Her name, according to Saba’s faked ID, was Ami Henders, and her address was listed as refugee housing on level four. She was supposed to be the pilot of the Blue Genius, a water hauler presently burning somewhere on the far side of the Athens gate without her. She wondered whether Saba had been able to scrub Naomi Nagata from the station records. He wouldn’t have been able to get her out of decades of newsfeed footage, standing behind Jim and wishing the cameras were elsewhere.
She was walking on the surface of a soap bubble and hoping it wouldn’t pop.
The refugee quarters, when they reached them, were a little better than living in the underground had been. A little suite of five rooms with a narrow common hall and a shared head at the end. She could have touched one wall with her elbow and the other with her shoulder. It was tighter than their quarters on the Roci, but with doors, so they could sleep without breathing each other’s dreams. A little monitor in the wall was set to the official newsfeed, but the captain of the Typhoon was gone, replaced by a sober-faced man in a security uniform.
“The base was exactly what we thought we would find. These rat holes are what allowed the terrorists to function and plan in secret. Without them, they’ll be forced out into the light. That’s where they can be stopped.
“We don’t know how many people were using the secret base, but we’ve cordoned it off and we’re making a full investigation. We feel certain that the threat to the station is reduced, but we can’t be complacent. These people are willing to risk the integrity of the environment for their ideological purity. Risk the lives of the whole station. It’s important that we isolate and disarm these terrorists before another attack like the one on the oxygen tank.
“With that in mind, the governor has authorized a limited amnesty for anyone who—”
Clarissa turned the monitor off with her thumb. She met Naomi’s eyes, and the determination and exhaustion in them was clearer than words could have been. Let it go. We have work to do.
Alex cleared his throat. “Well, since there’s no galley anymore, I guess I’ll head down the hallway and see if I can’t find a coffee shop or something. Anybody else need breakfast?”
There would be guards. There would be drones. There would be the risk that trying to pay for something would collapse Alex’s false identity or flag his real one. She wanted to grab him and lock him in his room. She wanted to make sure no one left the uncertain safety of their cabin.
“Tea,” she said. “Maybe some protein cakes.”
“All right,” Alex said. “I’ll be back.” The way he said it made it a promise. As if he could keep it.
“I’m gonna …” Amos said, gesturing to Clarissa.
Naomi nodded. “I’ll get some work done.”
“That leaves me for watch,” Bobbie said with a lopsided smile. “Not much of a plan, but it isn’t nothing.”
“I’ll get you a plan,” Naomi said.
Sitting alone on her new, thin bunk, she built a list on Saba’s terminal. If she thought too much about the dangers, the time pressure, she knew the dark thoughts would start coming. There wasn’t time for that. If she could focus, though, problem-solve, she’d be okay. She’d known herself long enough to learn that. The care and feeding of a well-used mind.
The final goal was to get out of the slow zone and find someplace safe to hide and regroup. So the last step was at the top of the list:
REGROUP
She didn’t have the details of what that would look like. Probably keep her head down and see what happened. Wait for the enemy to stumble or new allies to appear. The old, old strategies. But whatever shape it took, that was the final goal. In order for that to happen, they would have to manage some other things …
REACH SAFETY
Before that …
IDENTIFY SAFETY
After all, they’d need to know where they were fleeing to before they fled. It had to be someplace that they could land the Roci. Someplace that wasn’t likely to fall in line with Duarte and turn them in. So none of Fisk’s association worlds, and not Sol either. That was tricky, but she felt the beginnings of some ideas for it. So all right. But there was more than one dependency for that, so she split the column and added the other track.
BLIND MEDINA AND GATHERING STORM
If the Laconians knew where they’d gone, they wouldn’t stay hidden long. So that would be important. And it would be the last thing they did before they left, so the enemy wouldn’t have time to fix whatever they chose to break. She’d have to have everyone ready to go before the sensor arrays went down, so …
GATHER EVACUATION GROUPS
And in order to do that, they’d have to get the word to everyone in Saba’s networks. All the underground. All of them. And there it was. The sorrow and the fear. And the tightness at the back of her throat. It was all right. She just had to put it on her list. It was just part of the plan.
SAVE JIM
Saba sent a message an hour before “Ami Henders” was supposed to get off her shift. Bobbie got the same message, though none of the others did. It was a restaurant just one level under the drum’s inner surface and a route to reach it that would, if everything went well, avoid any checkpoints. Naomi washed her face in the little sink no wider than her two palms together and tugged her hair into something like order. When she got home to the Roci, she was going to spend a day in the showers. A whole damned day.
Alex and Clarissa were waiting for her in the public hall. Bobbie and Amos were a few meters down, pretending to talk, but actually keeping watch. They were both bruised, and there was a cut over Amos’ eye. They looked like they’d been caught in the explosion, which was technically true, but the tension that had been showing in the way Amos held his gut and shoulders was gone.
No, not gone. But lessened. That was good.
“We ready to paint the town red?” Clarissa asked, taking Naomi’s arm. It had the form of a playful gesture, but the need for support was there too.
“I hope this place serves margaritas,” Alex said. “It’s been a long time since I had a good margarita.”
“Trust me when I say you’ve never had a good margarita, Martian,” Amos replied. “Still some things only Earth does well.”
Bobbie caught Naomi’s eye, gave a little nod, and started off along the route. Amos walked at her side, his steps rolling a little in the fractional gravity, like something hurt with each step. Naomi gave them a few seconds, and then started after them. There was a story behind those bruises, and she had the impression she’d never know what it was.
James Holden had shipped with five others on his crew, but they weren’t five. They were a couple up ahead, and a different group of three behind. As ways to avoid pattern recognition, it was thin. But it was something.
The restaurant was a wide, white ceramic bar open to the corridor. Billows of steam came from the back, rich with the smells of fish and curry. The design didn’t fit into the aesthetic of the original ship. This space was a modification, the Nauvoo, which became the Behemoth, which became Medina Station in the process of learning what it was and would be. Looked at that way, Naomi liked the restaurant, even if it was a little ugly.
The man behind the counter nodded, greeted them all in a dialect Naomi didn’t recognize, and waved them back into the steam. The kitchen was small, with two women—one very old, the other hardly more than a girl—who looked at them curiously as they passed through.
The old man opened a thick metal door and nodded, smiling, at the walk-in freezer beyond it. Saba was already there, a blanket over his shoulders and a thin, black cigarette in his mouth. His cheeks were ruddy with the cold. The old man closed the door behind them, and a golden emergency light came on, throwing shadows across them from crates of vat-raised fish. Amos’ gaze cut over to Clarissa, but if anything she seemed to be enjoying the cold.