Tiamat's Wrath

Chapter Fifteen: Naomi

Getting what you want fucks you up. Naomi pushed the thought aside as she had a dozen times before.

The first part of breaking down her shelter was the easiest. She’d spent years on the float, sometimes running cargo herself, sometimes fighting smugglers for the OPA and the Transport Union. She knew all the tricks. Disassembling her crash couch and system into parts was the work of two hours. Everything she had was modular. Easy to take apart, easy to put into rotation as spare. Everything she’d had could dissolve back into the larger ship and not appear as anything more than a handful of off-by-one inventory miscounts.

The empty container was a little harder, but only a little. According to the manifest, her container was supposed to be filled with the same payload of Earth-farmed bacteria and microbes and starter soil as seventy other containers in the ship. Shifting the contents of just a dozen or so to a slightly less dense configuration left plenty of overage to fill the space that had been hers. By the time the supplies reached their destination, she’d be elsewhere. And even if Laconia backtracked the discrepancies, there wouldn’t be much to suggest anything more than run-of-the-mill theft.

The real problem was time. Well, the first real problem.

The Laconian ship was already on a braking burn. Eighteen hours to rendezvous didn’t leave her much time for everything she had to do. Emma was a help. The woman had more years working transport than Naomi did, and she could drive a loading mech like it was part of her body. Even so, they were cutting it close. And every hour of the mechs hissing and clacking, the smell of industrial lubricant, and the bone-deep ache of effort was another chance for the regular crew to notice that something strange was happening. Toward the end, Naomi sent Emma away to see whether there was any information about the larger picture. If other ships were being stopped. If this was a coincidence, or if the destroyer knew that Naomi was there.

Until she knew, she had to assume there was hope. Another motto for her life these days.

Naomi moved the last pallets into the steel and ceramic that had been her home for months, closed the doors, sealed them, and slapped a customs inspection sticker over the seam. She still had to stow the loader mech and replace the stickers on all the containers she’d cracked, but that wouldn’t take more than another few minutes. She had almost half a shift before the inspection. A little over four hours to reinvent herself and blend in with the ship’s crew. That was the second real problem …

Getting what you want fucks you up.

They’d been in a bar on Pallas-Tycho not long after the two stations had become a single object. Clarissa had been in relatively good health then. Strong enough she could go drinking, anyway. Naomi didn’t remember which bar they’d been in, except that it had gravity, so it had to have been in Tycho’s old habitation ring. She did remember that Jim had been there. They’d been talking about how to address Alex’s upcoming change in marital status. Whether he’d be bringing his new wife on the ship or taking a leave of absence to be with her or what. Every option had advantages, every one had drawbacks. Looking back, Naomi thought that on some level all of them knew that the relationship was doomed. Clarissa had leaned back in her chair, a glass of whiskey in her hand. Her voice was thoughtful. “Getting what you want fucks you up,” she’d said.

“When I was in jail, there was nothing I wanted more than to be anywhere else. Then I got out.”

“Into an apocalyptic hellscape,” Naomi said.

“But even after that. When we got up to Luna and when we got on the Roci. It was hard. I knew what I was when I was in prison. It took me years to figure out who I was outside.”

“We’re talking about marriage, aren’t we?”

“Getting what you want fucks you up,” Clarissa had said.

Naomi put her hand on the transport container. She’d put herself in prison in order to be safe, and her safety had turned her captive. All she wanted was to wake up next to Jim again. To have something like a pleasant, day-to-day life with him. And now that she couldn’t have it, all she wanted was her hermitage back.

Her hand terminal chimed. There was only one person it could be.

“Where do we stand?” she asked.

“I’ve got a plan,” Emma said. “Meet me in med bay three.”

“I don’t know where that is. Does the ship have a directory function? Because I don’t really think asking for directions is our best plan.”

“Shit. All right. Wait there. I’ll be down in ten. I can take you there.”

“Copy that,” Naomi said, and dropped the connection. It gave her time to reseal the containers.

Emma, on the float beside her, held the hypodermic needle between her finger and thumb like she was playing darts. Her technique aside, though, the plan was about as solid as Naomi could hope for at short notice. She stretched her chin up and Emma stabbed again, a quick pinch at her jawline at the right to match her already-swelling left.

“How’s that feel?” Emma asked.

“Itches,” Naomi said.

“Still up for the eyes?”

“Yeah.”

Inserting her into the ship’s roster wasn’t possible. Even if they could backdate all the paperwork to the Bhikaji Cama’s last port, Emma didn’t have the authorizations she’d need. And messing with the system immediately before an inspection was an invitation to disaster. Fail to shut down one logging system, and the last-minute change was a flashing pointer to whatever you most wanted hidden. So making Naomi into a regular crewman wasn’t possible, but making her not immediately match the biometrics for Naomi Nagata was in reach. All it took was a few well-placed needle sticks and some fluid that caused mild swelling. The only trick was changing the shape of her face in ways that made her look like someone else and not just herself, only puffy.

