THE QUIET REBELLION

  Published by Balkon Media

  Paperback edition ISBN: 978-1-916970-83-0

  Also available as an E-book

  Copyright © 2026 by Mark Voss

  The right of Mark Voss to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.

  All characters and events in this book are entirely fictional. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, (except for satirical purposes) is entirely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  Cover Design: Balkon Media

  www.vossiverse.com

  ALSO BY MARK VOSS

  THE SPACE PIRATES! SERIES

  Space Pirates

  Dead Men Launch No Ships

  Salvage Rights

  Echoes of the Plague Moon

  The Quiet Rebellion

  The Bounty Paradox

  The Black Drift

  Till the Engines Fall Silent

  The Median Gambit

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Mailing List

  About the Author

  ONE

  The Meridian moved through vacuum with all the urgency of a pensioner on a Sunday walk. Its hull, only recently polished to a high Imperial shine, now wore a coat of carbon scarring and opportunistic algae that flourished in the condensation between outer and inner hull plates. Some ships wore their battle scars with dignity; the Meridian wore it like a hangover.

  The bridge, despite the wide array of new technology, state-of-the-art screens, and upgraded navigation computers still managed to look like a frat party that was yet to wind down. No one thought the plastic lucky cat stuck to the dash looked out of place, its arm juddering in mechanical exhaustion. Doc had installed the cat. No one asked why. There were fewer questions about Doc’s hobbies since the incident with the IV lines and the decorative fairy lights.

  At that moment, Doc was reorganising his medical kit on the galley table, making slow, surgical passes over the inventory. Mercy was laid out on the deck, legs propped against the ladder shaft, polishing her favourite sidearm with a strip of someone else’s uniform. Jalen occupied the pilot’s chair—technically Rask’s, but the captain wasn’t in sight—poking at navigation displays and cultivating an air of profound disinterest.

  The ship’s AI, Glim, had decided to be a screensaver for the afternoon. Its chosen avatar—a softly glowing pixel fox—circled the edge of the comms panel, occasionally phasing through a cup of half-drunk tea that had fused to the surface during re-entry over Hesperus IV.

  Engine maintenance was Lyra’s excuse today, as it was every day. She was three metres down a crawlspace, hands deep in the cooling array, arguing in low monotone with the only spanner that would never slip off a nut but always, mysteriously, vanish whenever she put it down.

  “Glim,” she called, voice echoing through the ductwork, “cycle the number four fan. And if you over-volt the relay again, I’m coming up there with a hammer.”

  “I would never,” said Glim, in its most sincere child-angel voice. The avatar shimmered a halo and immediately started the fan at sixty percent over rated RPM. The corridor rattled as a backflow of heat burped up the vent. Mercy grinned and whistled at the vibration.

  Doc finished lining up a row of gauze packets, then leaned back and observed the cabin like a man diagnosing a patient just before the code blue.

  “You’ve got a coolant leak,” he said, loud enough for the ship to hear.

  “Containment’s holding,” Lyra replied. “It’s more than I can say for your stims locker.”

  Mercy cocked her head, one eye peering upside down at Doc. “He’s gone dry again? That’s the second time this quarter.”

  “Inventory reports don’t lie,” said Glim. “Unless you ask them nicely.”

  Jalen, who had made a career out of ignoring other people’s business, now squinted at the long-range sensors, lips pursed. “Speaking of lies,” he said, “anyone else picking up a flutter on the comms band?”

  Rask drifted onto the bridge with a bowl of what was, at some point, probably oatmeal. He wore it like an accessory, letting it slop against the rim with every step. His flight jacket was zipped halfway up, displaying an undershirt that had once been white but now belonged firmly to the taupe family. Three-day stubble, left eyebrow kinked at the permanent angle of disbelief.

  He surveyed the room. “We get a distress call, or is someone just sexting on the emergency channel again?”

  “Not distress,” Jalen said. “More like… a very nervous mouse, tapping out Morse behind the walls.”

  Glim’s avatar stopped its lap, flicked an ear, and went sepia. “There’s a data packet attached. Obsolete encryption. Variant of Qylos lattice—two-point-zero, military-dirty.”

  That woke up Lyra. She crawled out of the duct, hands black up to the wrists, hair plastered to her skull by honest sweat. For a moment, she just stood, hands braced on knees, staring at the comms console as if it might sprout teeth. Then she wiped her palms on her jumpsuit and marched over, elbowing Jalen aside with all the ceremony of a dockworker moving a crate.

  “Display raw traffic,” she ordered. Glim complied, and a waterfall of nonsense characters spilled across the leftmost display. Lyra watched, unmoving, as if willing the characters to reorder themselves into sense. Her jaw tensed; one vein in her temple twitched like a tripwire. “What’s the signature?”

  Glim’s voice, normally irrepressibly bright, dropped to a library whisper. “Source uses designation Lambda Six. That’s… you, isn’t it, Lyra?”

  Rask cocked an eyebrow at her, set his bowl on the comms panel, and leaned in. “You’ve got a secret admirer. Let me guess—old flame, or attempted assassin?”

