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.”
Chapter Eighteen: Naomi
It wasn’t the first time Naomi had found herself the new addition to a crew. Even under the best circumstances, there was an unsettled period. Anyone coming into the webwork of established relationships, enmities, and personal loyalties that was a ship’s crew needed time to find or create their own place. A time of isolation in the midst of a crowd.
In that sense, her appearance on the Bhikaji Cama was no different from other times. In the sense that she had appeared on the ship halfway through a run without stopping at a station or transferring over from another ship, it was a little weirder. And while they’d kept her identity hidden from Laconia, the small town’s worth of crew on the ship was corrosive to secrets. Even as the command staff made a point of not noticing her existence, everyone knew who she was.
Her presence was equal parts embarrassment to the Transport Union, threat to the crew, and the most interesting thing that had happened in the long weeks of transit. Pulling herself down the corridors or getting meals from the commissary, she felt the attention in the way people didn’t meet her eyes and the killing effect she had on conversations.
When they reached Auberon, she would need to vanish for a while and hope that her mysterious appearance was put down to rumor and myth. I was serving on a ship last year, and when the ship was searched, Naomi Nagata just showed up in with the crew. Stayed with us for the rest of the run. It was implausible enough that it might pass. Or it might be a problem. Either way, she had to touch base with Saba and see what her options were. The advantage of keeping the underground firewalled was that any single accident couldn’t bring down everything. The disadvantage was that she could never know what the big picture looked like. Even as one of Saba’s top-tier strategists, she only knew what he asked her to know. And it was possible—likely even—that he chose to be ignorant of some operations himself.
The commissary was wide enough to seat fifty at a time, but she tried to come at off-hours when the three rotating shifts were in the middle of work or sleep cycles. The tables were bolted to the floor, but on the float, no one used them anyway. The food dispensers were old, gray machines that decanted a nutritive slurry in eight different flavors directly into recyclable bulbs. Even the worst rock hopper in the Belt was more pleasant. Someone had painted bright flowers—daisies in yellow and pink and pastel blue—on the walls to make the place seem welcoming. Oddly, the effort halfway worked. Naomi ate the yellow curry flavored gruel with her feet hooked into footholds in the wall. But afterward, there was coffee that was a thousand times better.
Three environment technicians floated in a clump on the far side of the room, talking through a problem with the water purification system. The temptation to insert herself into the conversation was huge, but she held back. Hearing normal human conversation but not being part of it was like a starving woman smelling fresh food but not able to put it on her tongue. She hadn’t realized how badly she missed humans until she was among them again. And so when Emma pulled herself into the commissary, it was a relief to see her.