Saba sent a message an hour before “Ami Henders” was supposed to get off her shift. Bobbie got the same message, though none of the others did. It was a restaurant just one level under the drum’s inner surface and a route to reach it that would, if everything went well, avoid any checkpoints. Naomi washed her face in the little sink no wider than her two palms together and tugged her hair into something like order. When she got home to the Roci, she was going to spend a day in the showers. A whole damned day.
Alex and Clarissa were waiting for her in the public hall. Bobbie and Amos were a few meters down, pretending to talk, but actually keeping watch. They were both bruised, and there was a cut over Amos’ eye. They looked like they’d been caught in the explosion, which was technically true, but the tension that had been showing in the way Amos held his gut and shoulders was gone.
No, not gone. But lessened. That was good.
“We ready to paint the town red?” Clarissa asked, taking Naomi’s arm. It had the form of a playful gesture, but the need for support was there too.
“I hope this place serves margaritas,” Alex said. “It’s been a long time since I had a good margarita.”
“Trust me when I say you’ve never had a good margarita, Martian,” Amos replied. “Still some things only Earth does well.”
Bobbie caught Naomi’s eye, gave a little nod, and started off along the route. Amos walked at her side, his steps rolling a little in the fractional gravity, like something hurt with each step. Naomi gave them a few seconds, and then started after them. There was a story behind those bruises, and she had the impression she’d never know what it was.
James Holden had shipped with five others on his crew, but they weren’t five. They were a couple up ahead, and a different group of three behind. As ways to avoid pattern recognition, it was thin. But it was something.
The restaurant was a wide, white ceramic bar open to the corridor. Billows of steam came from the back, rich with the smells of fish and curry. The design didn’t fit into the aesthetic of the original ship. This space was a modification, the Nauvoo, which became the Behemoth, which became Medina Station in the process of learning what it was and would be. Looked at that way, Naomi liked the restaurant, even if it was a little ugly.
The man behind the counter nodded, greeted them all in a dialect Naomi didn’t recognize, and waved them back into the steam. The kitchen was small, with two women—one very old, the other hardly more than a girl—who looked at them curiously as they passed through.
The old man opened a thick metal door and nodded, smiling, at the walk-in freezer beyond it. Saba was already there, a blanket over his shoulders and a thin, black cigarette in his mouth. His cheeks were ruddy with the cold. The old man closed the door behind them, and a golden emergency light came on, throwing shadows across them from crates of vat-raised fish. Amos’ gaze cut over to Clarissa, but if anything she seemed to be enjoying the cold.
“Not perfect,” Saba said, “but hard for them to hear us.”
“You think they’re listening?”
“No,” Saba said. “But here, seems less likely I’m wrong. Perdón for the fast change. I didn’t have much warning.”
“Shikata ga nai,” Naomi said, and Saba nodded ruefully.
“We have a plan,” Bobbie said. “Well, Naomi does.”
“The outline of one anyway,” Naomi said. “I don’t love it, because a lot of things have to happen in a very small time frame. But the Typhoon arrives in less than a week, and slowing that down isn’t something I can do.”
“I have people,” Saba said. “You tell me, I’ll tell who needs telling.”
“There’s just a lot of moving parts,” Naomi said. “Lots of ways for things to break down.”
“Tell me a story,” Saba said through a cloud of smoke and visible breath.
Naomi did. She went through step by step, detail by detail. As she talked, the whole operation solidified in her mind, letting her speak with a clarity and authority she only halfway felt. It was a terrible plan, open to a thousand different failures, and some of them wouldn’t be things they could recover from. If the assault team couldn’t get onto the Storm. If the kill code was changed or unhackable. If the Laconian repair crews could get the sensors fixed more quickly than she expected.
But with every word she spoke, with every detail she provided, she felt the Typhoon looming behind her. Coming close. Ending any chance they had.
“Gonya need two bombs,” Saba said, pulling up his hand terminal. The one that didn’t connect to the station’s legitimate network. He talked as he composed a message. “One for sensors, one for the jail. Katria’s good for one. Have to see who she likes for two. Which one matters more?”
