“That’s not the plan the way I heard it,” Amos said.
“Amos, listen to me. Stand down. Don’t blow the ship. And if anyone down there kills another Laconian, I will shoot them myself. Including you. Understood?”
“Yup.”
“Stand by. If I need you to go back to plan A, I’ll know in about a minute.”
Davenport looked from her to her team arrayed behind her. He scowled. Bobbie felt her breath go shallow. She waited.
“Thirty seconds, Mister Davenport,” she said.
“You joined the wrong side, gunny,” Davenport said. “You should have been one of ours.”
Twenty-five minutes later, the surviving crew of the Gathering Storm were tethered together in the cargo airlock. Their arms were secured behind their backs, their ankles were tied together, and the maneuvering thrusters on their vac suits didn’t have any canisters. Amos and one of his team went through checking their seals one last time and strapping emergency beacons to their knees. The Laconian commanding officer watched Bobbie now with the intensity of someone planning his revenge.
Amos knocked on Davenport’s faceplate to get his attention. “Can you breathe in there? Getting good air? ’Cause if you’re not, this is the time to say something.”
He nodded once, a perfect physical representation of resentment.
Outside the Storm, ships were fleeing through the gates following the schedule Naomi had built. By and large, they were going to the smaller colonies where there was less traffic parked waiting for the gates to reopen. But some were going to the well-established places like Bara Gaon Complex and trusting to their ability to evade any traffic monitoring on the other side to get them to safety. There was still a little more than an hour before the last of them was slated to go, and then the Storm, following up at last. If things went right, Medina’s sensors would be deep in their routing seizures for at least four hours. And the prisoners had enough air for ten. A six-hour window for pickup seemed like more than enough.
Amos gave her the thumbs-up, and Bobbie nodded him on. He undid the tether from the airlock deck, pushed off, and floated through to pull himself to a stop beside her. Bobbie cycled the lock, and when the outer door opened to the darker-than-space of the slow zone, she touched her radio.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s see if the controls work the way they said.”
“Copy that, bossmang,” her new Belter pilot said.
The Storm shifted, pushing gently to the side. The prisoners seemed to float away, though really Bobbie was the one moving. Out beyond them in the darkness, a distant drive plume glowed like a star, and then, passing through a gate, went out.
“Okay,” she said. “We’re good. Make sure we get far enough away before we light up the drive. I don’t want to save them just so you can burn them down in the drive plume.”
“Sa sa,” the pilot said.
“Alex?” she said, then remembered her suit was still on the low-power stealth settings. She changed it and tried again. “Alex? Where do we stand?”
A different voice answered. A man that it took Bobbie a few seconds to recognize. “We’re hugged close to Medina for the extraction.”
“Houston?” she said. “Is that you?”
“Now that you fuckers have come to your senses about the immorality of centralized power? Yeah, it’s me. And I’m ready to accept your apology as soon as you untwist your diapers.”
“He’s gonna be a joy,” Amos said placidly. “I kind of missed him.”
Bobbie killed her mic. “I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic. I need to know these things.” She turned the mic back on. “We have a change of plan. We won’t need pickup.”
“Negative,” Alex said. “I’m not leaving you behind.”
“We’re flying escort,” Bobbie said. “The Storm is ours.”
“No shit?” Alex said, then whooped. “Holy crap, you took a prize? Looks like you got yourself a ship after all, Captain Draper.”
Naomi’s voice cut in, clipping into Alex’s last syllables. “I’m coming out.”
“All right,” Alex said. “Two to pick up, and then we can get in the flight queue out of this dump.”
“One,” Naomi said. “One to pick up. We ran into a problem. Clarissa went down fighting. I wouldn’t have made it out without her. None of us would.”
Bobbie’s throat went tight. She looked over at Amos, and he smiled his usual amiable smile, shrugged. Just for a moment, she saw something underneath the expression. Pain and loss and sorrow and rage, and then he was just himself again.