Tiamat's Wrath

Chapter Seventeen: Alex

Hiding a ship in space wasn’t all that different from hiding on a school playground. Find something bigger than you, and put it between you and the person looking. Even without something to hide behind it wasn’t impossible. Space was vast, and the things that floated through it were mostly cold and dark. If you could find a way not to radiate heat and light, it was possible to get lost in the mix.

Alex ran a map of the Jovian system forward in time, then back again. The moons spun around the gas giant, then reversed and spun back to their starting places. Possible paths shot through the imaginary space like threads of copper, tracing the complex interactions of thrust and temperature and the ever-changing invisible clockwork of interacting gravity. And as he manipulated the variables—what paths became open if they could add another half a degree to the ship, what closed down if they shortened the burn time—the paths blinked in and out of existence. A plan slowly began to form.

Finding an escape route to get the Storm off Callisto before the Laconian battleship came in range meant plotting a course off the moon that only included engine burns when the massive bulk of Jupiter was between them and the inner system, and then floating cold and dark when they were in the open. That narrowed the range down. But it was still a little more complicated than that.

Io, Europa, and Ganymede all had observation stations that might be in Laconian control and could pick up their launch and flag it as suspicious. He also needed to plan the launch for a time when Callisto had Jupiter between it, the sun, and the other three Galilean moons. Alex ran the orbital simulation forward again. A solution existed. There was a window where Callisto was alone on the antisunward side of Jupiter, caught in its shadow long enough to get the Storm off the ground. It made for a tight window. Maybe too tight.

They did have a few advantages. The Storm’s skin returned an extremely low radar profile compared to other ships. Her internal heat sinks could store days of waste heat. And when necessary, capillary-like microtubules in the ship’s skin could be flushed with liquid hydrogen to ensure that the hull’s outer temperature remained only a few degrees warmer than space. It was a very stealthy ship when it was flying dark. If the Laconians were looking for a standard rock hopper or salvaged military ship, the Storm could look too small to fit the profile. He checked the hydrogen supply, adjusted the temperature variables in his search, and looked again. The window opened a crack wider.

They could take off from Callisto when the moon was behind Jupiter, then do one very hard burn with the planet blocking line of sight to the Tempest and any other inner-planet observation posts. It wouldn’t keep other ships and minor posts from picking up the drive plume—there were just too many eyes in the system to evade all of them, no matter how complex his flight path. But between running cold and keeping the main observers blocked, he could get a decent delta-v for a few hours. Then they could kill the burn and float dark for as long as the heat sinks held up. Once they’d put a little distance between themselves and the Jovian system, cozied up to the gravitational low-energy paths that the Belters and salvage miners used, they could fade in their fake transponder, start a very gentle burn toward the ring, and hope they looked like just one of dozens of ships headed that way.

Once they were far enough away, put in a call to Saba and see if any of the union ships had room to scoop them up and get them the hell out of Sol system.

It was pretty damn thin, as escape plans went. But they were living in thin times.

Alex ran the simulation back and forth, adding in various launch and escape burn projections until he’d come up with a plan that the computer agreed gave them the best chance of success. If he hadn’t overlooked anything. If the variables were weighted correctly. If the gods didn’t just hate them that day.

He leaned back, and his skull throbbed like his brain had an appointment elsewhere. He stretched his neck. The muscles felt like he’d been punched. There had been a time he could go for hours fine-tuning a flight plan. And he still could, but the price was higher. He swatted the desk to shut down the holographic map display. The room lights came up on the small and dingy working space he was occupying during their stay on Callisto. A desk that fed directly to the Storm’s system so that none of his queries would leak out to Callisto’s larger data environment. A wall screen with access to a couple thousand different information and entertainment streams. A combination sink, toilet, and shower alcove in the corner that included a rank mildew smell free of charge. It even had a cot with a flat pillow and threadbare blanket if he decided not to head back to his coffin hotel. All the discomforts of a naval base bachelor pad. It didn’t make him nostalgic.

He was stirring a chalky analgesic powder into a glass of water, the grains of medicine swirling like stars, when his terminal began playing the first few bars of his favorite Dust Runners song. “Accept connection,” he yelled at it, then gulped down his medicine. The bitterness crawled up his tongue like a living thing, and he shuddered. “Yo, Bobbie, what’s up?”

“Meet me at the dining room in twenty,” she said, then closed the connection before he could ask a question.

