Tanaka stopped the playback. Her heart was going fast, and she was trying hard not to grin. It would hurt like hell if she did, and maybe even dislodge some of the regrowth matrix. But oh, she wanted to.
Mugabo accepted her comm request as soon as she’d made it. “Colonel?”
“Resupply is going to have to wait,” she said. “We’re going to rendezvous with the Derecho in Freehold system. All deliberate speed.”
“Yes, Colonel,” Mugabo said. “I shall inform the navigator.”
She dropped the connection and let herself smile until it hurt just a little, savoring the moment. She tabbed Trejo’s message back and started it playing again.
“… silhouette is very close. It reports itself to be a survey ship on contract out of Auberon, and there’s a paper trail to support that. But Auberon system is so deeply infiltrated by the underground, I have to take that fact very, very lightly. I don’t know if this is a lead you’ll choose to follow, but it looks promising to me. And if it is Teresa Duarte’s ship, and if Teresa’s ship is James Holden and Naomi Nagata’s… Well, then I might have a strategy we can try.”
Tanaka leaned forward. There was something in Trejo’s voice that caught her. She didn’t know if it was regret or anticipation or something of both.
“Everything we’ve done with these people up to now has been less effective than I’d hoped. They’re smart, and worse than that, they’re fortunate. I know it sounds like superstition, but some people are just born lucky. I believe that. Regardless, I think there’s some value in changing our tactics. I’ve included a datafile for you to review.”
She opened the datafile in an inset screen. Another image of Trejo sitting at the same desk, speaking in the same cadence. The voices overlapped, each obscuring the other until she killed the inset and rolled back the main message.
“… datafile for you to review. This is your mission, and I’m not looking to steer from the rear on it, but I think this is the right way to go. If you agree, you should use it. We’re at the high-stakes table here. If we don’t finish what Duarte started… Well, I don’t want to go out thinking about all the things I didn’t have the balls to try.”
Chapter Seventeen: Naomi
The captain of the Laconian destroyer Rising Derecho had a pleasant face. Thin, high cheeks and a little pencil mustache that reminded Naomi of old entertainment feeds about the fight for Martian independence. His eyes were dark brown, his skin only a little lighter. He had the trick of making threats while being pained at the necessity of doing it. This hurts me as much as it does you. A lot of Laconians seemed to have that style. Naomi had to believe that said something about Winston Duarte and how he’d led.
“We have reached the hundred-hour mark. I will restate this again: We know that the Gathering Storm is in this system. It must be surrendered to us within the next hundred hours, or we will be forced to act against the civilian population. I beg that the leaders of the underground in this system consider how little they have to gain by their refusal to act, and how much they have to lose.”
“They wouldn’t really do it, would they?” Alex said. They were on the ops deck together, her and Alex and Jim. Amos and Teresa were in engineering, controlling the automated probes doing pointless make-work tasks on the surface of a small, volcanically active moon that circled one of Freehold’s three gas giants.
“They would,” Jim said. “More than they would. They will.”
“It’s civilians,” Alex said.
“Yeah, but it’s our civilians. So fuck ’em.”
Botton looked soulfully into a camera in a warship orbiting a world whose population had grown to almost a hundred thousand over the years. “We are opening the channel to citizens of the city of Freehold in hopes that they will be able to reach your conscience.”
The feed shifted to a young man, maybe sixteen years old, standing outside on the planetary surface with a small house in the frame behind him. When he spoke, his voice quavered. “My name is Charles Parker—”
Naomi killed the feed.
Freehold was one of the most important systems in the underground’s network. It wasn’t particularly well populated or wealthy. Draper Station, hidden on another moon of the same gas giant, was very small as military bases went. But it was the hiding place of the Gathering Storm, and that made it central to the underground’s strength. Saba had known that would be true, back when Naomi had only been one of his chief lieutenants and not herself the center of the resistance to Laconia’s empire. There were plans in place for how to keep Draper Station hidden when a Laconian presence was in-system. It was why the Roci had been ready at a moment’s notice to pass itself off as the Sidpai operating out of Auberon. There was even a contract back in Auberon system to support the story, and a workplan backdated to seem it had been filed three months earlier that detailed the Sidpai’s mission to survey four sites in Freehold for possible mineral extraction. The second of the four was Draper Station, and they would make their approach to it when it was conveniently obscured from the Derecho’s direct line of sight.
The protocol now was to be what they pretended. Land where they said they’d be landing. Send out probes. Pull in data. Watch for signs that they’d been identified, and be ready to run like hell for the gate again if they were. Another transit to another system and hopefully no watchful Laconian eyes.
More traffic. More violence. No solutions. There were moments when it was easy to lose sight of all the progress the underground had made in hauling back the worst of Laconia’s bad ideas and power. She only hoped that somewhere in the bowels of Laconia, Admiral Trejo felt at least as frustrated as she did.
When she went to make a request, Amos’ comms were already open. “How’s it going out there?”
She could almost hear the big man shrug. “If we were really getting paid for this, we wouldn’t be covering the union in glory. But for a couple part-timers who don’t usually run this kind of job? Pretty good.”
“How long would it take to get all the equipment back into the barn?”
“Couple hours.”
Jim looked over at her. “We’re scheduled to be here for two more days.”
“We did really, really good work, and got all the data we needed early,” Naomi said. “Corporate back on Auberon will probably give us bonuses. Haul it all back in, Amos. We need to leave.”
“You got it,” he said. She heard his voice over the comms as he turned to Teresa. Playtime’s over. Time to pick up the toys. He sounded almost like the man she’d known before he’d changed. Before they’d all changed, one way and another.
“I’ll get you some course options,” Alex said as he unstrapped and headed for the flight deck.
“Thank you,” Naomi said. She pulled up the comms and prepared the fake captain of the Sidpai to generate a report to the Laconians. She could almost imagine being a survey crew trying to keep its head down and finish its contract in the shadow of war crimes about to be committed. It was always like this. People trying to get their work done even while atrocities were blooming around them. Avoid eye contact and hope that the fire doesn’t spread to you and yours.
Jim sighed. “We’re going to have to do something about this. Not sure what it is, but… something.”
He seemed confused by her smile. “It’s why I’m moving the transfer up. We’ll figure it out.”