Traitor (Rebel Stars Book 2) (16 page)

"Now that you're here? You could hit me with a shovel and I wouldn't notice. What brings you?"

"First, to see how you're doing."

"But second?"

"I had some questions," she said. "About business."

He smiled foxily, leaning forward. "There's my daughter. Something about the Billings case again?"

"Not that one this time. This is about the work you did for Horton/Kolt."

"Horton/Kolt?"

Rada's blood cooled. "H/K? The medical firm?"

He frowned, peering down the length of his nose, then shook his head. "I can't seem to remember."

"Dad, you worked for them for almost twenty years. They operated right here on Quarry."

He began to blink. His hand balled into a fist, knobby knuckles twisting into the bed sheet. Rada thought she smelled urine, but it might have been her imagination.

"I…I don't think I ever worked for any such place, Aberdeen. You must be mistaken."

She kneeled beside the bed, reaching for his hand. "Can you try to remember? It's so important."

"No! I never worked there!" Aikens yanked his hand away, pounding it into the mattress. "Why would you say this? Is that why you came here, to play tricks with my head?"

Rada stood. "I'm sorry, Dad. I didn't mean to."

He swung his head to the side, glaring toward the curtained window. "I think you should leave."

She headed to the door. As she exited into the hall, she glanced back. Aikens sank back into the bed. He was smiling. His blue eyes looked wolfish.

Rada's mouth fell open. She strode to his bedside. "This is an act, isn't it? A way to be left alone. If you have Flash, then no one can ask you a thing."

His smile withered. Lying on his back, a tear slid free from the corner of one eye. "You always were a smart one, Aberdeen."

"Tell me about Horton/Kolt."

His mouth worked. He stared at the ceiling. "Where did that damned cat go, Aberdeen? That kitten you had with the orange fur. Your mother couldn't stand that it peed on our bed, but I'd promised you. I told her we could buy a new
house
if we needed, but she took that cat like a personal insult!"

Rada prodded him with questions about H/K and his life, but everything he said in response was nonsense. As her frustration boiled over, she excused herself and ran down the facility doctor, a woman named Leeds.

The doctor didn't look up from her device. "How is Mr. Aikens today?"

"Fine," Rada said. "A little
too
fine."

"He has some days you'd wonder why he's here. But he's missing most of his later life."

"Doctor, this may sound crazy. But I think he's faking."

She looked up, blond brow arched in distaste. "That isn't possible."

"It isn't possible to say you don't remember? To start crying when someone asks you things you don't want to answer? Dr. Leeds—"

The woman held up a palm, her other hand flying over her device. She held it up to Rada, showing a picture of a brain scan. "This is Mr. Aikens thirty years ago." She flipped to a new image. Small, bright yellow spots appeared across the folds. "This is from when he was admitted here." She continued her little show, scrolling through a dozen other pictures. Each time, the yellow spots enlarged until they threatened to crowd out the gray matter. "Present day. Still think he's faking?"

Rada's face glowed with heat. "Doesn't he have money? How can you let him go like that?"

"His finances are minimal. When he arrived, a friend of his offered to pay for his treatment. Mr. Aikens refused."

The doctor smiled tightly and walked away. Rada gazed down the hall. It smelled like antiseptic and age.

Back at the hotel, the table was strewn with containers of curry. Flakes of limp green leaves and fried dough snowed the table. Webber and MacAdams both raised their glasses in salute. She supposed she should be annoyed at their lack of effort, but mostly she envied them. She'd been clean for years and no longer really felt the urge to drink. But she did miss the way it felt to sit around a table with a glass in your hand, a smile on your face, and the feeling that every problem was solvable.

"He's got Flash," she said. "It's so bad I'm surprised he could remember how to speak. I got nothing."

Webber nodded, regarding her as he sipped a glass of amber liquid. "We anticipated that."

"Is that what the food is about? Comforting me?"

"That was about us being starving and having access to company credit. Want a bite?"

She was about to reject it out of hand, but she was starving, too. She scooped up a plate and dropped into a chair. "Hope you two had a good time while I was out trying to get us somewhere."

