The tactical reports were strange, and it took her a moment to understand what she was looking at. The broken-down battleship had repaired itself somehow. And the fleet of enemy ships was running away, but not for the far edges of the system. They were going to the gate. Most of them, anyway. Almost all of them.
All of them but four. And those were in a path to Laconia. It was suicide. Four ships against the Whirlwind. Unless they had a secret weapon the way they had in Sol system . . .
But no, the Whirlwind couldn’t stop them. It had already gone too far, and even with the braking burn, its vector was still away from the planet. It was fighting its own mass and momentum like a swimmer struggling against the outgoing tide. The destroyers were in the same position. They’d been tricked. Lured away with only the planetary defense grid to protect them.
Which, in fairness, it probably could. Four ships weren’t much. They’d do some damage, though. And there was only one target. She was sitting in it.
She knew she should be scared, but she wasn’t. She put down her handheld, scratched Muskrat’s back, and thought. It didn’t even feel like solving a problem so much as remembering something she’d always known. She pulled up a map of the system and added in the enemy ships, their burn times. A lot would depend on how they made their braking burns, but Ilich had taught her enough about battle tactics that she could make an educated guess. Make a plan. If she called the enemy down, they’d kill her or take her as a prisoner. She needed something she could trade for passage. She didn’t know what that was.
And then she did.
Muskrat looked up at her when she laughed. The thump-thump-thump of the dog’s tail against the ground was reassuring. Without thinking, Teresa took another spoonful of chowder in her mouth, frowned, and sprinkled some salt over the bowl.
Her next bite was better.
The timing was bad, but it could have been worse. She left out the window as if she were sneaking out to see Timothy again. It felt familiar. Comforting. She knew it was the last time she’d see her room or her things. The last time she’d sleep in the bed that had been hers since she was a child. But her father had been dead for months, and it turned out she’d already done her mourning.
Muskrat whined as she slipped out, dancing from one paw to the other.
“You can’t come this time,” Teresa said. “I’m sorry.”
The dog whined, lifted graying eyebrows, and wagged hopefully. Teresa leaned back in and gave Muskrat one last long hug. Then she was out the window and gone before she lost her resolve.
The first step—the hard one, really—was getting to the cell. It was night. The snow was still falling lightly, but it wasn’t up past her shins. Getting out wouldn’t be the problem.
There were two guards watching over the cells, a man and a woman. They braced as she walked into the room.
“I wish to speak with the prisoner,” she said.
They looked at each other.
“I’m not sure—” the man said.
Teresa made an impatient sound. “Trejo has asked me to question him before. It’s about the assault. We don’t have time.”
The fear did it. The sense of an enemy almost at their gate, and the confidence that someone in power was taking care of it. Even if the voice of authority had just turned fifteen. They led her into the cell. She felt shaky with excitement. It was like being one of the adventurous women she’d watched on her screens, only it was real. She was doing it.
Holden sat up, blinking against the sudden light. His hair was standing at odd angles and his face had pink lines across it from the pillow. Teresa turned to the male guard.
“You stay,” she said. Then to the woman, “You have something to subdue him? An electrical prod?”
“Yes,” the woman said.
Teresa held out her hand, and the woman drew a black, shining weapon with a grip all along its length. It looked like an ear of burned corn. The female guard showed Teresa where the safety was and how to trigger it.
“That’s really not called for,” Holden said. “Whatever this is? I’m not going to fight it. You won’t need those.”
“I’ll decide that,” Teresa said. She nodded the female guard out. Then it was just the three of them: Teresa, Holden, and the male guard. It was the last chance to turn back. She could still change her mind . . .
Teresa flipped the safety clear.
Holden flinched, prepared for the pain and shock, and Teresa drove the weapon into the guard’s belly and pulled the trigger. He went down hard, not even trying to catch himself.
“Okay,” Holden said after a long, stunned moment. “That was weird.”
“We don’t have much time. Come with me.”
“Um . . . no? I mean, I think I’m going to need a little more explanation about what’s . . . ah . . .”
Teresa felt a burst of anger, but there wasn’t time for it. She started stripping the male guard’s uniform off, undoing zippers and buttons, tugging at his sleeves.
“Your people are coming. Your old ship. The whole invasion was a ruse get them close.”
“There’s an invasion?” Holden said. And then, “They don’t tell me much. But you’re saving me?”
“I’m using you. I need to leave. You’re my ticket onto those ships. Now hurry. We don’t have time.”
Holden pulled the uniform over his prisoner’s jumpsuit. Confinement had left him thin enough that the extra cloth just about filled out the difference. Teresa took the stunner from the fallen guard’s belt and his access key, and opened the door. They marched out together. The woman at the guard’s station had time to look confused before Teresa put her down.
“This is actually happening, right?” Holden said as she led him down the hall toward the forensics lab. “Because this is a very realistic dream if it’s not happening.”
“This is happening,” Teresa said. And she meant, I’m really doing this. “I have an implanted tracking device. They’re going to be after us as soon as we go.”
“Okay,” Holden said.
“Here,” Teresa said. The door was locked, but the access key opened it. She stepped into the dim room. Timothy’s belongings had been moved around in the weeks since she’d been there, but they hadn’t been taken away. She walked from table to table, her fingertips brushing each container they passed. It was here. Someplace. It was right here.
“Hey,” Holden said. “This is . . . the pocket nuke? The one Amos had?”
“Yes,” Teresa said.
“And I’m standing right here next to it.”
“You are.”
“And you’re comfortable with that,” he said. “This is a really weird night.”
She found what she was looking for. The screen glowed as it powered up. She felt the seconds slipping away. Somewhere far above the planet, the rebel ships were already coming close. Already engaging with planetary defense. The files came up, lockouts and protections broken weeks ago. She looked for the file for evacuation protocol and, without hesitating, shifted the call to active.
“What was that?” Holden asked.
“I called for evac,” Teresa said, liking how adult the word felt in her mouth. Not evacuation. Evac. “All we have to do is get to the pickup.”
“Sure,” Holden said. “Sounds easy.”
Chapter Forty-Six: Elvi
Going through Cortázar’s hidden files was the work of days. It was horrifying. Winston Duarte had believed in Cortázar’s ability, but more than that, he’d assumed that he had the man’s loyalty. And that the things Cortázar told him were true. The experiment to change Duarte’s body using the tamed protomolecule had been the worst kind of science—uncontrolled, unethical, speculative, and risky. He had overstated his certainty to Duarte, underplayed the risks, moved ahead on therapies based on best-guess understandings of Cara and Xan, and collected data obsessively. His notes and records read like a horror story.
As the unexpected changes had come—Duarte no longer needing sleep, developing new senses—Cortázar’s comments shifted. Elvi wasn’t sure the man himself would have seen it, but a plaintive quality started coming into them. A sense of jealousy about all the things he could only experience secondhand. A hunger was growing in Cortázar’s mind that he didn’t seem aware of.
Elvi tried to go though it all in more or less chronological order, but that was harder than it sounded. For one thing, the enemy fleet in Laconia system shook her concentration. Trejo was reassuring. No more antimatter was missing, and the mere nuclear warheads raining down on the planet were a trivial danger, easily avoided. Elvi started having nightmares about it, and her sleep suffered.