Leviathan Falls

Chapter Twenty-Three: Jim

The Roci burned hard, the crash couch pressing up from under him at an acceleration that made his eyes ache. The sting of the juice in his veins was cold and hot at the same time, and it left him smelling something astringent that wasn’t actually there. His breath labored with the unaccustomed weight like a hand pressing against his breastbone, defying every inhalation. And it went on for hours.

It might go on for days.

There were breaks every now and then to let people get food or hit the head. When he’d been a young man in the navy, he’d been able to wolf down a meal, grab a bulb of coffee, and get in a hand of poker in the galley in the break between hard burns. He didn’t try anymore. His stomach wasn’t as forgiving as it had once been.

Jim drifted in and out of sleep as they fled, but he only fell halfway. Part of him was always waiting to hear the collision alarms from his screen and the deep chatter of the PDCs trying to knock out enemy missiles before he and most of the people he loved were killed by them. The physical stress and the fear were as familiar as an old, often-sung song. A hymn to the price of violence.

He and Naomi were on the ops deck, in couches next to each other. Alex, above them on the flight deck. Amos, Teresa, and Muskrat were all down in the machine shop, in theory ready to leap into action if something in the ship failed. And maybe that was true. Amos was still a hell of a mechanic. Teresa was young, smart, and she’d been training under him almost since they’d fled Laconia.

Still, he really hoped that nothing failed.

He’d lost track of how many hours they’d been speeding out toward the Freehold gate and how many meals he’d skipped in the rush between hard burns, when a message popped up on his screen. It took effort to focus on it. It was from Alex: SAFE TO STOP RABBITING?

Jim shifted his hands on the old, familiar controls and pulled up the Roci’s tactical display. Freehold system was vast and empty. If the display had been to scale, none of the ships would have earned a pixel big enough to see, but he’d been making sense of the semi-abstract designs on the Roci’s interface for decades. He didn’t have to translate any of it. The red acute triangle was a Laconian destroyer falling away behind them. It wasn’t chasing. It was on a braking burn toward Draper Station. The white triangle was the corpse of the Sparrowhawk, receding from them, but only at the speed of the Roci’s escape run. And the green, blinking indicator was the debris field that had been the Gathering Storm—flagship of the underground’s forces.

It was a simple enough map. There weren’t enough ships or bases in Freehold to allow much subterfuge. He ran the math of transit times—how far ahead of the enemy they could be when they reached the ring gate if they kept to the present hard burn, how far ahead if they didn’t, how much of a lead they would need to get through the ring space and into some other system unfollowed. He ran a ladar sweep of a couple light-minutes ahead of them all the same before he let himself come to the conclusion he’d wanted to reach as soon as he read the question.

LOOKS CLEAR. WE CAN SPARK IT UP AGAIN IF WE HAVE TO.

In response, the thrust gravity eased back to half a g, and Jim’s spine cracked just above his sacrum as something slid back into place. He shifted carefully like he was waking from a long, restless sleep, and rolled to his side.

Naomi had already locked her couch and sat up. Her mouth was a thin, grim line. Her screen was an engineering report of the Roci’s core systems—reactor, recyclers, water tanks, missiles and PDCs, power. She went through it value by value, making sure that everything was where it should be, since their lives depended on the ship not failing. He wanted to reach out to her, take her hand in his, but that would have been for his comfort. She was already doing the thing that would make her feel better.

He opened a channel to the machine shop.

“How’s it looking down there? Everything good?”

The eerie hesitation in Amos’ voice had grown so familiar it was hardly eerie anymore. “Looking solid, except the dog’s got a little limp in her hindquarters. We’re going to give her a couple minutes to walk it off. If that doesn’t do it, we might take her to med bay and pop a little steroid in her hip.”

“Okay.” He dropped the connection.

Naomi had shifted her screen to a playback of the battle. Of the death of the Storm. Its destruction of the Sparrowhawk. The doomed dive into the teeth of the approaching Derecho. He had to think Alex was watching it too and seeing something very different. He’d served on the Storm for years. He knew the people who’d just died on it. Jim watched it on Naomi’s screen, trying to think how everyone else would make sense of it. How he did.

The two Laconian destroyers hurtled at each other, flinging torpedoes and PDC rounds until the resulting explosions blocked everything from view. The Derecho reappeared first, still under thrust, but its hull showing many glowing scars from Jillian’s furious assault. Then, when the Storm’s broken hull finally spun out the other side of the blinding cloud of violence, Jim heaved a sigh. It was the death of the underground, captured in low-resolution video. A glorious, ferocious death. But death all the same.

“Goodbye, Jillian,” Naomi said, whispering it like a prayer.

“We collect the most astonishingly brave people, don’t we?” Jim said. “And then we watch them die.”

Naomi smoothed her hair back and looked at him. “I thought Trejo was a man of his word.”

“He is,” Jim said. “I mean, he’s perfectly willing to commit atrocities. He’s not the good guys. But what happened back there, that wasn’t him.”

“And it happened anyway.” She bit the words as she spoke them.

“I was pretty sure I killed Tanaka back on New Egypt. This has the feel of a vendetta now.”

