“Not perfect,” Saba said, “but hard for them to hear us.”
“You think they’re listening?”
“No,” Saba said. “But here, seems less likely I’m wrong. Perdón for the fast change. I didn’t have much warning.”
“Shikata ga nai,” Naomi said, and Saba nodded ruefully.
“We have a plan,” Bobbie said. “Well, Naomi does.”
“The outline of one anyway,” Naomi said. “I don’t love it, because a lot of things have to happen in a very small time frame. But the Typhoon arrives in less than a week, and slowing that down isn’t something I can do.”
“I have people,” Saba said. “You tell me, I’ll tell who needs telling.”
“There’s just a lot of moving parts,” Naomi said. “Lots of ways for things to break down.”
“Tell me a story,” Saba said through a cloud of smoke and visible breath.
Naomi did. She went through step by step, detail by detail. As she talked, the whole operation solidified in her mind, letting her speak with a clarity and authority she only halfway felt. It was a terrible plan, open to a thousand different failures, and some of them wouldn’t be things they could recover from. If the assault team couldn’t get onto the Storm. If the kill code was changed or unhackable. If the Laconian repair crews could get the sensors fixed more quickly than she expected.
But with every word she spoke, with every detail she provided, she felt the Typhoon looming behind her. Coming close. Ending any chance they had.
“Gonya need two bombs,” Saba said, pulling up his hand terminal. The one that didn’t connect to the station’s legitimate network. He talked as he composed a message. “One for sensors, one for the jail. Katria’s good for one. Have to see who she likes for two. Which one matters more?”
They both matter, Naomi said at the same moment Clarissa said, The jail.
“I worked on this station, back in the day,” Clarissa said. “Get me access to the secondary power junction that feeds them and a way to reset the primary. I can keep the sensors down.”
“Claire,” Bobbie said, concern in her voice.
“I’m good for it,” Clarissa said. “It will work.”
And then that was decided. Saba was already putting a message into his hand terminal.
“Bist bien alles,” he said.
“Amos and I are dealing with the Storm,” Bobbie said. “You give us a team, but we’re point or no deal.”
“Deal,” Saba said. “I’ll put me and mine on the Malaclypse as soon as the signal goes. If the muscle here has trouble, at least there can be two against the one. Plan B, sa sa?”
Alex raised his hand. “No one’s flying the Roci on this but me. We all knew that, right?”
“I’ll take the jail,” Naomi said. I’ll get Jim.
Saba’s terminal chirped, and he looked at it with pleasure. “Katria has someone. Coyo with experience in demolitions. He’ll need to know what we’re doing. Just his part, though. Inner circle, us.”
“Inner circle,” Naomi said. “Claire and I can meet with him.”
“Good,” Saba said as he trundled to the freezer door and pounded on it with a blanket-wrapped fist. Then he pointed to Bobbie and Amos. “You come with me. We’ll see Katria. Talk about how to hunt Marines.”
Something flickered over Bobbie’s face. Hardly even an expression, but Naomi saw it.
“You lead, we’ll follow,” Amos said, smiling his empty smile.
“Any thoughts on how to get me onto my ship?” Alex asked as the door opened.
“Several,” Saba said. “You should come with.” Then he shook his head. “Too many things. Not enough time.”
They stepped out into the suddenly burning air. Naomi hadn’t even noticed she was getting cold until suddenly she wasn’t anymore. Saba led them out to the kitchen, and then they slipped through the steam and into the civilian world two by two until she and Clarissa were all that remained.
They sat at the counter and watched people go by. The fish was unremarkable, but the curry and mushroom rice actually were good. Across the corridor, a monitor spooled out the newsfeed until it repeated. Clarissa ate, drank tea, talked about everything and nothing. Naomi almost didn’t notice the tremble in the other woman’s hand or the way her eyes jittered sometimes. If she thinks she can do it, she can do it, Naomi told herself.
The man arrived, sliding into the chair beside them. Dark, handsome eyes and a bright, excited smile with a crooked nose between them. “Namnae na Jordao,” he said. “Seen you both back at home, yeah?”
“I remember,” Clarissa said.
“Katria, she sent me,” he said, then leaned forward. “So what is it we’re going to do?”
Chapter Forty-One: Singh
He had trained on ships back home, as anyone at his rank would. He’d spent weeks sleeping in a tight cabin and eating elbow to elbow with his fellow officers, but at the end of training, he went home, back to Laconia and Natalia and the monster. The weekends after a training run had been some of the best he’d ever had, waking up late with Natalia beside him. Before the monster came, they’d had quarters with a bedroom on the third story and a folding wall that they could pull back to get fresh air and the view. He remembered lying in that bed, looking out over the city as twilight fell. Vast clouds turning gold and violet on the horizon, and the alien construction platforms glittering among the stars.
He’d laid his head against Natalia’s as-yet-unoccupied belly and thought about the ships being made up above the planet’s atmosphere. How one day, he might command one. It had seemed glorious at the time.
He’d known without checking the dates when his exile on Medina Station had lasted as long as a full training tour. Something in the back of his mind had been anticipating the end of low ceilings and false skies. Each day, he found himself growing more anxious, and it wasn’t only the threat from local terrorists or the mounting pressure he felt to reopen the traffic through the gates. It was his flesh itself, grown accustomed to these long isolations having an end, expecting relief and not getting it. Wanting his wife and his child and their sky, even as his conscious mind knew the first two would come much later, and the last … perhaps never.
It was possible that he would live his whole life and die as the governor of Medina Station and never see a real cloud again. He’d known that from the moment he’d met with the high consul, all those months ago. It hadn’t started chafing until just now.
The draft of his monthly report was open on his monitor, his personal journal inset in a smaller window. Everyone above him in the chain of command could see his journal if they chose to, but his report gave him the chance to summarize his experiences. To say what, from his perspective, was important. His fingers hovered over his keyboard, where they had been since the memory of Natalia and their old bedroom and the clouds had intruded on his thoughts. He wished he could pause longer.
Many of the locals persist in referring to the transfer of control in Sol system as a war. This kind of rhetoric has emboldened dissident factions on Medina Station. Given the escalating violence employed by the dissidents, I have elected to maintain the closed-gate policy until the arrival of the Typhoon. Ships coming in from colonial systems have too great a potential to smuggle in relief supplies and reinforcements for the recalcitrant elements here.