Leviathan Falls

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Tanaka

Tanaka knew as soon as they made the transit that the trail had gone cold, but it took time to confirm it.

Gewitter Base was Laconia’s largest military installation in the Bara Gaon system. Made up of three rotating rings spinning around a central zero-g dry dock, it housed nearly seven thousand permanent officers and personnel. Two Storm-class destroyers remained on constant combat patrol around the station, monitoring all traffic through Bara Gaon’s ring and tracking the commercial traffic moving through the system.

Bara Gaon was one of the Laconian Empire’s most important industrial hubs. Bara Gaon-5 was a ball of soil and water placed in the exact center of the goldilocks zone, and with so little tilt to its axis that its seasonal changes were nothing more than mild suggestions. Significant volcanic activity in its early formation meant the crust was full of useful metals, and the soil was well suited for adaptation to Earth organics. In orbit around it, the Bara Gaon Complex floated, a massive construct of shipyards and low-gravity production facilities.

The tracking systems from Gewitter they’d linked to the Derecho showed that, in addition to the two destroyers, there were four deep-space telescopic satellites, three dozen Laconian radio listening stations, and seventy-three ships currently under thrust in the system.

Not one of them had seen the Rocinante come through the ring.

While the Rocinante might flee into the system and then try to get the underground to help them hide, it was impossible to believe they could have made the transit without being spotted.

Tanaka had the SigInt people run a deep background on the system’s governor to make sure she wasn’t on the take from the resistance, but it was pro forma. Tanaka didn’t expect them to find anything. She’d just followed the wrong lead.

“It looks like it was a supply ship out of Firdaws called the Forgiveness,” Botton said, standing next to her at the bar in Gewitter’s upscale officers’ club. He laid his terminal on the bar and pulled up a holographic 3-D model. “Former colony ship owned by a liability collective and run by Captain Ekko Levy.”

The décor was a tacky style they called Martian Classical. Lots of fake wood and polished metal mirrors surrounding carved stone tabletops. A few other people sat at the tables, chatting and drinking and eating mediocre pub food. But the lighting was good, and the music was low enough to allow for quiet conversations. After a few weeks on the Derecho staring at the same cloth-covered bulkheads every day, even the club’s fake wood paneling felt like luxury.

“No chance they were a deliberate decoy to pull us off the trail?” Tanaka said, knowing the answer before Botton replied.

“They don’t show up in any intelligence databases. If we were confused by the timing of their ship making the transit out of the ring space, it seems more likely that it was unintentional on their part.”

If we were confused. Botton was being diplomatic. This was her mission. She was calling the shots.

“We followed the wrong scent,” she said.

“It looks that way,” Botton replied. Tanaka shot him a look of irritation. She wasn’t looking for his agreement. Botton’s expression didn’t change. He waved the bartender over and ordered a second beer as if he hadn’t noticed.

As Tanaka brooded over her options, the bartender brought Botton his beer and a bowl of dried and salted seaweed flakes. He looked at her, as though trying to gauge whether asking her if she wanted another drink was more dangerous than ignoring her entirely. He made the right call and walked away without a word.

After the silence had stretched out long enough to make her point, Tanaka said, “I’ll check my other leads. In the meantime, call up signal intelligence. Put the word out to every ship and relay on the network. They’ll be running without a transponder, but we’ve got the Rocinante’s drive signature and hull profile.”

“Copy that,” Botton said, and started to leave, most of his second beer still sitting on the counter.

“Also? Go back over the sensor data we took in when we passed through the ring gate. Run the analysis again, omitting Bara Gaon. Maybe there’s something there we overlooked.”

“Aye, aye, Colonel.”

“And make sure they understand,” Tanaka said, “that finding this ship is a security priority. Failing to report will be considered an act of sedition and punished by being sent to the Pen.”

“I thought Major Okoye ordered the dismantling of the Pen?”

“I’ll build a new one.”

“Understood,” Botton said, and left the bar in an overly casual hurry.

