For a moment neither one of her captains spoke. She could hear all the objections in her own voice. She was tripling the risk of the mission. She was spending an order of magnitude more ammunition—torpedoes and PDC rounds—than a simple escort of the sacrifice ship required. She was putting them, her commanders and their crews and their families, at risk to preserve a station that was actively trying to kill them all.
“I need you to trust me,” she said. A loud pop announced a stray PDC round had holed the Connaught. Oksana shouted something about sealing the deck. Michio didn’t look away from the screen. Let them see these were her risks too.
“Dui,” Foyle said in her whiskey-and-cigar voice. “You say it, bossmang, and we get it done.”
Rodriguez, shaking his head, muttered something obscene, looked into the camera with tired eyes. “Fine.”
She dropped the connection. When she checked in with fire control, Laura had already changed the profile. On the display, every weapon on the face of the station was marked in red, targeted for destruction. But not the docks. Evans was out of his couch and pouring sealant on the hole where the PDC round had punched through the hulls. The slug had passed through the command deck maybe a meter from her head. She could have died. Any of her people could have died. Knowing it was like being two different people at once. One, horrified at the idea that it could have hit Laura or Evans or Oksana. The other, shrugging away what hadn’t happened. This was the work. This was the choice she’d made, and it was the right one.
For two long hours, the Connaught dodged, strained, poured rounds down onto the surface of Pallas. What had originally been a fast, sharp attack turned into a long, bloody bout more about endurance and supplies than clever tactics. The Panshin and the Serrio Mal matched her blow for blow, hammer strikes against an anvil. The jammers were set too deep in the stone for even her torpedoes to reach, and every time the curve of asteroid cut off her line of sight to the other ships, Michio was afraid something would happen. That she wouldn’t see them again. And once, the Panshin emerged from a long pass with a bright scar and section of her hull peeled back.
Slowly, a blindspot appeared around the docks. Parts of space leading to Pallas that had been defended, weren’t. Evans brought the Solano into it kilometer by kilometer, then meter by meter until it had locked to Pallas’ orbit with only an occasional little push from the maneuvering thrusters to keep it stationary.
“They’re going to find a way to kill it, sir,” Oksana said. “May take them days, may take them hours, but this isn’t a blockade that can hold for long.”
“Get me line-of-sight on the Panshin, Oksana.”
“Sir.”
Rodriguez, when he appeared on the screen again, was grinning. So that, at least, was a good sign.
“How’s your ship, Captain Rodriguez?” Michio said, returning his smile despite herself.
“Esá bent, broken, fucked, flustered, and far from home,” Ezio said, laughing. “Got a couple in the med bay and one in the morgue, but we done the thing, que sí? Pulled a whole station’s teeth and half their eyes too, account son los champions.”
“I think we are,” Michio said. “I’m going to need you to stand guard on this. Pull back far enough that you’re out of range of anything Pallas puts together. Take control of the Solano.”
“Babysit?” Rodriguez said.
“Got your hull pulled back like a condom wrapper, Ezio. I’m not putting you in at Titan.”
God bless the man, he looked disappointed. “Bist bien,” he said. “We’ll hold the line. But you and Foyle take the torpedoes we’ve still got, yeah? Stock up. Anything we do, we can manage con PDCs and my winning smile.”
“Won’t say no to that,” Michio said.
“Que tu trigger?” he asked. “When do I light it up and slag the fuckers?”
“When you know it’s Free Navy you’re burning down. Not if just people. Lose the ship before you hurt civilians. Killing people because they got in the way is inner-planets bullshit. It’s Free Navy bullshit. We’re better than that.”
“Damn right we are,” Rodriguez said and signed off. When he saluted, he had blood on his fingers.
She pointed a tightbeam connection request at one of the less damaged comm arrays, unsure if it would do any good. Even if the equipment was limping along well enough to function, there was no reason for the connection to be accepted. Only it was.
A familiar dark, pebbled face appeared on her monitor. From what she could see behind him, he was in a well-appointed office, brightly lit and probably somewhere deep enough in the station that she couldn’t have reached him without nukes or a reactor set to critical and crashed into the station.
“Captain Pa,” he said. “You seem to be moving from one shitty decision to another.”
“Rosenfeld,” she said.
“When you broke with Inaros, I understood it. Respected it, even. I was disappointed when you turned to Fred Johnson. But this? Playing marionette to Chrisjen Avasarala and Emily Richards. And Holden?” He shook his head. “Something happened to you, Michio. You’ve changed.”
“Context changed,” she said. “I’m still the same. And here’s what happens next. I have a live, warmed-up Epstein drive pointed at the docks. If I see any activity there? I slag them. If I see any shuttles or boats taking off from the surface, I’ll shoot them down and slag the docks. If I see anything that looks like an
attempt to sabotage the Solano, I’ll slag the docks. If any Free Navy ship comes within a hundred thousand klicks of Pallas, I’ll slag the docks. You will find yourself governor of an old, broken station that can’t move supplies in or out.”
“Duly noted,” Rosenfeld said dryly.
There didn’t seem anything more to say, but she didn’t kill the connection. Not yet. And then, “Use this.”