Amos cut, and air and light spilled in from the other side. The ship’s interior was still pressurized. That was odd, for battle conditions. If the crew of the Storm hadn’t realized they were being boarded, they were finding out now. Bobbie squeezed through first into the back of a bunk room. Two rows of gel-mattress bunks, not that different from the quarters on the Roci where the Marine fire teams were meant to sleep. These beds were empty and neat. She took a position by the doorway while the others pushed in. Amos came last, slapping a plastic patch over the hole that bellied out into the space between the hulls like a balloon before it hardened.
“I don’t want to shoot you bastards,” Alex shouted through the radio. It was a code phrase. The Storm was getting close. The Roci’s evasions were going to fail, and soon.
Bobbie popped the door open, ducked her head out and back, and a bullet tore a streak out of the frame where her skull had been.
“How many?” the man beside her asked.
“At least one.” She looked around the bunk room for something—anything—that would give them the edge. “This place is a death trap, and we’re out of time. You three, with me. You two go in firing left, you to the right with me. If you see a grenade or anything that might be one, duck back in. Everyone else, into the bunks, on your backs. Set up to shoot between your feet if the bad guys rush the door. You have four seconds. Go.”
She picked high when they went out. The woman crouched down beside her could have been anyone, but their lives depended on each other now. Down the corridor, Bobbie saw the intersection where the fire had come from before. A single head bobbed out and back. She aimed for it, but she couldn’t tell if she hit.
Another doorway stood across the hall. She pointed and gestured. They made the crossing in a rush. Another cabin. Bunks for twelve, but no sign that they’d been used. No one fired at them. Whoever had tried before was down or fled. Going for whatever reinforcements the ship had. Surprise had gotten them this far. Skill had to take it from here.
“Amos?” she said into the radio.
The walls of the ship attenuated his response, but she could still hear him. “Babs? How do you want to play this one?”
It had been too many years since her ship tactics, but this one at least was easy. The ship had two points of vulnerability to boarding attack—engineering and command. The enemy had the home-field advantage, but if they were understaffed, they’d protect whichever one they thought she was making a play for. So the smart thing was to feint at one and hit the other.
“I’m taking these five and heading for ops. Wait two minutes, then take yours for engineering.”
“You got it. Are we looking to disable or blow up?”
The Storm lurched again. A smooth rattling sound echoed through the ship like a chain slipping off a shelf. It was different enough from what she was used to that she almost didn’t recognize it as PDC fire. They were going for the Roci.
Before she could speak, Saba’s voice came through on the radio. Evacuation teams are at the docks. Waiting for clear sign, yeah? And then, almost overlapping, Naomi’s answer. Message received. We’re going in. The underground’s ships were ready to launch. Medina’s sensor arrays were going down soon. The window was opening. It wouldn’t stay that way long.
“The first thing you find that kills this ship, do it,” Bobbie said.
“What about evac?”
She knew what he meant. If he could blow the reactor, should he? Was the mission more important than living through it?
“Use your judgment, big guy,” she said. “I trust you.”
Chapter Forty-Eight: Clarissa
There were only two ways that she felt anymore. Either she had the shakes or she was exhausted. The shakes part had been nasty when it started because it felt like being scared—jittery and heart racing. And because it felt like fear, she kept thinking she was afraid, and then becoming afraid without any focus or reason. Once she understood it was just her shitty aftermarket endocrine system leaking into her bloodstream, it helped. At least she understood that it wasn’t just her going crazy with amorphous anxiety. She still shook, though.
In the worst of it, she’d go back to her old mantra, the one from prison. I have killed, but I am not a killer. Because a killer is a monster, and monsters aren’t afraid. She felt like she was afraid all the time now, and in that frame, it was almost comforting.
The superstitious part of her kept thinking that she’d invited this shape to come into her life with the sympathetic magic of her words. The rational part thought she’d invited it by paying a shitload of money to have illegal body modifications as part of an insane adolescent revenge fantasy. That and the part where she’d killed a bunch of people.
“You okay?” Naomi asked.
Clarissa lifted her hand in the same Schrödinger’s answer she always had, no matter how she expressed it. Always yes, and always no. Yes, I’m fine in that I am not presently in medical collapse. No, having that be what fine meant didn’t ratify her early life choices.
“You?”
“Fine,” Naomi said in a tone of voice that probably meant the same thing. Ever since Holden had been taken, a light had gone out of Naomi’s eyes. After discovering the Lightbreaker was gone and Holden with it, Naomi wasn’t catatonic from grief, and so sure. Fine.
They were waiting on a bench at the edge of a field on the inner face of the drum. Wheat stretched out to their right, curving up and away from them, ripening in the light of the false sun. A woman in a systems control uniform walked along the path holding a little boy’s hand. He stared at Clarissa as they passed. She could practically hear, What’s wrong with that woman, Mommy? he was thinking it so loud.
It felt a little weird being out among the normal inhabitants of Medina. All of the people going about their lives like they were trying to forget that the Transport Union had ever existed. Picking their kids up from school, eating dinner with their friends, working their jobs and performing their duties as if they’d always done this at the wrong end of a gun. As if Laconian rules were normal. As if there weren’t already things in play that were going to change everything before night.
“I’m sorry about Holden,” Clarissa said. She hadn’t meant to, but she did.
Naomi took a quick breath, let it out. Like someone ripping off a bandage that had adhered a little too much to her skin. A quick pain, and then over with. “Thank you. It’s not … what I was expecting.”