Tiamat's Wrath

Chapter Forty-Five: Teresa

The Mammatus died, burning through Laconia’s gate and being dismembered by the enemy ships, two nights before her birthday. The celebration was held in one of the minor ballrooms, with the same tasteful and understated decorations she always had. Silk banners with bright designs, glass candles that she’d loved when she was eight and been saddled with ever since, flowers raised in hydroponic farms in the city proper.

Soft music played over hidden speakers, all of it by composers and performers living on Laconia. Half of the guests were politicians and cultural figures—adults who’d come mostly to say they’d been there and to see who was in favor. The other half were her peer class and their families. They were dressed in stiff formal blues, just like she was. None of them seemed happy to be there. That was fair. To them, it was like having to go to school an extra session. They were nice to her. They had to be.

The sense of strained pleasure almost made her happy. All the adults had smiles like masks. They made a show of congratulating her, as if not dying for fifteen years in a row was an achievement to be proud of. But even while they pretended to be impressed by how mature and composed she looked, their eyes were darting around the room, trying to find her father. She had to play her role, but at least so did they. No one talked about the invasion. Not even Carrie Fisk, wearing a champagne-colored gown and a fixed grin, looking like she wanted to bolt for the door. Camina Drummer wasn’t there, and Teresa wondered what had happened to her. Either she’d lost control of the Transport Union and wasn’t anyone anymore, or she’d been part of planning the invasion, in which case she was lucky if she wasn’t in the pens.

Teresa didn’t care. She had her own problems.

It was still thirty interminable minutes before the dinner was served when Ilich escorted her to the dais at the back of the room. The crowd got quiet without being prompted. Like they’d been trained. She’d been trained too. She knew what to do.

“I want to thank all of you for coming tonight,” she lied with a smile. “I am honored to be in your company now, and for all the years that I’ve lived here among you. My mother, as you all know, died when I was very young. And my father carries his own burdens. He can’t be with us here tonight because his duties to all of us don’t allow him time even for simple, honest pleasures like this.”

Plus which, he’s out of his fucking mind. Lost to all of you and to me as well, but I’m the only one who knows it, you poor fuckers. She grinned widely at the pattered soft applause, taking an angry pleasure in the raw perversity of the situation.

Teresa caught sight of Elvi Okoye in the back of the room. Yellow gown, and her husband at her side. She was holding a wineglass in her fist like she was trying to break the stem. She knew too.

“All of you have been a family to me as I grew up,” Teresa said. Ilich’s words didn’t sound like something she’d say, but none of them knew her well enough to catch it. “I am humbled. And I am grateful.” Another round of applause, and Teresa bowed her head like she was actually grateful. Like she actually cared whether the enemy ships burning from the edge of the system reduced everyone in the room to ash.

You’re one of the angriest people I know. She wore the words now like a shawl, smiled and made her little bows as if they weren’t statements of contempt.

“Please enjoy this evening as both my guest and my father’s,” she said, and stepped down. The guests turned back to each other, oppressed and anxious and thinking less about her than the return of the Gathering Storm and its pirate fleet. Reminiscing less about Teresa Duarte’s childhood and more about the violent death of the Heart of the Tempest.

Teresa made her way across the ballroom, avoiding Ilich and Connor and Muriel. She found Elvi and her husband not far from where she’d seen them. From the dais, Elvi had looked stressed. Close up, she looked angry.

“Is everything all right?” Teresa asked.

Elvi started, snapped out of whatever other place her mind had been by Teresa’s voice. For a moment, she didn’t speak, and when she did, it wasn’t convincing. “Fine. Everything’s fine.”

“Well,” Teresa said. “Except.”

Elvi nodded, the movement hinging in her chest so that it seemed less like agreement, more like someone preparing for violence. “Yes. Except,” Elvi said.

The chime rang, calling them all to the dining room like the most privileged cattle in the universe. When they started walking, Teresa stayed at Elvi’s side. Her husband was using a cane and wincing as he walked. That was fine. Teresa wanted to go slowly.

“I was wondering, Dr. Okoye,” Teresa said. “The Falcon.”

Again, it took Elvi a moment to come back. “What about it?”

“I wondered how the repairs were going. With everything that’s going on … I mean, it is built for sustained high burn. It has breathable liquid crash couches.”

Elvi shuddered.

“Those are unpleasant,” her husband said.

“But still. If the fighting got close? You’d be able to use it to get away?”

Elvi and her husband exchanged a look that Teresa couldn’t quite read. Like there was another conversation going on that she couldn’t quite hear.

“Unfortunately,” Elvi said, “the Falcon was deeply, deeply compromised.”

“I got a new foot, toenails and all,” her husband said. “But that ship’s still in pieces.”

“I really don’t think it’ll come to evacuation,” Elvi said. “None of those ships are even going to get close to the planet. And everything Admiral Trejo has at his disposal will be used to keep us all safe.”

“Maybe you should put a push on the repairs, then,” Teresa said. It came out sharper than she’d meant it to, but Elvi laughed. That was interesting.