  Lyra ignored him, staring instead at the header data. “Patch me through to origin,” she said.

  Jalen, who never missed an opportunity to escalate, tapped the link open. The cabin filled with a shallow hiss—static that danced with the suggestion of breath, or wind, or the world’s loneliest heart murmur. Then a voice, quiet but unbroken, came through.

  “—repeat: this is Talos Reach. Direct request to Lambda Six. If you receive, acknowledge at once. No coordinates. No further transmission. Awaiting reply. End.”

  Mercy, who had yet to find a problem that couldn’t be solved with explosives, piped up from the floor. “That a code word, or just someone with a talent for brevity?”

  Lyra’s lips compressed to a line. She turned from the display and addressed the room, tone flat as the deck. “That’s from someone I served with. Last I heard, she was dead.”

  “Well,” Rask said, “either she got better, or we’ve just been invited to a haunted house.” He shot a look at Jalen. “Is it really coming from Talos Reach?”

  Jalen shook his head. “No metadata, no bounce points. Whoever sent that was running silent, and knew which windows to keep dark.”

  Doc, who had never met a ghost he couldn’t triage, finished his mental diagnosis and declared, “If this is a trap, it’s a well-set one. Most people would at least ask for a medic.”

  “Most people aren’t ex-rebel spec ops,” Lyra said, gaze returning to the crackling waveform on the screen.

  Mercy rolled to her feet in a gymnast’s arc. “You want to go, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

  Lyra didn’t answer. Her silence said it for her.

  Rask picked up his bowl, spooned out a clump of oats, and chewed thoughtfully. “We just finished three jobs back-to-back. Every bone in my body says, ‘ignore it and fly casual.’” He scraped the last of the sludge from the bowl, then grinned. “But you know how much I like being wrong.”

  He slotted the bowl into a recycler, clapped his hands for attention, and addressed the room. “Glim, set course for the ghost. Jalen, keep the engines cool but ready for a hard burn. Mercy, no grenades until we’re docked, please.”

  Mercy’s face registered the kind of disappointment only a child denied sugar can manage. “That was one time.”

  Doc muttered, “And the burns are healing nicely.”

  Glim’s avatar reappeared, now in the form of a fox wearing a pirate eyepatch. “Course plotted, Captain. Talos Reach, or what’s left of i
t, is two standard days out, direct.”

  Lyra lingered by the console, staring into the non-space between readouts, hands flexing on her hips like she was trying to squeeze the tension out through sheer force. “Thank you,” she said to no one and everyone.

  Rask caught the edge in her voice and, for the first time all morning, dialled down the banter. “You need to tell me what we’re flying into, Lyra.”

  She nodded once, eyes never leaving the ghost signal. “Not yet. But I will.”

  Jalen, already keying the engine startup, looked back over his shoulder. “So, is this a rescue, or a revenge run?”

  Lyra finally smiled, thin as fishing line. “With this crew? There’s always a third option.”

  The Meridian shuddered as her drives spun up, and for the first time in weeks, the hum of the engines felt almost like anticipation.

  The Meridian’s situation room was an insult to its name. The only “situation” it had ever managed, prior to today, involved the smuggling of three metric tonnes of pickled fish and a regrettable hand of zero-gee poker. The projection table, patched in three places with clear resin and one with chewing gum, spat out a lopsided star chart and flickered just enough to be a health risk.

  The crew arrayed themselves around it in their customary pecking order. Rask slouched at the head, boot propped on the table’s corner like he was ready to swing into a bar fight at a moment’s notice. Doc leaned against a bulkhead, arms crossed, face already registering scepticism. Jalen tapped restlessly at the glass with a stylus, while Mercy gnawed on a ration bar and watched Lyra with undisguised curiosity.

  Glim, sticking with the fox avatar, perched atop the projector and waited for a cue. Rask, in his best impression of a benevolent dictator, gave a go-ahead nod.

  “Here’s the fun bit,” Glim intoned, voice just this side of mock-gravitas. “That ghost signal is coming from here—Talos Reach. Coordinates triangulated from fringe traffic and some very interesting gravitational anomalies.”

  The star map spun, then snapped to a patch of black so empty it might as well have been a sensor error. Glim’s avatar drew a line in virtual marker and stabbed it with a pulsing red dot.

  “Isn’t that supposed to be uninhabited?” Jalen asked, eyebrow hiking.

  “Was,” Lyra said, “until a few years ago. Talos Reach got scrubbed from all the charts, because a rebel cell set up shop there. My cell, to be precise.”

  Mercy whistled through her teeth. “You never mentioned that bit.”

  “It wasn’t relevant,” Lyra said, and didn’t elaborate.

  Doc, whose definition of “not relevant” usually involved arterial bleeding, cleared his throat. “If it’s a dark site, why send a personal ping?”

  Lyra flicked her gaze to the table. “My guess is they’re in trouble and the risk of a message being intercepted is less than whatever they’re already facing.”

