Supremacy's Outlaw: A Space Opera Thriller Series (Insurgency Saga Book 3) by T.E. Bakutis (top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT) 📗

Whatever else Kinsley might have said ended as both sides of the scow violently separated from the main portion and the bed holding Jan. Emiko was flailing and airborne for what seemed like an eternity before the hard ground stole her breath. Was she dead? She hurt too much to be dead.

She saw two blurry scows as a new repulsorlift on Rafe’s skiff sputtered, revved, and ignited. Rafe’s craft sped off once more. Emiko’s world returned to lizard-filled darkness.

Emiko gasped for air she couldn’t find. Eventually, mercifully, she gathered enough energy to curl into a ball on the ground. When she tried to stand, a spear split her shin with agony. She collapsed once more.

“Hey, don’t move,” Kinsley warned from somewhere in the darkness. “I think you hurt something in your fall.”

Emiko felt soft hands on her shoulders. She sat back, gripped Kinsley’s hands, and turned in what she assumed was Kinsley’s direction. She couldn’t see a damn thing. She sucked in breaths until she could speak again.

“What,” she wheezed, “just happened?”

“Rafe triggered the scow to eject its side compartments and, apparently, activated an auxiliary repulsorlift.”

Emiko breathed, swallowed, and breathed some more. “Why?”

“I suspect he wanted to escape before Jan woke up, so we could not hold him accountable for his betrayal.”

Rafe had betrayed Jan? How? Emiko tried to stand again, then cried out as her leg stabbed her again. “We have to get to the others!” Despite her urgency, she sat down hard.

“The others no doubt started after us the moment we pulled away,” Kinsley said. “Rafe has already escaped with Jan. Don’t stress. The others will catch up to us soon enough.”

“And what do you mean, Rafe betrayed Jan?” Emiko demanded. “How did he betray Jan?”

“Rafe sold Jan out to the Supremacy,” Kinsley said, quite matter-of-factly, “who then placed Jan in orbit.”

Emiko did a double take, then realized Kinsley probably couldn’t see that. “He said it was Fatima.”

“And that is what Jan has always thought. I know only what Fatima shared with me, but neither of us had any inkling that Rafe was the one she calls Mastermind. I could only be certain once he blew past Bharat and the others moments ago.”

“But why?” Emiko asked. “Why would Rafe betray Jan?”

“I’m not sure. Gambling debts? Drug addiction? I can only guess at Rafe’s intentions, but we can now safely assume he is not the master criminal he claimed to be. While Rafe is ambitious and creative, he is not, well, competent.”

Emiko breathed. “Well, yeah.”

“It’s possible that Rafe didn’t even mean for Jan to get taken by the Supremacy. Their sudden decision to seize Jan from CSD custody would have been difficult to engineer. Regardless, I am now confident it was Rafe who sent both Jan and Fatima spoofed texts five years ago, leading to Jan’s arrest. Those fake texts lured them both to the Star’s Landing starport.”

“Really?” Emiko asked.

“The CSD arrested Fatima, and the Supremacy took Jan. Fatima spent six months in a CSD prison before she was released. Jan spent five years in orbit, and would have spent forty without Fatima’s help, because he embarrassed the Supremacy.”

“So how do you know all this?”

“Fatima confided in me a year ago. At the time, I was as surprised as you are now, but it would seem that Mastermind ... or Rafe, as we now know ... convinced Fatima our families would be in jeopardy if she ever told us what happened. Even after Ceto threw off the Supremacy occupation, Fatima was entirely alone in her quest to free Jan from Tantalus prison.”

Emiko leaned close, then squeezed Kinsley’s hand. “So you’ve known about Mastermind and Fatima for a year? That’s what you wouldn’t tell us earlier, when Jan said Fatima betrayed him?”

“Yes.”

Emiko slapped Kinsley as hard as she possibly could. “How could you lie to us like that?”

Kinsley sputtered and scrambled out of reach. “We did not know who Mastermind was! We could not know when we were being surveilled, or who was listening!”

“Rafe doesn’t have the attention span to surveil Fatima for five minutes, let alone five years!”

“Well, we know that!” Kinsley said. “Now. How were we to know the mysterious hacker who claimed he could track our every move was, well, Rafe? We dared not violate Mastermind’s edict until we were all together and Jan was free. We had to get everyone out of danger first.”

“So what have you been doing for Fatima, anyway?”

“Tech support. I set up a cloaked, drone-based holo-projection system that allowed Fatima to project a perfect replica from the air, so she could contact Bharat while remaining invisible to the archiver in his PBA. I also hacked into Bharat’s PBA, at his behest, and suppressed his memories of their plan. I even came up with turkey chlorine diction.”

Emiko blinked in the darkness. “What?”

“Yet none of us planned for Tarack to inflict those torture nanos upon Jan, or on Truthers capturing Bharat before Fatima could find him and restore his memories.”

“Kinsley, seriously, what the fuck?”

“Bharat could not know of his involvement in our plot until he was here on Ceto, because Senator Tarack would have detected it. Similarly, I could not reveal our plot to Jan where Mastermind might overhear. As we’ve just now learned, Rafe put a tracking device on Jan, and that device could record audio. It would seem I made a wise decision.”

Emiko’s head was really starting to hurt. “People can delete their own memories?”

“With a properly configured Personal Brain Assistant, yes. Fatima and Bharat’s plan was ambitious, but it worked. Jan is free, Rafe is exposed, and we are all now safe from Mastermind.”

“Well, I don’t feel