Leviathan Falls

Chapter Twenty-One: Tanaka

The girl on the screen wore something that was supposed to look like a uniform, held herself in a way that was supposed to look like military crispness, and spoke with a formality that was supposed to sound like authority.

“In accepting Admiral Trejo’s offer, I am willing to permit one envoy from your ship to enter Draper Station to take custody of Teresa Duarte,” Jillian Houston said. “Once this transfer is complete, both the Sparrowhawk and the Derecho are invited to retire from Freehold system until such time as the details of our new situation can be finalized.”

“Oh, goody,” Tanaka said. “We’ll be invited to retire.”

“Yes, sir,” Mugabo said. Then, a moment later, “She does seem a bit green.”

“She’s still licking off the caul. I can’t believe we’ve had this much trouble tracking down someone who’s still sleeping with her teddy bear.”

“I believe a Martian was in command of the Storm until shortly before the attack on the homeworld.”

“And Nagata was in charge during that,” Tanaka said, then tilted her head. “So why isn’t she the one answering now?”

“I don’t have a theory to venture,” Mugabo said, but she hadn’t really been talking to him anyway.

Trejo’s plan was bold, she’d give him that. And, like all the best plans, it was limber. If Nagata accepted the terms, then he’d let her playact at being in charge until he could rebuild the strength they’d lost. And if Duarte proved to be unmanageable, maybe even keep her on as figurehead in perpetuity. It was an elegant way to put an end to the fighting: Give the enemy the raiment of power while keeping the actual power for yourself and then seeing if she ever noticed.

If she didn’t agree, but did reach out to announce her rejection, the door was open for diplomacy. Diplomacy always provided the chance to glean more information from the enemy. Or for them to glean it from you. It wasn’t a form of conflict Tanaka found comfortable, but she understood it.

This situation, though, fell somewhere between the two. It was an acceptance, and allegedly by the underground, but not by Nagata. It was a negotiation of terms, but not about the larger issues. Tanaka had already learned more than a little critical information: the exact location of the underground’s secret base and confirmation that the Gathering Storm—or at least its commander—was there. Teresa Duarte was probably there. The little rebel captain was certainly acting like she was. And it was probably true. The ship that had come through the gate was a good match for the Rocinante when it left New Egypt. It had gone to the moon that had the enemy base. And if the Rocinante was there, James Holden and Naomi Nagata were almost certainly there too.

If Nagata had been the one responding, it wouldn’t have smelled wrong at all.

It smelled wrong.

“I’m taking it,” she said. “I’ll go get the girl.”

If she’d expected Mugabo to object or push back against her taking the personal risk—The last time you had a Marine fire team with you, and you still came within centimeters of death, sir—he disappointed her. She didn’t feel disappointed, though. More amused.

“Tell Botton to start the Derecho toward us,” she said. “If we’re leaving after this, it looks like good faith. If we’re fighting, I want him close.”

“Of course, ma’am,” Mugabo said. “Not to change the subject, but you saw the briefing about San Esteban?”

“What about it?”

Mugabo’s little smile was melancholy. He would have made a good waiter. He had the vaguely embarrassed expression crafted for telling people the special was already sold out. She met his eyes.

“There are other people on that mission. We’re on mine. If the Messiah comes, He can find us at work. Understood?”

“Perfectly, sir.”

“If you need me, I’ll be in the armory.”

She hadn’t packed her fast scout suit, much to her regret. The Sparrowhawk did have a latest-generation assault suit, and lying on the deck awaiting her finishing touches, it looked nothing like the elegant and greyhound-lean Stalker. The assault armor had the simple, brutally efficient design of a wearable murder-robot. Underslung on both arms were Gatling guns, designed to fire a high-speed stream of small-caliber explosive rounds. On the left shoulder was an integrated rocket-propelled grenade launcher, for when a pair of machine guns just won’t get the job done. And the suit itself was a weapon. Wearing one, Tanaka could bench-press a ground vehicle. Ripping a human limb from limb while wearing a Laconian assault suit was trivial. It was made for door-to-door, corridor-by-corridor assault. It was the pinnacle of Laconian design engineering, and in her hands it could clear a base like Draper Station without assistance. As long as she didn’t step in front of any PDCs.