“So maybe he’s having as much trouble controlling his people as I am?” Naomi said, and went on before he could answer. “Jillian’s big heroic death screwed us. We’re fucked now.”

Jim flinched a little, imagining how the words would carry up to Alex. “She made a bad call. I mean, I understand the mistake. I’ve been known to act on my own judgment from time to time.”

He waited a few seconds before he went on.

“And when she saw what the situation really was, she saved us. She died saving us.”

“She lost us Draper Station,” Naomi said. “The minute she talked to Laconia, she lost us the base. Even if they’d made the deal, they were never going to politely decide to forget we had resources on that moon. They weren’t going to pretend not to know the Storm was in Freehold system.”

“They were going to bomb the cities. People she knows and loves. Her family.”

“They’re the enemy army,” Naomi said. “Do we just do what we’re instructed every time they tell us that they’re going to do what enemy armies do? If that’s the plan, we’ve been running down the wrong road for a long, long time.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“That we should have handed Teresa over? That we were wrong?”

“It’s not Jillian’s fault there was no good answer.” Naomi’s almost subliminal flinch at his words told him the rest. When he went on, he was gentler. “And it’s not your fault either.”

The flicker of her eyes was a conversation in itself: grief and exhaustion and despair, and also determination. The knowledge that they’d been playing the game of no-right-answer for decades, and that it would outlast them, the way history outlasted everyone.

That that was the best case.

Alex’s slow footsteps came from above them, then down the ladder. Jim had known the pilot for more years than he hadn’t, and he’d seen Alex in every mood from exultation to rage. He’d never seen him look so quietly, profoundly defeated. He’d grown a white wash of stubble on his cheeks since they’d started the run from Freehold. It reminded Jim of snow.

Alex lowered himself into one of the remaining crash couches and turned it so he could look at the two of them. They didn’t ask how he was, but he answered anyway. Just a shrug and a sigh and a turning to the next issue.

“Technically, we’re not at the ideal escape radius. If the destroyer did the hardest possible burn starting right now, it could be a squeeze getting out the Freehold gate and through another one in time to keep them from seeing where we went.”

“They’ll have wounded crew,” Naomi said. “They likely have some structural damage. And they’re still picking up Tanaka from Draper Station.”

“I don’t think they’ll do it, either. And if they tried, we could make them work for it anyway. Jillian topped up all our tanks. But I’d rather push a little less hard and conserve reaction mass for later.”

He didn’t say I don’t know when we’ll be able to fuel up again. He didn’t need to. He also didn’t ask where they were going or what the next plan was. The three of them sat together, the Roci ringing like a feather-rubbed gong, the musical whisper of a good ship. Jim didn’t know exactly what they were waiting for, except that the silence seemed right. When Alex spoke again, his voice was thicker.

“Bobbie always said Jillian needed watching. She liked getting her own way a little too much. Wasn’t just independence. She was independent, but she was a little mean too. You know?”

“Like her father,” Naomi said.

“She was smarter than her dad,” Alex said. “She’d have been a good captain if she’d had a few more years doing it. And the Storm was a good ship. Second best I’ve been on.”

“Really?” Jim said.

Alex shook his head. “No, it was creepy. Laconian ships all feel creepy. But I just watched a bunch of my friends die, so I’m feeling nostalgic.”

The comm channel opened before Jim could reply, and Teresa’s voice—punctuated by sharp, alarmed barking from her dog—interrupted them. “I’m in the med bay. I need help. He’s having another seizure.”

The medical systems did the best they could with Amos, which was mostly the expert system version of shrugging and saying Looks weird all the same ways he usually looks weird. Amos lay in the autodoc, his head resting on the little pale cushion. The utter blackness made his gaze hard to track, but Jim was pretty sure the mechanic was looking at him.

“How long was I out?”

“About half an hour,” Jim said. “How are you feeling?”

“Might skip my workout. This shit’s tiring.”

“It’s happening more often, isn’t it?”

“Nope.”

“Because it seems like it’s happening more often.”

“Well, yeah it is. But not because anything’s going bad. The doc’s pushing harder.”

Jim looked at the autodoc, confused. Amos shook his head.

“Okoye. She’s running on full burn trying to make sense of things out at Adro, and since all of us with—” He pointed to his eyes. “We’re all connected at the back. I get the spillover.”

“Really?”

“Pretty sure. Every time I get the wigglies, I come back up knowing more.”

“Like what?”

“Nothing useful,” Amos said. “There’s holes in the spectrum where the idea of being in a place breaks down. And there’s a kind of light that can think. I mean, it’s interesting I guess, but it doesn’t get the tools stowed.”

“Can you tell if she’s making progress?”

“It’s not like it’s a tightbeam. We don’t talk about stuff,” Amos said, then frowned. “Not exactly, anyway. More like I’m listening to someone doing shit in the next cabin over. And… You know how it is when there’s people in the room with you, and even if you’re not looking at them, you still know they’re there? It’s like that. There’s always three of us.”

“The girl and her brother,” Jim said.

“Not sure about that, but there’s three of us. I know it’s a pain in the ass with me getting messed up like this, but I don’t think there’s much I can do about it. I mean, besides train Tiny so she can cover for me.”

