Tiamat's Wrath

Chapter Thirty: Bobbie

Bobbie couldn’t sleep.

This was a new thing, or at least one that she didn’t remember from when she was young. Back when she’d been active duty with the MMC, she’d been able to close her eyes and lose consciousness whenever a few minutes presented themselves. The idea of lying on a cot in a converted office, staring up at the ceiling, strapped lightly to keep from launching herself out of bed given Callisto’s mild gravity … It wouldn’t have made sense to that Bobbie Draper.

But here she was, three hours into her sleep cycle, making an inventory of her muscles and forcing each tense one to relax. A live monitor on the desk’s surface threw flickers of light and darkness above her. She noticed the tension that had crept back into her shoulders and made herself release it for the fourth or fifth or twenty-fifth time. She closed her eyes and willed them to stay closed. Something in the hallway dripped. Condensation that might mean a failure in the heating system or in the air recyclers. She tried to ignore it.

Her crew was scattered through Callisto Station or on the Storm or in their own cots in the complex of smugglers’ caves. It made her anxious to have her people diffused out into the civilian population like that. It also made her anxious to have them all together where they’d make a single target. The Laconian security forces only needed one lucky break. She needed all of them.

Her shoulders were tense again.

“Fuck.”

She undid the restraint with one hand and hauled herself up. Maybe an hour in the Storm’s gym would get her past the worst of her insomnia. But on the way out toward the hangar, she stopped at the desk, checking again the way she did fifty times a day. The map was broken into two frames. The smaller one showed the relative positions of the major bodies in Sol system, tracking the inevitable and predictable change in cartography like an orrery. The larger showed the Jovian system in great detail with data copied from the traffic control logs. On the small screen, Jupiter and its moons looked calm and serene, passing through the vastness of space with the tranquil beauty of the inevitable. Closer up, it was like a beehive. Hundreds of ships from ancient rock hoppers and mining skiffs to the Tempest and everything in between.

It was the Tempest that drew her.

Trejo had transferred out of the system on one of the fast Laconian shuttles, burning hard back to Laconia to deal with the crisis in the slow zone. The Tempest, on the other hand, had been sniffing around the Jovian moons like a dog searching for its lost antimatter. It had been in a complex orbit near Ganymede most of the time, though once it had darted out to Europa. It would come to Callisto eventually and force her hand. Until then, the best she could do was take comfort in imagining the fresh new Laconian vice admiral losing sleep in his cot because a moon-killing load of antimatter had gone missing and it was his job to find it.

She tapped the red dot on the map that was the Tempest. “Anything you can do, I can do better.”

An alert popped up. A newsfeed from Ceres Station with a breaking report. She opened it, and a young man with a Lunar accent looked earnestly up at her from the desk.

“This is Davis Myles with Ceres Beat, and behind me you can see station security in cooperation with Laconian state intelligence agents securing a cell of criminal separatists here at the heart of Ceres Station in what is being called the biggest bust since the coalition joined the Laconian Association of Worlds.”

Bobbie felt the tightness across her back get worse. It wasn’t only that every loss to the underground was more risk to her and hers. She hated the way history was being rewritten before her eyes. Sol system joined the Association of Worlds was a hell of a way to say, Laconia trucked in a half-alien warship and killed the shit out of everyone until we showed them our bellies.

The time was coming when, even if she didn’t hear from Naomi, she was going to have to make the ancient human decision again: fight or flight. As the reporter enthused about how many guns and enemy soldiers had been captured, she cracked her knuckles. She had three options. Take on the Tempest, run for the gate, or destroy the Storm and let her crew dissolve into the civilian population. Every option was its own kind of bad.

“The cell was exposed by the discovery of an encryption package running on a public system,” the reporter said, and the feed kicked over to a wide-faced woman with a pattern of moles on her cheeks that looked like paint spatter.

“The activity of the decryption package coincided with a data drop from known separatist elements earlier today,” she said, and Bobbie killed the feed.

She made a connection to Jillian. Her second in command accepted like she’d been expecting her. Before Jillian could speak, Bobbie asked, “Did a bottle come through?”

“It did,” Jillian said. “We got a full copy of the data. I was going to let you sleep until the decryption run was finished.”

“We’re running the decrypt on our own system, yeah?”

“You saw the thing on Ceres,” Jillian said. It wasn’t a question. “Those yokels were stupid and so they’ll die. Good riddance. We’re not stupid. We won’t die.”

“How long before the data’s clean?”

Jillian shrugged. “Another hour, maybe.”

“I’ll be in the gym,” she said. “The minute it’s done, I know it. Understood?”

“Yeah, okay,” Jillian said, and Bobbie dropped the connection. Any hope of sleep was gone now. Her nerves were as bright as stars. She pulled the tactical map back up. The red dot of the Tempest was still near Ganymede. She stared at it for a long moment as if the commander might be able to feel her attention, might be scared by it. She closed its display and went to the Storm.