They both matter, Naomi said at the same moment Clarissa said, The jail.
“I worked on this station, back in the day,” Clarissa said. “Get me access to the secondary power junction that feeds them and a way to reset the primary. I can keep the sensors down.”
“Claire,” Bobbie said, concern in her voice.
“I’m good for it,” Clarissa said. “It will work.”
And then that was decided. Saba was already putting a message into his hand terminal.
“Bist bien alles,” he said.
“Amos and I are dealing with the Storm,” Bobbie said. “You give us a team, but we’re point or no deal.”
“Deal,” Saba said. “I’ll put me and mine on the Malaclypse as soon as the signal goes. If the muscle here has trouble, at least there can be two against the one. Plan B, sa sa?”
Alex raised his hand. “No one’s flying the Roci on this but me. We all knew that, right?”
“I’ll take the jail,” Naomi said. I’ll get Jim.
Saba’s terminal chirped, and he looked at it with pleasure. “Katria has someone. Coyo with experience in demolitions. He’ll need to know what we’re doing. Just his part, though. Inner circle, us.”
“Inner circle,” Naomi said. “Claire and I can meet with him.”
“Good,” Saba said as he trundled to the freezer door and pounded on it with a blanket-wrapped fist. Then he pointed to Bobbie and Amos. “You come with me. We’ll see Katria. Talk about how to hunt Marines.”
Something flickered over Bobbie’s face. Hardly even an expression, but Naomi saw it.
“You lead, we’ll follow,” Amos said, smiling his empty smile.
“Any thoughts on how to get me onto my ship?” Alex asked as the door opened.
“Several,” Saba said. “You should come with.” Then he shook his head. “Too many things. Not enough time.”
They stepped out into the suddenly burning air. Naomi hadn’t even noticed she was getting cold until suddenly she wasn’t anymore. Saba led them out to the kitchen, and then they slipped through the steam and into the civilian world two by two until she and Clarissa were all that remained.
They sat at the counter and watched people go by. The fish was unremarkable, but the curry and mushroom rice actually were good. Across the corridor, a monitor spooled out the newsfeed until it repeated. Clarissa ate, drank tea, talked about everything and nothing. Naomi almost didn’t notice the tremble in the other woman’s hand or the way her eyes jittered sometimes. If she thinks she can do it, she can do it, Naomi told herself.
The man arrived, sliding into the chair beside them. Dark, handsome eyes and a bright, excited smile with a crooked nose between them. “Namnae na Jordao,” he said. “Seen you both back at home, yeah?”
“I remember,” Clarissa said.
“Katria, she sent me,” he said, then leaned forward. “So what is it we’re going to do?”
Chapter Forty-One: Singh
He had trained on ships back home, as anyone at his rank would. He’d spent weeks sleeping in a tight cabin and eating elbow to elbow with his fellow officers, but at the end of training, he went home, back to Laconia and Natalia and the monster. The weekends after a training run had been some of the best he’d ever had, waking up late with Natalia beside him. Before the monster came, they’d had quarters with a bedroom on the third story and a folding wall that they could pull back to get fresh air and the view. He remembered lying in that bed, looking out over the city as twilight fell. Vast clouds turning gold and violet on the horizon, and the alien construction platforms glittering among the stars.
He’d laid his head against Natalia’s as-yet-unoccupied belly and thought about the ships being made up above the planet’s atmosphere. How one day, he might command one. It had seemed glorious at the time.
He’d known without checking the dates when his exile on Medina Station had lasted as long as a full training tour. Something in the back of his mind had been anticipating the end of low ceilings and false skies. Each day, he found himself growing more anxious, and it wasn’t only the threat from local terrorists or the mounting pressure he felt to reopen the traffic through the gates. It was his flesh itself, grown accustomed to these long isolations having an end, expecting relief and not getting it. Wanting his wife and his child and their sky, even as his conscious mind knew the first two would come much later, and the last … perhaps never.