The dining room was an abandoned storage space about six meters square with spray foam insulation walls and a carbon fiber door that didn’t even have a latch. Piping that entered through the walls and then just ended hinted at a past as a machine room, though what infrastructure used to occupy the space was lost to history. A tiny green chalk X had been placed on the lower left-hand corner of the door and was surrounded by other graffiti. The graffiti was mostly gang boasts and assertions of sexual prowess. The green X meant the room had been swept for surveillance less than thirty hours ago and found to be clean. If it had been red, the underground would have left the devices in place and abandoned the room.
Bobbie was waiting for him when he arrived. Impatience in the former Marine eluded most people. She didn’t pace. She never bounced a knee or a foot. The only time he’d ever heard her crack her knuckles was before they sparred in the gym. But Alex knew something was up the moment he walked into the room. She was standing perfectly still, but she was stiff, as though she was half flexing every muscle in her body.
“You’re late,” she said.
“I got caught up talking to Caspar at the drop, and now you’re kind of scaring me.”
“We have the battleship that shrugged off the combined fleets of Earth, Mars, and the Transport Union cruising toward us because we killed a high-ranking Laconian officer. If you weren’t already scared, you’re fucking stupid, and I know you’re not fucking stupid, Alex,” Bobbie said.
“Copy that, Gunny. It’s a fair point,” Alex said, and raised his hands in mock surrender. The dining room was his least favorite place to meet, mostly because there was nothing in it to sit on. Instead he found a patch of wall without any pipes sticking out of it and leaned into the foam of the insulation. “Why don’t you get me up to speed?”
“Sorry,” Bobbie said. She clenched her hands into fists and jammed them into her pockets. “I’m pissed at you right now and it’s not your fault.”
“What can I stop not doin’ so it ain’t not my fault anymore?”
Bobbie chuckled at that and shot him a thin smile. It wasn’t a very funny joke, but he knew she appreciated his not taking her anger personally.
“Something’s been bothering me. You’re right. And Naomi’s right,” she said. “The timer’s running out on our little resistance, and what have we accomplished? We’ve annoyed the empire. Snatched a few ships, some supplies. Killed a few Laconians. And maybe I used to think it was enough to spit in my enemy’s eye while he strangles me. But I’ve been thinking about Jillian’s assessment of the objective value of moral victories, and she wasn’t wrong either.”
Bobbie went silent, like she was listening to the words she’d said. She probably hadn’t spoken these thoughts out loud until just now.
“Are we talking about what I think we’re talking about?”
“I don’t know what you think we’re talking about, Alex.”
“Because,” Alex said, “if we’re talking about packing it in, it’s a lot easier to get off Callisto if we’re not trying to take the Storm with us. I mean, I’ve got a plan either way, but—”
“No,” Bobbie said, “we’re not talking about that.”
Anger roughened her voice. He wanted to pull back from her. Retreat, but he’d known her long enough to see it was the wrong way with her. Whatever she was thinking through, she needed someone to slam it up against. Placating her wasn’t going to make either of them happy. Or safe. Even if she did scare him a little, she was still Bobbie Draper, his old friend and compatriot.
But she was also a creature of violence whose frustrations were coming out sideways.
“Copy that, Gunny,” Alex said, trying not to sound like a hostage negotiator.
“I’m not giving up,” Bobbie said. “I’m figuring out how to win. How can we take our present circumstance and find the orthogonal move, the surprise attack that snatches victory from defeat. How do we do more than just survive?”
“Survive is a pretty good start,” Alex said. “I’ve worked up a launch plan to get the Storm off of Callisto, if that helps.”
“Yeah, it does. But running away isn’t going to solve our larger problem.”
“Cap . . . Bobbie,” Alex said. “There are three Magnetar-class ships in the universe, and the one that kicked the whole combined fleet’s ass is steaming toward us right now. Pickin’ a fight with her is like me pickin’ a fight with you. Not being scared is fucking stupid, to use your own words.”
Bobbie didn’t answer. She pulled a terminal out of her pocket. It was one of the cheap ones that kiosks in the markets would spit out for a few bucks. Enough battery charge for a few hours, and then you just threw it away and bought another one. She tossed it to him. On the screen was a picture of a small metal ball with text printed on it, and some sort of cable running out of the top.