She pulled up her personal message queue and started the long process of demanding reports. The questioning of Duarte’s friends and intimates hadn’t turned up any other visitations, but the interviews of second-degree connections were ongoing. It looked like a dead end to her, but there was someone on Laconia whose job was to tell her so, and they could fucking well do that. Ochida hadn’t gotten her an updated study of the egg-ship thing. She sent a request for that. It queued. There was congestion at the repeater network because of interference coming off the ring gates. Three notifications were waiting for her with intelligence about San Esteban and the death count there, not that she had any clear idea what she was supposed to do about it. Feel bad that she hadn’t found Duarte in time for… what? For him to stop it from happening? Everything about the situation chafed.

The bartender risked returning. “Anything else I can get for you, Colonel?” he asked, giving the bar top in front of her his friendliest smile while he said it.

“Club soda,” she said, then taking a guess, “Chief?”

“Jay gee,” he said, risking a look up from the bar and into her eyes for a second, then looking back down. “Commandant doesn’t like enlisted working in here. Says it’s bad for morale.”

“Whose? Theirs or ours?” Tanaka asked, taking a pull off the soda water the bartender had poured while he spoke. It had just a hint of artificial lime flavoring that tasted like fancy soap.

“The commandant didn’t share his thoughts on that with me,” the bartender said, and started to move away.

“Still,” Tanaka said. It slowed him. Pulled him back. “Pouring drinks is a shit detail for a lieutenant. Even a junior grade. Probably not what you imagined doing when you were killing yourself to get through the academy.”

The bartender locked eyes with her now. He wasn’t bad looking. Dark hair and eyes. The hint of a dimple in his chin. He had to know who she was. What her rank and status meant. But he stared at her for a moment, trying very hard not to show any fear before he spoke. “No, Colonel, it’s not. But I’m an officer in the Laconian Navy. I serve at the pleasure of the high consul.” He managed to get some playfulness into his tone, even if it was a little forced.

Tanaka felt a familiar warmth and tug in her belly. She didn’t trust it. She was angry, she was frustrated, and the whatever-the-hell-it-was in the ring space had thrown her farther off true than she wanted to admit. She’d spent her career teaching herself how to cultivate and protect her secret lives. Taking risks when she wasn’t fully in command of herself was not on the list of good ideas.

And yet.

“You heard about San Esteban?” she asked before he could step away. “Hell of a thing. Whole system wiped out, just like that.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“That’s related to my work. My mission. No details, of course. But… I don’t know. We’re here, and then we’re gone. No warning. No second chances. It could happen here, and you and me and everyone on this station would be…” She shrugged.

“You think that’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t invest my tip money in long-term bonds. You know, just in case.”

He smiled, and there was fear in it. A different kind of fear. Young men didn’t like feeling mortal. It made them want to prove they were alive.

“Do you have a name, Lieutenant?”

“Randall,” he replied. “Lieutenant Kim Randall. Sir.”

He had to be forty years her junior. And the difference in their ranks was a yawning chasm that he’d be lucky to cross in a lifetime. An affair with someone of a lower rank was still a violation of the Laconian Military Code, and now that she had Omega status, literally everyone in the military outside of Fleet Admiral Trejo was a lower rank than her. But her status also put her effectively outside the law. Which took away some of what made it worth doing.

She was hungry, though. Not for sex, though that was how she was going to fix it. For control. For the sense that she wasn’t vulnerable. That she was able to exert her will over a hostile universe in the form of this boy’s body.

“So, Lieutenant Randall,” she said. “Even though my ship is docked, they gave me a room here on the station.”

“Did they?” Kim moved away, wiping down the bar top as he went.

“They did,” Tanaka said. “Would you like to see it?”

Kim froze, then turned back to look at her. He looked her up and down once, as though really seeing her for the first time. Making sure he’d understood her offer, and gauging his interest. And then Kim’s gaze landed on her ruin of a cheek for a moment, and he gave a barely perceptible flinch. It felt like a slap. She even felt her ruined cheek get warm.

A rush of emotions and reactions welled up in her, as unfamiliar as a bus filled with random strangers. Insecurity, shame, sorrow, embarrassment. She could put names to each of them, and the names were all ones she’d suffered under before. But these were different. The sting of embarrassment was like feeling it for the first time. The sorrow was a flavor of sorrow she’d never generated before. The shame was a different nuance of shame. She knew the feelings, genus and species, but they belonged to someone else. Some crowd of others who had sunk invisible wires into her heart.