They exchanged a look. MacAdams shook his head subtly.

Webber scowled. "Sounds like you're doing a real bang-up job out there. Maybe we
would
be getting somewhere if you actually, you know, let us help?"

Rada swallowed a bite of curry. It was stupid spicy. "I told you. We needed a light touch on these visits, not a sledgehammer. If you want to get more involved, maybe you should prove you can do more than stand around looking tough."

"Is that all you think we're good for? Flexing our muscles?"

"I wouldn't go that far. You're pretty good at flexing your mouth, too."

Webber stared her in the eye, tapping his index finger on the table. "Do you want to keep insulting us? Or do you want to hear our next move?"

Rada set down her fork. "Have you got something?"

"Ah-ah. I'm going to require at least nine hundred percent more begging."

"Knock it off, Webber," MacAdams said. "Actions speak louder than words."

"Maybe I want to rub it in with actions
and
words." He grabbed the last fritter and crunched it in his teeth. "So you think the old man was a dead end. When you hit a dead end, what's Toman's first rule?"

Rada cocked her head. "Buy whatever's in your way and pave it over?"

"Okay, what's the
second
rule?"

"When in doubt, follow the money."

"While you were out, we checked in with LOTR to try to find where Henry Aikens' money had gone. Get this: he put it all into foundations. For the health and welfare of Quarry's children. Especially those harmed by vaccination."

"Holy. Whirling. Shit!"

Webber scowled again. "Don't act that surprised. You're not the only one who knows how to dig up dirt."

"It's not that," Rada said. "It's Aikens. He
wanted
Flash. He wanted to forget. To be rid of the guilt."

MacAdams chuckled uneasily. "That's top-shelf creepy. Letting your own brain burn out because you couldn't handle what you did?"

"How did you get this so fast?"

"I think LOTR upped their financial game after their troubles looking into me." Webber wiped his greasy fingers on the tablecloth. "Or maybe Aikens wanted the info out there. As an ongoing protest against H/K."

"Adding to the idea they're culpable." Rada chased stray grains of rice across her plate. "So what's that point us to? Someone else to talk to?"

"You have to think if they went to the trouble to shut up Jeri Carlton, they've silenced everyone else, too. But LOTR found something else. Aikens set up another foundation. On the Locker."

"Implying H/K—or, these days, Valiant Enterprises—has been up to something there, too? Everything keeps pointing us back to it. Fine time for the entire place to be on lockdown."

Webber smiled. "Haven't you heard? It's back open for business. We've already booked shuttle tickets out of here."

Rada glanced between him and MacAdams. "I'm sorry. I know you're here for good reason."

"FinnTech killed a lot of our friends, too. We want to take 'em down just as much as you do."

"I hear you. I'll do a better job keeping you involved. If we're headed to the Locker, I expect we'll need all the help we can get."

She wasn't sure they'd exhausted their avenues on Quarantine, but heading to the Locker would kill two birds with one stone. Other than the attack on the
Tine
, FinnTech's navy had been quiet. Maybe they thought they'd gotten away with it.

But if Toman let slip that FT had been doing business with the Swimmers for decades, including artificial gravity—or if their hunt turned up a new bombshell about Valiant—Thor Finn and Iggi Daniels would come out swinging. If that happened, the Hive would need the Locker at its back.

They shuttled off Quarry and piled into the
Tine
, which had been rearmed in their absence. It felt good to be back. For Rada, the ship was home.

They made way for the outskirts of the System. The Locker might have reopened, but there was still no solid intel on what had closed it. Rumors bloomed like a red tide, but if anything, their profusion made it harder to sift facts from speculation. Rada had very little to brush up on.

Several days later, they slowed, nearing the converted miniature moon. Security was as tight as ever, escorting them in to port. There, they were checked for firearms. Dressed in red and black, the security officers brought them to a car and requested they climb in the back.

"There a problem?" Rada said.

"Our new admiral would like a word with you. Step into the car, please."

