The access panel clicked and slid down.
“What are we doing here?” Jordao said. “Got to go, us.”
“We’re doing the thing that makes the next part matter,” Naomi said, then stepped aside. The guts of the ship would have looked chaotic to anyone who didn’t know the things she did. For her, there was a simple logic in every weld, every conduit, every connector. She took the doctored traffic card out of her pocket, plucked the old one out, and slotted hers in. The fault indicator barely blinked to amber, and then went back to a flickering, happy green.
“Okay,” she said, sliding the panel back into place. “Let’s go set the charges.”
But when she started walking, she knew it was going to be harder than she thought. If they moved fast enough, they’d be done before she ran out of energy. That was why Naomi was here, after all. Because none of them thought she could do it by herself. Because they weren’t necessarily wrong.
The worst part was that she’d done it to herself. The damage to her body, the wear and the weariness, were all products of conscious, determined choices made by a girl she hadn’t been in decades. She carried the weight of those decisions like a sack of bones. Like a toolbox full of them.
Some sins carried their own punishment. Sometimes redemption meant carrying the past with you forever. She’d gotten used to that over the years, but it was still pretty fucking inconvenient.
“Down here,” Jordao said, waving them on.
“I know,” Naomi said.
The door to the primary power junction was reinforced. A red border was painted around the frame, with warnings in half a dozen languages that all meant Please be careful. There’s a lot of things in here that we’ll have to fix after they finish killing you.
Jordao opened the door, and Naomi stepped past him into the maintenance way beyond—
And then stepped backward, her arms rising. Running footsteps came from behind her, sudden and loud. A young man in the blue uniform of Laconian security stepped out from the red door, a pistol leveled at Naomi’s stomach. Rough hands grabbed Clarissa by the shoulder and threw her to the floor. Jordao leaned against the wall and sank down to sitting.
“There a problem, sir?” Naomi asked, her voice the perfect echo of innocence.
“Knees,” the pistol man said. “And keep your arms up while you do it.”
Naomi looked down at her. Clarissa saw no sorrow in her eyes, only calculation. And then a conclusion. Naomi sank to her knees. Jordao’s head was leaned back, looking at the ceiling and taking deep gulping breaths. He still had the toolbox under his arm, and she thought he might be about to set off the charges and turn them all to paste, until he started laughing. It wasn’t mirth or gloating, but it was relief. Even before he spoke, Clarissa understood they’d been sold out. She laid her head against the rubber matting on the deck as someone put a knee in the small of her back and started pulling her arms behind her. The exhaustion was coming on stronger now. The deck felt almost comfortable.
“There’s a thing,” Jor
dao said. “A thing they put behind an access panel. No savvy mé que, but I can show you where, yeah?”
“What was it?” the pistol asked Naomi.
Naomi shook her head ruefully. “Afraid you’re going to have to go fuck yourself, coyo.”
He hit her, stepped forward. Clarissa felt the zip tie going around her right wrist while the guy fumbled with her left. She rolled her head. Five of them, all told. All with guns drawn. The pistol came down, ready to end Naomi where she lay.
“You’re sure you can find whatever it is?” the man said.
“’Course I am,” Jordao said. “Where are your Marines? You said there’d be Marines.”
“Change of plan. They’re statues until we can get the lockdown codes undone.” He looked down at Naomi. “Was that yours too, bitch?”
Naomi locked eyes with Clarissa. The calculation was gone. They were out of options. Which meant, really, that Naomi was out.
Clarissa always had one left.
It was a weird moment. Through the bone-weary tiredness, through the fear and the panic and the anger, something else opened up. Something like rage and joy, and more than all that, a profound relief. Naomi saw it in her expression, and her eyes widened. Clarissa pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth, swirled it the way she hadn’t in years. The fake glands in her body triggered, pouring their shit into her blood. It hurt. It didn’t use to hurt, but this time, every one of them ached. Even the pain felt good.
Time slowed down around her. She bucked and the man on her back fell forward. He still had a hand on her right wrist, and he kept his grip as he fell. She felt her shoulder dislocate and heard the deep pop, but there wasn’t any pain. Her legs were under her and she pushed off before he hit the floor. Her right arm was shredded and useless. Her muscles were thin and fragile. Just jumping, she felt the tendons in her knees and hips strain and rip, but she was already rolling, ready to hit the wall and launch again.
Pistol man didn’t shift his aim from Naomi, but the other three were drawing down on her, moving slowly as someone underwater. One pistol barked, but the shot only tore into the anti-spalling fabric on the wall.
Clarissa spun through the air, her ruined arm trailing behind her. She led with her knee, and it felt like dancing. Like flying. Her aim was still good. She brought her bent knee into pistol man’s nose, felt the cartilage give in her joint and his face, the two of them crumbling together.
She’d been sick for so long, she’d let it make her fragile. So much of her life had become nurturing what fading health she had. Rationing it like one canteen that had to get her across a desert. Now she gulped it, and it felt wonderful.