Kim, seeing the confusion on her face, started to show cracks in his fearless facade. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Colonel,” he said, emphasizing her rank. Making his rejection about that. Making it about being a good, rule-abiding Laconian and not the ragged mess that was her face.

Tanaka felt her cheeks getting warmer, and her eyes began to itch at the corners. Fuck me, am I getting ready to cry because some fucking JG bartender doesn’t think I’m pretty enough to screw? What is happening to me?

“Of course,” she said, horrified at the thickness in the words.

She stood up, careful not to knock over her bar stool, and turned away before pretty little Lieutenant Randall with his fearless smirk and his dimpled chin could see the water in her eyes. “Colonel,” Kim said, an edge of surprise or worry in his voice. Good. Let him worry. Tanaka left without answering.

On her way out the door, she caught a glimpse of herself in a wall-mounted mirror. The angry red topographical map of her cheek. The way the skin pulled at her eye, giving her a slight droop to the lower eyelid. The white ridgeline where the school medic had sewn her face back together after James Holden blew it apart.

Am I ugly? a voice in her mind said.

It wasn’t her. It was a small voice. A child’s. Tanaka could almost picture the face saying it, curly red hair and green eyes and a nose covered in freckles. The face was looking up at her, on the edge of tears, and hearing those words come out of her mouth broke Tanaka’s heart. The memory was as clear as if she’d lived it, hearing the pain in her daughter’s voice and wanting to wipe the thought away and kill the little boy who’d put it there. Knowing she couldn’t do either. Love and pain and impotence.

Tanaka had never had a daughter, and she didn’t know the fucking kid.

She clamped her jaw until she could hear her own blood rumbling in her ears and the memory faded. She tapped at the handheld wrapped around her arm and said, “Get me an appointment with the medical division.”

“What can I schedule you for, sir?” the girl asked. She was probably just a little south of thirty. Dark-haired, round-faced, with an olive cast to her skin and a professionally pleasant demeanor.

There’s something wrong in my head, Tanaka thought. A ship started going dutchman, and then it came back, and whatever saved it broke me. There’s something wrong in my mind.

“I was injured,” she said, and pointed sharply at her wounded cheek. “In the field. I haven’t been at a real medical center since. I wanted… someone to check the regrow.”

“I’ll let Captain Gagnon know you’re his next patient,” the dark-haired girl said. She hadn’t been born yet when Laconia became its own nation. She’d never known a universe without the gates. She was like looking at a different species. “You can wait in the officers’ lounge if you’d like.”

“Thanks,” Tanaka said.

Twenty minutes later, she was having her face gently pressed and prodded. Doctor Gagnon was a short, thin man with a shock of bright white hair that stood nearly straight up from his head. He reminded Tanaka of a character from a children’s show. But his voice was deep and somber, like a priest or a funeral director. Every time he spoke, she felt like she was being scolded by a puppet.

A series of images glowed on the wall screen. Several pictures of her cheek, both inside and out. A scan of her jaw and teeth. Another of the blood vessels in her face. She could see the ragged mark where her old skin ended and the new growth began more clearly in the scans than in her mirror. The sense of something new growing in her, replacing her flesh with something else, made her uncomfortable.

“Yes,” Gagnon said in his bass rumble, sounding disappointed. Maybe in her. “The damage was significant, but this is repairable.” He waved one hand at the image of her jawline. The broken teeth and healed fractures showing up as jagged lines against the smooth white.

“And the cheek,” Tanaka said, not making it a question.

Gagnon waved that away with one impatient flick of his tiny hand. “The field work wasn’t bad. I wouldn’t say that. But there’s no texturing or tone-matching. If we don’t do that, you’ll wind up walking around with half your face looking like a newborn’s ass. But the medic on the Sparrowhawk did a decent job with the vasculature. I was worried about the potential damage to the jaw. If the bone was in danger of dying, we’d want to replace the whole thing. But…”

He gestured at the images of her, of her inner flesh, as if she could judge her health for herself.

Tanaka tried to picture her face, jawbone removed, and waiting while they grew her a replacement, her mouth hanging loose and formless. Her scalp tightened at the image. That, at least, was one indignity she’d dodged.

“How long?”

Gagnon’s bushy white eyebrows rose like a pair of startled caterpillars. “Will that be an issue?”

“Maybe.”

He folded his hands in his lap like a sculpture of the Madonna.