The med bay was old, but well put together. Nothing had the shine of the new. Everything was worn. But it was only worn, not neglected. Naomi had been around long enough to know the difference. She considered her new face in the hand terminal’s camera. Emma’s first move had been to shave her hair into an unflattering topiary that made her forehead seem wider and her eyes closer together. The swelling in her brow and jaw had thickened her features already. The system’s match to her normal appearance was only 80 percent. Enough that even if they identified her, it could be written off as a false positive.

Unless they already knew she was there.

“I’m putting you in with the crew working the heat sink,” Emma said. “Chief has them swapping out coolant exchanges.”

“Joy,” Naomi said.

“The stink’ll give you a reason to be wearing a mask,” Emma said. “And it’s a mixed-shift crew. Any luck, everyone will think you’re from the other one.”

Emma drove the needle into the flesh under Naomi’s eye. It only hurt a little. “How long do we have?”

Emma checked her terminal and spat out a low, grunting curse.

“We should go,” she said, dropping the needle into Naomi’s skin one last time. “They’re already positioning for transfer.”

“If they take me,” Naomi said, “I will try to hold out until you can get away. But go quickly, and make sure Saba knows what happened.”

Emma didn’t meet her eyes, but she nodded. This had always been a risk. It was what they’d signed up for. As Emma gave her a mask and led her down to the engineering decks, Naomi wondered how Bobbie and Alex would find out about it if she was captured. And what Jim would hear. The temptation was still there. If she did it—if she jumped instead of waiting for the push—she could control the fall.

The coolant lines on the Bhikaji Cama were an old design but in decent condition. She’d flushed lines like them back in her water hauler days, and the process wasn’t that hard. Punishing and foul, but not hard. There were four others on the team. Five people on a three-shift boat. It wasn’t much of a disguise.

The full process would run about four hours if nothing went wrong. She had to hope it was long enough for the Laconians to come, make their inspection and move on. All she would have to do was stay quiet and small until the danger passed. She fell into the work, taking orders from the foreman, doing her part with as little fuss as she could manage. She’d almost forgotten there was anything to worry about more pressing than not getting too much coolant in the air filters, when the interruption came.

“Make safe! Make safe! All you fucking bastards hold the work and make safe, yeah?”

The others all closed down the lines. Naomi did too. There wasn’t much choice.

The man who pulled himself past the yellow work barrier was dressed in a chief engineer’s uniform. Behind him, three soldiers in Laconian blues, one with a captain’s bars. Naomi hooked her foot into a wall handhold. Her heart was going fast, and a hint of nausea plucked at her that had nothing to do with the stink of coolant. The chief engineer motioned for them to take off their masks. The others started to comply. If she hesitated now, it would only call attention where she didn’t want it.

Naomi pulled off her mask.

“Was that discussed with senior staff?” the Laconian captain demanded, continuing whatever conversation they’d been having before they came in the room.

“No,” the chief engineer said. He was a younger man, but with a rough, scarred face that made him ageless. “Why would it be? Captain says it. We do it. That’s how it is. That a problem?”

One of the other Laconians held a hand terminal up to the face of her team foreman. The terminal chimed. Naomi felt a sick kind of peace descend over her.

“It’s an irregularity,” the Laconian captain said. “The political officer will want a full report when you reach the transfer station.”

“Political officer?” the chief engineer asked. Despite herself, Naomi’s ears pricked up. If this was related somehow to the mission in Sol—if Laconia was making a broad crackdown—maybe they weren’t here looking just for her. It was a thin hope, but it was something.

“New oversight regulations,” the Laconian captain said as the hand terminal tracked over Naomi’s face.

“Never heard of them.”

“You’re hearing about them right now,” the captain said.

The soldier frowned. “Sir? This one’s not on the crew list.”

I am Naomi Nagata. I would like to accept the invitation of High Consul Duarte. Please let him know. It was all she had to say. It would even be a relief, knowing that she’d done all that she could first. The chief engineer looked at her and shrugged. “Course she’s not. She’s on the apprentice program.”

The Laconian captain looked at her, uncertain. She kept the confusion off her face. No one on the ship but Emma was supposed to know she was there. Play along, she thought. Just play along.

“She’s old to be an apprentice,” the captain said.

“Had some trouble back home,” she said. “Trying to make something new.” The lie was easy.

“She needs to be on the crew rolls,” the Laconian captain said, turning away.

“Why?” the chief engineer asked. “She’s not crew. She’s an apprentice.”

“Apprentices are part of the crew,” the captain said, a note of exasperation in his voice.

“First I’ve heard of it,” the chief engineer said. “If I put her in, it starts counting her hours toward a benefits package like she was crew. That’s not how it works.”

“You can take that up with the political officer too,” the Laconian captain said. The last of the work crew was scanned and cleared.

