If they kill us all, Drummer thought, this will be why. Not their technology, not their strategy, not the invisible cycle of history. It’ll be our inability to do anything without five committee meetings to talk about it.
“I haven’t read the draft, Admiral. As soon as we’re done here, I’ll have them get me a copy. I don’t want to get this muddy any more than you do.”
Hu nodded sharply and smiled as if Drummer had capitulated. The technician touched her cheeks with a rouge brush and considered her like she was a painting. She had to fight the impulse to stick her tongue out at him.
And then it was time. Vanegas walked out first, and then Hu. They took the podiums to either side. Drummer took the center. The podium’s screen threw up an image visible only to her, running through the lines of the speech. She lifted her chin.
It didn’t matter how she felt. It didn’t matter what she thought. All that counted right now was how she looked and sounded. Let those carry confidence, and she could find the real thing later.
“Thank you all for coming,” Drummer said. “As you know, a ship originating in Laconia system has now made an unauthorized transit into Sol system. The union’s stance is unequivocal on this matter. The Laconian incursion is illegal. It is a violation of the union’s authority and the sovereignty of the Earth-Mars Coalition. We stand as one body in the defense of the Sol system and all its citizens.”
Drummer paused. In the back of the group, Chrisjen Avasarala stood up from her wheelchair and dusted the pistachio bits off her sari. Her smile was visible even from here.
“And the union,” Drummer said, “will dedicate all its resources to the defense effort.”
Just like you told us to, you old bitch, she thought. She didn’t say it.
In her dream, Saba was dead.
She didn’t know how he’d died or where, and with the non-logic of sleep, she didn’t question that. It was simply the truth: Saba was dead and she wasn’t. She’d never see him again. She wouldn’t wake up beside him. The rest of her life was emptier and smaller and sadder because of it. In the dream, she knew all of that. But what she felt was relief.
Saba was dead, and so he was safe now. Nothing bad could happen to him anymore. She couldn’t fail him or abandon him or feel the weight of his disappointment. She woke into darkness, a moment’s confusion, and then a wave of overwhelming guilt. The darkness, at least, she could control. She moved the cabin lights up a quarter. Dim gold, faint enough to leave everything in monochrome.
She could feel the thrust gravity when she turned. The absence of even trace Coriolis telling her what she already knew. She wanted to send a message out. To tell Saba she was thinking of him, and not quietly longing for the failures that would lose him forever. But she’d cut that line of communication, and having a weird subconscious wasn’t a good reason to change that policy.
Instead she stretched in the near dark. Only half of her sleep cycle was done, but she wasn’t interested in diving back into the pillow. Instead, she showered and ordered up a bulb of tea and a tortilla with fruit jam. Comfort food. Then she checked the system map.
The Tempest was still out in the vastness between the orbits of Uranus and Saturn. A billion and a half kilometers between the ring gate and the first human habitats of any real size, even if Saturn and its moons were at their closest. Having come through the gate so much earlier than she’d hoped, the Tempest wasn’t burning hard for the inner solar system. At its present acceleration, it would take weeks to reach her. Drummer pulled on her uniform and went out into People’s Home. The tube station was near her quarters. The void city knew where she was and arranged a private car for her without her even having to ask for it. Her security detail shadowed her with the practice of years. Even at the height of a shift change, she moved through the city like it was a ghost town. Only the litter and smell of bodies and old curry in the tube lingered as a promise that she wasn’t as alone as she felt.
The arboretum was a restricted-access zone. Some of the trees were experimental, and being in a high-traffic area would have affected the data. But one person or a handful? That was within tolerance. It was warm there, the air thick with moisture and the novelty of oxygen that had just been breathed out by another living thing. It was a strange place, exotic and surreal. Like something out of a child’s fantasy.
Usually, she was the only one there.
Avasarala sat in the shade of a catalpa. Her hands were folded in her lap. Her eyes were unfocused until Drummer stepped onto the black rubber walkway in front of her.
“The fuck are you doing here?” the old woman said. “Don’t you sleep?”
“I could ask you the same,” Drummer said.
“I don’t sleep anymore. It’s one of the things you lose at my age. I’m not incontinent yet, though, so I don’t get to bitch.”
Drummer leaned against one of the trees, folded her arms. She didn’t know if she was pleased the old woman was there, or annoyed by her, or both. “Is there a reason you’re still on People’s Home?” she asked, but her voice wasn’t biting.
“Thought I might need to firm up your resolve. But I didn’t. Now I’m only here because I hate fucking space travel. You’re going my way. I’ll get out when the last leg of the trip home is shorter.”
“So not just looking to stick your nose in my business?”
“Not until you fuck up,” Avasarala said. “Sit down, Camina. You look exhausted.”
“No one calls me that, you know,” Drummer said, but she sat on the bench at Avasarala’s side.
“Almost no one.”
They sat for a moment with only the sound of dripping water and the tapping of leaves that moved in the artificially controlled breeze. The wisps of her dream haunted Drummer’s mind like the afterimage of a strobe.
“One ship,” she said. “They sent one ship. They didn’t hold ground at Medina. They didn’t fortify. They didn’t build supply lines or prepare a flotilla. They sent one big-ass ship through by itself. Like a boast.”
“I’m as surprised as you are,” Avasarala said. “Though I feel like I shouldn’t be. I actually read history. It’s like reading prophecy, you know.”