“Jesus,” Caspar said.
“Correct,” Bobbie replied. “But delivery will be difficult, and we’re only going to get one shot. In our last mission we found, along with this antimatter, replacement parts for a sensor array very similar to what the Storm’s using. I’ve been over the battle footage, and I know the story is that the Tempest shook off everything the Earth-Mars Coalition threw at her. But—”
She laid out the schematic. Overlapping fields sprang out from the Tempest like peacock feathers on display. The range of sensor arrays. She tapped one, and it dropped out.
“From the hits she took and from how she’s been flying since, I think this is the array they need a replacement for. And if the information we have is right, it means the Tempest has a blind spot. Here.”
She pulled the display out to showcase the thin cone of black where the enemy ship’s eyes couldn’t go.
“And if we’re right about their need for antimatter, they won’t be able to use the field projector. Which means they’ll be down to conventional weapons only.”
“Captain?” It was Caspar. Jillian scowled at the boy like she was ready to punch him, but Bobbie nodded him on. “I don’t see . . . I mean, even with just torpedoes and rail guns, and even if there is a data hole there—”
“They can still take us in a straight fight, and they’ll still see us coming,” Bobbie said. “So we let them see us. We get a Callistan shuttle. Private, small. Doesn’t even have an Epstein. And we put it out”—she switched back to the image of Jupiter and its moons. A single bright-blue dot appeared—“here. And on an orbital path that looks like we’re heading for Amalthea. A crew of two with a gas canister torpedo. Now those are slow, yes. But they also run cold. Basically no heat signature.”
“Bist bien,” Timon said. “Ran hundreds like, back on Ceres, sa sa?”
Jillian’s voice was harsh. “Could we not interrupt the captain?”
“The hard part will be putting the Tempest into a flight pattern like . . . this.”
A red arc appeared going from Ganymede. A line marked the time at each point. She zoomed in to show how the little blue shuttle fell into the blind spot, and the long seconds it would stay there.
“This is the window,” Bobbie said. “It doesn’t look like a trap, because we aren’t trying to hide. We get there first, and we’re just part of the traffic. So all we need is a lure. Something so critical that the Tempest will follow it where we want it to go. That will be the Storm.”
She let it sink in. It was like she could see the implications settling in each face looking toward her. It was a sucker punch. One shot, and if it failed each and every one of them would be dead. The underground would lose its only warship with Laconian tech.
“I’ll captain the shuttle with Rini as tech specialist. Jillian will be in command of the Storm.” That made her second sit up a little straighter. Her jaw was firm. She looked like a hunting dog that had caught a scent. “The Storm’s mission is to hold the Tempest to this course so that the shuttle stays in the enemy’s blind spot.”
Alex, sitting to the side, leaned forward. His hands were on his knees, and his eyes were cast down toward the deck. She didn’t know what he was thinking.
“If anyone doesn’t want to do this,” Bobbie said, “I’m not going to force you. We have four days before the shuttle is ready and the orbits are where I want them. I will be accepting resignations until that time. No sugarcoating. This is the most dangerous thing we’ll have ever done. Even if we win, we may sustain losses. Potentially heavy losses. But each and every one of you has my word that if I thought this was hopeless, we wouldn’t be doing it.
“I have sent detailed briefs to your team leaders. Look them over. If you have questions, for fuck’s sake ask them. We’re not going to screw this up because someone turned left instead of right. Understood?”
There was a ragged muttering of assent.
“I said, Am I understood!”
The reply was more like a cheer now. It filled the space. There was power in it.
“Outstanding. You have your orders. Dismissed.”
Jillian was out of her seat in a moment, herding the crew like they were sheep. Nipping at them. It was something she’d have to get over before she had a command of her own. Bobbie let it play out, though. There was an energy in the ship that needed to work itself through. She felt it too.
Back in her cabin on the Storm, she put herself through the routine of cleaning and straightening her things. The cabin didn’t need it, but she did. The ritual calmed her. She found herself humming. She didn’t know how long it had been since she’d done that. She needed to go back to her little campsite and clear out all signs of her occupation, but she waited anyway. She’d almost decided that Alex wasn’t going to come talk with her when he knocked at her cabin door.
“Hey,” she said.
“Naomi said it was a good idea?”
“She didn’t go that far. She might have just thought it was the right bad idea for the moment.”
Alex managed a little smile. His melancholy made her feel almost ashamed of her lightness and anticipation. “If you need to step back, no one’s going to think less of you. Kit’s your son. Being part of his life and this too . . . If you’ve got to pick one, I’d understand.”
“You left out a part of the plan. What happens after the payload hits?”
“We’ve never done it before. So apart from an explosion that makes a nuke look like a firecracker, I’m not sure what I’d say. The Storm’s a tough ship, though. Even if there’s some debris hits, she can take it. Probably.”
“You’re going to want to get that shuttle behind something, though,” Alex said. “Put me on it. I’ll get it to shelter.”
“I need you on the Storm. Keeping the Tempest where I need it, when I need it? It’s going to take a great pilot. That’s you. Rini and I will be in power armor. The shuttle might get shredded, but we’ll be better protected than it will. And you’ll be there to come pick us up.”
Alex shifted his weight. She could see him looking for objections the way old married couples could see when one wanted the other to pass the salt.
“I don’t like putting us on different ships either,” Bobbie said. “But this is the right way to do it.”
“Yes, Captain. All right.” He sighed, and then, to her surprise, grinned. “This is going to be one hell of a rodeo.”
“They aren’t going to know what hit them,” Bobbie said. “My only regret is that Trejo won’t be on the ship when we blow it into hot, fast dust.”
“We can find him later,” Alex said. “I’m going to go obsessively run diagnostics on systems I know are solid so I can feel like I have control of something.”
“Sounds good,” Bobbie said. “I’m going to stay here and see how many of my crew quit rather than go through with this.”
“There won’t be any. These people will still follow when you lay siege to hell. We trust you.” Then, a moment later, “I trust you.”
The door closed behind him, and Bobbie sat in her crash couch like she was easing down into a warm bath. When she closed her eyes, she slept.
Chapter Thirty-One: Teresa
Was Timothy ever really my friend?”
Holden sat on the cot, his back against the wall. The paper gown he wore was crumpled and streaked with old blood. The sclera of his right eye was blood red and the flesh around it swollen. The cheek below puffy and dark. More than that, there was a carefulness to his movements that meant everything ached. The cell was tiny. The smallest closet in her bedroom suite was nearly twice as large. The only light came from a pencil-thin strip at the top of the wall that was too bright to look at directly but left most of the room too dark to read in.
“If he said he was your friend, then he was,” Holden said. “Amos wasn’t a man who felt the need to lie very often.”
“Why was he here?” she heard herself ask, just the way she’d been told.
Holden swallowed like it was a difficult thing to do. He seemed sad. No, not sad. Pitying. It was worse.
“They asked me all this before. I’m sorry that they’re making you do it too.”
Trejo had told her to stay on script, to only say what she’d rehearsed, but she took the chance now. “Maybe they thought it would be harder to lie to someone you’d hurt.”
“Maybe. I’ll tell you the same thing I told them. I didn’t know he was here. I hadn’t been contacted by him. I don’t know what his mission was or who put him onto it or how long he’s been here. If he had a way to get in touch with the underground, I don’t know what it was. And I don’t know why he had a backpack nuke, except that I’m guessing he at least wanted to have the option of blowing something up. If I’d known he was here, I’d have told him not to.”