of a man clamped his palms on the edge of the table, groaned, and unleashed an avalanche of vomit.
Hands clapped MacAdams on the back. He staggered to his feet, propped up by fifty pairs of shining eyes awash with shared triumph. If only for a minute, he'd saved them.
Things blurred for a while. When they came back, he was standing outside the bar, buildings crowded around them, the Locker's roof high overhead. Yep leaned against the wall beside him, puffing on a plastic tube spangled with tiny lights, the vapor curling around her clever face. MacAdams used to know every scent of Cloud there was, but the smell meant nothing him.
She exhaled through her nostrils. "So what was your cut?"
MacAdams got out his device, employing the one-eye trick to enable himself to read its face. "Almost four hundred."
"That's normally what my tab costs me." They both chuckled. She took a reflective drag. "Taking down the Keg himself. You'll be a legend. How'd you get through the check-in, anyway? Delayed-release enzymes?"
"I got through because I was clean."
"Keg was undefeated because he was on something. No way you beat him without a little help. It ain't dirty if they cheat first."
"If I had to cheat, I wouldn't play. Anyone can win if they cheat."
She swore, laughing to herself. "You know what climbing up on your high horse makes you? A better target."
He was about to fire back, but words were weak. The only way to change the shape of a mind was by doing. He shook his head. Bad idea. He had to grab the wall for support.
Some stations didn't bother with a night. If the Locker put it to vote, the crews and unaffiliated hustlers would have kicked out the day. Down the street, it was black as vacuum. At the scrape of footsteps, MacAdams straightened and moved his hands near his waistband. Yep did the same.
A slim woman strode toward the bar, dark hair tied behind her head, the zippers of her pilot's jacket flashing in the faint light.
MacAdams relaxed. "Ain't this neighborhood a little low-rent for you?"
Rada startled, pulling up short; to MacAdams' approval, she was reaching for a pocket in her jacket.
"There you are." She headed for him, glancing at Yep and sizing her up. "I heard the craziest rumor, MacAdams. They said you were over here getting into a drinking contest."
"Wrong," Yep said.
"Oh good. Because—"
"He was winning a drinking contest."
MacAdams hid a smirk. Rada's jaw swung open, then clicked shut. "Well congratulations!"
"Cleaned up on bets, too."
She pulled her gaze from Yep to stare at MacAdams. "If you need money, did you forget Toman's a billionaire?"
"And I'm not," MacAdams said. "Which means I got to work."
"Like hell you do. We've got more work at the Locker than we can handle and Toman pays us more than I know what to do with. So why are you down here? I know it isn't that you're afraid to fight FinnTech. I've already seen you risk your life doing that. So what are you afraid of? Going legit? Or losing your independence?"
He grunted. Rada was as good at deceiving herself as most people, but she had a knack for cutting through the bullshit others tried to spin around themselves. Hadn't quite hit the mark this time, though. It was more like he was trying to hang tight to a home that was starting to slip away.
He rolled his shoulders. "Don't tell me you tracked me down just to bust up my good time."
"We're heading out tomorrow. Are you coming with us? Or staying here?"
"What's the destination?"
Rada's eyes flicked to Yep, then at the Locker's ceiling. "Deep recon. Behind enemy lines. It'll be dangerous."
"I'll go."
"You're sure? I wasn't kidding when I said there's work here, too."
"More important than what's out there?"
"No," she said. "Not even close."
"Then all I need to know is what time we're leaving."
She nodded, dipped her head at Yep, and left the way she'd come in.
Yep watched her go. "That was Rada Pence, yeah?"
"Toman's Hammer," MacAdams said. "Never gets tired of being swung."
"If she says it's dangerous, I'm guessing this is the last time I ever see you."
"Could be."
Yep inhaled deep from her pipe. The Locker's captive atmosphere was barely big enough to scare up a breeze and the vapor hung around her face like clouds bunched against a mountain.
"Then again," she said, "it's only a matter of time before Finn comes for the rest of us, ain't it? You think we got any chance at all?"
"Maybe not." MacAdams pushed off from the wall. "But at least we'll make him bleed for it."
~
They launched the next morning. He could have taken something for the hangover, but pain was there to help you know when to stop.
They took the Tine, which had survived the dust-up at the Hive with no more than a few scrapes and scratches. With the Motion Arrestor onboard, they didn't so much as feel a bump during takeoff, but some other force kept MacAdams in his seat. Superstition, probably. They boosted free of the Locker, putting the sun to their backs. Uranus was a pale blue ball behind them. Rada leveled out their course.