She worked, slowly and methodically going through the mental checklist thousands of hours operating these suits had etched in her brain. As she finished the suit’s final touches, her mind occupied itself with the upcoming fight. If it was a fight.

She was ready for it to be a fight.

Tanaka’s tongue probed through the gap where her teeth used to be and across the nasty scar inside her cheek. The wound no longer hurt, but she could feel the uncanny smoothness of poorly healed gashes where James Holden’s bullet had blown the side of her face apart. It itched, but not physically.

The physical wounds were bad. Her head still ached if she slept on it wrong. Even if she went through the trouble of a complete regrow, her cheeks would never quite match again. It was going to take months to grow back the missing bone, and more than that to regrow teeth from it. There were people—even people in the Laconian military—who had used less to claim permanent disability with increased retirement benefits. But that wasn’t the worst.

The embarrassment was worst.

She was the peak of the Laconian military. The lone atom of steel at the tip of the tip of the spear. Experienced, trained, and still in top condition despite her age. She’d gone on what should have been a milk run with a full fire team at her back, and James Holden had handed her her ass on a plate. She understood why. She’d been restrained to protect the girl, and he hadn’t. She’d been conservative with employing a warship around civilians, and he hadn’t. She could have waited until the girl had been dropped off, but even that had been a calculated risk that just bounced bad for her that time. Nothing she’d done would have raised an eyebrow from a review tribunal. But she’d lost, and he hadn’t.

She loaded a belt of mixed high explosive and armor-piercing rounds into the right arm’s gun. It made a satisfying metallic click when she locked and armed it. Don’t kill anyone, or kill everyone.

If anything went south during the transfer, she knew which one she was picking.

Tanaka had Mugabo park the Sparrowhawk far enough from the moon that they’d have time to evade incoming rail-gun rounds, then used her assault suit’s EVA jets to descend to the surface at the coordinates she’d been given. A shallow overhang in the rock and ice hid an airlock door from orbital view, but was plainly visible once she’d hit the surface. The outer door was open and waiting for her.

Draper Station wasn’t much more than an icy cave sprayed with insulating foam on a tiny moon where the gravity was a meek suggestion of down. It had about as much in common with a naval base as it did with a Belter pirate station. The idea that a great warrior and leader like Admiral Trejo felt the need to negotiate with these low-rent revolutionaries left Tanaka feeling insulted on his behalf.

“I’m going in,” she radioed up to Mugabo.

“Understood, sir,” he said. “We are standing by.”

Tanaka chuckled to herself and killed the channel. A few moments later she’d passed through the airlock and into a large equipment storage room. Lockers and vacuum suit racks filled all the wall space. The ceiling was covered with the same shitty spray-on insulation as the walls, but the floor was metal grate, so she kicked on her mag boots.

Five people waited for her in the room. They were all armed.

“I’m Jillian Houston,” the woman in the middle said. She wore a simple jumpsuit without rank markings. The four people flanking her held rifles like they were some kind of honor guard.

“Colonel Aliana Tanaka of the Laconian Marine Corps.” There were forms to be obeyed in a prisoner transfer, and until Tanaka had the girl in her hands, she’d obey them.

Jillian Houston seemed nonplussed when Tanaka didn’t continue. They shared an awkward silence. Jillian cleared her throat. Tanaka watched her HUD while the suit’s various heat-and-sound-imaging and radar sensors built a map of the interior of the station for her. The electromagnetic sensor that could pinpoint the location of human heartbeats also mapped the location of anyone within its range.

“Trejo said—”

“Fleet Admiral Anton Trejo,” Tanaka interjected, the assault suit’s external speakers making her voice echo off the walls.