“Maybe I should,” she sighed, and then they were in the dining room, and Teresa was escorted to the high table with Ilich and a half dozen guests more honored than Elvi Okoye.

The meal was a feast. Fresh pasta. Lobster tails taken from actual lobsters. Gently marbled steak grown from the finest samples. The centerpieces were all Laconian flowers, and they smelled of mint and iron and resin. No one asked after Dr. Cortázar. That, Teresa had come to understand, was one of the unwritten rules. When someone disappears, don’t ask why. She wondered if they’d mention her after she left. Assuming she could find a way.

She looked over at the table where Elvi Okoye sat. Her husband was telling a story, his hands shifting in exaggerated gestures for the delight of their tablemates. The doctor was lost in her own thoughts. Teresa wondered whether they’d been lying about the Falcon. She wasn’t sure, and she wasn’t even sure how she’d find out.

Regretfully, she discarded the plan to have them escape the invasion and take her along. She’d have to find another plan.

Days passed. Weeks. The invasion proved harder to stop than anyone liked. The state newsfeeds kept a brightly optimistic view, treating the threat as more of an annoyance by disgruntled idiots than an actual danger to the empire. She still had the access her father had given her to high-level secret reports and briefings, but even if she hadn’t, she’d have known the reports were bullshit.

Apart from the peer class, her lessons were ignored now. She only saw Ilich at meal times. He didn’t repeat his threat to force-feed her, but he didn’t need to. She understood the terms of their relationship now. Having lost control over so many other things, he made up for it by controlling her. There was nothing she could do about it.

“They’ve slipped this time,” Ilich said. “They panicked. That great huge ship of theirs lost part of its magnetic bottle, and they’re all going to defend it.”

“That doesn’t seem like a bad idea,” Teresa said, forcing herself to take another spoonful of the corn chowder. It should have tasted good, but the texture was slimy and it was too sweet. She swallowed and didn’t gag.

They were sitting in an enclosed courtyard with ivy growing up the walls and artificial lights that mimicked the sun. The actual weather was a snowstorm that was covering the gardens in white up to her ankles. Muskrat had been running through it with a wide canine grin and little balls of ice forming on her coat. Ilich hadn’t let her in with them while they ate because she stank of wet dog.

“It wouldn’t be if there was any way for them to actually mount a successful defense. They’ve survived as long as they have by running away. We could kill any of them whenever we chose to, but Trejo was waiting.”

“For what?”

“For this,” Ilich said. He did love the sound of his own voice. The calm, patient instructor unfolding for the clueless little girl how the universe really worked. It had seemed like kindness for so many years. Now it looked like condescension. “The three Martian battleships are the irreplaceable core of their makeshift fleet. And when you have something that important, it’s natural to try to protect it. But it’s an emotional response, not a tactical one. And that’s why they’re going to pay for it.”

He had said all the same things at breakfast—eggs, sweet rice with fish, seared spinach with almonds—and she let him repeat himself now. Nothing he said mattered to her anymore.

“The Whirlwind will go through them like they weren’t there. There’ll be some cleanup afterward. We won’t get all of them. But their major ships? They’re even putting the Storm in harm’s way for this. It’ll be a bloodbath. And I—”

His handheld chimed. Ilich scowled and accepted the connection. Teresa put down her spoon and took a sip of water. Trejo’s voice was clear, and it was tense.

“I’d like a word with you in the tactical office, Colonel.”

Ilich didn’t speak, only nodded, rose, and walked away. Teresa was forgotten behind him. Which suited her just fine. When he was around the corner, she got up and opened the door for Muskrat. The dog trotted in, huffing under her breath. Teresa took out her handheld and opened the tactical reports.

There was a moment of sorrow. They came now and then. The memory of her father telling her that she could be the leader they needed her to be. That he wanted to train her with all the things he knew, just in case. She’d been a different girl then. He’d been a different man. She missed both of them. But the pain faded quickly, and she didn’t lose anything by letting it go. It always came back.

The tactical reports were strange, and it took her a moment to understand what she was looking at. The broken-down battleship had repaired itself somehow. And the fleet of enemy ships was running away, but not for the far edges of the system. They were going to the gate. Most of them, anyway. Almost all of them.

All of them but four. And those were in a path to Laconia. It was suicide. Four ships against the Whirlwind. Unless they had a secret weapon the way they had in Sol system …

But no, the Whirlwind couldn’t stop them. It had already gone too far, and even with the braking burn, its vector was still away from the planet. It was fighting its own mass and momentum like a swimmer struggling against the outgoing tide. The destroyers were in the same position. They’d been tricked. Lured away with only the planetary defense grid to protect them.

Which, in fairness, it probably could. Four ships weren’t much. They’d do some damage, though. And there was only one target. She was sitting in it.

