“You do,” Saba said to him, “and yours is next, and I’m doing the cutting. Mushroom food, you. Every Laconian throat you cut is ten of ours you’re bleeding out. We stay angry, but we stay smart, sabe? Stay with your missions, stay with your plans.”
A ripple of grudging assent moved through the room. People started getting up to leave. The mutters of conversation had an edge to them, but Holden didn’t hear anyone actively planning a murder, so he’d call it a win.
Holden caught Bobbie’s eye and then stood up to grab Saba’s arm before he could leave. “Let’s talk.”
Fifteen minutes later Saba, Bobbie, and Naomi were sipping tea out of waxy cups in the Diner. Holden tried casually leaning against the wall for a minute, then gave up and paced around the room to give his restless energy someplace to go.
“The problem we’ve got right now is we’re all rats in a cage,” he said. “And we’re spending a lot of time and energy figuring out how big the cage is and where the doors are and how we might open one. But we haven’t got a single clue what we’d do if we actually got out.”
“We don’t start with just getting out?” Naomi asked.
“There was a time when I’d have said that was enough,” Holden agreed. “But that was when I was still thinking of this as a war. When escaping to join up with our side of the fight might matter.”
“This isn’t a war now,” Bobbie said, her voice low and dangerous.
“No?” Saba asked.
“No,” Holden said. “The war’s over. Sol might not know it yet, and a lot of people will die so that they can feel like they gave it a shot, but it’s over.”
“So what, then,” Saba asked. “Good Laconians, us?”
“No,” Holden replied. “At least not yet. But it does change the nature of what we’re doing here. We’re not looking to get the Roci free and join the fight. This is a jailbreak.”
Naomi made a clicking noise with her tongue, her eyes distant, then said, “All the same problems. The Marines, the Laconian destroyer, Medina’s scopes. But you’re saying if we can solve those, we just get as many people and ships free as we can and make a run for it. Scatter.”
Saba nodded one fist, then gave her the two-fingered OPA salute. Holden felt a little twinge of unease about that, but this wasn’t the time to talk it through.
“It gives us a goal,” Holden said. “Maybe we can keep everyone pulling the same direction if they understand what the end game is.”
Saba tilted his head. There was no surprise in his expression. He’d been thinking along the same lines, so maybe he’d come to the same conclusions. “The decryption safe room.”
“I don’t like losing it,” Holden said, looking more at Bobbie now than Saba. “We’re still getting in a lot of data from the sniffer, and I know once we move forward with the plan, we lose that. We won’t get it back. But until we can decrypt what we do have, we can’t use it. And the Typhoon? It’s due in thirty-three days.”
“Thirty-two,” Naomi said.
“I don’t want to die with one still in the chamber,” Bobbie said. “I’m good with the timing.”
“Bien,” Saba said. “I’m in.”
“Great,” Holden replied. “Get word to every cell leader and ship captain you trust. We need to have everyone ready when the time comes.”
“This is gonna be some strange bedfellows,” Saba said as he left.
“Find some lunch?” Holden said to Naomi.
“Give me half an hour,” she replied. “I want to get a computer crunching the tactical data that video gave us. But after that, meet out front?”
“OK,” Holden said, wondering how to waste half an hour in the cramped space of their little hideout.
“Hey, Holden,” Bobbie said as Naomi left the room. “Can I hang on to you for a second?”
Holden shrugged and sat on a crate. Bobbie sat flexing her hands and staring at the floor so long that Holden started to wonder if he’d misheard her. He braced himself. He didn’t know where this conversation was going to go, but he had a suspicion it was about her and him and the captaincy of the Rocinante, and he didn’t know what to say about any of that. So it came as kind of a relief that he was wrong.
“Amos is going to be a problem,” she finally said. “I had the Voltaire people talked off the ledge when he started that fight. He wanted to crack some heads, and he made it happen. That’s fine for shore leave when he wants to blow off some steam, but it won’t fly when we’re under the radar like this.”