"So," MacAdams said once she sat back in her chair. "What are we up to this time?"
Webber laughed in disbelief. "You don't know why we're here? How drunk were you?"
"Probably could have sold my blood as beer."
Rada got a pained look on her face. "We're going scouting. We need to find out more about Those."
MacAdams scratched the back of his neck. "Those kill anything that comes close enough to get a look at them. What's the thinking in going back?"
"The only thing we know about them is that they don't want us to know they're here. We need a lot more than that. Not only so that we can combat them, if we need to, but so we can convince others to help out."
"They've seen the footage of Those attacking us. They know that Those have killed every human who's tried to fly past Pluto. If that wasn't enough to push them over to our side, what will?"
"We don't know," Rada said. "But FinnTech just stole our lunch money and shoved us in the mud. He'll come for us again. If we don't find some new allies somewhere, Finn will finish the job."
Webber laced his fingers behind his head and kicked his feet up on the ship's dash, earning a scowl from Rada. "Anyway, this time, we're not looking for a fight. We're just snooping."
"How so? Those shut down the comms of anyone who stumbles into them."
"Toman stuck some new shit onboard. Stuff he used to use to look for Swimmers. He thinks it might be buff enough to spot Those while we're still out of engagement range."
"We have better passives, too," Rada said. "And a plan. One that's going to get us out into the darkness without being seen."
The plan sounded iffy, but he wasn't one to complain. Four days later, with the Tine on the fringe of the Kuiper Belt, Rada brought the Tine directly behind a grimy comet that LOTR had dubbed the Falcon. The rock had completed its orbit of the sun and was now outbound. That far out, its tail had mostly refrozen. Rada only had to adjust course twice to avoid debris as she guided the Tine behind it. Less than ten miles across, the rock didn't have the gravity to make the ship stick. MacAdams and Webber suited up to secure them to their host.
Falcon had some english on it, rotating every ten hours. Meaning that, for five hours of every rotation, they were pointed in the wrong direction from what they wanted to see. Solving that meant another EVO to the other side of the rock to plant a sensor and unreel a line of ultrafine wire so the sensor wouldn't have to spit radio transmissions that might be heard by lurking hostiles.
It was rough work. Took most of a day. After, MacAdams wished it had taken longer. People who hadn't been out in it thought space was romantic. Truth was, it was a waiting room. The stars spun on the screens, but after a while, they all looked the same. Work was the only thing that helped fill the time.
Hidden against the Falcon's bulk, the Tine drifted further into darkness. The ship's computers were set to alert them to anything artificial, but MacAdams didn't complain when Rada assigned them to sort through the data manually, too. Wasn't like they had anything else to do.
Out that far, there wasn't much to find. A trillion rocks were tumbling around out there where even the sun had a hard time reaching, but most were separated from each other by thousands of miles. There were no habitats out past the fringe. Not living ones, anyway, though the husks of a few failures were making their slow orbits around the sun. No trade, no travel, no reason for anyone to be out here except to research. Besides, everyone knew that if you wandered too far into the Kuiper, you didn't make it back.
Over the course of four days, the computer tipped them off to two pieces of debris that might once have belonged to a ship, three derelict probes, and a habitat module that'd been gutted and left to the vacuum.
Near the end of a long shift, Webber set down his device and rubbed his eyes. "Okay, I'll say it. How long are we going to give this? It's been ten days since we left and we haven't seen one hint of Those."
"Could be," MacAdams said. "Or maybe Those are the ones behind the wrecks we've seen."
Rada made a noise that might have been a little bit amused. "We're out here until Toman recalls us."
"Hey Webber. If you don't like it, you can call a cab. But the fare's going to be pretty steep."
Webber gestured across the bridge. "I'll put it on the corporate account."
"We're all getting antsy. But answer me this. Would you rather run into Those?"
Webber leaned back, closing his eyes and squeezing his temples with both hands. "Man, I can't take it anymore."
Rada jerked up her chin, suddenly alert. "What's going on?"
"My head's about to explode. You guys should get to the escape pod before the shrapnel takes out the hull."
"If you've really spent too long out here…"
Webber waved a hand at the air, as if someone had left the waste chute open. "This isn't space madness. It's Those, okay? Can we stop calling them that?"
Rada turned to MacAdams, mouth half open. "Any help understanding this would be appreciated."
MacAdams lifted an eyebrow at Webber.