She knew she should be scared, but she wasn’t. She put down her handheld, scratched Muskrat’s back, and thought. It didn’t even feel like solving a problem so much as remembering something she’d always known. She pulled up a map of the system and added in the enemy ships, their burn times. A lot would depend on how they made their braking burns, but Ilich had taught her enough about battle tactics that she could make an educated guess. Make a plan. If she called the enemy down, they’d kill her or take her as a prisoner. She needed something she could trade for passage. She didn’t know what that was.

And then she did.

Muskrat looked up at her when she laughed. The thump-thump-thump of the dog’s tail against the ground was reassuring. Without thinking, Teresa took another spoonful of chowder in her mouth, frowned, and sprinkled some salt over the bowl.

Her next bite was better.

The timing was bad, but it could have been worse. She left out the window as if she were sneaking out to see Timothy again. It felt familiar. Comforting. She knew it was the last time she’d see her room or her things. The last time she’d sleep in the bed that had been hers since she was a child. But her father had been dead for months, and it turned out she’d already done her mourning.

Muskrat whined as she slipped out, dancing from one paw to the other.

“You can’t come this time,” Teresa said. “I’m sorry.”

The dog whined, lifted graying eyebrows, and wagged hopefully. Teresa leaned back in and gave Muskrat one last long hug. Then she was out the window and gone before she lost her resolve.

The first step—the hard one, really—was getting to the cell. It was night. The snow was still falling lightly, but it wasn’t up past her shins. Getting out wouldn’t be the problem.

There were two guards watching over the cells, a man and a woman. They braced as she walked into the room.

“I wish to speak with the prisoner,” she said.

They looked at each other.

“I’m not sure—” the man said.

Teresa made an impatient sound. “Trejo has asked me to question him before. It’s about the assault. We don’t have time.”

The fear did it. The sense of an enemy almost at their gate, and the confidence that someone in power was taking care of it. Even if the voice of authority had just turned fifteen. They led her into the cell. She felt shaky with excitement. It was like being one of the adventurous women she’d watched on her screens, only it was real. She was doing it.

Holden sat up, blinking against the sudden light. His hair was standing at odd angles and his face had pink lines across it from the pillow. Teresa turned to the male guard.

“You stay,” she said. Then to the woman, “You have something to subdue him? An electrical prod?”

“Yes,” the woman said.

Teresa held out her hand, and the woman drew a black, shining weapon with a grip all along its length. It looked like an ear of burned corn. The female guard showed Teresa where the safety was and how to trigger it.

“That’s really not called for,” Holden said. “Whatever this is? I’m not going to fight it. You won’t need those.”

“I’ll decide that,” Teresa said. She nodded the female guard out. Then it was just the three of them: Teresa, Holden, and the male guard. It was the last chance to turn back. She could still change her mind …

Teresa flipped the safety clear.

Holden flinched, prepared for the pain and shock, and Teresa drove the weapon into the guard’s belly and pulled the trigger. He went down hard, not even trying to catch himself.

“Okay,” Holden said after a long, stunned moment. “That was weird.”

“We don’t have much time. Come with me.”

“Um … no? I mean, I think I’m going to need a little more explanation about what’s … ah …”

Teresa felt a burst of anger, but there wasn’t time for it. She started stripping the male guard’s uniform off, undoing zippers and buttons, tugging at his sleeves.

“Your people are coming. Your old ship. The whole invasion was a ruse get them close.”

“There’s an invasion?” Holden said. And then, “They don’t tell me much. But you’re saving me?”

“I’m using you. I need to leave. You’re my ticket onto those ships. Now hurry. We don’t have time.”

Holden pulled the uniform over his prisoner’s jumpsuit. Confinement had left him thin enough that the extra cloth just about filled out the difference. Teresa took the stunner from the fallen guard’s belt and his access key, and opened the door. They marched out together. The woman at the guard’s station had time to look confused before Teresa put her down.

“This is actually happening, right?” Holden said as she led him down the hall toward the forensics lab. “Because this is a very realistic dream if it’s not happening.”

“This is happening,” Teresa said. And she meant, I’m really doing this. “I have an implanted tracking device. They’re going to be after us as soon as we go.”

“Okay,” Holden said.

“Here,” Teresa said. The door was locked, but the access key opened it. She stepped into the dim room. Timothy’s belongings had been moved around in the weeks since she’d been there, but they hadn’t been taken away. She walked from table to table, her fingertips brushing each container they passed. It was here. Someplace. It was right here.

“Hey,” Holden said. “This is … the pocket nuke? The one Amos had?”

“Yes,” Teresa said.

“And I’m standing right here next to it.”

“You are.”

“And you’re comfortable with that,” he said. “This is a really weird night.”

She found what she was looking for. The screen glowed as it powered up. She felt the seconds slipping away. Somewhere far above the planet, the rebel ships were already coming close. Already engaging with planetary defense. The files came up, lockouts and protections broken weeks ago. She looked for the file for evacuation protocol and, without hesitating, shifted the call to active.

“What was that?” Holden asked.

“I called for evac,” Teresa said, liking how adult the word felt in her mouth. Not evacuation. Evac. “All we have to do is get to the pickup.”

“Sure,” Holden said. “Sounds easy.”