Dining room was just a code phrase for a small storage compartment off a seldom-used side tunnel. It was one of half a dozen rooms they’d designated for secret meetings. They were swept every couple of days for listening devices, and members of Bobbie’s strike team dressed in civilian clothes kept an eye on them to see if anyone else was going in or out.

Alex’s time in the military had all been on board ships or on naval bases waiting for a shipboard assignment. He’d never been a spy or special forces operator like Bobbie. He found the built-in paranoia that came with a secret mission lifestyle exhausting.

“I should probably pick up some food,” he said to his terminal. It beeped a recognition at him, then sent an order to a noodle shop in the lower medina. The owner of the shop was a resistance member who would send a pickup notification to Caspar. It was another code. He wasn’t even vaguely hungry, but if someone heard him or got a copy of the signal, it sounded innocuous. Nothing about his life was what it looked like anymore.

Ten minutes later Alex walked into the back room of the noodle shop and found Caspar waiting for him. When they weren’t using the space for secret meetings, it was the noodle shop’s dry goods pantry, and boxes of supplies were stacked up against most walls. The station’s heating ducts had been closed off, so the room stayed about ten degrees cooler than the shop itself, and Alex could just see his breath in the air.

“How long do you need?” the kid asked without preamble.

“Dunno. Give me two hours, then we’ll meet up at the casino. Blackjack. I’ll be at the five-dollar table.”

“Copy that,” Caspar said. He pulled off the heavy hooded jacket he was wearing and handed it to Alex. Alex put the jacket on and passed his terminal to Caspar. The kid would wander the station for a couple hours. Anyone who was tracking Alex by terminal location would be sent on a merry chase. It was unlikely that anyone was tracking any of them. The terminals were as stripped down and anonymized as it was possible to make them. If their false identities had been cracked, they would probably already have been picked up by security and interrogated by Laconian operatives. But Bobbie had laid down the operational security law, and they all followed her rules to the letter.

Caspar took the terminal and stuffed it into his jumpsuit pocket, then gave Alex a cheery little wave and headed for the door. “Wait,” Alex said.

“Everything okay?” Something in Alex’s tone had put a little worry line between the younger man’s eyes. Nothing is okay, Alex wanted to reply, but didn’t.

“Just be careful. Something happens to you, it doubles my workload.” He tried to make it a joke, but it fell flat. The line between Caspar’s eyes deepened.

“I don’t need you to daddy me, Alex. I know my job.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Alex said, then leaned against the wall and rubbed his eyes. His headache made him want to press his face against it. Only a thin layer of composites and insulation separated him from the natural tunnel. Maybe some ice that was as old as the solar system itself would be cool enough to numb the throb in his temples.

“It’s no big deal,” Caspar said. “But my father pulled up stakes when I was seven. I didn’t need one then, and I don’t now.”

“Fair enough. Truth is …”

Caspar waited. Alex heaved a sigh.

“Truth is I’m worried shitless about my own kid, and I’m just projecting onto you. Don’t take it as anything else, okay?”

Alex waited for Caspar to leave, but he didn’t. Instead he sat down on a stack of boxes labeled

SOY NOODLES

“What? No, I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t fuck around, Alex. I have family too.”

“It’s not that,” Alex said. He spotted a small bag of dehydrated onion flakes and picked it up. It felt cold in his hand, and heavenly when he pressed it to his temple. Caspar sat on his boxes, staring and bouncing one knee impatiently.

“Then what is it?”

“He’s getting serious,” Alex said. “Maybe even married. Probably married. It’s just making me think about how much I don’t want to mess things up for him. You always think you’re going to leave things better for your kid than you found them for yourself. That’s not working out for me.”

Alex moved his bag of onions to the other side of his head, but it had started to warm up.

“Worrying feels like you’re at least doing something,” Caspar said. “I get it. When I started flying for the union, I worried about my mom so that I wouldn’t feel guilty for leaving her behind.”

“You’re too smart for your age,” Alex said. “But yeah, that’s probably it. Or close enough. I was a shit father long before I left my family to play revolutionary.”

“I dunno,” Caspar said, then stood up. “My father took off because my mother asked him to stop spending the rent money on pixie dust. You’d win father of the year if it was down to a two-man race.”

“Thanks,” Alex said, and surprised himself by laughing. “That’s a hell of a compliment.”