“The fuck is this?” Alex said.
“The report’s linked.”
Alex flicked the screen with his index finger, and it changed to an article about the theoretical uses of antimatter for high-energy reactors. Even so, it took him a minute to understand what she meant.
“No,” he said.
“Oh yes,” Bobbie replied. “Rini is ninety-nine percent sure. She’s been looking them over and doing the research. We’ve been able to produce trace amounts of antimatter since the dark ages, but it’s never been practical. Now it is. The Laconians know how to produce and store it. I will bet you a week’s wages that it’s coming from the same construction platforms that made the Storm and the Tempest, and it’s part of the resupply for the battleship. That big cannon of theirs must burn it like crazy when it fires.”
“Laconia’s a hard target, but if you’re right and we could figure a way to knock out those platforms—”
“Yeah, taking out their resupply is great,” Bobbie said. “But that’s just a tactical victory. That’s my kind of target. It’s not yours. Or Naomi’s.”
“My kind of target?”
“If we blew out the Laconian construction platforms, Duarte and his admirals would know why it mattered. But Kit’s friends at university? They’re the ones we need to inspire, for them it has to be something they can see. We have to do something that shows Laconia’s not invincible. That there’s a chance for us to get a new generation on board.”
“You want to drop these on Laconia?” Alex asked, aghast. Sure, they were enemies, but the idea of killing a planet full of people was horrifying. Even in war, there were lines no one should cross.
“If we start carpet-bombing civilians, we’re worse than the enemy.”
Alex felt a rush of relief. He was still fighting for the good guys. “Okay, good. I didn’t think you’d—”
“I want to kill the Tempest,” she said. “We show Earth and Mars and everyone in the Belt and every other colony out past the gates that Laconia’s battleship isn’t invincible. Show them that we can win. We’ll create a whole new generation of people willing to fight by lighting the biggest god damn signal fire the human race has ever seen.”
“Bobbie,” Alex said. Something in her eyes was more frightening than her fists had been. A fervor he wasn’t used to seeing there. All the fear and desperation suddenly transformed into something verging on fanaticism. “This is crazy.”
“We’re fucked, and we’ve been playing not to lose. I’m going to start playing to win.”
“No, you’re not.”
Bobbie stared at him. Her jaw slid forward a fraction of a centimeter. Every fiber of his body told him to back off, except for the one little part of his brain that knew showing weakness now was a path to disaster.
“You aren’t,” he said. “You’re stung because we had a win in our hands and we lost it. And then Jillian twisted the knife because she was frustrated too, and she’s kind of an asshole. And we found this”—he held up the hand terminal with the antimatter information—“so it feels like the universe handed you a way to redeem the loss. But what you’re really doing is trying to win back what you’ve lost by going all in. It’s shitty poker, and even worse as a battle strategy.”
“Fuck you, Alex. I do this for a living.”
“And you’re really good at it. And you’re smart. And I’m just a glorified bus driver who takes you where you need to be so you can kill people. But you’re wrong about this one, and you know you’re wrong.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“You want the big symbolic victory,” Alex said. “When has that ever been the smart move?”
For the first time, a shadow of doubt crossed Bobbie’s eyes. She crossed her arms, but she looked away from him. He leaned forward.
“You’re frustrated. And you feel trapped. And hitting back hard is what you do when you feel frustrated and trapped. But let me get us out of here. We’ll get these little balls of hell to Saba. And yeah, maybe he’ll send us back and we can take the Tempest down. Or maybe he’ll do something else. But let’s get more voices weighing in on this plan before we go all damn-the-torpedoes. Okay?”
“You think it’s an unwinnable fight. That’s what you just said.”
“I do,” Alex admitted. “But I’ve been divorced twice now. I wouldn’t take my word as gospel. I could be wrong about a lot of things. Yeah, your best soldiers are old shoe leather like you and me. But kids like Caspar are here too. Not as many as I want. Not as many as I think we’re going to need. But some. I just don’t think we should throw them away without a lot of consideration. Let’s get out of Sol system. Let the big brains have a crack at the new info, and see what they think is the right strategy.”
Bobbie took in a long slow breath and let it out through her teeth. “How long before dust-off? If we run?”