The leader of her first fire team had been Sergeant Huk. He’d been about half a head shorter than she was, with a terrier-thin face and a receding hairline. She’d never known anyone before or since who could command her loyalty or instill fear in her the way he had. When she’d been right out of boot and as green as they come, he’d turned her into an actual Marine. Before every mission briefing, he had found a way to acknowledge her. A nod, a touch on her shoulder or arm. Something that meant that no matter what was coming next, she wasn’t going into it alone. He never humiliated her by saying it aloud, and he never left it unsaid. After he retired, she’d found out he’d done the same for everyone.
Now, as her people returned to the ship, she did something similar. She stood in the airlock, seeing each of them as they boarded. Timon Coul, with his old OPA split-circle tattoo smudged by time until it was just a bluish blotch on the back of his hand. Liese Chou, with her pale-gray hair. Caspar Asoau, looking like a teenager surrounded by his grandparents. Denise Lu. Skaldi Austin-Bey. Ian Freeman. And almost last, Alex Kamal. Alex, her oldest friend, and the man she’d traveled with for what felt like half a dozen lifetimes now.
He looked weary, like she’d woken him from his sleep. Maybe she had. He wouldn’t have complained. He paused in front of her, and for a moment, it was like they were back on the Rocinante together. Like they were home. She touched his hand, and he nodded to her like he understood perfectly. Probably he did.
When the crew was all assembled in the galley, she pulled up her map of the system. It filled the wall. Someone in the back coughed, and she realized she’d been looking at it for several long seconds. And that she was enjoying herself.
“All right,” she said. “We have word from on high. New mission. High risk. High reward.” She shifted to an image of the Tempest. As strange as the Storm was in its particulars, its architecture was essentially the same design language that Martian ships had been for decades before the starving years. The Tempest was something else. Pale, asymmetrical, with protrusions and curves more like some monstrous vertebra. “We are going to kill that.”
She waited for a moment, half expecting mutiny on the spot. The Tempest had put its boot on Sol system’s neck without seeming to break a sweat. She could have said We’re all going to turn ourselves inside out and become seagulls and it might have seemed about as realistic. No one objected. Looking into their faces, she saw interest. Anticipation. She saw hope, and she knew she’d been right to want this.
“We have a small payload that will do the trick,” she said, nodding to Rini Glaudin at the back.
“Payload of what?” someone asked.
“The Magnetars run on antimatter,” Bobbie said. “The Tempest’s resupply was on that freighter we took.”
“Jesus,” Caspar said.
“Correct,” Bobbie replied. “But delivery will be difficult, and we’re only going to get one shot. In our last mission we found, along with this antimatter, replacement parts for a sensor array very similar to what the Storm’s using. I’ve been over the battle footage, and I know the story is that the Tempest shook off everything the Earth-Mars Coalition threw at her. But—”
She laid out the schematic. Overlapping fields sprang out from the Tempest like peacock feathers on display. The range of sensor arrays. She tapped one, and it dropped out.
“From the hits she took and from how she’s been flying since, I think this is the array they need a replacement for. And if the information we have is right, it means the Tempest has a blind spot. Here.”
She pulled the display out to showcase the thin cone of black where the enemy ship’s eyes couldn’t go.
“And if we’re right about their need for antimatter, they won’t be able to use the field projector. Which means they’ll be down to conventional weapons only.”
“Captain?” It was Caspar. Jillian scowled at the boy like she was ready to punch him, but Bobbie nodded him on. “I don’t see … I mean, even with just torpedoes and rail guns, and even if there is a data hole there—”
“They can still take us in a straight fight, and they’ll still see us coming,” Bobbie said. “So we let them see us. We get a Callistan shuttle. Private, small. Doesn’t even have an Epstein. And we put it out”—she switched back to the image of Jupiter and its moons. A single bright-blue dot appeared—“here. And on an orbital path that looks like we’re heading for Amalthea. A crew of two with a gas canister torpedo. Now those are slow, yes. But they also run cold. Basically no heat signature.”
“Bist bien,” Timon said. “Ran hundreds like, back on Ceres, sa sa?”
Jillian’s voice was harsh. “Could we not interrupt the captain?”
“The hard part will be putting the Tempest into a flight pattern like … this.”
A red arc appeared going from Ganymede. A line marked the time at each point. She zoomed in to show how the little blue shuttle fell into the blind spot, and the long seconds it would stay there.
“This is the window,” Bobbie said. “It doesn’t look like a trap, because we aren’t trying to hide. We get there first, and we’re just part of the traffic. So all we need is a lure. Something so critical that the Tempest will follow it where we want it to go. That will be the Storm.”
She let it sink in. It was like she could see the implications settling in each face looking toward her. It was a sucker punch. One shot, and if it failed each and every one of them would be dead. The underground would lose its only warship with Laconian tech.
“I’ll captain the shuttle with Rini as tech specialist. Jillian will be in command of the Storm.” That made her second sit up a little straighter. Her jaw was firm. She looked like a hunting dog that had caught a scent. “The Storm’s mission is to hold the Tempest to this course so that the shuttle stays in the enemy’s blind spot.”
Alex, sitting to the side, leaned forward. His hands were on his knees, and his eyes were cast down toward the deck. She didn’t know what he was thinking.
“If anyone doesn’t want to do this,” Bobbie said, “I’m not going to force you. We have four days before the shuttle is ready and the orbits are where I want them. I will be accepting resignations until that time. No sugarcoating. This is the most dangerous thing we’ll have ever done. Even if we win, we may sustain losses. Potentially heavy losses. But each and every one of you has my word that if I thought this was hopeless, we wouldn’t be doing it.
“I have sent detailed briefs to your team leaders. Look them over. If you have questions, for fuck’s sake ask them. We’re not going to screw this up because someone turned left instead of right. Understood?”
There was a ragged muttering of assent.
“I said, Am I understood!”
The reply was more like a cheer now. It filled the space. There was power in it.
“Outstanding. You have your orders. Dismissed.”
Jillian was out of her seat in a moment, herding the crew like they were sheep. Nipping at them. It was something she’d have to get over before she had a command of her own. Bobbie let it play out, though. There was an energy in the ship that needed to work itself through. She felt it too.