Traitor (Rebel Stars Book 2) (15 page)

Rada mumbled to herself. But this was the way of field work. If the info in question was easy to gather, you could do it all from the net without leaving your room.

Since they were headed to the fringe of enemy territory, that meant changing their faces. While Toman arranged a flight, Rada, Webber, and MacAdams headed to the Hive's chameleon. The man adjusted their nostrils, earlobes, the planes of their cheeks. Enough to throw off facial recognition. Though it was strictly temporary, Rada couldn't stand to look at her new face for more than a few seconds. It was just close enough to the real her to be utterly creepy.

For the same reason they couldn't wander in wearing their real faces, they couldn't take the
Tine
. They'd head to Ares Orbital, then shuttle from there to Quarry. As they prepped to leave, Toman pulled Rada aside.

"Sidebar," Toman said. "That maneuver you pulled out there. The one that took down the FinnTech bogey?"

"I know. It was way too risky."

"You were up against a top-of-the-line fighter. Equipped with an MA of its own. The real risk would have been to
not
throw everything you had at it." He grinned with a raw excitement she never saw except when he was talking spaceships or Swimmers. "I'm going to throw the video of your fight at LOTR. See if they can model a few more stunts to round out your repertoire. And you keep pushing the envelope on your end. As much as computers can help us with this, they're never as creative as human beings fighting for their lives."

"How inspirational," Rada said. "What do you think the attack was about, anyway?"

"Opportunity. I don't think they knew Marcus was on board. I think it was about taking down the
Tine
—and its crew."

"What does FinnTech care about
us
?"

"Why would Finn want to take out one of the biggest thorns in his side? Beats me, Rada. Maybe he's one of those weirdos who doesn't like pain."

Not all that long ago, she'd been an anonymous rock-lugger on a two-bit mining crew. Now, she was a thorn in the side of one of the System's most powerful men? Rada didn't think she ought to be happy about that. Yet on the way to the ship, she found herself smiling.

* * *

On the shuttle's screen, the irregular lump of Quarry grew in size. Half of it was gray, cratered rock. The other half was sealed with a bubble. Usually, bubbles were transparent or monochrome, but Quarry's, while mostly clear, was spotted with broad patches of green, blue, and yellow.

Webber squinted at the screen. "The hell's that? This some kind of artist refugee camp?"

"I think," Rada said, "those are patches."

"Like…to stop it from leaking?"

"I imagine that was a high priority."

The shuttle touched down outside the bubble. There were hangars nearby, but theirs was the only ship on the tarmac. A two-person crew hooked the umbilical to the shuttle's airlock. Rada crossed inside the terminal. There, a handful of people awaited the other passengers. The rest of the port was vacant, still. It had the stale smell of atmosphere scrubbers in need of changing.

The streets outside were no rowdier. Right outside the port—prime real estate—half the storefronts were dark, empty. The residential towers were fifteen floors high, but only a fraction of the apartment windows were lit.

"Huh," MacAdams said. "Looks like we'll have our choice of rooms at the hotel."

Rada wasn't completely surprised. It turned out that "Quarry" was short for "Quarantine." Early in its existence, the place's lack of docking fees had turned it into a thriving trade hub. Forty years back, though, a series of virulent pathogens had swept through it. The government had managed to prevent a complete breakdown, but they'd had to shut the port repeatedly, for months at a time. Commercial traffic dried up. So did the population. And so did its reputation. With nothing to reverse these trends, it continued to dwindle. If things kept up, the last one alive would have to turn out the lights.

They rented a car. As it drove to the hotel, Rada gazed up at the dingy buildings. Many of the windows had been sealed up with opaque plastic. Small dogs with ratty fur sniffed around the quiet streets, but there wasn't much to find. The blank black windows stared down like parchment-faced skulls.

The hotel's exterior was about two shades cleaner than its neighbors'. A lone man crewed the lobby. He checked them in and showed them upstairs himself. The room was big, but it smelled musty. The walls were yellowish, greasy.

Webber opened the sliding door to the balcony. No city noise whatsoever entered the room. "This place is
spooky
. If my bed's empty in the morning, start by checking for ectoplasm."