The gym was bright and clean. All the equipment was Martian design strained through Laconian technology. Bobbie threw herself into the effort like it could help her forget, and it did at least a little bit. She’d been in the resistance gel for forty minutes when Jillian’s message came through. The bottle had been from Auberon. From Naomi. It was the reply she’d been hoping for. Bobbie, panting and wet from exertion, opened the message file.

The background filter made Naomi look like she was in a featureless white room. Like she was an angel, delivering her message from some abstract heaven. Naomi tipped her head forward unconsciously before she spoke, the way she did when she was delivering bad news.

“Hey, Bobbie,” she said. “Your plan … looks solid.”

Bobbie grinned until her cheeks ached.

In his last days, her grandfather talked sometimes about how weirdly clear his early memories had become. He might not quite remember the name of his nurse or when the man had last been to check on him, but the details of his childhood were vivid and immediate. Like the past was growing stronger as his present and future wore thin. He told the story about seeing a living cat for the first time, and how strange it had felt to hold it, with the same awe in his voice every time. Bobbie’s memory hadn’t done that, not yet. But maybe there was something. When she called the crew back to the Storm for her briefing, all she could think of was when she’d been back in the service on Mars.

The leader of her first fire team had been Sergeant Huk. He’d been about half a head shorter than she was, with a terrier-thin face and a receding hairline. She’d never known anyone before or since who could command her loyalty or instill fear in her the way he had. When she’d been right out of boot and as green as they come, he’d turned her into an actual Marine. Before every mission briefing, he had found a way to acknowledge her. A nod, a touch on her shoulder or arm. Something that meant that no matter what was coming next, she wasn’t going into it alone. He never humiliated her by saying it aloud, and he never left it unsaid. After he retired, she’d found out he’d done the same for everyone.

Now, as her people returned to the ship, she did something similar. She stood in the airlock, seeing each of them as they boarded. Timon Coul, with his old OPA split-circle tattoo smudged by time until it was just a bluish blotch on the back of his hand. Liese Chou, with her pale-gray hair. Caspar Asoau, looking like a teenager surrounded by his grandparents. Denise Lu. Skaldi Austin-Bey. Ian Freeman. And almost last, Alex Kamal. Alex, her oldest friend, and the man she’d traveled with for what felt like half a dozen lifetimes now.

He looked weary, like she’d woken him from his sleep. Maybe she had. He wouldn’t have complained. He paused in front of her, and for a moment, it was like they were back on the Rocinante together. Like they were home. She touched his hand, and he nodded to her like he understood perfectly. Probably he did.

When the crew was all assembled in the galley, she pulled up her map of the system. It filled the wall. Someone in the back coughed, and she realized she’d been looking at it for several long seconds. And that she was enjoying herself.

“All right,” she said. “We have word from on high. New mission. High risk. High reward.” She shifted to an image of the Tempest. As strange as the Storm was in its particulars, its architecture was essentially the same design language that Martian ships had been for decades before the starving years. The Tempest was something else. Pale, asymmetrical, with protrusions and curves more like some monstrous vertebra. “We are going to kill that.”

She waited for a moment, half expecting mutiny on the spot. The Tempest had put its boot on Sol system’s neck without seeming to break a sweat. She could have said We’re all going to turn ourselves inside out and become seagulls and it might have seemed about as realistic. No one objected. Looking into their faces, she saw interest. Anticipation. She saw hope, and she knew she’d been right to want this.

“We have a small payload that will do the trick,” she said, nodding to Rini Glaudin at the back.

“Payload of what?” someone asked.

“The Magnetars run on antimatter,” Bobbie said. “The Tempest’s resupply was on that freighter we took.”

“Jesus,” Caspar said.

“Correct,” Bobbie replied. “But delivery will be difficult, and we’re only going to get one shot. In our last mission we found, along with this antimatter, replacement parts for a sensor array very similar to what the Storm’s using. I’ve been over the battle footage, and I know the story is that the Tempest shook off everything the Earth-Mars Coalition threw at her. But—”

She laid out the schematic. Overlapping fields sprang out from the Tempest like peacock feathers on display. The range of sensor arrays. She tapped one, and it dropped out.

“From the hits she took and from how she’s been flying since, I think this is the array they need a replacement for. And if the information we have is right, it means the Tempest has a blind spot. Here.”

She pulled the display out to showcase the thin cone of black where the enemy ship’s eyes couldn’t go.

“And if we’re right about their need for antimatter, they won’t be able to use the field projector. Which means they’ll be down to conventional weapons only.”

“Captain?” It was Caspar. Jillian scowled at the boy like she was ready to punch him, but Bobbie nodded him on. “I don’t see … I mean, even with just torpedoes and rail guns, and even if there is a data hole there—”

“They can still take us in a straight fight, and they’ll still see us coming,” Bobbie said. “So we let them see us. We get a Callistan shuttle. Private, small. Doesn’t even have an Epstein. And we put it out”—she switched back to the image of Jupiter and its moons. A single bright-blue dot appeared—“here. And on an orbital path that looks like we’re heading for Amalthea. A crew of two with a gas canister torpedo. Now those are slow, yes. But they also run cold. Basically no heat signature.”