Jillian’s expression hardened. She might be green, but she didn’t like being corrected. Even standing face-to-face with Tanaka’s battle suit, she wasn’t backing down at all. Only the elevation in her heart rate betrayed her nervousness. Scrappy.

Tanaka waited, watching the guards twitch. Jillian seemed determined to force Tanaka to speak first now. A power game. Fine. The suit reported that it had a mostly complete station map, and every human within seventy meters was pinpointed. Tanaka turned off the external speaker and said, “Free-fire authorization, Tanaka.”

The weapons of the suit clicked out of safe mode, a sound that also echoed around the room. The guards shot nervous looks at each other.

“Fleet Admiral Trejo,” Jillian Houston said, breaking first, “guaranteed us that if we gave you the girl, all Laconian forces would withdraw from the Freehold system without further attacks. We have his word on it.”

Tanaka chinned the external speakers back on. “I’m not seeing Teresa Duarte. Where is she?”

“Before I hand her over, I need more than vague assurances that you are acting in good faith.”

“Moving the goalposts?” Tanaka said.

“I need more than assurances,” the Houston girl repeated. Apparently they’d gotten to the end of her script.

“Where’s Nagata?”

“Excuse me?”

“The admiral made his offer to Naomi Nagata. You aren’t her. Teresa Duarte’s not here. What’s really going on?”

Houston lifted her chin like Tanaka had accused her of something. “Naomi Nagata is in operational control of the civilian action of the underground. As the commander of the Gathering Storm, military decisions fall to me—”

“Bullshit.”

“I don’t care for your tone of voice.”

This was the moment. Playing it safe hadn’t worked in New Egypt. Life was risk, and the fact that even if it all came down poorly, there could be no consequences for her personally was a little intoxicating.

She wasn’t going to shoot the Duarte girl. They weren’t likely to do it. The only danger was an accident, and even if the girl did take a bullet, there was a percentage of those wounds she could recover from.

And once the shooting started, they might try to evac the prisoner, in which case she had two ships ready to disable the enemy. Flushing Teresa out of the base was probably the safest way for her.

She realized she’d taken a long time responding. Jillian Houston’s heart rate was ticking up with her anxiety.

So this was it. Play nice with the enemy, or do the obvious thing.

“You know, we’ve got some of those suits,” Jillian said, pointing at her armor. “We aren’t wearing them as a sign of good faith.”

“Wouldn’t matter if you were.”

Fuck it.

“All right,” Tanaka said, locking eyes with each of her four guards in turn and using the touchpads in her gloves to target them. “I’ll just go get her myself.”

“No—” Jillian started.

Tanaka said, “Go loud.”

The left and right arms of her suit snapped up into firing position much faster and more accurately than if she’d been driving them manually. The second the weapons were lined up on the outer two guards, they fired a short five-round burst that blew their heads off. Her arms snapped to the second position and fired a second time. The two people standing next to Jillian Houston disappeared from the chin up. The entire process took less than a second and a half.

Smoke filled the room, and the roar of the guns was still bouncing around the space when Jillian Houston spun on her heel and pushed off, flying down the corridor behind her. Tanaka watched her go. She could have turned the woman into a dancing bloody rag doll a hundred times over in the time it took for her to flee.

“Track her,” she told the suit, and Jillian Houston’s rapid heartbeat got a special tag on her HUD. If Houston was in charge of the base, she’d know exactly where the girl was. Teresa Duarte’s value as a hostage was the only thing that might keep any of them alive. In the meantime, Tanaka had other business she could do.

She used the suit’s mag boots to keep her secure to the floor as she casually strolled down the corridor following Houston. All around her the heartbeats of the station’s denizens were running around and speeding up as the panic spread. That was fine. It wasn’t like her plan relied on secrecy. Let the revolutionaries prepare. Let them arm up and dig in. None of it would matter. They could have the courageous last stand all the romantics craved. It would still be a last stand.