Rada tried to contact Ms. Carlton, but got no response. She had an address, though, and headed down to the car alone. This was one trip best accomplished by herself.

23 years ago, during one of the outbreaks, the government had announced a new vaccine. Mandatory. A week after treatment, Carlton's daughter Edi, six years old, had died of illness.

Jeri Carlton insisted Edi hadn't been sick beforehand. That she'd kept the two of them quarantined. She launched an investigation, then a lawsuit against the inoculation's manufacturer, Horton/Kolt. This was unusual—Quarry was one of those anti-litigious places where if you lost a lawsuit, you faced fines and/or jail time—but Carlton hadn't cared. She was a mother whose daughter had died.

She lost the case. The judge decided that since this was a matter of public health, the damage Carlton's lawsuit had done was substantial. Even so, when she got 25 years with no chance of release, the public had been shocked by the draconian sentence. Afterward, several emigrants had cited it as their reason for leaving Quarry.

With the outbreaks dying down thanks to proper vaccination, interest in the case faded. Ten years later, with fifteen remaining on her sentence, Carlton was released early from prison, to hardly a flicker of interest. That had been thirteen years ago. Since then, she hadn't said a word about H/K (who, LOTR had discovered, had long ago been bought out by Valiant) or her daughter.

If Marcus knew about the Carlton woman, he must have known about her silence. Rada had no idea how she was supposed to break that streak, but she was getting used to her role as ridiculous-situation-solver.

Now and then the car passed another vehicle, but traffic, like everything else in the waning habitat, was light, and she cruised through with minimal stops. The buildings ahead thinned. The ground climbed. You didn't often see hills in a habitat, and Rada didn't know what was stranger: the slopes, or the fact she was crossing into a…what would you call it? A country lane? Rather than space-effective towers, single homes dotted the hill, with open grass and unmanicured trees between them. White fences separated the properties. She couldn't remember seeing a neighborhood like this outside of Earth.

The car turned down a narrow lane, the shadows of leaves dappling the windshield. Rada came to a stop in front of a white three-story house with an arched roof, wall-sized windows, and an expansive porch, overhang propped up by white columns. She got out, stopped by a buzzing sound. Was the car still running? Wait—the noise came from
crickets
.

She gave herself a moment to quit being freaked out by all the nature, then climbed the porch and thumbed the doorbell. It made no sound. There were few things more awkward than standing on a stranger's doorstep when you weren't sure their bell was working.

As she reached to knock, a woman's voice croaked from a hidden speaker. "What do you want?"

"To talk," Rada said.

"Go away."

"It's about Edi."

A long pause. "I said go away."

"Ms. Carlton." Rada lifted her face to the overhang. Cobwebs snarled the corners where the joists projected from the walls. Had someone brought spiders to Quarry on purpose? "What happened here—I think it's about to spread across the System."

The woman paused again. The silence stretched for three seconds, then five. As Rada cleared her throat, the door swung open. The woman inside was tall yet hunched, her shoulders bent forward like a crumpled can. She was a healthy fiftysomething, but her eyes looked as old as Maya ruins enmeshed in vines.

"Take it to the Bones already," Carlton said. "Or get off my porch."

"The vaccine that was used on your daughter. Its technology has been acquired by Valiant Enterprises. They are now part of the most powerful company in the universe."

"And?"

Rada searched her eyes. "Why were you so sure it killed your daughter?"

The woman shrugged her hunched shoulders. "Can't say."

"23 years ago, you risked your freedom to say it. You said Edi wasn't sick before the treatment. Did you have proof it harmed her?"

"Can't say."

Rada forced herself not to glance up at the house. "They bought you off, didn't they? With an NDA. That's why they let you out early."

Carlton's face contorted with disdain. "Do you think a document could stop me from talking?"

"I know somewhere we can go. It's safe. No one will be able to hear."

"If I'm there, nowhere is safe."

Rada cocked her head. "I don't understand."

"Do you understand what they put in her?" The woman closed her eyes. When she reopened them, they burned with an emotion Rada knew far too well: the exhausted wrath of someone who can't escape their own skin. Carlton put her hand on the edge of the door. "Besides, even if they weren't listening. Someone who'd made a deal like that—who'd betrayed their own daughter—do you think they
could
talk about it?"

