“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Had word from one of ours in system logistics. Laconia’s slated this section for survey. If they’re going to find our holes here, best we not be in them.”
“Well. We knew it would come.”
He pressed a hand terminal into her palm. “This is yours. Cooked profile. Got one for alles la along with. Rooms, jobs. Don’t scratch the chrome, it’ll come off, but it’s what I could do fast.”
“Thank you,” Bobbie said as he passed one to her.
“Messages too. Just text. And just to me. Your circle is your circle.”
Naomi nodded. It felt like being young again, in all the worst ways. Amos, Alex, and Clarissa were already moving toward the common corridor, Bobbie trotting to catch up to them. Naomi put her hand on Saba’s arm. “The false identities don’t have to hold up long. We’re close to doing this. No despair.”
Saba’s eyes softened. “My lady wife is back in Sol leading the fight against these bastards. And I will move worlds to wake up beside her again. Just once more.”
Naomi thought of Jim, and the ache of fear in her stomach. Saba touched her shoulder, and pushed her gently away toward her friends. Her crew. Her family, less one.
The inner layer of Medina’s drum could have been any of the old spin stations. Wider, common corridors with room for carts and foot traffic both, ramps that led up toward the soil and false sun of the inner face or down toward the vacuum beneath her feet. She hadn’t stepped outside Saba’s hidden dens since they’d lost Jim. Now, walking with the normal inhabitants of Medina, trying to fit in with the midshift patterns, she kept noticing how open everything felt. In another context, it might have been a relief. Now it left her feeling exposed as a mouse in cat territory.
She plucked up the terminal that Saba had given her, trying to look bored as she checked who she was, where she lived, all the answers she’d need to give the Laconians if she was stopped. She’d seen plenty of faked identities before, and this one was decent. The real question was how deeply Saba’s moles had been able to get into the Laconian datasets. With the link between Medina and the Storm severed, they’d be working from local copies. Corruptible ones. Odd to think that without Jim’s sacrifice, the underground might have ended right then. Her gratitude was complicated by anger.
Wide screens showed the station newsfeed. Laconian propaganda, but maybe true, some of it. They were playing images of Sol system and the war there. She didn’t watch that, but when it shifted, she paused. A young woman with olive skin and a wide jaw in Laconian blues. The text below her said, ADMIRAL JAE-EUN SONG OF THE EYE OF THE TYPHOON. And on the other side of the screen, a young man. Santiago Singh, governor of Medina.
“What are your hopes for your arrival at Medina Station?” he asked, the subtitles in Spanish, Chinese, and—unnervingly—Belter Creole.
The woman nodded seriously, and answered. “The important thing is that we ensure the safety of the people on the station. High Consul Duarte has made it very, very clear that—”
Naomi didn’t realize she’d stopped until Amos prodded her.
“Should probably keep moving, boss. Less attention.”
“Yes,” Naomi said.
“It’s editing,” Clarissa said. “They do it all the time. That’s not what the light delay really is. There’s still time.”
Naomi nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
Her name, according to Saba’s faked ID, was Ami Henders, and her address was listed as refugee housing on level four. She was supposed to be the pilot of the Blue Genius, a water hauler presently burning somewhere on the far side of the Athens gate without her. She wondered whether Saba had been able to scrub Naomi Nagata from the station records. He wouldn’t have been able to get her out of decades of newsfeed footage, standing behind Jim and wishing the cameras were elsewhere.
She was walking on the surface of a soap bubble and hoping it wouldn’t pop.
The refugee quarters, when they reached them, were a little better than living in the underground had been. A little suite of five rooms with a narrow common hall and a shared head at the end. She could have touched one wall with her elbow and the other with her shoulder. It was tighter than their quarters on the Roci, but with doors, so they could sleep without breathing each other’s dreams. A little monitor in the wall was set to the official newsfeed, but the captain of the Typhoon was gone, replaced by a sober-faced man in a security uniform.
“The base was exactly what we thought we would find. These rat holes are what allowed the terrorists to function and plan in secret. Without them, they’ll be forced out into the light. That’s where they can be stopped.
“We don’t know how many people were using the secret base, but we’ve cordoned it off and we’re making a full investigation. We feel certain that the threat to the station is reduced, but we can’t be complacent. These people are willing to risk the integrity of the environment for their ideological purity. Risk the lives of the whole station. It’s important that we isolate and disarm these terrorists before another attack like the one on the oxygen tank.
“With that in mind, the governor has authorized a limited amnesty for anyone who—”
Clarissa turned the monitor off with her thumb. She met Naomi’s eyes, and the determination and exhaustion in them was clearer than words could have been. Let it go. We have work to do.
Alex cleared his throat. “Well, since there’s no galley anymore, I guess I’ll head down the hallway and see if I can’t find a coffee shop or something. Anybody else need breakfast?”
There would be guards. There would be drones. There would be the risk that trying to pay for something would collapse Alex’s false identity or flag his real one. She wanted to grab him and lock him in his room. She wanted to make sure no one left the uncertain safety of their cabin.
“Tea,” she said. “Maybe some protein cakes.”
“All right,” Alex said. “I’ll be back.” The way he said it made it a promise. As if he could keep it.
“I’m gonna …” Amos said, gesturing to Clarissa.
Naomi nodded. “I’ll get some work done.”
“That leaves me for watch,” Bobbie said with a lopsided smile. “Not much of a plan, but it isn’t nothing.”
“I’ll get you a plan,” Naomi said.
Sitting alone on her new, thin bunk, she built a list on Saba’s terminal. If she thought too much about the dangers, the time pressure, she knew the dark thoughts would start coming. There wasn’t time for that. If she could focus, though, problem-solve, she’d be okay. She’d known herself long enough to learn that. The care and feeding of a well-used mind.
The final goal was to get out of the slow zone and find someplace safe to hide and regroup. So the last step was at the top of the list:
REGROUP
She didn’t have the details of what that would look like. Probably keep her head down and see what happened. Wait for the enemy to stumble or new allies to appear. The old, old strategies. But whatever shape it took, that was the final goal. In order for that to happen, they would have to manage some other things …
REACH SAFETY
Before that …
IDENTIFY SAFETY
After all, they’d need to know where they were fleeing to before they fled. It had to be someplace that they could land the Roci. Someplace that wasn’t likely to fall in line with Duarte and turn them in. So none of Fisk’s association worlds, and not Sol either. That was tricky, but she felt the beginnings of some ideas for it. So all right. But there was more than one dependency for that, so she split the column and added the other track.
BLIND MEDINA AND GATHERING STORM
If the Laconians knew where they’d gone, they wouldn’t stay hidden long. So that would be important. And it would be the last thing they did before they left, so the enemy wouldn’t have time to fix whatever they chose to break. She’d have to have everyone ready to go before the sensor arrays went down, so …
GATHER EVACUATION GROUPS
And in order to do that, they’d have to get the word to everyone in Saba’s networks. All the underground. All of them. And there it was. The sorrow and the fear. And the tightness at the back of her throat. It was all right. She just had to put it on her list. It was just part of the plan.
SAVE JIM