Free Rebel Stars 1: Outlaw by Edward W. Robertson Page A

gleaming on the blue water of his private world. "I want you to back off that angle. I'll task some worker bees to it. They can pry into police records, pirate chatter, and anything involving the Piper from a safe distance. If their panning turns up any gold, I may redeploy you to the field then."
    "And in the meantime?"
    "You're headed to the most boring place in all the universe: Earth."
    She glanced at Simm. "I'm not following."
    Toman stood and stretched his back. "Jain Kayle, astronaut extraordinaire, is a born-and-raised Earther. Her funeral's already been scheduled. If her last words mean anything to anyone, chances are you'll find them there."
    "That's a hell of a way to condense the search." Rada got to her feet. "When's the date?"
    "Two weeks. They have to make sure everyone has time to fly in." Her boss turned and smiled at her. "In the meantime, I want you to think long and hard about what you almost did to my Tine ."
     
    ~
     
    The funeral was to be held on the beach at Founder's Bay. Rada arrived early, taking a chair near the back. The air smelled like salt and kelp and water. Out to sea, the Invasion Memorial rose from the waves, silent, titanic, a black plane of startling size. She knew it had been restored many times over the centuries—not to mention stripped of anything interesting and/or useful long, long ago—yet gazing at the alien ship, she couldn't shake the feeling that it could lift off at any moment.
    And finish what it had started.
    As the guests arrived in ones and twos, she gave them a good long look. Following along remotely through the lens cam in her right eye, Simm identified each in turn. Kayle hadn't had much in the way of family (a daughter, an ex-husband, two cousins), and most of the arriving mourners were either former colleagues from her university days, or employees at Valiant, Iggi Daniels' naval company.
    No one paid Rada any mind. By the time the ceremony began, fewer than half the seats were filled.
    A priest took the short platform, his back to the sea. He said some bland pleasantries and stepped down. He was replaced by Kayle's boss, Mikela Rolf, a fortyish woman with the musculature of an Earther. Rada didn't pay attention to her words so much as the strength of the relationship they hinted at. Fairly personal. She made a mental note.
    The next to move to the stage was Kayle's daughter Dinah. She was only 28, but she looked twice that, frail and shuffling, dark circles around her eyes, knobby knuckles. Grief rarely did anyone any favors in the looks department, but Rada thought it was more than that. On her way to the platform, Dinah faltered and had to be helped up by a young man with the no-nonsense motions of a professional caretaker.
    Dinah moved to the podium, looked down, cleared her throat. She put her hand over her eyes and gestured offstage. The caretaker bounded up and helped her off.
    In the receiver in Rada's ear, Simm said, "Kudos for trying."
    From anyone else, it would have been an insult. From Simm, she knew it was sincere.
    A middle-aged man Simm ID'd as Bill Watkins shook Dinah's hand, leaned in to say something in her ear, then ascended to the podium. He was decent-looking, in an over-sunned way, and though he looked plenty sad, it was in a less severe way than Kayle's daughter. Watkins had been Kayle's boyfriend for several years, but they'd parted ways during the same period she'd left the university for Valiant. Rada wondered which event had precipitated which split.
    "It's been a few years since I saw Jain," he said. "But I'm not too proud to admit I've thought about her far more frequently. She got under your skin—in the best possible way. Passionate, but rarely angry, and never hurtful." He grinned wryly. "Well, rarely hurtful."
    A speckle of quiet laughter.
    "She did better than most of us, though. Better than I did. I think it was because she believed so much in her work that it lent her a clarity of purpose that most of us lack. I don't think