It was what she was doing now.
Her box had left the Mosley for another ship, almost its twin, called the Bhikaji Cama. They were on a quarter-g burn for Auberon with mining equipment salvaged on the cheap from Mars. The hum of the drives was familiar enough by now that she didn’t hear it unless they were making some adjustment to speed or trajectory, and then it was only when the vibrations hit a harmonic and made something ring. The rations she’d gotten as a farewell gift from the Mosley were Earth-made. Rice and vegetable protein and curry sauce that might almost have been Belter food, except for the added raisins. She set her system to local, not tying into the Cama’s computers at all unless there was something she could only get there. She had music—soft mambo cereseano like she’d danced to when she was a girl—and as many newsfeeds as she could stand. She’d arranged her space so that there was room to stretch and exercise, and she made herself keep to a schedule religiously, pushing herself to a sweat twice a day. She slept to schedule too, dimming the lights for eight hours, no more and no less, never sleeping in. Never taking naps. Routine was what kept the darkness at bay, when anything did.
And in between, she studied her data again and waited for her most recent bottle to break.
The monitor showed a schematic of Bara Gaon Complex with both the existing settlement and the newly proposed expansion. Bara Gaon was one of the most successful of the new human systems, with three planets already boasting self-sustaining cities, an independent mining cooperative surveying a particularly rich asteroid belt, and bases on two moons of the system’s only gas giant. The map of humanity’s presence in the system looked like the first growth of a leaf: pale, elegant, thin, and promising a greater strength still to come. The initial waves had been led by an agricultural corporation based on Ganymede and a progressive Muslim community out of the Greater Terai Shared Interest Zone. The two had managed a functional partnership that drew five more waves of settlement in under two decades.
It was a fraction of Sol system, but it wouldn’t be for long. The expansion plan had been trapped in negotiations for years before Laconia had rolled through, and now Duarte’s will was kicking it forward.
Five new cities had been proposed, two each on the planets nearer to their sun, one on the cooler outlier. A high-end sensor network that would be able to map the system over the course of the next six years. Eighteen new exploratory missions. An increased civil infrastructure rolled out in two-year increments, with an emphasis on scientific and cultural support. If it worked, Bara Gaon would eclipse Sol system in under a century. It was as ambitious as any plan Naomi had ever seen, and it might even be possible.
That ambition was also the underground’s best hope. Her best hope.
She flicked through the lists of project proposals. She’d been over all of them a hundred times. Every phase had its own requirements. The sensor network alone was slated to hire a hundred and thirty engineers and subject specialists. And while the network’s primary function was mapping, it didn’t take a genius to see its potential as system surveillance. It would make the underground’s covert operations in Bara Gaon Complex easier if between 10 and 20 percent of those engineers and specialists also answered to Saba.
She’d put together her own map of the project. Not impeding the expansion, but taking control of it from within. The Personnel Directorate of Bara Gaon was her first target. They were already putting out requests for applications, beefing up the bureaucracy that would be evaluating new hires. Naomi had identified seven critical positions and built candidate profiles that Saba could use to flood the job openings with his allies. It was important that the people not be false identities, but actual people with real histories and qualifications. If they managed to get two of the seven positions now, it would be enough to give them an edge on later ones. Three, and they’d be able to cover their own tracks well enough that prying them out would be difficult even if Laconia became suspicious. Five, and Saba would effectively control the Bara Gaon Complex expansion.
She’d also identified problem issues. The chief administrator of Zehanat province on Bara Gaon-6—the planet they called Al-Halub—was a close friend of Carrie Fisk and openly supportive of Laconian rule. It was important that the projects based there be deprioritized and his personal influence undermined. Labor unions on the gas giant’s moons had ties to an old inner planets hate group and still fought against everything the Transport Union did with the zeal of the self-proclaimed oppressed. Saba would need to create other allies there. The local government had a communitarian faction that was growing more vocal about armed resistance against Laconia that would bring more scrutiny without gaining any useful ground if it wasn’t reined in.
You can’t fight a shooting war armed with paper clips, Bobbie said in Naomi’s imagination.
“Watch me,” Naomi answered. Her voice echoed with the music in the container. A pinch of annoyance bothered her. She closed down her files and pushed the monitor aside. In the time since she’d left Sol system, she’d hoped that their last conversation would have lost some of its power, but like a splinter under her skin, it bit a little every time she touched it.
When two people get in a fight, and only one has a gun and the will to use it? That’s a short damned fight.
Only it wasn’t Bobbie’s voice that said it this time. It was Amos’. A few decades flying the same ship together had built little versions of her family in her head. Made some part of them a part of her, even when she didn’t particularly want them to be. Even when the little mirrors of them only told her that their conversation wasn’t finished.
She hauled herself up out of the couch, the gimbals hissing as she shifted. She turned the music to a brighter selection with a clearer, faster beat. Something to push her. It was early in her day for a workout, but she needed to move. As if working the long muscles of her arms and legs and back could relieve a tension between her and people not present.
“It’s never a short fight,” she said as she hooked resistance bands to the top of her container. The fasteners had been painted gray when she’d first stepped into her little box. They were bright raw steel now. “Last time I fought it, it was generations old before I even stepped in the ring. We can’t shoot our way to peace.”
Peace isn’t the only good victory condition. How about just shooting our way to freedom or justice?
Naomi sank her feet into the floor loops, braced herself, locked the bands in place, and pulled. It was hard work. It hurt a little, but hurting a little was the point. The voice in her imagination wasn’t Amos’ now, but Jim’s.
That’s the thing about autocracy. It looks pretty decent while it still looks pretty decent. Survivable, anyway. And it keeps looking like that right up until it doesn’t. That’s how you find out it’s too late.
“I am fighting,” she said, then grunted and pulled down hard again. “The quiet work’s still a fight. It’s a better one. It’s one we can win.”
Not in our lifetimes, Bobbie said. And that was the point, really. That was the deep, true thought that Naomi was working her own way through with all the beloved voices in her head.