“It might be better to wait until your current mission is complete, then, before beginning,” Gagnon said, his voice sounding deeply worried about her life choices.

The memory of a small redhead asked if she was ugly. The rawness, and the vulnerability, and the overwhelming pain of her love for the child. The humiliation in her ringing like a wineglass.

“Jesus fuck,” she whispered, shaking her head.

“Excuse me?”

“I said no. Start now.”

“What are you in for?” a voice asked from very far away. Tanaka tried to open her eyes, but the world was in a twenty-g burn, and the lids weighed a thousand pounds.

“Mmmbuhhh,” she said.

“Oh, shit, sorry,” the voice said, from not quite as far away. Male. Gravelly. Off to her left. “Didn’t see you were sleeping. Just heard them wheel you in.”

“Mmmuh,” Tanaka said in agreement, and someone eased down on the acceleration and her eyes opened. Bright white light crashed into them, frying her optic nerve. She slammed her lids shut. She tried to find her body with her hands, and something limp and flopping like a dying fish skipped across her chest.

“Yeah, give it a minute,” the man said. “You must be post-op. When they put you under, they put you all the way under. Takes a minute to climb back out.”

Tanaka tried to nod in agreement, and her head fell over to the side. The world continued to ease down on its acceleration, and she was able to straighten her head and risk opening her eyes again. The room was still too bright, but it wasn’t a laser shooting into her brain anymore. She’d made a mistake, but she couldn’t quite recall what it was.

She looked down at herself. She was dressed in a hospital gown that only came down to her knees. Her calves, marathon-runner thin and covered with knots and scars, poked out of it. Her hands were lying limp on her chest. The left had a tube running out of a vein on the back.

She felt a brief moment of panic, then a voice said I’m in a hospital. I just had facial reconstruction surgery. I’m fine. The voice, which was both her own and a stranger’s, reassured her.

“You okay?” Gravel Man asked. “Should I call someone?”

“No,” Tanaka managed. “I’m fine. I just had facial reconstruction surgery.” She stopped herself before telling him that they were in a hospital. He probably knew.

Now that the gravity in the room only felt like the one-third g of Gewitter Station’s rotation again, Tanaka risked rolling her head to the side to get a look at him.

It turned out he was mostly not visible, buried inside the mass of medical machinery that surrounded his bed. No wonder he hadn’t been able to see her when they rolled her bed into the room. But Tanaka could see the top of his head, graying blond hair in a high-and-tight military cut. At the bottom of his bed, past the machines that nearly covered him, one callused foot poked out.

“That had to suck, huh,” Gravel Man said.

“I got shot,” Tanaka said before she’d even thought about it. I’m still a little under, her voice told her. Be careful what you say. Keep your secrets secret.

“In the face?” Gravel Man said, then gave a wheezing laugh. “Most people get shot in the face, surgery ain’t necessary, you know? Needing to get patched up sounds like a win to me. Congrats on another day outside the recycler.”

“Hurt, though.”

“Oh, I bet it did. I just bet it fucking did.” Gravel Man wheezed another laugh.

“You?” Tanaka said.

“Face is about the only piece of me ain’t all fucked up. My patrol skiff was chasing smugglers. Followed ’em to what we figured was their drop point. Shitty little asteroid not much bigger than our ship was. Got close to look it over…”

He trailed off. Tanaka waited, wondering if he’d fallen asleep, or if the memory was simply too painful to talk about.

“Then BOOM motherfucker!” Gravel Man wheezed out. “Whole rock goes. Wasn’t no smuggler. Was some underground shithead looking to bag him some Laconians. The skiff folded up like it was made outta tinfoil. Ricky and Jello never even saw it coming. But the ship folded around me like it was designed to cut off everything I didn’t need to live, and keep me from bleeding to death at the same time.”

The gruff good humor of it—my friends died, and I got injuries I may never heal from, ain’t that a laugh?—hid a symphony of mourning and grief, but she could hear it. That wasn’t new. She could feel it with him, and that part was.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Tanaka said. She felt pins and needles shoot through her arms and legs. She tested clenching her fists. She felt weak as a baby, but her fingers moved when she told them to. That was a good start.

“Yeah,” Gravel Man said.

