Tiamat's Wrath (Expanse 8)

“We can’t just shoot the ring gate, sir,” Travon said. “We’ve got about a billion kilometers to get to the ring, and a million to slow down in on the other side. Less if we go at an angle, and we still need to miss Medina and the central station so…”

“I’m aware of the issues,” Sagale said. “Please make ready. Major Okoye, I’m going to ask that you report to the med bay. My understanding is that we may be able to make this safer for you if we forgo sedation in the submersion couch. It will be unpleasant.”

“That’s okay,” Fayez said. “She’s okay with that. We’ll both go without. I will too.” He turned to her. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I just really need you not to die.”

“I understand, Admiral,” Elvi said. “I’ll go now.”

Sagale nodded once, tightly. Elvi undid the restraints, pushed gently off, floating in the cool air. Fayez had already launche

d himself down the corridor toward the couches. Elvi grabbed a handhold, stopping herself. She didn’t know if the feeling in her chest was rage or fear or a bitter kind of amusement. Whatever it was felt cold.

“Admiral…”

“Yes, Major Okoye?”

I told you so hovered in the air between them. She didn’t have to say it. She could see that he’d heard.

On the screen behind him, the first ship’s drive came to life, moving the ship toward the ring gate. The illusion that it could still stop—that they could undo what had already happened—was as powerful as it was wrong. The bomb ship’s drive cone flared a moment later as it moved to follow.

In a smaller window in the same screen, the neutron star at the heart of the dead system glowed tiny and bright.

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.”