  “Not a lot of good options, then,” Rask said. He watched Lyra for a tick too long, then jerked his head toward Glim. “Show us what’s in the public record.”

  Glim put on its best bureaucratic voice. “Talos Reach: uncolonised exoplanet, surface gravity point-eight-three, atmospheric mix marginally hospitable for humans, no native fauna larger than a credit chip. Four prior settlement attempts, all failed. Last registered traffic four years ago: one unmarked hauler, one research cutter. No return.”

  “Sounds homey,” said Mercy, tossing her ration wrapper into the grav bin and missing. “How hard is it to get in?”

  Jalen did some back-of-napkin astrogation, tapping at his display. “If we slingshot off the current drift, we make orbit in forty-seven hours. Assuming the signal wasn’t a lure and the place isn’t mined.”

  “Let’s assume both for safety,” Doc said, dry as a good martini.

  Lyra folded her arms. “I don’t expect trouble, just an extraction. But if someone’s alive on the ground, they’re not going to wait.”

  Rask nodded, slow and deliberate. “Alright. Here’s what’s bothering me: there’s no profit in this.”

  “Obligation,” Lyra said, tone so even it could have cut glass.

  He grinned at her, that sharp-witted wolf’s grin. “That’s my second least favourite motivator. First being guilt.”

  Glim, not to be left out, flicked its fox tail and piped in, “There is also the potential for salvage. Several high-value installations left dormant in system.”

  Mercy’s ears perked. “Salvage is my favourite motivator.”

  “Thought so,” Rask said, clapping the table. “Right then. Lyra, you’re in charge of ground logistics. Mercy, weapons check and boarding prep. Doc, make up a triage kit in case this turns into a rescue. Jalen, plot a microjump just out of sensor range, and make sure our exit vector is clean.”

  The crew took this in stride—no saluting, no “aye, captain.” Just the shuffle of movement and the low, familiar grumble of people preparing to do something they’d probably regret later.

  Doc lingered by the table as the rest filtered out, lips pursed. “You trust this?” he asked, softly.

  Lyra didn’t answer immediately. Her hands curled on the edge of the table, knuckles pale. When she did speak, it was so low only Doc and the AI could have caught it.

  “She trusted me first. That counts.”

  Doc nodded, oddly gentle. “I’ll prep the medbay.”

  Alone, Lyra gazed at the red dot still pulsing on the map. Glim’s avatar approached, tail sweeping softly behind.

  “It’s alright to be nervous,” Glim said.

  “I’m not nervous,” Lyra replied, and it was almost true.

  She left the room, purposeful, and the Meridian—her battered, bad-luck ship—altered course, starlight bending ever so slightly in its wake.

  Somewhere in the dark, an old friend waited, and the Meridian, never one to break a promise, was on its way.

  TWO

  The Meridian made approach on Talos Reach at a dignified crawl, so as not to disturb the locals or, more to the point, the planet’s delicate sense of anonymity. From orbit, Talos Reach looked exactly like a place that deserved to be forgotten: dun soil, skittering clouds, and continent-scale runoffs that traced the path of ancient failures. Nothing on the spectrum suggested a population or, more notably, anything worth shooting at.

  Lyra stood behind Jalen at the navigation console, arms folded with the grim satisfaction of a woman whose worst fears were proving correct. Jalen nudged the Meridian into a high polar sweep, sensors dialled so tight they could probably spot a moth blinking on the surface.

  “No traffic beacons, no defence grids, no comms chatter,” Jalen muttered, almost disappointed. “It’s like someone cleared the table and forgot to reset the plates.”

  Mercy hung upside down in the jump-seat, chewing a protein stick and studying the terrain feed with the intensity of a bored student proctoring a test. “No pirate markers, either. Just tumbleweed.”

  “There’s something,” Lyra said, voice level but finger jabbing at a faint anomaly. “Look at the wind patterns.”

  Jalen expanded the atmospheric layer, then ran it back a few orbits. Subtle cyclones traced the surface, swirling around three precise points on the main continent. “Weather control? On this budget?”

  “Wind turbines,” Lyra said. “But not for power—too far from optimal placement. Those are camouflage. Someone’s sculpting the atmospheric trace to mask infrastructure from above.”

  “Overkill, but elegant,” Doc said, appearing with a mug of coffee that steamed like a cauldron and smelled twice as sinister.

  “Shows imagination,” Rask conceded, putting one boot up on the dash. “I approve of any hiding spot that starts with a lie and then builds outward.”

  Glim, who had been silent for nearly six minutes (a ship record), now flickered into view. “I have located additional energy signatures. All spike at regular intervals, with none exceeding background geothermal. It is, and I quote, the world’s most boring EKG.”

  Mercy rolled out of her seat and landed with both feet flat, then stretched with a sound like a gunshot. “So, they’re here, but pretending not to be. Which is more or less what we expected.”

  “Landing corridor there,” Lyra said, pointing at a segment of rock so featureless it might have been designed by committee. “Run the heat bloom at forty-five seconds after sunrise, you’ll see the access.”