Alex’s terminal buzzed in Caspar’s pocket. The kid pulled it out, then said, “Cap wants to know where the fuck you are.”

“On my way.”

The dining room was an abandoned storage space about six meters square with spray foam insulation walls and a carbon fiber door that didn’t even have a latch. Piping that entered through the walls and then just ended hinted at a past as a machine room, though what infrastructure used to occupy the space was lost to history. A tiny green chalk X had been placed on the lower left-hand corner of the door and was surrounded by other graffiti. The graffiti was mostly gang boasts and assertions of sexual prowess. The green X meant the room had been swept for surveillance less than thirty hours ago and found to be clean. If it had been red, the underground would have left the devices in place and abandoned the room.

Bobbie was waiting for him when he arrived. Impatience in the former Marine eluded most people. She didn’t pace. She never bounced a knee or a foot. The only time he’d ever heard her crack her knuckles was before they sparred in the gym. But Alex knew something was up the moment he walked into the room. She was standing perfectly still, but she was stiff, as though she was half flexing every muscle in her body.

“You’re late,” she said.

“I got caught up talking to Caspar at the drop, and now you’re kind of scaring me.”

“We have the battleship that shrugged off the combined fleets of Earth, Mars, and the Transport Union cruising toward us because we killed a high-ranking Laconian officer. If you weren’t already scared, you’re fucking stupid, and I know you’re not fucking stupid, Alex,” Bobbie said.

“Copy that, Gunny. It’s a fair point,” Alex said, and raised his hands in mock surrender. The dining room was his least favorite place to meet, mostly because there was nothing in it to sit on. Instead he found a patch of wall without any pipes sticking out of it and leaned into the foam of the insulation. “Why don’t you get me up to speed?”

“Sorry,” Bobbie said. She clenched her hands into fists and jammed them into her pockets. “I’m pissed at you right now and it’s not your fault.”

“What can I stop not doin’ so it ain’t not my fault anymore?”

Bobbie chuckled at that and shot him a thin smile. It wasn’t a very funny joke, but he knew she appreciated his not taking her anger personally.

“Something’s been bothering me. You’re right. And Naomi’s right,” she said. “The timer’s running out on our little resistance, and what have we accomplished? We’ve annoyed the empire. Snatched a few ships, some supplies. Killed a few Laconians. And maybe I used to think it was enough to spit in my enemy’s eye while he strangles me. But I’ve been thinking about Jillian’s assessment of the objective value of moral victories, and she wasn’t wrong either.”

Bobbie went silent, like she was listening to the words she’d said. She probably hadn’t spoken these thoughts out loud until just now.

“Are we talking about what I think we’re talking about?”

“I don’t know what you think we’re talking about, Alex.”

“Because,” Alex said, “if we’re talking about packing it in, it’s a lot easier to get off Callisto if we’re not trying to take the Storm with us. I mean, I’ve got a plan either way, but—”

“No,” Bobbie said, “we’re not talking about that.”

Anger roughened her voice. He wanted to pull back from her. Retreat, but he’d known her long enough to see it was the wrong way with her. Whatever she was thinking through, she needed someone to slam it up against. Placating her wasn’t going to make either of them happy. Or safe. Even if she did scare him a little, she was still Bobbie Draper, his old friend and compatriot.

But she was also a creature of violence whose frustrations were coming out sideways.

“Copy that, Gunny,” Alex said, trying not to sound like a hostage negotiator.

“I’m not giving up,” Bobbie said. “I’m figuring out how to win. How can we take our present circumstance and find the orthogonal move, the surprise attack that snatches victory from defeat. How do we do more than just survive?”

“Survive is a pretty good start,” Alex said. “I’ve worked up a launch plan to get the Storm off of Callisto, if that helps.”

“Yeah, it does. But running away isn’t going to solve our larger problem.”

“Cap … Bobbie,” Alex said. “There are three Magnetar-class ships in the universe, and the one that kicked the whole combined fleet’s ass is steaming toward us right now. Pickin’ a fight with her is like me pickin’ a fight with you. Not being scared is fucking stupid, to use your own words.”

Bobbie didn’t answer. She pulled a terminal out of her pocket. It was one of the cheap ones that kiosks in the markets would spit out for a few bucks. Enough battery charge for a few hours, and then you just threw it away and bought another one. She tossed it to him. On the screen was a picture of a small metal ball with text printed on it, and some sort of cable running out of the top.

“The fuck is this?” Alex said.

