Hartford, Connecticut
Kuai didn't notice the ache in her elbows as she leaned her chin on her hands, watching the live news feed, the incredible gaping wound that used to be a city. It was still dark outside, but she couldn't sleep, and somehow the office seemed a more natural place to sit alone and watch the dark, unbelievable footage of the devastation only a few hundred miles west. Her mind couldn't encompass the enormity of it — satellite photos, footage of a splintering streak of green light shredding the sky, and the ground-level footage that made her think of Hiroshima, Kyoto, Mumbai, Dresden, the flooded and fallen remains of Houston.
Her eyes prickled with caffeine and sleeplessness. Toronto. Cleveland. Buffalo. Fires as far east as Albany and Ottawa.
Thirty million dead.
Thirty.
She tasted salt. Unbelieving, childlike, dry eyed, she realized she was sucking on the webbing between her forefinger and her thumb. She pulled her hand away from her mouth. The sun had not yet risen, but she heard someone unlocking the outside door. Sally?
Thirty million people. Dead.
She stood and went to her office door, poked her head around the glass partition. Sally had walked to her desk and flipped on a different news feed. She stood perfectly still, her puffy quilted coat still zipped, twisting a few strands of ashen hair between her fingers: same footage, another angle. Sally's other hand held her headset to her ear, and Kuai could tell from the look of concentration on her face and the slight movements of her lips that she was triaging overnight messages.
“Thirty million people,” Sally said a few minutes later, without looking at Kuai.
Kuai swallowed. “Cancel that extradition proceeding, I think.”
“Yeah.” Sally blinked, finally, and looked down at the lights on her interface.
“Sally, go home.”
“I can work.” She pressed thumb, then pinky, then the pad of her index finger to the interface, tilting the bridge of her hand with automatic efficiency. “By the way, a Col. Frederick Valens from the Canadian Army left a message with the service.”
Kuai brushed it aside. “Sally, get in touch with Hartford Hospital. With Yale New Haven and St. Francis and New Britain. Hell. Manchester Memorial. Rockville. Anything. We're putting together a disaster team.”
“Colonel Valens—”
“Can wait.”
“—says he wants to talk to you about Unitek. And — he says — the supposed criminal actions of one of its vice presidents.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Our friend Dr. Alberta Holmes. Valens is in Hartford. He wants to see you.”
Kuai drew a long, slow, luxurious breath. She closed her eyes and let it out again. “Call Colonel Valens,” she said softly, “and tell him that if he wants to talk to me, he can get his ass on a bus and ride north. I'll be one seat over.”
“He's a medical doctor, ma'am.”
Sally never called her ma'am. “He's what?”
“An M.D.”
“Then tell him to bring his goddamned little black bag. And call the governor back, Sally, and tell him he needs to activate the national guard, because we're likely to have riots and looters and God knows what. Oh, and get in touch with Hartford PD and see if they can release anybody to go north. What did I forget?”
Sally smiled and sat more upright, easing her shoulders. The line between her eyes smoothed to efficiency. “Coordinate with FEMA. Red Cross. Blood and medical supplies. Firefighters. Shit. We can't think of everything.”
“It's not our job to think of everything,” Kuai answered, and slung her overstuffed pocketbook over her lab coat. “It's just our job to do as much as we can. Can you take care of Moebius for me while I'm out of town?”
“Kuai,” Sally answered, her sinewy hands halting as they adjusted her ear clip and headset over her hair. She looked up, green eyes serious behind straight brown hair still damp from the shower. “He can come stay with me. In case things get bad.”
“Yeah,” Kuai answered, heading for the coat closet. “In case they get bad.”
Overnight
Friday 22 December, 2062
HMCSS Montreal
Earth orbit
When Richard finally told Patty it was all right to uncouple Master Warrant Officer Casey from the ship, the older pilot had collapsed; Mr. Castaign had finished the code he was working on while Casey huddled in an observation chair in the bridge corner, holding a steaming mug in her hands as if she was too tired to sip from it. He'd picked her up like an overgrown child to carry her to quarters, and Wainwright had touched his shoulder and whispered something low in his ear.
Wainwright turned around as she redogged the bridge hatch behind him; Patty knew she'd been caught looking and glanced down at her hands. “Pilot—” the captain said, and Patty looked back up, her lip caught in her teeth.
“Ma'am.”
“Can you fly this thing? I need somebody in that chair if the Chinese come back and—” she paused. “It's a lot to ask of you, but I hear you were the best of your class, and you're all I've got.”
Patty blinked.
I hear you were the best of your class.
“My family—” Patty said. “Papa Georges. Papa Fred. My parents.” My boyfriend. She didn't say that out loud. She knew what her mother would have said. It's a mercy he never knew what was happening.
A mercy. Is that what you call it, Mom?
“I know,” Wainwright answered, staring at her hands as they moved aimlessly over her console, the appearance of activity more vital than the reality. “My husband was on the ground. I — well. We have to be bulletproof, Cadet. You know why?”
“No.” Patty put her hand over her mouth when she tasted blood.
“Because we owe our families some kind of reckoning. And if we're scared, the crew will be scared. So you need to be able to be strong for them if you can't be strong for yourself.”
Unwittingly, Patty's hand brushed her breast pocket. Paper crinkled between layers of fabric. You have to be better. Stronger. Smarter.
It was different when Wainwright said it. More like when her Papa Fred told her she was smarter than anybody else than when her mother did. Because when Mom says it—said it—the subtext is, was “and you're still not good enough.”
“Casey,” Patty said.
Wainwright slowly shook her head. “Casey would. But she's done, Cadet. I'll kill her if I put her back right now. So what about you?”
Will it kill me, you mean? She laughed inside, and even let the laughter touch her lips. “Leah will be jealous I got to fly first,” she said. “Can you and Richard wire me in?”
Overnight
Friday 22 December, 2062
PPCASS Huang Di
Earth orbit
Min-xue floated undiscovered, and the Huang Di floated as well, immobilized by his will. Richard showed him the images, and Min-xue was glad he hadn't eaten; the column of flame made his stomach clench and roil. The fires surrounding what had been Lake Ontario seemed to gnaw at the darkened landscape, and as the terminator revealed devastated terrain, he wished he could call it back to cover the scene in forgiving darkness. He squirmed in his crash webbing, breathing shallowly, hidden by the very ship he held in stasis, and transmitted aerial images showed him buildings blasted from the foundations, trees laid side by side like wet hairs stroked smooth on an arm.