Free Traitor (Rebel Stars Book 2) by Edward W. Robertson

his resolve, and quell his objections to the unauthorized device, she showed him the video of the Swimmer, too. Tiant watched with a raptness she'd seen only in children.
     
    * * *
     
    In the morning, Rada had the displeasure of getting intimately acquainted with the outhouse. Breakfast was better—tortillas with potatoes, shredded chicken, and bell peppers—until she crunched into a grain of sand. She was beyond relieved when Tiant showed up with a list of names for her to run down. He assigned her a young girl named Sollie to act as guide.
    In the dirt streets, people came and went on foot and bikes. Small flocks of goats bayed to each other, driven by patient-looking men. Smoke rose from cook fires. The Xenoist enclave had a pastoral, timeless feel, but this sense was shattered every time a street vendor lit a propane grill, or an electric guitar jangled from the back porch of a shack.
    The first interviewee was a man named Peet. Peet turned out to be a potato farmer on a small plot of sloppy terraces. He wore sandals and denim overalls with the legs cut off at the knees. As they approached, he leaned on his hoe, sweating freely and looking like he still hadn't adjusted to Absolution's rustic way of life.
    "You're the woman from last night," he said, mouth hanging half open, though likely more from weariness than awe. "Something I can help you with?"
    The man smelled. Rada smiled anyway. "We're historians of a sort. Trying to get a read on what brings people here. Mind if I ask you a few questions?"
    "Not if I can answer in the shade."
    He relocated beneath a fragrant tree with leaves that were almost circular. There, Rada said, "What attracted you to Absolution?"
    "The deliberate pace of life, I suppose," Peet said.
    "You can farm potatoes anywhere. Why here?"
    "Because this is the only place where there isn't another option. There's no devices to distract you. You make it, or you starve."
    Webber rolled his eyes. "Or you go back home and sign up for government cheese. What really brought you down here?"
    Peet frowned, rippling the skin of his brow and cheeks. "There wasn't the one thing. My old life wasn't adding up. The only way to understand why was to come here, strip away the bullshit, and see what was left."
    Rada questioned him at length, sometimes circling back for more details on his motivations for migrating. Webber played bad cop, pressing for inconsistencies. MacAdams was content to look big and take notes. Once Rada felt there was nothing more to glean, she thanked Peet and headed back to the street, where Sollie was playing with some of the other children.
    Webber glanced back over his shoulder. "You know this is doomed, right? If Marcus DuPrima came here to flee FinnTech, there's no way he'll just tell us that."
    MacAdams folded his arms. "That wasn't DuPrima. Not unless he put on sixty pounds."
    "What, you never heard of lipojection?" Webber said.
    "How about the five-inch height difference?"
    "Leg extensions."
    "DuPrima's changed his appearance. We can bank on that. But I think we can rule out some candidates by looks, you know?"
    Webber stepped over a pile of feces, species indeterminate. "The point stands. Asking questions isn't going to get us anywhere."
    "Nobody's going to hand us the answer on a platter," Rada said. "We have to put in the work. Gather what's out there piece by piece. And see what shapes up."
    As the interviews went on, though, she gave Webber's objections more and more credit. The immigrants all fell into three discrete camps: those driven by loss (a breakup, a firing, the death of a sibling or spouse); those driven by disillusionment (modern life was a hollow sham); and those driven by insanity (those who thought worshipping human-destroying aliens was a dandy idea). Rada pried into their past occupations and interests, but none of them coughed up anything to indicate they were DuPrima in disguise.
    After exhausting the Xenoists, Tiant reached out to his contacts in the Pilgrim