“The report’s linked.”

Alex flicked the screen with his index finger, and it changed to an article about the theoretical uses of antimatter for high-energy reactors. Even so, it took him a minute to understand what she meant.

“No,” he said.

“Oh yes,” Bobbie replied. “Rini is ninety-nine percent sure. She’s been looking them over and doing the research. We’ve been able to produce trace amounts of antimatter since the dark ages, but it’s never been practical. Now it is. The Laconians know how to produce and store it. I will bet you a week’s wages that it’s coming from the same construction platforms that made the Storm and the Tempest, and it’s part of the resupply for the battleship. That big cannon of theirs must burn it like crazy when it fires.”

“Laconia’s a hard target, but if you’re right and we could figure a way to knock out those platforms—”

“Yeah, taking out their resupply is great,” Bobbie said. “But that’s just a tactical victory. That’s my kind of target. It’s not yours. Or Naomi’s.”

“My kind of target?”

“If we blew out the Laconian construction platforms, Duarte and his admirals would know why it mattered. But Kit’s friends at university? They’re the ones we need to inspire, for them it has to be something they can see. We have to do something that shows Laconia’s not invincible. That there’s a chance for us to get a new generation on board.”

“You want to drop these on Laconia?” Alex asked, aghast. Sure, they were enemies, but the idea of killing a planet full of people was horrifying. Even in war, there were lines no one should cross.

“If we start carpet-bombing civilians, we’re worse than the enemy.”

Alex felt a rush of relief. He was still fighting for the good guys. “Okay, good. I didn’t think you’d—”

“I want to kill the Tempest,” she said. “We show Earth and Mars and everyone in the Belt and every other colony out past the gates that Laconia’s battleship isn’t invincible. Show them that we can win. We’ll create a whole new generation of people willing to fight by lighting the biggest god damn signal fire the human race has ever seen.”

“Bobbie,” Alex said. Something in her eyes was more frightening than her fists had been. A fervor he wasn’t used to seeing there. All the fear and desperation suddenly transformed into something verging on fanaticism. “This is crazy.”

“We’re fucked, and we’ve been playing not to lose. I’m going to start playing to win.”

“No, you’re not.”

Bobbie stared at him. Her jaw slid forward a fraction of a centimeter. Every fiber of his body told him to back off, except for the one little part of his brain that knew showing weakness now was a path to disaster.

“You aren’t,” he said. “You’re stung because we had a win in our hands and we lost it. And then Jillian twisted the knife because she was frustrated too, and she’s kind of an asshole. And we found this”—he held up the hand terminal with the antimatter information—“so it feels like the universe handed you a way to redeem the loss. But what you’re really doing is trying to win back what you’ve lost by going all in. It’s shitty poker, and even worse as a battle strategy.”

“Fuck you, Alex. I do this for a living.”

“And you’re really good at it. And you’re smart. And I’m just a glorified bus driver who takes you where you need to be so you can kill people. But you’re wrong about this one, and you know you’re wrong.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“You want the big symbolic victory,” Alex said. “When has that ever been the smart move?”

For the first time, a shadow of doubt crossed Bobbie’s eyes. She crossed her arms, but she looked away from him. He leaned forward.

“You’re frustrated. And you feel trapped. And hitting back hard is what you do when you feel frustrated and trapped. But let me get us out of here. We’ll get these little balls of hell to Saba. And yeah, maybe he’ll send us back and we can take the Tempest down. Or maybe he’ll do something else. But let’s get more voices weighing in on this plan before we go all damn-the-torpedoes. Okay?”

“You think it’s an unwinnable fight. That’s what you just said.”

“I do,” Alex admitted. “But I’ve been divorced twice now. I wouldn’t take my word as gospel. I could be wrong about a lot of things. Yeah, your best soldiers are old shoe leather like you and me. But kids like Caspar are here too. Not as many as I want. Not as many as I think we’re going to need. But some. I just don’t think we should throw them away without a lot of consideration. Let’s get out of Sol system. Let the big brains have a crack at the new info, and see what they think is the right strategy.”

Bobbie took in a long slow breath and let it out through her teeth. “How long before dust-off? If we run?”

“We’ve got some time.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good,” he said, and stood up, ready to give her the room.

“Alex?”

“Yeah, Gunny?”

“Don’t take this wrong.”

“All right?”

“If you really believe we can’t win, you should think about whether you’re coming with me if I go.”