"Don't tell me it isn't bothering you," Webber said. "Listen to us. 'I'm concerned about Those. What if Those mean us harm? What is Those's real plan?' I usually care about grammar about as much as I care about what the president of Las Reinas had for breakfast. But my brain's about to melt out my ears."
Rada relaxed in her chair. "That's all? But that's what the Swimmers call them."
"The hell it is. You think they say 'Those'? They don't even have lips!"
"Besides," MacAdams said, "the Swimmers ain't Swimmers. They're Dovon. Doesn't stop us from calling them Swimmers."
Rada tapped her finger on the arm of her chair. "That seems like more of an argument to stop calling the Swimmers Swimmers."
"I'll worry about calling Those whatever they want to be called once they quit killing us on sight."
"I suppose we are the first humans to discover them and live to tell about it. Webber, you're right. Those is a terrible name. Got any alternatives?"
Webber nodded, deadly serious. "I say we call them Dishes."
"Dishes."
"That's what their ship looked like. A flying dish."
"It was deeper than a dish. More like a bowl. A bowl filled with knives. Anyway, don't you think 'Dishes' is a little…boring?"
"So what's your great idea?"
Rada shrugged one shoulder. "We could call them Thirds. As in Third Species."
"And you thought Dishes was boring?"
They set to squabbling. MacAdams scowled. Before they could suck up all the oxygen from life support, he stood and gestured to the tiny gobs of silver dashed across the black screen.
"They lurk, don't they? Out here in the darkness like spiders in a web. I say we call them Lurkers."
Rada nodded slowly. "Menacing without making them sound monstrous. It'll make people pay attention, but it won't prejudice them too badly to think straight. What do you think, Webber?"
"Great," Webber said. "Anything but Those."
She grinned at MacAdams. "I'll get word to Toman as soon as it's safe to send a Needle. Congratulations, MacAdams. Bet you never thought you'd ever name a new intelligent species."
He hadn't. Discovering things and naming them was for people who went to school and put letters at the end of their names. Born to the Locker, the only thing he'd expected to name was a couple of kids. The only thing he'd expected to discover was how long he could keep running jobs before someone put a bullet in his back.
He crossed his arms and stared at the rectangle of space captured by the screen. With that sight, his pride hooked a U-turn. He'd always assumed there was more than Swimmers out there in the dark. Maybe even something worse than Swimmers. But that hadn't been anything more than a thought. No worse than the idea that, somewhere in the streets, a thug you hardly knew might be plotting to stick a blade in you.
Now, though, he'd given the threat a name. And when you named something? You made it real.
~
"Hey." Rada pulled her bleary eyes away from the screen. It had been two days since they'd rechristened the Lurkers and two hours since the last time anyone had said a word. "I've been doing some thinking. Even if we don't find the Lurkers, we don't have to come back empty-handed."
"Really?" Webber jerked his chin at the screens. "Because unless Toman's in the market for some new asteroids, there isn't much else out here."
"Which gives us a mountain of free time to work with. Let's put it to use thinking about how we're going to win."
MacAdams grunted. She'd brought them up to speed on current events during the initial flight from the Locker. Since losing the Hive to Finn and Daniels, the war—it hadn't been named yet, but that's what it was—had gone quiet. Both sides were regrouping. The Locker's unexpected rescue of Benez' fleet had left the new alliance bubbling with optimism. Everyone from Toman to Kansas Carruth seemed to think their upcoming counterstrike would knock FinnTech dead.
MacAdams didn't see it. Their escape hadn't turned the tide. It had only delayed the inevitable. At the battle, they'd lost more than a few dozen ships and their crews. They'd lost the Hive. Benez' manufacturing base. Pit Benez and the Locker against FinnTech tomorrow, and it'd be a toss-up.
But put them up against each other after a year of Finn cranking out new ships and Motion Arrestors while Benez' fleet stagnated, and it didn't take a fortuneteller to see where the future was headed.
"Getting the Locker on our side changed everything." Webber shrugged his shoulders tight. "Why don't we bring in the Asteroid Belt next?"
Rada thought about this for a moment. "Won't work."
"Hell it won't. Finn cracked a couple of their rocks practicing to hit the Hive. You spent any time around the Belters? They'll jump at the chance to hit back."
"Do more harm than good," MacAdams said. "Finn's already convinced half the System we're flying in formation with pirates."
"Because we are!"
"We ain't committing any piracy, though. That's the only thing keeping the neutral nations on the fence. If we go and team up with the only other freebooters out there, it'll turn half of Earth against us."
