She found Santos-Baca sitting with an older man in a gray jumpsuit. He nodded to Drummer as she approached. When she sat down, he left. Santos-Baca smiled.
“You look like you could use some food.”
“It’s been a while since lunch. I’ll get to that in a minute. You saw the reports?”
“I’m not quite caught up. But yes.”
“Where’s the board on this?”
The younger woman settled into herself, thoughtful and closed as a poker player. When she spoke, her voice was careful. “It’s hard to get too worried about a fleet of out-of-date Martian warships commanded by the remnants of a decades-old coup. Frankly, I’m a little surprised to find out there’s anyone alive there.”
“Agreed.”
“The message isn’t coming up with any particular flag of high stress in the vocal patterns. Or any demands, at least not as yet.”
“I know, Emily. I read the reports. I’m asking what you think of them.”
Santos-Baca opened her hands, an old-school gesture that said, It’s right here in front of you. “I think we’re about to see a bunch of self-centered assholes who’ve realized that their glorious independence isn’t going to work out in isolation. If we can keep them from losing face, we can probably find a negotiated path to reintegration. But Mars is going to be a problem. They’re going to want all of them trotted back to Olympus Mons and hung as traitors.”
“That’s what I was thinking too. Any idea how to approach them about this?”
“I’ve been trading some messages with Admiral Hu. She’s Earth, but she has friends in Martian high command,” Santos-Baca said. “Nothing formal. And McCahill in security.”
“Of course.”
“The other possibility is that they’re going to try force.”
“With ships that haven’t resupplied or seen a shipyard in decades,” Drummer said. “And with our rail-gun emplacements all warmed up and ready to poke holes in anyone that gets too rowdy. Are we thinking that’s a realistic possibility?”
“It’s not the odds-on bet. Even when their fleet was new, taking out the rail-gun emplacements would have been a mighty tall order.”
Drummer considered. “We can get a couple ships as backup, just in case. If it turns out Laconia needs its ass kicked, I’m not sending our ships through their gate. But it may make that charter an easier sell. Let Mars smell blood and vengeance and see if the EMC gets more interested in enforcement and policing than it was before?”
“It would be a very different case,” Santos-Baca agreed. It was good that they were on the same page with this. Drummer had half-feared that the board was going to come up with their own strategy. Her job was herding kittens. Only thankfully not this time. She was trying to avoid being a police force. She sure as hell didn’t want to command a full military. If there was going to be a war on the far side of Laconia gate, let Mars fight it.
“All right then,” Drummer said. “Nothing we can’t handle.”
Chapter Eleven: Bobbie
When the Roci pulled into port at Medina, the security detail was there to take Houston into custody. Bobbie watched Holden as the prisoner marched away. She thought there’d been a melancholy look in Holden’s eyes. The last thing he’d done as captain was hand over a man to live in a cell. Or she might have been reading more into the situation than was there. Drummer’s threatened press release didn’t appear.
After that, they’d all gone out to a club. Naomi rented a private room for all of them, and they’d eaten a dinner of vat-grown beef and fresh vegetables seasoned with mineral-rich salt and hot pepper. Bobbie tried not to get drunk or maudlin, but she was the only one. Except Amos. He’d watched all the hugging and weeping and protestations of love like a mom at a five-year-old’s birthday party, indulgent and supportive, but not really engaged with it.
After they’d eaten, they went out to the floor of the club and danced and sang karaoke and drank a little more. And then Holden and Naomi left together, their arms around each other’s hips, strolling out into Medina Station’s corridors as if they were going to come back. Only they weren’t.
The four of them made their way back to the port talking and laughing. Alex was reciting lines and acting out scenes from one of the neo-noir films he collected. She and Clarissa egged him on. Amos grinned and ambled along behind them, but she saw him watching the halls in case four old half-drunk space jockeys attracted any trouble. Not that there was a reason to expect it. It was just something he did. She noticed it in part because she did it too.
Back at the ship, the others scattered, floating to their rooms. Bobbie waited in the galley sipping a bulb of fresh coffee until they were gone. There was still one more thing she wanted to do before she called it a day, and it was something she wanted to do alone.
Around her, the Rocinante ticked as the residual heat of their journey slowly radiated out into the absolute vacuum of the slow zone. The air recyclers hummed. A sense of peace descended over everything like she was a child again and this was the night after Christmas. She let her breath deepen and slow, feeling the ship around her like it was her skin. When she finished the last drop of coffee, she put the empty bulb into the recycler and drew herself down the corridor to Holden’s cabin. The captain’s cabin.
Hers.
Holden and Naomi had taken everything out already. The drawers were unlocked. The captain’s safe was open and scrubbed, waiting for a new access code. The double-sized crash couch—the one Holden and Naomi had shared for so long—gleamed, clean and polished. The slightly acrid smell of fresh gel told her that Naomi had replaced it all before she went. Clean sheets for the new tenant. Bobbie let herself drift into the space, stretching out her arms and legs. Eyes closed, she listened to the peculiar quietness of this cabin, how it was like the one she’d been using these last years. How it was different. When she reached out to take a handhold, the wall was still a half a meter away. A double-sized crew cabin, created so Naomi and Ho
lden could share the space, had become the privilege of being the Rocinante’s captain. She smiled at the thought.
The safe waited for her passcode. She fed it the prints from her thumb and two index fingers, then typed in the password she’d chosen and spoke it out loud for the system to learn. Sixteen digits long, committed to her memory, and not associated with anything outside itself. The safe closed with a solid clack, magnetic locks falling into place where it would take a welding torch and a lot of time to force. She pulled up her partition on the wall screen, checking to see that everything was in place. The drive was quiet, the reactor shut down, the environmental systems well within the green. Everything just the way it should be on her ship. It was going to take a while, she figured, before that thought didn’t seem like she was playacting. Better that she got used to it, though. Her ship.