"You didn't betray her, Ms. Carlton. The world did. No one can fault you for saving yourself from the wreckage."

"Except me."

"Guilt is nothing more than a reminder that you're still alive."

Something unreadable shifted in the woman's eyes. "Want to land a whale? Bring a bigger spear."

She breathed in sharply, then slammed the door, as if regretting she'd ever opened it. Rada raised her hand to knock, then turned and walked back to the car.

Back at the hotel, Webber plied her with questions, but she wouldn't say a word until she'd scanned herself and their room for bugs. Once she was reasonably sure there was nobody eavesdropping, she relayed her conversation with Jeri Carlton.

"Everything she's got," MacAdams said. "Her house, her freedom—came from the people who killed her little girl?"

"A real tragedy." Webber paced around the room. "You know what else is tragic? We didn't learn anything. I thought you were Toman's Hammer, Rada. You sure you can't knock something loose here?"

"Toman's Hammer?" Rada waved a hand. "Nevermind. We can't get anything out of her. I think Valiant's bugged her."

"So run a scan and root 'em out."

"They've bugged
her
. Embedded recording devices in her spine using the same tech they used to inoculate the kids. There's no way to get the devices out without disabling her—or, more likely, killing her."

Webber pushed out his lower lip. "And if she talks, they take away her shit and toss her back in jail. Now that's an impressive display of evil."

MacAdams scowled, moved to the suite's kitchen, and unsealed a bottle of bourbon. Apparently they'd made a supply run in her absence.

"So are we done here? Or do we try to bust into Valiant's lab?" He poured himself a cup, swirling it.

"The last thing she said," Rada said. "It sounded like code. 'You want to land a whale? Bring a bigger spear.'"

Webber groaned. "Haven't you spent enough time chasing down gibberish phrases? Here, I'll save you the time."

He flipped on his device, tapped in a quick search, and held up the results for Rada. There were thousands of them. "See? Common phrase."

She rolled her eyes. "Sort by date, fool."

He did so, then looked up, sheepish. "The first recorded use was at Carlton's trial?"

"Yup. By H/K's lead defense attorney. And guess what? He's retired, but he still lives here."

Webber had set down his device. He walked to the kitchen, grabbed the bottle from in front of MacAdams, and swigged. "Shall we pay him a not-so-friendly visit?"

"No need for liquid courage," Rada said. "He's in a retirement facility. He has Flash."

"Flash? Like, 'my brain is gently disintegrating' Flash? But Flash is treatable."

"If you have big money. Do you think people with big money wind up in retirement facilities?"

Webber set down the bottle with a clank. "He was a corporate defense attorney. He could afford his own habitat!"

"Know what, you're right. Something's funny here." She pulled up directions on her device. "I'm going to go check it out."

"Are you planning on keeping us in this room for the entire trip?"

"We can't walk in there together without causing a stink. You look like a Belter pirate and MacAdams looks like the bouncer at a bouncer's club." She nodded at the bottle in his hand. "Besides, you're well equipped to entertain yourselves."

The car drove her the two miles to the hospice, a nondescript tower with a view of a small park. She'd called ahead with a story about being a friend of a niece. Bit shaky, but apparently the lawyer, Henry Aikens, was happy to see her.

An orderly took her to his room. It was small and dark, but at least he had it to himself. On the wall screen, a movie showed an old man watching a flag flutter in the wind. There in the bed, another old man rested, eyes closed.

"Mr. Aikens?" Rada said. "I called to see you?"

His eyes fluttered open. His skin was heavily wrinkled, pale from long hours indoors, but his blue eyes were lively. "Yes?"

The orderly touched Rada on the shoulder and stepped out. Rada moved toward the bed. "I know your niece, sir. Gia."

"Is that you, Aberdeen?" He sat up for a better look. His face crinkled in a deep smile. "I wondered when I'd see you!"

She smiled back and edged closer, tapping a furtive search into her device. Aberdeen was his daughter. Also a corporate attorney.

"Hi," she said. "How are you feeling?"