She moved into a corridor junction, and her suit blatted an alarm tone at her microseconds before a barrage of gunfire hit her on the left side. The suit marked three targets, all using light automatic weapons and hiding behind improvised cover. Tanaka tapped a pad in her glove and the left arm of the suit snapped around and fired three times. Three shredded bodies drifted out from behind their cover, spraying globes of arterial blood into the air.

The ammo counter for the left gun went down by another fifteen rounds. Tanaka noted this without concern. Full ammo packs on both guns. Plenty for everyone. And if not… Well, the alternative was messier but it had its charms.

“In New Egypt, we could have done this easy,” she said, imagining Nagata and Holden and their crew. “This is what you picked.” She smiled while she said it, the tightness in her wounded cheek pulling it into a lopsided grimace. It didn’t hurt much.

Corridor by corridor, meter by meter, Tanaka moved through the station. She headed toward the large clumps of heartbeats first. Hoping that the center of the largest resistance would be the heroes of the Rocinante, but it never was. The resistance fighters were tenacious and brave, Tanaka would give them that. They came at her with little regard for their own safety, and some of the counterattacks had a real cunning to them. Though, given that her rampage had left little indication surrendering would lead to safety, she’d have been doing exactly the same thing in their situation. And everywhere she went, the seventy-meter range of her heartbeat detector found new pockets of people, hiding or preparing to fight. One by one, she went to them all, offering them amnesty if they put down their guns and turned over the girl. Not that she expected them to. Not that she’d necessarily stop shooting if they did.

Tanaka realized she’d lost track of Houston’s heartbeat. It gave her a moment of pause, but only a moment. She was concentrating on the map layout in her HUD, looking for possible ship docking points, when she rounded the corner into the base’s single largest pressurized room. A massive warehouse space, over a hundred meters on a side and a dozen meters high. The room was filled with racks of supplies and ship parts. The secret treasure trove of the revolutionary underground. All of it stolen from Laconia.

The suit warned her that three people were moving up behind her, and when she glanced at the warning it popped a rear view up on her screen. Three Belters were maneuvering what looked like a tool cart laden down with a massive compressed-gas tank. She was just starting to turn when one of the Belters hit the rear of the tank and it launched at her like a battering ram.

Oh, she thought as it picked her up off her feet, an improvised missile.

She only blacked out for a moment, but when she came to, her suit was blaring half a dozen alarms at her. She was embedded a good half meter into the foam-covered wall of the warehouse. The improvised missile oxygen tank was holding her upright, still pressed against her chest.

The suit warned her that it had lost secondary actuator control for her upper torso, and 30 percent of the reserve battery power before the system had rerouted to stop the leak. She also had four broken ribs and a dislocated left shoulder. She chinned the medical override and had the suit shoot her full of painkillers and amphetamines. She felt a surge that was almost like pride in her opponents. Nice job, little bunnies. Good try.

The three Belters were cautiously approaching. She hadn’t moved since their missile hit, and they were undoubtedly hoping it had finished the job. One of the three had a portable plasma torch in his hand. To cut her out of the suit and make sure, she guessed.

“RPG,” she said, locking her eyes on the middle man. The suit raised the launcher up over her shoulder and took aim. The three Belters only had a moment to register a look of surprise before a twenty-millimeter rocket-propelled grenade struck the man in the center and turned into a cloud of shrapnel that would kill anything within ten meters.

Some of the shrapnel sprayed across her breastplate and visor, with a sound inside the suit like hail hitting a metal roof. A half second later, the shrapnel was followed by a spray of blood and viscera.

“Motherfuckers,” Tanaka said, then used the right arm of her suit to shove the oxygen tank away from her chest. Its mass was significant, but the suit was up to the challenge, and a few moments later she was back on her own two feet, pain-free and jittery from the drug cocktail in her veins.

“I’ll make you a deal,” she yelled out, turning the suit’s speakers up so high that anyone in the warehouse space with her would probably suffer permanent hearing loss. “The person who brings me Teresa Duarte lives. They’re the only one who gets to walk out of this place in one piece. So if you have her, you’d better be the first to show up with the girl in your hands.

“Because everyone else here is going to die.”