“We’d meant to do this a long time ago,” Naomi said. “It looks like they built up in the meantime.”
She checked her maps. The city was almost beneath them now. This was as close to Jim as she had been in years. If the Prince of the Face was on time and target, there was only one platform left. On her monitor, one of the Laconian weapons platforms blew, taken out by a combination of a rail-gun round from the Quinn and two of the Roci’s remaining torpedoes.
It would be so easy to order the drop. Fall through the rough Laconian air, make the pickup, and kill the last platform on her way out.
If she was sure she’d make it. If she was so convinced that she’d live through it that she could risk wasting everything they’d done until now. And she wasn’t.
“Steady as she goes, Alex,” Naomi said.
A sudden bang like a detonation shook the ship, deafening her. She waited for the hiss of lost air, the silence of the vacuum, and it didn’t come.
“What was that?” she shouted.
“Debris hit,” Ian said. “We’ve got a hole in the outer hull.”
“Watch our pressure. If we start leaking, tell me.”
“You got it.”
“I’ve got the last one,” Alex said.
Fast movers on our back. PDCs at thirty percent. Naomi pulled up the visual tracking. They were so close now, she could see the curve of Laconia in the scopes, the milkiness of its high atmosphere.
A connection request came in. The Prince of the Face had cleared the planet and had line of sight for a tightbeam. She accepted it.
“Give me good news,” she said.
“Clar y muerte,” the Prince of the Face said. “Up to you now, boss.”
“Thank you for that,” Naomi said.
Another rail gun from the surface.
“Another what?” the Prince of the Face asked.
“We’re getting fire from the surface,” Naomi said. “It’s fine. Continue with your flight plan. Get out of here. Do it now.”
“Maybe etwas can can do,” the Prince of the Face said, but before she could ask what they meant, Alex said, “I’ve got lock.”
“Do it,” Naomi said.
The Rocinante bucked again. The rail-gun round left a faintly glowing trail, superheating the almost-absent air that it passed through. Naomi held her breath. The rail-gun round touched the distant platform, and her sensors went dead. She pulled up the ship status. All the sensor arrays had tripped to safe. Overloaded.
“What’s—” she started, and the ship screamed. She grabbed the edge of the crash couch as it whirled crazily. They were tumbling. A shock wave moved through the barely present gas out past the edge of turbopause, still strong enough to send them spinning like a kid’s toy that had been kicked. The lights flickered, died, and came back on again. The bones of the ship creaked, and the roar of maneuvering thrusters filled her ears as Alex fought to bring them back to stability. The sensor arrays were still resetting, and Naomi felt the rail-gun rounds cracking up from the surface unseen. She waited to hear them snap through her ship. Hole the reactor. End them.
When the sensor arrays blinked back, the construction platform was gone. A corona of superheated air danced where it had been, green and gold and red.
“I think they may have been making some more antimatter,” Alex said, dryly. “Not sure that was the best idea.”
Naomi didn’t respond. Something was happening on the surface of the planet. The ground defenses where the rail-gun rounds had originated was reading hot. Nothing was firing. She tried to connect the death of the platform with it, but the pieces wouldn’t fit. Something else had happened.
A connection request came. The Prince of the Face again. Naomi took it. “Did you do something? What did you do?”
“Still had demi-hold á plasma torpedoes, yeah?” the other ship said. “No use for. Dropped them on your rail-gun base, que? Clear your way. Question is what did you do? That a nuke?”
“Nothing so trivial as that,” Naomi said. “Thank you, Prince. We’re good. Now get out.”
“Already gone,” the ship said, and the connection dropped. She sent a tightbeam to the Quinn. It answered immediately.