As they left, the chief engineer looked back. His eyes met hers. There was a subterranean joy in them. “As you all were. Shit’s not going to maintain itself.”

“Yes, chief,” Naomi said, and put her mask back on.

They fell back into the familiar rhythms of labor, but Naomi’s mind was working on more than the lines. The others on the team didn’t seem to have noticed anything odd in the conversation. One of them—a thick-faced man called Kip—treated her a little worse, but that was probably just because he thought she was lower status now. Nothing odd about that. When the new exchange was in, the old one sealed, and the diagnostics all in optimal range, Naomi wanted nothing more than a shower and a meal. She didn’t have a cabin of her own, she didn’t know where the gang showers were, and she wouldn’t have a locker there. Even if she got to the right place, after she cleaned up, she’d have to put the same coolant-stinking jumpsuit back on. That seemed worse than not cleaning up in the first place.

She followed the others as they headed back to the crew decks. Lagging behind. She wanted to go to her container. The urge to check her incoming feeds itched as badly as her jawline where the swelling was just starting to go down. But it was gone. Months of habit had just become irrelevant, and she pulled herself along the off-white halls, moving from handhold to handhold with the feeling of having woken from a long dream to find herself in some foreign station where she didn’t belong.

The mess hall had six people in it, but it was built for thirty or more. She pulled herself to a dispenser, but couldn’t get food. It wanted an access code or ID match that she didn’t have. She went to a corner by herself, bracing on a wall-mounted foothold, and waited without knowing what exactly she was waiting for.

Her thoughts moved in the silence of other people’s conversations. When, after an hour or so, Emma appeared, Naomi was almost surprised to see her. The woman pulled a double share of food and brought it over.

“They’ve moved on,” Emma said quietly. “Docked, ran down the whole fucking ship stem to stern, told the captain that he’d need to talk to someone at the transfer station, and gone.”

“Political officer,” Naomi said. “I heard. We got word of one heading for the transfer station in Sol system too. Earth.”

“Well, looks like we have political officers now,” Emma said sourly.

Naomi nodded with one fist. The crackdown was broad, then. A tightening of control over the whole Transport Union. More than that, it might be a sign that Duarte and his machinery were starting to suspect the Transport Union’s role in smuggling the underground from system to system. Or had other plans that wanted loyal and trusted eyes beyond the governors and their staffs.

If they found the shell game, it could mean a serious retooling of their methods at best. At worst, the end of the underground. With Medina in control of the slow zone and their methods of transportation exposed, they were in real danger of becoming thirteen hundred fragmented, isolated movements, unable to support or help each other.

“No one checked you, though?” Emma said.

“Oh, they checked her,” a voice said behind them. The chief engineer floated over and took position beside them. “They caught her.”

Emma blanched. So apparently she hadn’t been behind that.

“I appreciate you covering for me,” Naomi said. “It might be better for you if we just kept it at that. I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“Are you kidding?” the chief engineer said. “That was the best thing that’s happened to me since I signed up for this haul. Seriously, it was my pleasure.”

“I appreciate your enthusiasm, but—”

He handed her a card. “Override access to a private cabin and a commissary account,” he said. “It’s off the books, so even if there’s an audit, it’ll just come back as unused and overages.”

Naomi looked at it, then at him. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, they said. But it was bad advice. “I’m guessing there’s something you’ll want in return? Because I think we’re going to need to be very, very clear what that is.”

“No,” the chief engineer said. “Nothing. You’ve already paid me out. I’m just glad I get the chance to hand some back.”

“Excuse me for being rude,” Naomi said, “but I’ve never really trusted the whole kindness-of-strangers bit.”

“You’re not a stranger,” the chief engineer said. “You’re the reason I’m an engineer. My dad was a kid on Ceres when the Free Navy stripped it. You and your crew? You put your hands out in peace in the middle of a civil war. You built the Transport Union. As far as I’m concerned, we should kick the captain out of his quarters and give them to you. You more than earned them.”

Naomi reached for her hair, trying to pluck it down over her face, but Emma’s haircut didn’t leave enough for that. “You know who I am, then.”

The chief engineer coughed out a laugh. “Of course I do. Anyone in the Belt’s going to know Naomi fucking Nagata. It’s just these Laconian fucks who can’t see what they’re looking at. And again, it’s a real honor.”

“Chuck,” Emma said, and her tone made the word a warning.

“I won’t say it again,” the chief engineer—Chuck—said, lifting a hand. “But don’t either one of you worry. I’ll get you shuttle access as soon as we’re close to port. You’re safe with me.”

Naomi nodded her thanks, and Chuck beamed. She saw now how young he was. His delight with himself made her heart ache a little. He’d gotten away with something, and his pride was bright enough to read by. She even had a sense of what she must look like through his eyes—a demigod. A figure from myth appearing in his life. A celebrity. God knew she’d seen enough people look at Jim with that expression. This must be what it had been like for him all those times.

It was a feeling she could easily learn to hate.