She got in, making Webber sit in the middle. The officers climbed in the front. The car made its way through the vibrant, pedestrian-choked streets. In one depressed neighborhood, a pair of men in red and black uniforms drew her eye. They closed in on a young boy. He looked terrified, but the passersby didn't give the scene a second glance.

The vehicle came to a stop in front of a gleaming tower. Inside, an elevator delivered them to the top floor. Security took them down a hallway floored with real stone and flung open a pair of gunmetal doors. A room yawned before them. At its far end, a woman walked toward them, her shoes echoing from the stone.

"Welcome to the Locker." Her voice was as steely as the doors. Her eyes were such a light, shining blue they might have been silver. She regarded the three of them the way Rada had seen some men look at ships they weren't sure would fly. "My name's Kansas. And I've heard a lot about you."

10

Kansas crossed the terminal alone. Ced watched from behind a post, cementing the image in his mind. A heavy pack bulged over her shoulder, causing her to list to one side. She'd cut her hair short and choppy. Somehow, this drew out the sharp lines of her cheeks. She didn't look happy, exactly, yet her face was more relaxed than he'd ever seen it.

He took a deep breath and rolled from behind the post.

Since transferring out, she hadn't returned any of his messages. He'd gone to her room, but it was empty. He went to the cafeteria as soon as it opened and stayed until it closed, but she didn't show up for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. After pressuring Benson into looking into it, Ced learned Kansas had moved to the Dragons' flight crew facility. When he went there, they'd turned him away at the door: flyboys only.

He'd had half a mind to hang around there until she stepped outside, but he couldn't take that time away from his crew. Back at the office, he brought himself up to speed on Heddy's duties even as Benson charged him with stopping a rival crew's juke from encroaching on their territory. Ced found some time to dig into the files regarding the jukes' payments and care debts, too. It felt like they'd been increasing the money they brought in for the Dragons, but their cut of the spoils was smaller than ever.

Kansas wasn't going to see him, but he'd figured a way around that. All he'd had to do was wait for her to join her new ship.

There in the terminal, her metallic eyes snapped to his. She tensed her jaw, as if preparing to plow straight through him. He planted his feet wide. She stopped, free hand held palm up, demanding he explain.

"You're leaving," he said.

"What tipped you off? The spaceport? Or all the stalking you've been doing?"

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"There was nothing to say."

Ced clasped his hands, cracking his knuckles. "Why did you transfer?"

"Doesn't matter. Get out of my way before I miss my flight."

"It doesn't leave for an hour. The talk we're having now? It's
your
fault. We could have done this a week ago if you hadn't been hiding from me."

She slipped her pack from her shoulder. It thumped to the ground. "I want to fly. Okay?"

"You never talked about that. You were always happy here."

"Happy?" Kansas reached for the strap of her bag. "This is pointless. Go back to the Iguanas, Ced."

"Something's happening here, okay? They aren't paying us like they used to. At the same time, they're ratcheting up the care debt."

"You're kidding. Management is screwing us?"

"And I have proof."

"Ced, they've been screwing us since the moment they bought our contracts." She turned to gaze at the stars beyond the port windows. "The only way out of here is out there."

"We can petition the admiral. Expose the truth. I need you here."

"No, you don't. And neither does anyone else."

He drew back his chin. "That's why you transferred, isn't it? You wanted to be CEO."

Her cheeks grew sharper. "I don't need to boss around a bunch of kids."

"
I
don't want it. Stay and help me and I'll give it to you. If you need this so bad—"

She drew back her fist and drove it into his jaw. Ced's teeth clacked together; white light flashed across his eyes. He sat down hard. Surprise flashed across Kansas' face. She reached down as if to help him up, lips parting.

As suddenly as it had appeared, her regret vanished, burned up by raw anger. She ignored his lifted hand, grabbing her pack instead. Her eyes were as hard as ice.

She was gone before she walked away.

* * *

"I want to turn this place upside down." He stood across from Benson's desk. His jaw still throbbed. Across from him, Benson had his feet up. Ced took a step closer. "I want to drag all their dirt into the light and make them eat it. And if they don't clean it up, I want to see them burn."