Tiamat's Wrath (Expanse 8)

“It was,” she said. “I’m hoping not to do that again.”

“We’ll try to keep it that way. I was a little anxious making the transit myself. I mean, I wasn’t awake for it. I heard you were awake in one of these new full immersion couches? I don’t think I’d enjoy that. I don’t like going over twenty g asleep, much less watching it happen.”

“I’m glad you made it,” Elvi said. Cortázar shrugged and looked at his fingernails. Performative boredom. He wasn’t happy she was there. With a little taste of spite, she found a way to draw the pleasantries out a little more. “I hope there wasn’t any trouble for you?”

“No, no,” Trejo said. “I was fine. There are problems, though. People are starting to make their own transits. One poor bastard out of Bellerophon tried to speed through. Transit into ring space and transit back out in the same burn. He hadn’t heard about how the gates all shifted position a little. His ship hit the edge of the gate hub about three hundred klicks to the left of the gate he was aiming for.”

“Ouch,” Elvi said.

“People are getting desperate. For every system that can sustain itself, there’s dozens that aren’t there yet. Trade isn’t optional for them. It’s life and death. And without a traffic authority, death comes a lot more often.”

“I’m sorry about Medina and the Typhoon,” Elvi said.

“Admiral Song was a good sailor,” Trejo said. “Died with her boots on. That’s as much as any of us can ask. But there’ll be time enough to toast the dead later. I have a problem, Doctor. And I have chosen to make part of my problem your problem too.”

Cortázar sighed and looked away. Trejo explained what had happened to the high consul, then asked Kelly to bring them some tea while Elvi got over the shock. It was green tea, poured from a cast-iron kettle into black ceramic mugs. She’d had two servings before she felt like she’d found her feet again.

“So there’s no one running the empire,” she said.

“We are running the empire on the high consul’s behalf until such time as he is sufficiently recovered to take over the duties himself,” Trejo said, then paused and added, “or his daughter has reached an age sufficient to take over in his place.”

“She’s very bright,” Colonel Ilich said. “And she’s controllable. The high consul believed, and I agree, that the narrative of succession had to be familiar and reassuring. Primogeniture is a common model across a wide band of cultures and backgrounds. Of course, she won’t be expected to actually wield power until she has shown an aptitude and willingness.”

“How old is she?” Elvi asked.

“Duarte hoped he’d have a couple centuries to train her up,” Trejo said. “Hell, he hoped she could stay on the bench forever. But these are the cards we have, and so we’re going to play them. I’m not going to sugarcoat this. We’ve got a lot to carry, and most of that is going to fall on the Science Directorate.”

“How can I help?” Elvi asked. It sounded better than What the fuck do you want me to do about this?

“Your top mission is to get the high consul back,” Trejo said. “Dr. Cortázar will walk you through everything he’s done so far. We’re hoping a pair of fresh eyes will find something he hasn’t.”

Elvi looked over at Cortázar. He wasn’t looking at her. So this was why he was pouting. Trejo had called his competence into question. That was going to be unpleasant.

“While you do that, I’m going be getting things back under control,” Trejo said. “The Voice of the Whirlwind’s still a few weeks shy of her shakedown, but we’re not stationing any crewed vessel in the ring space, and we’re keeping the transits short. Whirlwind’s going to be protecting Laconia. Tempest is staying in Sol. There’s a situation there that needs an eye on it, and Sol’s the most unruly system we have to worry about.”

“And the traffic control?” Elvi asked.

“We can’t hold the inside of gates,” Trejo said. “So we’re going to have to take the outsides. We have two hundred and eighty Pulsar-class destroyers to police thirteen hundred and seventy-one gates.”

For a moment, Elvi saw the enormity of what Trejo was facing press down on him. The bright-green eyes focused on nothing, and the cheerful, confident face only looked tired. But a moment later, he was back.

“I’ll be deploying those to systems most likely to have high traffic. We’ll get the comms network back. And after the Whirlwind’s ready, we’re turning all the construction platforms over to generating more antimatter charges. That brings us to your number two priority. I think we can all agree this tit-for-tat see-if-we-can-be-reasonable plan hasn’t gone so well. We’re going to gear up to fight this war for real. Anything you can find that will give us an—”

Adrenaline flooded Elvi’s bloodstream. Her heart hit her ribs like a hammer. “Are you fucking crazy?”

Ilich and Kelly shared a look as if she’d confirmed something. Cortázar sneered.

“I’m sorry,” Elvi said. “Wait. No. I’m actually not. Are you fucking crazy? Did you not see what just happened?”

Trejo bowed his head. His scalp glimmered at her through his sparse hair.

“I understand that this is a hard conversation for you right now, Doctor. You’ve been through a lot. But I’m a military man, and the fact is that we are at war. We have been at war since the first time a ship failed a transit.”

“Those things killed—”

“I know what they did.” Trejo’s voice was harsh. It pushed her back into her seat. “And I know why they did it. Because they got hurt. That means they can be hurt, and unless they find some way to sue for peace, I intend to prepare our forces to hurt them again. Candidly, I don’t like it. We’re going up against something we don’t understand with unfamiliar tools on a battlefield whose constraints we’re working out as we go along. It’s a stupid war, but it’s ours. If it can be won, I intend to win it. You’re going to help me.”

&n