“Huh. Okay. I’d wondered about that.”
“It’s a problem I don’t know how to fix,” Bobbie said.
“Me neither,” Holden said. “But give it a couple days.”
“Not sure we have them,” Bobbie said.
“Why not?”
Bobbie pointed behind her back, meaning not what was physically behind her but backward in time. “You just gave us all a goal,” she said. “Something to bring us all together.”
“I did,” Holden said. “And I’m thinking from the way you’re looking at me right now that there’s some aspect of that I’ve maybe overlooked?”
“Some of us are Katria Mendez and her mad bombers.”
Holden felt a coolness down his spine. “Yeah. That could be interesting,” he said.
“Right?”
He found Amos in a narrow side hall, a welding torch in his hand. The big man’s arms showed little pocks of red where sparks had landed, but Amos hadn’t done so much as find a long-sleeved work shirt.
“Hey,” Holden said. “How’s it going?”
“Doing all right,” Amos said, gesturing at the conduits that textured the wall. “Saba’s folks said we should reroute the power. Makes it a little harder for the cops to track down where they’re losing it from if it keeps moving.”
“Yeah?”
“Decent plan in theory,” Amos said. “In practice, kind of an ass-pain, but whatever.”
“I can see that,” Holden said, then paused.
The truth was, in spite of decades flying the same ship, Holden still had very little idea what made Amos tick. He liked food, booze, meaningless sex, jokes. He seemed to like palling around with Alex, but when their pilot had decided to try being married again, Bobbie had been his best man. Amos treated every word out of Naomi’s mouth as if it were gospel, but the truth was all of them did these days.
Amos found the conduit he was looking for, lit up the torch, and opened a six-centimeter length of it, exposing the plastic-sheathed wire inside it without so much as melting the insulation. It was a good trick. Amos killed the torch.
“So,” Holden said again. “How’s it going?”
Amos paused. Turned to look at Holden.
“Ah,” the big mechanic said. “Sorry there, Cap. Were we having a conversation and I didn’t notice?”
“Kind of, yes,” Holden said.
“Babs ratted me out.” Amos’ voice was as calm as the surface of still water. Holden was pretty certain something big was swimming underneath it.
“Look,” he said, “we didn’t get where we are by me prying into things you didn’t want pried into. I don’t want to change that now. But yes, Bobbie’s worried about you. I am too. We’re going into some pretty dangerous times here, and if there’s anything that you need to get off your chest, now is a better time than later.”
Amos shrugged. “Nah, I get it. I got a little happy when we went on that last run. Opened up sooner than Babs would have liked. I’ll rein in some if it makes her feel better.”
“I don’t want to make an issue of it,” Holden said.
“It ain’t an issue, then,” Amos said, turning back to the conduit. He took a thick pair of pliers from his pocket, clamped them over the power cable, and started wrestling it out like he was getting crab meat out of a shell. It looked really dangerous. “I’ll play nice. Cross my heart.”
“Okay, then,” Holden said. “Great. Glad we had this talk.”
“Anytime,” Amos said.
Holden hesitated, turned, and walked away. Bobbie was right. He didn’t know what was going on in Amos’ mind, but something definitely was. He was hard-pressed to think what the good version of that looked like. And if Amos was finally coming off the rails, he had no idea what would cause it or how to fix it.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Bobbie
The representatives from the Voltaire Collective entered the meeting space like they were anticipating an attack. She would have felt the same if the positions were reversed. Three in the front with unencumbered hands, three in the back looking around like tourists coming to a casino for the first time in case something interesting or threatening would come from behind, and in the center, Katria Mendez. Her face was the expressionless calm of a player at a poker table. The kind that always left with more chips than she came with. Just seeing her made Bobbie’s cheek throb a little. Psychosomatic pain, but pain all the same. She registered the sensation but didn’t let it bother her.