It wasn’t over. Laconia would send another ship after this one. A fleet, next time. The union and the EMC would have to get much more clever. But they knew more now—about how the enemy ships functioned, how they maneuvered in battle, and most important of all, how they could be killed.
And she had to expect reprisals. By deciding to send her one last, desperate message, she had as good as told the Laconians that she still had allies on Medina. The choice had seemed like the right and obvious thing at the time. She’d pointed at Medina and said, Look for my people here. It might be the thing that killed Saba and his crew.
It was a problem for another day. A tragedy she’d face when she could do something about it, and not before. There was too much that had to be done here and now.
“Send the return signal to all the transport ships and get the docks ready to bring everyone home,” she said. “It’s going to be a long couple weeks, people. We may as well get to it.”
Another cheer, this one louder. They’d all been so hungry for a win, they were drunk with it. She was too.
“Ma’am?” the sensor tech said, the word like a drop of ice in a sauna.
The sensors had finished their reset. The Tempest was still where it had been, not scattered into atoms. An eerie blue mottling danced in lines like veins under the ship’s skin, bright but fading. The EMCs’ nukes might not have made contact before they detonated, but the fireball should have been enough to kill anything. Or at least anything that Drummer knew of.
“It’s firing missiles, ma’am,” the sensor tech said.
They’d known. Laconia had known they’d be facing nuclear torpedoes. And now everyone on all the colony worlds would see that even that wasn’t enough to kill their ships. Maybe that had been the point all along.
“Tactical,” she said. “Get me tactical.”
The display jittered and shifted. The orange dot was now deep in the cup they’d created to destroy it, and it was still not destroyed. Even with its tactical maneuvering, its course toward the inner planets hadn’t shifted.
All around it, bright-green dots were blinking out.
Chapter Forty-Three: Naomi
The scratch came in the middle of the third shift. If Naomi had been able to sleep, it would have been her midnight, but she was in her bunk, staring into the darkness and waiting for something she knew wouldn’t come. So she heard it—fingernails against the access door that led to the corridor. It was softer than a knock, but it meant the same thing. I’m here. Let me in.
She sat up. Her body ached like she’d worked out too hard, but it was just stress and fatigue. She pulled herself up, opened her door as Bobbie, across from her, opened her own. Bobbie was wearing a tight jumpsuit. The kind you’d put on under a vac suit. Or, she supposed, power armor. She nodded to Naomi, but didn’t speak. They were both being quiet for the others—Amos and Alex and Clarissa. The ones who could sleep, maybe. Someone ought to.
Bobbie opened the door to the public corridor.
Katria wore the uniform of the Medina maintenance crew. Green with a station logo printed on the shoulders and back. A ceramic toolbox rested on the deck by her left foot. Gray where it wasn’t scratched white by long use. Naomi guessed there was enough explosive in it to kill all of them so fast they wouldn’t know they were dead until the funeral. Katria’s nonchalance with it was like a boast. Voltaire Collective had always been like that, even back in ancient days when Earth and Mars had ruled the solar system and no one had ever heard of Protogen. Every revolution needed its mad bombers, apparently.
“Tag,” Katria said to Naomi. Then to Bobbie, “You ready to play a game?”
Bobbie put her hand on Naomi’s shoulder. “Take care of the kids until I get back.”
“I will,” Naomi said. “Good hunting.”
“Thanks,” Bobbie said. Katria stood aside and let the big woman pass. The emptiness on Bobbie’s face could have read as indifference to someone who didn’t know her. To someone who didn’t understand the kinship that Bobbie felt to Mars and its military, and to those who had served once and then been forced by conscience or circumstance to walk away.
“Bobbie,” Naomi said. “I’m sorry.”
Bobbie nodded. That was all. An acknowledgment that they both understood the situation, and would do what needed to be done. Katria plucked the toolbox up, and the two of them walked away down the corridor. Naomi closed the door behind them.
Back in her bunk and sleepless, she wondered what Jim would have done. Something idealistic and impulsive that would lead to more complications, probably. Certainly. And he would have done it in a way that kept that expression off Bobbie’s face if he could. Even if it meant doing something terrible to himself. Like languishing in a Laconian brig. An image came to her mind of Jim being tortured, and she pushed it away. Again. Feeling fear and sorrow would come later, when they were done. When he was back. There’d be time for it then. She didn’t manage actual sleep, but she was able to drift a little before the shift change. It was enough to let her feel rested, but not deeply.
She met Saba at the same public counter where they’d used the freezer, but this time they sat at the front like customers. The girl behind the counter turned up the music playing from her system speakers loud enough that they could barely hear each other, their words drowned in drums and strings and ululating voices. Saba looked as tired as she felt.
“Something happening back in Sol system,” he said. “Looks like the big fight. Not sure how it’s going to play.”
Half a dozen possibilities flashed through her sleep-starved mind ranging from the miraculously good to the catastrophically bad. It didn’t matter. Nothing that happened there changed what they were doing here. But Saba’s wife was there, back in the empty spaces where they’d all lived, once upon a time. She knew too well what that fear felt like.
“You have the list?” she asked.
Saba nodded and pressed a silver memory chip into her hand. “All the ships we could make contact with,” he said.
“How many?”
“Twenty-one.”
Naomi nodded. Twenty-one ships docked on Medina and waiting for their chance to load up and fly. It was more than she’d hoped for. It was also enough to pose some problems. “I don’t like having this many people knowing what’s going on.”
“It’s a risk,” Saba said, as if he were agreeing with something she’d said. “How does it make us for time?”
“If you don’t mind half of them vanishing in transit, we can go pretty fast,” Naomi said, more sharply than she’d intended. She shook her head, apologizing, but Saba ignored both the snappishness and the regret for it.
“Say we don’t. Everyone through the gates safe and sound. What does that look like?”
“I can’t know that until I look at the ship profiles. Mass, drive type, cargo. All of that’s going to make a difference.”
“Ballpark.”
“A hundred minutes. That’s conservative. I can probably find a way to make it less.”
The girl at the counter swung past, pouring fresh tea into their glasses. Tiny bits of mint leaf swirled in the reddish amber. Naomi took a sip while Saba scowled. “That’s a long time for the station’s eyes to stay blind. And a lot to lose if they find a way to put it back together.”
“Truth,” Naomi said.
Saba scratched his chin with the back of his hand. If they ever played poker together, it was a gesture she’d remember. His tell.
“Your technician. The one to break the system?”
“Clarissa.”
“Her, yeah. If she doesn’t do the thing and do it well, everyone on those ships is going to die from trusting me. Not disrespect, but it’s mine to say. Not sure she’s good for it.”