Jim was about to say I’m not sure I want a sixteen-year-old mechanic in charge of keeping us alive when a happy bark sounded from the hallway. A moment later, Muskrat and Teresa came in. The girl was carrying a tube from the galley in one hand and a drinking bulb in the other. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun that wouldn’t get in her eyes when they went on the float. Her mag boots were turned off, but she was wearing them. The dog was grinning and wagging her tail in a wide circle.

“Feeling better?” Teresa asked.

Jim was astonished by her casual, matter-of-fact manner. Even though he’d been crewed up with her for almost a year, some part of his mind wouldn’t let go of the memory of her as she’d been when he first met her on Laconia: a too-serious child with the weight of the empire on her shoulders, but still a child. She was old enough now to take long-term apprenticeship contracts, old enough to claim emancipation and her own rights on basic if she’d lived on Earth, old enough to see her only friend in the world suffer a massive seizure and take it in stride.

“I’m working my way back up,” Amos said.

“I got you white kibble and lemonade. Salt, sugar, and water. I figured, you know, electrolytes.”

Jim’s stomach shifted at the thought of food, and he wasn’t sure if it was hunger or nausea or a little of both.

“Thanks,” Amos said, holding out his hand. She slapped the tube smartly into his palm like she was giving him a tool. “You take the stress inventory?”

“It’s where I’m headed now,” she said, then turned toward Jim for the first time, met his gaze, and nodded before she left. Muskrat pushed over, demanding a scratch behind the ears from both Jim and Amos before trotting back after Teresa. If the old dog was having hip trouble after the hard burn cycles, Jim couldn’t see it.

“What’s on your mind, Cap?”

“Thinking what it would be like to be sixteen and important enough that people kill each other over you.”

“Yeah. It’s gonna fuck her up,” Amos agreed, amiably. “We did the only thing we could, though.”

“Keeping her?”

“Yeah.”

“I know,” Jim said with a sigh. “It’s going to be a problem, though. I don’t see Tanaka giving up.”

“She reminds me of Bobbie,” Amos said as if he was agreeing.

“Naomi is wondering if Trejo was always going to double-cross us.”

“You don’t?” Amos sucked at the tube of kibble and nodded for Jim to go on.

“I’ve never known Trejo to lie. I’ve never known Duarte to lie either, and he was the personality that set the tone for all of this. He was grandiose. He was ruthless. He was a genius at a couple of things and under the misapprehension that it meant he was smart about everything. But in his mind, he was doing the right thing.”

“The kind of guy, he’d feed you into a wood chipper, but he wouldn’t stiff you for his half of the bar tab,” Amos said. “I’ve known folks like that.”

“This Colonel Tanaka? I think she’s pissed off that she didn’t get us at New Egypt. Also, that I shot her in the face.”

“Yeah,” Amos agreed. “That’ll do it.”

“Think she’ll cool it if I explain I was just trying to kill her?”

“Seems like the right tentacle ain’t keeping track of what the left tentacle’s up to,” Amos said. “High command wants more than one thing, and running a galactic empire’s hard work. Maybe you’re right about Trejo. Maybe Tanaka just let it get personal and fucked up.”

They were silent for a long moment, then Jim sighed again. “The thing with hunting dogs is that once you let them off the leash, you’ve let them off the leash. They don’t stop until they catch what they’re going after.”

Amos went quiet for a moment, and Jim couldn’t tell if he was thinking or in one of his uncanny pauses. When he moved, it was like he turned back on.

“When I was back on Earth, I didn’t run with a hunting-dog kind of crowd,” Amos finally said. “But there was this guy I knew growing up who used to train police dogs. That’s kind of the same thing, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Jim said. “Maybe.”

“So this guy, he was pretty fucked up by the time I knew him. Addicted to a bunch of different stuff, and taking a long time dying from it, but he still liked the dogs. The thing he said was that the whole process was about trying to find which ones weren’t going to start fucking people up on their own recognizance. So he’d flunk out any of the puppies that didn’t train up right, and he’d spend a lot of time working with the ones that made the cut. Fucking well-trained, smart animals, but that was the problem too. You get a dog smart enough, they know when it’s a training exercise and when it’s not. He used to say that until you went in the field, you never really knew what kind of dog you had.”

“So you think Tanaka’s going to stay on us until she gets what she’s after.”

“Or we manage to kill her,” Amos said. “Not sure it makes much difference in the big picture.”

“I can’t see how this all plays out.”

“Sure you do. Everyone dies. That’s always been how it is. Only question now is whether we can find some way to not all go at once.”

“If we do, then civilization dies. Everything humanity has ever done goes away.”

“Well, at least there won’t be anyone who misses it,” Amos said, and sighed. “You’re overthinking this, Cap’n. You got now and you got the second your lights go out. Meantime is the only time there is. All that matters is what we do during it.”

“I just want to go out knowing that things will be okay without me. That it all keeps going.”

“That you’re not the one who dropped the ball.”

“Yeah.”

“Or maybe,” Amos said, “you’re not that important and it ain’t up to you to fix the universe?”

“You always know how to cheer me up.”