“Bist bien,” Timon said. “Ran hundreds like, back on Ceres, sa sa?”

Jillian’s voice was harsh. “Could we not interrupt the captain?”

“The hard part will be putting the Tempest into a flight pattern like … this.”

A red arc appeared going from Ganymede. A line marked the time at each point. She zoomed in to show how the little blue shuttle fell into the blind spot, and the long seconds it would stay there.

“This is the window,” Bobbie said. “It doesn’t look like a trap, because we aren’t trying to hide. We get there first, and we’re just part of the traffic. So all we need is a lure. Something so critical that the Tempest will follow it where we want it to go. That will be the Storm.”

She let it sink in. It was like she could see the implications settling in each face looking toward her. It was a sucker punch. One shot, and if it failed each and every one of them would be dead. The underground would lose its only warship with Laconian tech.

“I’ll captain the shuttle with Rini as tech specialist. Jillian will be in command of the Storm.” That made her second sit up a little straighter. Her jaw was firm. She looked like a hunting dog that had caught a scent. “The Storm’s mission is to hold the Tempest to this course so that the shuttle stays in the enemy’s blind spot.”

Alex, sitting to the side, leaned forward. His hands were on his knees, and his eyes were cast down toward the deck. She didn’t know what he was thinking.

“If anyone doesn’t want to do this,” Bobbie said, “I’m not going to force you. We have four days before the shuttle is ready and the orbits are where I want them. I will be accepting resignations until that time. No sugarcoating. This is the most dangerous thing we’ll have ever done. Even if we win, we may sustain losses. Potentially heavy losses. But each and every one of you has my word that if I thought this was hopeless, we wouldn’t be doing it.

“I have sent detailed briefs to your team leaders. Look them over. If you have questions, for fuck’s sake ask them. We’re not going to screw this up because someone turned left instead of right. Understood?”

There was a ragged muttering of assent.

“I said, Am I understood!”

The reply was more like a cheer now. It filled the space. There was power in it.

“Outstanding. You have your orders. Dismissed.”

Jillian was out of her seat in a moment, herding the crew like they were sheep. Nipping at them. It was something she’d have to get over before she had a command of her own. Bobbie let it play out, though. There was an energy in the ship that needed to work itself through. She felt it too.

Back in her cabin on the Storm, she put herself through the routine of cleaning and straightening her things. The cabin didn’t need it, but she did. The ritual calmed her. She found herself humming. She didn’t know how long it had been since she’d done that. She needed to go back to her little campsite and clear out all signs of her occupation, but she waited anyway. She’d almost decided that Alex wasn’t going to come talk with her when he knocked at her cabin door.

“Hey,” she said.

“Naomi said it was a good idea?”

“She didn’t go that far. She might have just thought it was the right bad idea for the moment.”

Alex managed a little smile. His melancholy made her feel almost ashamed of her lightness and anticipation. “If you need to step back, no one’s going to think less of you. Kit’s your son. Being part of his life and this too … If you’ve got to pick one, I’d understand.”

“You left out a part of the plan. What happens after the payload hits?”

“We’ve never done it before. So apart from an explosion that makes a nuke look like a firecracker, I’m not sure what I’d say. The Storm’s a tough ship, though. Even if there’s some debris hits, she can take it. Probably.”

“You’re going to want to get that shuttle behind something, though,” Alex said. “Put me on it. I’ll get it to shelter.”

“I need you on the Storm. Keeping the Tempest where I need it, when I need it? It’s going to take a great pilot. That’s you. Rini and I will be in power armor. The shuttle might get shredded, but we’ll be better protected than it will. And you’ll be there to come pick us up.”

Alex shifted his weight. She could see him looking for objections the way old married couples could see when one wanted the other to pass the salt.

“I don’t like putting us on different ships either,” Bobbie said. “But this is the right way to do it.”

“Yes, Captain. All right.” He sighed, and then, to her surprise, grinned. “This is going to be one hell of a rodeo.”

“They aren’t going to know what hit them,” Bobbie said. “My only regret is that Trejo won’t be on the ship when we blow it into hot, fast dust.”

“We can find him later,” Alex said. “I’m going to go obsessively run diagnostics on systems I know are solid so I can feel like I have control of something.”

“Sounds good,” Bobbie said. “I’m going to stay here and see how many of my crew quit rather than go through with this.”

“There won’t be any. These people will still follow when you lay siege to hell. We trust you.” Then, a moment later, “I trust you.”

The door closed behind him, and Bobbie sat in her crash couch like she was easing down into a warm bath. When she closed her eyes, she slept.