I’m sorry for your loss was just the bullshit you say to someone you’ve just met when they tell you their sad story. Gravel Man knew it. Tanaka knew it too.

“I lost my brother,” she said, her voice thick with an overwhelming grief. She didn’t have a brother.

“Bomb?”

“Climbing accident,” she said. She saw his face, the image of him twisted at the cliff bottom. The rope looped around him like a snake. The vast sorrow that came with the image threatened to wash her away.

What is happening to me? she asked the voice in her head. Stop lying to this guy. But she wasn’t lying. The only answer was a sob that shook her chest.

“Hey,” Gravel Man said, “it’s okay. They’re putting me back together all right. I mean, yeah, sucks about Rick and Jelena not making it, but that’s the job, right?”

I’m not crying for you, Tanaka wanted to tell him, but part of her was. Part of her was remembering the brother who fell down the cliff, remembering the way his limbs twisted around the rocks at the bottom, his empty vacant eyes. And that part was sobbing for Jello and Ricky and the people they left behind when a bomb snatched them out of the world. But most of her was just scared. What is happening to me?

“Hey, I’m Chief Byrd,” Gravel Man said. “Lias Byrd. You are?”

I don’t know.

Before Tanaka could answer, the door opened and Gagnon walked in furiously tapping at a terminal in his hand. When he saw that she was awake, he slapped the terminal against his arm and it curled around him.

“Glad to see you alert, Colonel,” Gagnon said.

“Shit, sorry for talking your ear off, Colonel,” Byrd said. Tanaka could hear in his voice the way the revelation of her rank instantly changed the nature of their relationship. She felt an unfamiliar pang of regret.

Gagnon ignored Byrd entirely and began checking over Tanaka’s vitals on the wall screen above her bed.

“Hey, Chief,” Tanaka said.

“Aye, Colonel?”

“You hang in there, sailor. We’ll both be walking out of this place. I’m just going first.”

“Copy that, sir.”

Gagnon looked down at the terminal wrapped around his wrist for a moment, then patted Tanaka on the hand. “Everything looks good. You get some rest now, and we’ll get you discharged tomorrow. We’ll want to schedule some follow-up in the next—”

“What about Chief Byrd?” Tanaka said.

“Who?” Gagnon looked baffled.

“Chief Byrd. He’s in the next bed. How’s he doing?”

Gagnon shot a look at Byrd’s bed, barely registering it. “Oh, I see. I’m afraid he’s not my patient.” He went back to tapping on his wrist terminal.

When it happened, it happened without conscious thought. Like running a preprogrammed sequence in her power armor. Suddenly her limbs just snapped into action and she was merely along for the ride. One moment she was looking up at Gagnon tapping on his wrist.

Blink.

She was on top of Gagnon on her bed, her knees on his shoulders, his bloody and terrified face looking up at her as she slammed her fist into it again.

“Did I ask if he was your fucking patient!” she heard herself yelling as she drove her left fist into his eye, the IV tube torn out and blood flying off it as she swung. “Did I fucking ask if he was your patient!”

Her blood was singing in her veins. She felt wide and tall and alive in a way that violence often gave her. And then, like a pail of cold water thrown in her face, she was wide awake and very afraid. She climbed off the bed and stepped back. Gagnon slid off and to the ground, making soft, pained animal sounds.

“Colonel?”

Her gaze cut over to Byrd. Now that she was standing, she could see his face. His pale blue eyes were wide. She pointed at him.

“I’m going to make sure they take care of you,” she said. But in the privacy of her mind, the small, still part of her that watched all the rest was thinking: I am fucked.

“Th-thanks,” Byrd said. “I’ll be okay, Colonel. I’m all right.”

“I’m going to make sure,” she said.

She turned and marched out the doors. Two armed guards approached her, then backed away. Her hospital gown was slipping off her shoulders, and she grabbed it before she flashed everyone in the corridor her tits. She was probably already showing her ass to half Gewitter Station’s medical personnel. It all seemed very distant.

It felt like hours or seconds before she found the intake desk. The same dark-haired girl was sitting at it. Her soft young eyes went wide as Tanaka stalked over to her.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“Good.” Tanaka took a deep breath, centered her spine, and spoke with as precise an enunciation as she could, given her bandages and her wounds. “I would like to schedule a psych eval.”