Where the fuck are you, Kamal? she thought. Into her handheld she said, “Prep for launch.”
“Aye, Captain,” Caspar said, and she heard the fear in his tone.
When she reached the lift, she checked her security report. Eighteen high-priority alerts tracked the Laconian from where she’d first opened fire, and then through the base, time codes of broken doors and gunfire alerts marking the Laconian’s passage through space and time like a borehole chewed through wood. She tried to guess which way Kamal and his people would go. Another alert lit up, but it wasn’t automated. Station security asking her what the plan was. The tightness in her throat was that she didn’t know what to tell them. The base was compromised, and it was her fault. One prisoner for thousands of civilian lives had seemed like an obvious trade at the time, but it had brought her here. Dwelling on the postmortem of her error was for later.
“Kamal, report,” she said, and for a terrible half second thought he might not reply. Then the speaker ticked once, hissed, and his out-of-breath voice came gasping to her. “By the water tanks. Heading for the dock.”
“Get there and get out,” she said. “I’ll clear the path.”
Caspar was in his crash couch on the bridge when she reached it. Amanda Feil was strapping in at comms. Natasha Li had the gunner’s controls up, even though she was sitting at her usual station. All the other couches were empty. Jillian slung herself into her own. The one she’d taken when Draper left. For the very first time, the chair didn’t feel right. It suddenly felt much too large for her.
“Launch when ready,” she said. “Li, target the Sparrowhawk as soon as we’re clear of the dock.”
“Disable or destroy?”
“Kill the fuck out of them.”
The Storm shifted under her, tilting her crash couch and then pressing her into it as the ship left its home port for what Jillian understood in that moment would be the last time.
Behind her, Draper Station burned.
The funny thing was she didn’t even like Kamal. She never had. She’d always felt like his faux-folksy grandpa act had a hidden contempt for her and people like her. She still remembered when the Rocinante had come to Freehold as a threat and taken her father away. Maybe on some level she’d never forgiven him for that. Or maybe she was just reaching for bullshit psychological justifications because she was ashamed of how things had worked out. Flip a coin, win a prize.
The Storm thumped twice as two torpedoes were ejected from the launcher. On Li’s screen she could see the tiny dots that represented them speeding off toward a targeting diamond with the name Sparrowhawk floating next to it. The Derecho was the same class as the Storm, but with the advantage of recent repair and resupply and the knowledge and expertise of the people who’d built her. The Sparrowhawk was smaller, and it had taken some damage in New Egypt.
Jillian looked at the tactical map of Freehold system. The little solar disk on her display made the vastness seem comprehensible. That was an illusion, but a useful one. Here was the ring gate. Here were the ships that the underground had in-system—half a dozen rock hoppers and an ancient ice hauler, none of them ready for a full-scale battle. Here was the Storm.
There were the enemies, focusing in on Draper Station and on her, the indicators for her two homes—her base and her ship—still so close together they overlapped. She pressed her fingertips into her lips until it hurt a little. There was the planet and her family and everyone she’d grown up with that the fuckers had threatened to glass. Here were the planets of Freehold system that didn’t sustain life.
Here was the problem that, if she solved, she could live, and if she couldn’t, she would die.
“Status on the Sparrowhawk?” she said.
“Matching us. Shot down the first two torpedoes, now staying just out of effective range.”
“Could you give me an evasion plan for the Derecho, please?” she asked, and saw Caspar and Feil exchange a look. They knew when she got polite, things were bad.
Caspar spoke, his voice steady. “If we break directly away and make the highest sustainable burn, their long-range missiles will be good to go in eighteen hours, fifteen minutes. Solutions drop quickly from there.”
“What’s the status from Draper Station?”
“They’ve gone dark, Captain,” Feil said.
She felt Bobbie Draper beside her. Not a ghost or a spirit, but a memory. The older woman’s smirk that might have been to condemn Jillian’s naive fuckup or God’s sense of humor or both.
If the Rocinante didn’t get out—if Kamal and Nagata and the rest of them died where they were—there were options. Assuming Trejo’s bullshit emissary stayed alive, one of the ships would have to stop and pick her up. If it was the Sparrowhawk, that meant it had to break away and give the Storm a head start. If the Derecho went after Tanaka, that meant they intended to let the Sparrowhawk do the fighting. But that was one she thought she’d be able to win. She could escape.
Freehold, on the other hand, couldn’t. If she killed their sister ship, would the Derecho chase her or turn back to punish the underground by leveling the colony? Could the underground’s other ships run interference? If she could lure the destroyer into joint action against her and her scattered militia at the same time… Well, the ice hauler wouldn’t make it, but it might give her enough of an edge to win that fight. And then it would be the Storm and whatever damage it had sustained against the one remaining Laconian ship…
“It’s okay, Captain,” Caspar said, and Jillian looked up at him. Her lip had gone numb where she’d been pushing at it without realizing. The pilot’s face was meant to be consoling. “We understand. It’s okay.”
Jillian fought the urge to unstrap, walk over, and hit him. Or dress him down at least. Lash out somehow. If they lived through this, she would have a long and very unpleasant talk with him about morale and faith in her command, but that was for later. Now, things were happening.
“Rocinante has cleared Draper Station,” Feil said. “They made it.”
A third icon appeared on her display, stacked on top of Draper Station and the Storm like they all shared the same shirt.
“Get me a tightbeam,” Jillian said.
Seconds later, Kamal was on her screen. Familiar as he was, she found herself caught by the small details of his face: the way his skin darkened at the eyelid, the whiteness of the stubble on his chin and neck, the laugh lines at his mouth. If he was frightened, he didn’t show it.
“What’s your status?” Jillian asked.
“We’re all on the ship. The girl and her dog too. It was closer than I would have liked, but we made it.”
“Injuries?”
“We’re good.”
The map of the system still on her screen rearranged itself without any of the designator icons moving. The Rocinante was only one more piece on the board, but it changed the logic behind everything. She saw the flaws in her plans and the stakes she was playing for. The despair felt almost like relief.
“All right,” Jillian said with a sigh. “Set your course for the ring gate. I’ll buy as much time as I can. Tell Nagata I’m sorry.”
“She’s right here, if—”
“No,” Jillian said. “You can do it for me.”
She dropped the connection, took a moment for a long, slow breath, then checked status. The Derecho was upping its burn, leaping after them now that Teresa Duarte was in play. The Sparrowhawk was shifting away too, ready to take another shot at the Rocinante. Get even. That made her target selection easy enough.