“The important thing is that we get good data. One person. Lots of people. All the same. But bad experimental design? That’s what sin really is,” Cortázar slurred. “That’s not me either. Nature eats babies all the time.”
Holden shifted, looking directly up into the surveillance camera as if he knew exactly where the hidden lens was. As if he knew she would be watching. You should keep an eye on me. Teresa felt a crawling sensation coming up her neck and the feeling, even after he looked away, that he saw her as clearly as she saw him.
She shut down the feed, closed the logs, and went back to bed, but she still didn’t sleep.
Chapter Fifteen: Naomi
Getting what you want fucks you up. Naomi pushed the thought aside as she had a dozen times before.
The first part of breaking down her shelter was the easiest. She’d spent years on the float, sometimes running cargo herself, sometimes fighting smugglers for the OPA and the Transport Union. She knew all the tricks. Disassembling her crash couch and system into parts was the work of two hours. Everything she had was modular. Easy to take apart, easy to put into rotation as spare. Everything she’d had could dissolve back into the larger ship and not appear as anything more than a handful of off-by-one inventory miscounts.
The empty container was a little harder, but only a little. According to the manifest, her container was supposed to be filled with the same payload of Earth-farmed bacteria and microbes and starter soil as seventy other containers in the ship. Shifting the contents of just a dozen or so to a slightly less dense configuration left plenty of overage to fill the space that had been hers. By the time the supplies reached their destination, she’d be elsewhere. And even if Laconia backtracked the discrepancies, there wouldn’t be much to suggest anything more than run-of-the-mill theft.
The real problem was time. Well, the first real problem.
The Laconian ship was already on a braking burn. Eighteen hours to rendezvous didn’t leave her much time for everything she had to do. Emma was a help. The woman had more years working transport than Naomi did, and she could drive a loading mech like it was part of her body. Even so, they were cutting it close. And every hour of the mechs hissing and clacking, the smell of industrial lubricant, and the bone-deep ache of effort was another chance for the regular crew to notice that something strange was happening. Toward the end, Naomi sent Emma away to see whether there was any information about the larger picture. If other ships were being stopped. If this was a coincidence, or if the destroyer knew that Naomi was there.
Until she knew, she had to assume there was hope. Another motto for her life these days.
Naomi moved the last pallets into the steel and ceramic that had been her home for months, closed the doors, sealed them, and slapped a customs inspection sticker over the seam. She still had to stow the loader mech and replace the stickers on all the containers she’d cracked, but that wouldn’t take more than another few minutes. She had almost half a shift before the inspection. A little over four hours to reinvent herself and blend in with the ship’s crew. That was the second real problem . . .
Getting what you want fucks you up.
They’d been in a bar on Pallas-Tycho not long after the two stations had become a single object. Clarissa had been in relatively good health then. Strong enough she could go drinking, anyway. Naomi didn’t remember which bar they’d been in, except that it had gravity, so it had to have been in Tycho’s old habitation ring. She did remember that Jim had been there. They’d been talking about how to address Alex’s upcoming change in marital status. Whether he’d be bringing his new wife on the ship or taking a leave of absence to be with her or what. Every option had advantages, every one had drawbacks. Looking back, Naomi thought that on some level all of them knew that the relationship was doomed. Clarissa had leaned back in her chair, a glass of whiskey in her hand. Her voice was thoughtful. “Getting what you want fucks you up,” she’d said.
“When I was in jail, there was nothing I wanted more than to be anywhere else. Then I got out.”
“Into an apocalyptic hellscape,” Naomi said.
“But even after that. When we got up to Luna and when we got on the Roci. It was hard. I knew what I was when I was in prison. It took me years to figure out who I was outside.”
“We’re talking about marriage, aren’t we?”
“Getting what you want fucks you up,” Clarissa had said.
Naomi put her hand on the transport container. She’d put herself in prison in order to be safe, and her safety had turned her captive. All she wanted was to wake up next to Jim again. To have something like a pleasant, day-to-day life with him. And now that she couldn’t have it, all she wanted was her hermitage back.
Her hand terminal chimed. There was only one person it could be.
“Where do we stand?” she asked.
“I’ve got a plan,” Emma said. “Meet me in med bay three.”
“I don’t know where that is. Does the ship have a directory function? Because I don’t really think asking for directions is our best plan.”
“Shit. All right. Wait there. I’ll be down in ten. I can take you there.”
“Copy that,” Naomi said, and dropped the connection. It gave her time to reseal the containers.
Emma, on the float beside her, held the hypodermic needle between her finger and thumb like she was playing darts. Her technique aside, though, the plan was about as solid as Naomi could hope for at short notice. She stretched her chin up and Emma stabbed again, a quick pinch at her jawline at the right to match her already-swelling left.
“How’s that feel?” Emma asked.
“Itches,” Naomi said.
“Still up for the eyes?”
“Yeah.”
Inserting her into the ship’s roster wasn’t possible. Even if they could backdate all the paperwork to the Bhikaji Cama’s last port, Emma didn’t have the authorizations she’d need. And messing with the system immediately before an inspection was an invitation to disaster. Fail to shut down one logging system, and the last-minute change was a flashing pointer to whatever you most wanted hidden. So making Naomi into a regular crewman wasn’t possible, but making her not immediately match the biometrics for Naomi Nagata was in reach. All it took was a few well-placed needle sticks and some fluid that caused mild swelling. The only trick was changing the shape of her face in ways that made her look like someone else and not just herself, only puffy.
The med bay was old, but well put together. Nothing had the shine of the new. Everything was worn. But it was only worn, not neglected. Naomi had been around long enough to know the difference. She considered her new face in the hand terminal’s camera. Emma’s first move had been to shave her hair into an unflattering topiary that made her forehead seem wider and her eyes closer together. The swelling in her brow and jaw had thickened her features already. The system’s match to her normal appearance was only 80 percent. Enough that even if they identified her, it could be written off as a false positive.
Unless they already knew she was there.
“I’m putting you in with the crew working the heat sink,” Emma said. “Chief has them swapping out coolant exchanges.”
“Joy,” Naomi said.
“The stink’ll give you a reason to be wearing a mask,” Emma said. “And it’s a mixed-shift crew. Any luck, everyone will think you’re from the other one.”
Emma drove the needle into the flesh under Naomi’s eye. It only hurt a little. “How long do we have?”
Emma checked her terminal and spat out a low, grunting curse.
“We should go,” she said, dropping the needle into Naomi’s skin one last time. “They’re already positioning for transfer.”
“If they take me,” Naomi said, “I will try to hold out until you can get away. But go quickly, and make sure Saba knows what happened.”
Emma didn’t meet her eyes, but she nodded. This had always been a risk. It was what they’d signed up for. As Emma gave her a mask and led her down to the engineering decks, Naomi wondered how Bobbie and Alex would find out about it if she was captured. And what Jim would hear. The temptation was still there. If she did it—if she jumped instead of waiting for the push—she could control the fall.
The coolant lines on the Bhikaji Cama were an old design but in decent condition. She’d flushed lines like them back in her water hauler days, and the process wasn’t that hard. Punishing and foul, but not hard. There were four others on the team. Five people on a three-shift boat. It wasn’t much of a disguise.
The full process would run about four hours if nothing went wrong. She had to hope it was long enough for the Laconians to come, make their inspection and move on. All she would have to do was stay quiet and small until the danger passed. She fell into the work, taking orders from the foreman, doing her part with as little fuss as she could manage. She’d almost forgotten there was anything to worry about more pressing than not getting too much coolant in the air filters, when the interruption came.