“Whatever story Duarte was selling was compelling enough to get a big chunk of the Martian military to buy in. The devil’s story was freedom from the oppression of God’s rules, and it was good enough to win a lot of angels to his side. Whatever Duarte’s pitch was, it’s a good one. Don’t be so sure you wouldn’t have bought it.”
“Oh, I’m pretty fucking sure,” Alex replied with a snort.
Bobbie had to admit she wasn’t. A galaxy-spanning human civilization run the way the Martians, at their best, ran things. Organized, focused on a single overarching goal. Efficient, well planned, not wasting anything. She could see why that appealed to a lot of people when Mars was watching its dream of terraforming die. Duarte could step in and sell them a new dream that used all the same skills and attitudes that the old one had, but was even grander in scope. Bobbie recognized that there was a version of her that was fighting on the Laconian side right now, and it made her itchy.
Alex had started to gather up the plates and cups from their meal when Amos walked into the room. “Hey, Babs. Cap wants to see us about that thing.”
“Which thing?”
“The making-sure-no-more-bombs-go-off-we-don’t-know-about thing.”
“Oh, that thing. Be there in five,” she replied, and he shrugged and walked off without another word.
“Still kinda chafes, don’t it?” Alex said, his voice gentle.
“What? Hearing him go back to calling Holden ‘Cap’?” Bobbie said, ready to shrug it off. But something caught in her throat. “Yeah. I gotta admit it does. I might have a word with him on that.”
“Be gentle,” Clarissa said. “He’s fragile right now.”
Bobbie had no idea what the word fragile meant when applied to Amos. She wasn’t sure she wanted to learn.
Saba leaned against one wall in the larger storage space that they’d been using as their insurgent-cell meeting room. Someone had finally pushed all the crates and boxes up against the walls to serve as seating, and some enterprising thief on the crew had even managed to steal a few benches from one of the parks. About twenty members of their group were scattered around the space, including Holden, Naomi, and Amos.
On the wall screen behind Saba was a diagram of Medina, and a picture of a severe-looking woman with black hair and a lot of facial piercings. She stared at the camera with angry eyes, giving the picture a mug-shot feel. The name Katria Mendez floated beneath her photo.
“The Voltaire Collective,” Saba said, pointing at her. “Bomb throwers from ancient days.”
“Fighters,” someone in the room replied, making the word a term of respect.
“Sa bien,” Saba replied. “Now with Laconia? They go back to the old script.”
“Apart from the fact that their strategy doesn’t work anymore and it’s fucking our shit up, they seem like people we want in our team,” Holden said. “We should recruit them. Coordinate with them. Killing them or feeding them to the Laconians should be our last option.” He sounded a little scattered. Distracted. She wondered what was up with him. He knew something or suspected something that was eating up all his spare cycles. Bobbie had seen it before.
Saba nodded with one fist. “If we can, we should.” He pointed to a sublevel on the Medina map marked Water Reclamation. “Holed up here, them. I say we send our envoys to make them an offer of alliance.”
Holden turned on his bench to look back at Bobbie. She gave him a tiny nod. He stood up to take a spot next to Saba and said, “I think we should send Bobbie to speak for us. She can pass along our respects, tell them we need to join up, and if they get belligerent … well, she can handle that too.”
“Agreed,” Saba said. “How many you want with you?”
“Let’s keep this small,” Bobbie replied. “Just me and Amos for now. This should feel like natural allies reaching out. Not a war party.”
“Sabe bien,” Saba said. “But this ends with they don’t plant more bombs unless we say so. Our house gets in order now. One way or.”
“Yeah,” Bobbie agreed. “One way or, that’s where this ends.”
The shortest path to Water Reclamation included a short jaunt through the inner drum. Bobbie didn’t mind. Hiding out with her resistance-fighter buddies included an awful lot of sleeping and eating in tiny metal rooms. Getting out into the habitat space with open air and a dirt floor and the full-spectrum light on her face was a welcome change.
Even the ubiquitous Laconians didn’t ruin the mood. For the most part, their conquerors were easy to get along with. They acted like people who’d lived on Medina for years: eating in the restaurants, browsing the shops, making use of the entertainment districts. If you gave them a nod, they nodded back like old neighbors. Even the Marine patrols moving past in their exotic blue power armor looked alert, but not particularly threatening.
Bobbie had seen the other version of them during the assassination attempt on the governor, so she knew they could go from friendly and professional to full rock-and-roll at the flip of a switch. Easy to get along with or not, the Laconians were a military occupation. You forgot that at your peril.
“How are you doing?” Bobbie asked as they walked through a particularly lush section of park. The lovingly tended path curved through grass, patches of flowers, and even past the occasional tree. Insects buzzed about, still the best-designed pollinating system there was. Technology did a lot of things well, but evolution had it beat when it came to environmental systems.
“My feet hurt,” Amos said. “Kind of all the time now. Glad these Belters keep the rotation at a third of a g.”
“It’s quicker to list the shit that doesn’t hurt, these days,” Bobbie said. “But that’s not really what I meant.”
“Yeah?” Amos said. His tone didn’t change at all, but Bobbie had flown with him for a couple decades now. She could hear the tension that had crept in.