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

Jan let himself be led back down a number of hallways, past the laundry room, to what he assumed was the not-quite-prison wing of the facility. It certainly had only one way in or out. Esparza didn’t trust him that far, it seemed.

It could be days or even weeks until Jan learned the Truther patrol patterns well enough to escape. Still, he’d spent five years in an orbital prison much less pleasant than this. With his nanos disabled, assuming Rafe wasn’t full of shit, Jan now had all the time in the world. Assuming the CSD didn’t find and nuke the place, he was safer here than anywhere.

So long as Esparza had a use for him.

“Stay in your room,” the soldier ordered, once they arrived at it. “I’ll be back for you in the morning.”

Once Jan and Rafe were inside, the soldier closed the door. Jan didn’t have to hear the click to know it locked from the outside. All appearances aside, they were prisoners.

Their square room had two beds, a sink, a toilet, and little else. Still, they had pillows and sheets, and the walls were solid. No cameras Jan could see, another small measure of trust. Small measures meant a great deal in a place like this.

“So, Jan,” Rafe started again, but once more Jan silenced him. Time to test the limits of his captivity.

Jan kept Rafe silent for the five minutes it took to find and remove the wireless listening device in the ceiling light, as well as the one in Rafe’s mattress frame. He held them up where Rafe could see, pointed pointedly, and said, in a normal tone, “We should probably get some sleep. Esparza may need us soon.”

“Sure,” Rafe said, looking a bit green. “Let’s sleep.”

Jan opened his pillow and carefully tucked both bugs into the foam, taking care to make as little noise as possible. He placed the pillow facedown on the bugs, put Rafe’s pillow on top of that, and piled both their sheets on top of that. That should muffle their whispers, unless the Truthers had amazing bugs.

Jan walked over to Rafe’s bed and sat beside him, keeping his voice low. “Tell me everything you told Esparza.”

“Not a lot,” Rafe whispered back. “Just what you just did.”

“You did not tell him our trip to his warehouse was to rescue Bharat?”

“Hell no, mate. He’d have put me on a pike if he knew I was involved in that!”

So Rafe wasn’t entirely foolish. “I need you to tell me what’s really going on here. I get why you’re involved with these Truthers, and I want to help them, too, but I have to look out for my people first. Where are Kinsley and Emiko?”

“Not here,” Rafe said. “I told you.”

“That’s the truth?”

“I don’t know where they are,” Rafe whispered. “But they’re not here. We left them behind when I, uh ...”

“Rafe?” Jan prompted.

“They wouldn’t understand,” Rafe said. “Not like you do. They’re not down with the cause, if you get me.”

“I do,” Jan said. He squeezed Rafe’s thin shoulder to show his relief. “You did the right thing, leaving them behind, but I had to know they were safe before I could focus on our problems.”

“Yeah,” Rafe said, smiling back. “I thought so.”

“So what’s Esparza planning?”

Rafe shrugged. “No idea. I just do jobs for them.”

“Oh? What kind?”

Rafe frowned. “Why do you want to know?”

This was dangerous territory. “Just curious. You don’t have to tell me, but I know how talented you are.” Blatant flattery usually worked with Rafe. “They’ve kept you busy?”

Rafe relaxed and smiled. “Hell yeah, mate. I’ve been doing all kinds of jobs for them since they brought me back. Database hacks, records manipulation, identity theft, the works!”

“I’m sure that’s been very useful,” Jan agreed. “When did you start working for them?”

Rafe looked away. “I, uh ... that’s not a happy story.”

“Few are,” Jan said. “I’d still like to know.”

Rafe looked somewhere far away, and Jan let him look. He let Rafe stew. In this one case, that was probably best.

“After you got took?” Rafe whispered. “I want to say I went to a dark place, but really, I’d been there a long time.” His voice trembled as he spoke. His eyes actually glistened.

The emotions Rafe was now in the process of revealing seemed serious, and real, so Jan nodded gravely and leaned close. “What sort of dark place did you go to?”

“Anywhere I could get a fix,” Rafe said, as he stared somewhere far away. “I was fucked up back then. I’d do anything to score a little bliss. I did a lot of stuff I don’t even remember, and the stuff I do remember, I’m not proud of.”

“Are you still addicted?”

“No, I’m clean.” Rafe sniffled and met Jan’s gaze. “The True Sons got me clean. They’re good people, Jan, just like I said. I was a mess when they found me, but they showed me where I’d gone wrong. They helped me make my time useful. It was like it was when we were all a crew, when we were helping people.”

Rafe really had bought into the Truthers’ bullshit, but Jan couldn’t be angry at him. If anything, he was furious at the Truthers for preying upon Rafe’s vulnerability to turn him into mass-murderer tech support. Jan hadn’t been here to keep Rafe on the straight and narrow, so Rafe had fallen in with whack jobs.

This might not be Jan’s fault, but Rafe was Jan’s responsibility. So he would get Rafe out of here, one way or the other. Jan Sabato left