And by then, none of it would matter, because in the Laconia gate data was the game-ender. The Voice of the Whirlwind, last of the three Magnetar-class battleships, was on a killing burn toward the Laconia gate. At its pace, even people in the breathable-fluid crash couches would be risking their lives. Only they weren’t risking their lives at all. Their lives were no more important now than the individual skin cells on a boxer’s knuckles. They would be shattered by the hundreds and not be missed.
The moment the Whirlwind came through that gate, the fight was over, and any forces that Duarte’s hive mind had would be able to flood the ring station and pull Jim and Teresa and Tanaka back out like they were plucking a splinter.
She opened a connection to her little, doomed fleet.
“This is Naomi Nagata,” she said. “Prepare to receive your orders.”
Chapter Forty-One: Jim
This is a bad idea,” Miller said. “I mean, you’ve always been a little dim, but even you have to know this is a bad idea.”
“Yeah. I know,” Jim said. “But it is literally the best bad idea I’ve got.”
“You look back, some of the life choices that got you here were ill-advised.”
Jim shifted to look at the space where the dead detective seemed to be. Miller had the decency to look sheepish and raise one hand, palm out in a gesture of surrender.
“I’m not saying there’s no pot-and-kettle aspect to this,” Miller said. “I’m just trying to set your expectations on how this ends.”
The sphere of the station wasn’t a sphere at this distance. He was close enough—they were close enough—that it felt more like a glowing blue plain. The ring gates around and behind him shone like tiny, perversely regular stars.
The Laconian heavy vac suit that Elvi had given him fit strangely in the armpits and knees, giving him an ease of motion that kept sending little the-suit-is-coming-apart jabs of panic to his amygdala. The HUD showed that he had fifteen hours of air, which was pretty damned good. He didn’t even need a second bottle. The Laconian suits stored backup air and water in pores in the suit’s plating, and while this wasn’t battle armor—the only weapon he had was a sidearm from the Roci’s supply—it was reinforced enough to give him some protection.
The on-suit sensors didn’t show anything dangerous in the station’s bluish glow, and only a few hundred millirems coming from all the gates together. He would have suffered more radiation on a short walk outside to check the Roci’s hull in normal space. It was the only thing about his situation that seemed even vaguely safe.
The Roci and the Falcon floated a few kilometers off to his right, the Derecho about the same distance to his left. All the ships were small enough to cover with the thumb of an outstretched hand. And the alien transport that had hauled Winston Duarte from Laconia was a pale dot below him on the station surface. His helmet assured him that Teresa and Tanaka were both en route to his position, but he couldn’t see them without magnification. Not yet. Which just left him, or else him and Miller, depending how he looked at it.
The detective wore the same gray suit and dark hat that he had in life. His sad, basset-hound expression seemed younger than Jim remembered it, but that was probably just that Jim had grown past him while Miller stayed the same. Having the protomolecule working directly on his body had given Miller the ability to remain in Jim’s consciousness even when other people were present, and Miller had also developed the unpleasant habit of being somewhere in Jim’s view at all times. If he seemed to be at Jim’s right side, and Jim turned left, Miller would be there too. And his sense of the direction Miller’s voice came from clicked to match wherever he seemed to be. It was disorienting and creepy, like Miller was the villain in a low-budget horror video.
Miller stuck his hands in his pockets and pointed toward the Derecho with his chin. “Looks like Colonel Friendly’s here.”
“You don’t want to call her that.”
“Why not? It’s not like she’ll hear me.”
Tanaka was a dark dot against the background light of the gates. Her maneuvering thrusters were compressed gas and hardly made any sign that they were firing except that she began to slow as she approached. Her suit was the same blue as Laconia’s flag, with the stylized wings on it. Apart from that, it reminded Jim of Bobbie Draper’s old Goliath: less a vac suit than a weapon shaped like one. Her face was surprisingly visible. One cheek looked smoother and younger because he’d blown the original into ribbons not that long before. Her gaze clicked around him like she was taking inventory. She paused, frowning, and seemed to focus on the emptiness around his helmet.
“Well, I guess it’s true then,” she said through the helmet radio. “You really do have someone else on board.”
“Yes, I do,” Jim said. “But how did you—”
“I’m here,” Teresa said. Jim turned back toward the Roci and found Teresa in a battered Rocinante-badged vac suit, Miller floating apologetically at her side. “I’m almost ready. I just need to take care of one more thing.”
“What?” Tanaka asked sharply.
“Muskrat. If there’s fighting, she should be in her crash couch.”
Tanaka’s silence seemed like a pointed reply.
“Oh, this is going to be fun,” Miller said.
“I’ll take care of that,” Jim said. “Other than Muskrat, are you both ready? Do we need anything else before we head in?”
“No,” Teresa said. “We can go.” Tanaka shook her head. Jim reoriented himself toward the vast and empty blueness, and found Miller already there below him.
He opened a connection to the Roci. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Naomi replied. She sounded soft and preoccupied. Jim took a quick reading to the station.
“So, we’re about a hundred meters from the surface of the station, and we’re heading in.”
“I’ve got you,” she said, and then something else that he didn’t quite catch.
“Teresa wants you to make sure Muskrat’s in her crash couch in case you have to do any tricky maneuvering.”
“I’ll see to it.”
The great blue wall grew closer. In the corner of his eye, Tanaka was activating and shutting down the gun in her suit’s forearm, extending and retracting the barrel in a combination of fidgeting and threat. Teresa was staring ahead at the station in something like hunger.
Miller, at his side, nodded. “I’ve got something. Look at this.” The blue wall suddenly wasn’t featureless. Lines ran through it, fine as string, making wide, complex spirals that came together and fell apart only to be replaced by new whorls that rose up. It was something between organic and mechanical, and it felt very familiar.
Miller blinked forward, teleporting from one spot to another the way only a hallucination could, waited until the pattern of lines had come to a moment of calm, and reached into the surface. Jim felt it as an effort in his own body, but not anyplace he could identify, like flexing a muscle in a phantom limb. As the spirals re-formed, the place where Miller was stayed empty, then widened. The blue glow darkened in a circle three meters wide as a depression formed, then deepened, then became a tunnel. Tanaka said something, but with her radio off. Jim only knew because he saw her lips move.
“Okay. We’ve got an entrance. We have a way in.”
When Naomi spoke again, her voice was despairing. “We’ll give you as much time as we can.”
“She thinks you’re all dead,” Miller said. “Her and you, and everybody in those ships. Or, I don’t know. If not dead, something worse. I’ve been a mind caught inside these fuckers and not permitted to die. It wasn’t fun. Speaking of which, have I said fuck you very much for dragging me back yet?”