It didn’t come from underground sources. Bobbie hadn’t sent a report, or if she had, the bottle had been lost in transit or slowed to the point that the civilian news outpaced it. The first Naomi heard of it was on Laconian state feeds run by the governor. The tone of the report was outraged and meant to inspire fear. Terrorists had murdered a Laconian diplomat and stolen military technology which they’d then used to slaughter the protector of Sol system. The danger of chaos and riot in Sol system were, to listen to the feed, apocalyptic. Laconian forces were gearing up to protect innocent civilians from the waves of reprisals and violence that were sure to follow.
Probably it had sounded persuasive to Laconian ears. The bone-deep assumption that all things Laconian were good and all opposition evil made for a hell of a blind spot when it came to writing propaganda. For Naomi and Chava it was the resolution of an uncertainty they’d been carrying. They knew now how Bobbie’s plan had worked out. For all the others in between—the normal citizens of Auberon—the message was that the unstoppable Laconian machine could, in fact, be stopped. Had been stopped. The certainty that had come with imperial rule had a crack in it wide enough to drive a ship through. And like all good news, it brought a list of new problems with it. Good problems, the problems Bobbie and Naomi had been hoping for, but problems all the same.
“Five years of shipping records deleted,” Chava said. “Wiped out.”
“And it wasn’t us?”
“It wasn’t anyone I’m aware of,” she said, pouring out a cup of coffee. “You know the network better than I do, but …”
“It just means that they’ll load it from backups,” Naomi said, taking the cup. She’d gotten used to Chava’s French press coffee. It was strong and bitter and occasionally carried a bit of the coffee grounds in it. She found she was starting to prefer it to the normal ship-dispensed kind. “So it sounds like someone managed to get access to the backup. Put in whatever they want history to have been, and now it’s the official record.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Might be one of our cells acting independently. Or civilians taking initiative. Or criminals. Hell, it could be Laconians using the opportunity to hide something they did and blame it on us. No matter who it is, though, they weren’t confident enough to risk it before, and now they are. And what’s happening here? Some variety of it is going on everyplace else too.”
Decentralized authority was what Belters had done since the start, generations ago, when the power to communicate orders outdistanced the power to enforce them. Old Rokku, back in her radical days, had talked about the inners being like a sword that hit in one place hard enough to destroy. The Belt was like water, able to push in from all places at once. The death of the Tempest hadn’t actually changed anything for the systems outside of Sol. It wasn’t like Duarte had been willing to send his planet-killer warship to follow up on suspicious data loss. What had changed was the confidence people had in the system, and that uncertainty created new holes, cracks, and opportunities.
Laconia was powerful because it had a single vision, and one brilliant mind behind it all. The underground, like the OPA before it, probably had as many visions as there were people in it, and even as the titular leader, Naomi’s was only one of many voices. Duarte’s machine was limited. With enough going on at any given time, his attention could be flooded. That was his weakness and their power.
“New contacts are coming in too,” Naomi said. “I’ve had reports on almost a dozen since the first report came in.”
“That’s a good sign. People feel the tide turning.”
“Some of them do,” Naomi agreed. “And some of them have other agendas. I’ve spent months figuring out how to get our people hired on by their managers. They’re capable of doing the same thing to us.”
“I’ll be careful,” Chava said. “Background checks, surveillance on new recruits, test assignments. The whole show. I won’t let anybody sneak in the aft airlock.”
“You will, though,” Naomi said. “Test the people you trust too. Make it random. And make it so that someone can keep eyes on you. It’s like checking the seals on your suit. Everyone checking everyone should just be normal. And be ready for the crackdown. Because it’s coming.”
Chava sipped her own coffee and nodded. “I wish you were staying. I mean, it will be nice to be able to invite my friends over to my place again, but … I’ve enjoyed having you here.”
“Even though it risked getting you killed?”
Chava was one of those people who could frown with just her forehead. “Maybe because of that. I think I’m too much of an adrenaline junkie to survive as a ship rental manager. If it wasn’t this, I’d be slingshotting on my vacations.”
Naomi finished her coffee, put down the white porcelain cup for the last time, and hugged Chava goodbye. Naomi’s belongings were in a tight-wrapped bag by the door. They fit easily under her arm. She looked around Chava’s rooms one last time. The kitchen, the common area, the passage to the bedroom that had been hers for really not so long a time. Still, long enough for everything to change at least twice.
The knot she felt in her chest wasn’t sorrow at leaving here. She liked Chava, and it was a pleasant space to be in, but it wasn’t home. What she missed was the idea of a home of her own. People she knew for more than a few weeks at a time. It was worse, because she’d had a place once. And a family with it. She would never stop missing that.
The transport tubes on Auberon’s lunar base ran cars every seven minutes, and the signs and directions were clear and well designed. It wasn’t hard getting from Chava’s place to the docks, or from the docks to the skiff taken out in a false name tied to an imaginary corporation and insured with a policy that would never be used.
Auberon was a target, and not only because it was a successful colony. Any Laconian traffic analysis of the bottles the underground used was going to show high throughput on the Auberon gate. With the Tempest dead, there would be a response, and neither she nor Chava nor any of her other high-level contacts doubted that part of that response would come to Auberon. And the best way to survive an asteroid strike was not to be on the planet.
While she waited for the traffic control queue to reach her, she opened a window and called up the visual telescopy on the planet below her. Another blue marble in the void. The wide whirl of a hurricane covered part of an ocean she’d never see. The scattering of continents across the visible hemisphere below her was like dice thrown in a backroom craps game. A vast, beautiful sphere with so few people on it. Cities with universities full of students who’d never known a different sky. She doubted she’d ever see it again, and so she watched and told herself to remember. There were so many last times that passed unrecognized. Knowing in the moment what was ending and wouldn’t come again was precious.
The connection to traffic control went live. “Skiff eighteen forty-two, your transit to Bara Gaon is approved. You are clear to exit.”
“Acknowledged, Control. Releasing the clamps now.”
The little ship, light as an empty food can, shuddered when the docking clamps let go, and Naomi opened the throttle on the drive. The image of Auberon grew a little smaller, and a little smaller, and a little smaller until she closed it down. The moment was over.
The skiff was a tiny little thing, too small and undistinguished for a name. A transponder code, a number, and a perfunctory paper trail. It was as cramped as a racing ship, but without the maneuverability or high-end crash couch. It was intended for in-system trips, usually between planets in similar orbits. Taking it into the depths of the system, through the ring, and then back down some stellar gravity well meant traveling well outside its intended use. Naomi didn’t find it intimidating. She’d gone much farther in much worse in her life. After a few days’ hard burn, she went on the float.