The chime came again, louder this time. Drummer growled and tapped the screen to accept. Vaughn appeared, and before she could snap at the man, he spoke.
“Laconia put out a message, ma’am.”
Drummer looked at him. “What?”
“The warning message from Laconia gate was taken down,” Vaughn said. “It’s been replaced by a new message. The report from Medina came in”—he looked away and then back to her—“four minutes ago.”
“Is it broadcast?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Vaughn said. “Audio only. Not encrypted either. This is a press release.”
“Let me hear it,” she said.
The voice, when it came, was low and warm. It reminded her of a scratchy blanket she’d had once, comforting and rough in equal measure. She didn’t trust it.
“Citizens of the human coalition, this is Admiral Trejo of the Laconian Naval Command. We are opening our gate. In one hundred and twenty hours, we will pass into the slow zone in transit to Medina Station with a staff and support to address Laconia’s role in the greater human community going forward. We hope and expect this meeting will be amicable. Message repeats.”
“Well,” Santos-Baca said, and then stopped. “Didn’t see that coming.”
“All right,” Drummer said, and looked into Santos-Baca’s wide eyes. “Emily, get me everyone.”
The void city People’s Home was still in Mars orbit, down close to Earth and the sun, and hell and gone from the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. It took ten hours to hear back from all the experts in the union hierarchy, and five more for the system to review everything and build a unified report. Every question, every clarification, every new nuance or caveat would take about as long. Drummer was going to be spending most of the hundred and twenty hours before Laconia reopened waiting to hear from people. Their messages were flying between planets and moons, void cities and stations at the speed of light in vacuum, and it was still too damned slow.
The voice on the message matched Anton Trejo, a lieutenant in the MCRN who had gone to Laconia with the breakaway fleet after the bombardment of Earth. Yes, it was possible that the voice was faked, but the technical service tended to accept it as genuine. Medina Station reported light and radiation spikes coming through Laconia gate consistent with ships approaching on a braking burn. How many ships and of what kind, there wasn’t enough information to guess at.
Mars had lost almost a third of its ships when the Free Navy made its brief, doomed grab at power. Those had been divided between the Free Navy’s forces in Sol system and the breakaway fleet going to Laconia. In the decades since, Earth and Mars had slowly rebuilt their navies. Technological breakthroughs based on reverse engineering alien artifacts—lace plating, feedback bottles, inertial-compensating PDC cannons—were standard now. Even if the ships on the other side of Laconia gate had been able to glean some details of how the manufacturing processes worked, they would have to build shipyards and manufacturing bases before they could start using them. Thirty years without a refit was a long time.
The most likely scenario was that something in Duarte’s private banana republic had finally gone wrong enough that he was being forced back into contact to threaten or beg or barter whatever he—or whoever was in power by this time—needed to prop things up.
The flag in the intelligence report speculating about the fate of the active protomolecule sample that the Free Navy had stolen from Tycho during the war tripped Drummer up a little when she read it. She remembered that day. Fighting in her own corridors, her own station. Even now, she remembered the cold rage that came from discovering betrayal in her ranks. And Fred Johnson’s leadership in the face of it.
She still missed Fred. And, sitting in her crash couch with the intelligence reports waiting patiently on her monitor, she wondered what he would have made of all this. Not just Duarte and Laconia, but all of it.
Her monitor chimed and the orange temporary-priority flag appeared. A new report from Medina with the updated analysis of the drive signatures from the far side of Laconia gate. She blew out a breath and opened it. Certainty factors were still thin, but the drives were either unregistered or altered so much they no longer matched the database. She ran her finger over the accompanying text to keep her tired eyes from sliding off them. There had been at least one Donnager-class battleship in Duarte’s stolen fleet. Given the size of the incoming plume, it was possible this was that ship. Older, yes. Worn down. But still a powerhouse.
She stood, stretched. Her back ached from between her shoulder blades up to the base of her skull. She’d been spending too much time reading reports that she should have given to Vaughn. Digesting information down to the critical pieces was part of his job, after all. Used to be, it had been hers too. She trusted herself more than she did him.
She located Emily Santos-Baca on the ship. It was late, but the younger woman hadn’t left for her quarters either. The system put her in the administrative commissary. The idea of food woke her stomach, and a hunger she hadn’t noticed rose up like a flame. Drummer sent a quick message asking her to wait there for a few minutes. She shut down her monitor, put it in security lock, and made her way out.
The hallways of People’s Home still had a sense of newness about them. The foot- and hand-holds on the walls didn’t have the wear of a lived-in ship or station. The lights all had a brightness, subtle but unmistakable, that spoke of recent installation. Not enough time for anything to age or break. Their great floating city would develop all of that in time, but for now, it and the others like it were the bright, perfect Singapores of their age. The well-regulated city. Now, if she could just push that out as far as the stars, everything would be just ducky.
She found Santos-Baca sitting with an older man in a gray jumpsuit. He nodded to Drummer as she approached. When she sat down, he left. Santos-Baca smiled.
“You look like you could use some food.”
“It’s been a while since lunch. I’ll get to that in a minute. You saw the reports?”
“I’m not quite caught up. But yes.”
“Where’s the board on this?”
The younger woman settled into herself, thoughtful and closed as a poker player. When she spoke, her voice was careful. “It’s hard to get too worried about a fleet of out-of-date Martian warships commanded by the remnants of a decades-old coup. Frankly, I’m a little surprised to find out there’s anyone alive there.”
“Agreed.”
“The message isn’t coming up with any particular flag of high stress in the vocal patterns. Or any demands, at least not as yet.”
“I know, Emily. I read the reports. I’m asking what you think of them.”
Santos-Baca opened her hands, an old-school gesture that said, It’s right here in front of you. “I think we’re about to see a bunch of self-centered assholes who’ve realized that their glorious independence isn’t going to work out in isolation. If we can keep them from losing face, we can probably find a negotiated path to reintegration. But Mars is going to be a problem. They’re going to want all of them trotted back to Olympus Mons and hung as traitors.”
“That’s what I was thinking too. Any idea how to approach them about this?”
“I’ve been trading some messages with Admiral Hu. She’s Earth, but she has friends in Martian high command,” Santos-Baca said. “Nothing formal. And McCahill in security.”
“Of course.”
“The other possibility is that they’re going to try force.”
“With ships that haven’t resupplied or seen a shipyard in decades,” Drummer said. “And with our rail-gun emplacements all warmed up and ready to poke holes in anyone that gets too rowdy. Are we thinking that’s a realistic possibility?”