Because that was the final lesson she taught her enemy: It’s safe to chase after us. It’s how you’ll win.
And it was a lie.
The first sign of fresh cheese in the mousetrap was the Bellerophon changing its drive signature. The Donnager-class battleship was burning away from Laconia, heading in the rough direction of the Verity Close. Even from half the system away, the drive plume would have been visible to the naked eye, a faint but moving star.
And then, for a moment, it blinked out.
The Roci and her three escort ships were on the float, skating on the far side of the sun from Laconia. She’d led them in toward the corona until even with pumping spare water onto the ship’s skin and letting it evaporate, the built-up heat was at the edge of tolerance. Even when the temperature was in the error bars of normal use, it baked the resins and ceramic. The air smelled different, and it left Naomi and the rest of the crew jumpy and uncomfortable. But with Laconia’s fighting ships near the planet, they were in a blind spot. Out of sight.
When the Bellerophon’s drive lit back up, it was dirty. Half a minute after that, it went off again. The way an apex predator lured lesser hunters by mimicking the sound of wounded prey, the Bellerophon called out for help. And Naomi’s fleet answered. The Storm, the Armstrong, the Carcassone, and almost a quarter of the other ships started burning on courses that would meet the Bellerophon. The Bellerophon wasn’t halfway to the Verity Close, but the light delay from it to Laconia was still over seventy minutes.
A malfunctioning ship would be interesting to Duarte and his admirals. An escort fleet coming to its aid looked like something more. It looked like a mistake. And an opportunity.
“Come on,” Naomi said.
“Should I start up?” Alex asked.
“Put us at half a g,” Naomi said. Even if it didn’t work, they’d want to be out of here soon. As comms officer, Ian passed the word along to the other ships, and the Roci eased up from beneath her.
Two hours later, the Whirlwind moved. At high burn, she headed out toward the Bellerophon and the gathering escort ships. For anyone who’d seen the Tempest destroy the combined forces back in Sol, it was like seeing a shark darting toward a beach full of toddlers.
Three hours after that, several hunt groups on the other side of the heliosphere started burning in toward Laconia, and the destroyers went on intercept courses, ready for a slice of their own glory.
There was a point long before any battle came that was her window. Not just how long it would take the Whirlwind to get back, but how long it would have to decelerate before it could even start to reduce the distance to Laconia again. And the same for the destroyers. It was a window of time defined by mass and inertia, thrust, and the frailty of the human body. The time it would take even long-range torpedoes to reach them. Naomi ran the numbers, and she knew when they would see her and her little force diving in from sunward. And that it would be too late.
“Alex?”
“Ready when you are,” he said.
“Let’s go.”
The burn was punishing, and it lasted hours. The distance from the sun to Laconia was slightly less than an astronomical unit. If they’d kept the burn going the whole distance, they’d have snapped by Laconia too quickly to see it. The flip came at the halfway point, and the braking burn was just as bad. Worse, because now the planetary defenses had seen them. Torpedoes darted out toward them, and died in the web of four ships’ coordinated PDCs.
The planet itself was beautiful. Blue and white as Earth, with a greenish cast at its edge that was almost pearlescent. Naomi could make out the clouds. A cyclone forming in its southern hemisphere. The jagged, black-green line of its coast where the forests stood. Naomi fought to keep them in focus. The force of the burn was deforming her eyes.
THE WHIRLWIND HAS TURNED. STARTED ITS BRAKING BURN. IS FIRING LONG RANGE.
The message was from the sensor ops. One of the new people. She checked it herself all the same and agreed. If this didn’t work now, it wouldn’t work later. This was her only shot. Fingers aching, she sent a message to Ian, suffering in the next couch over. SEND THE EVACUATION ORDER. EVERYONE GOES FOR THE GATE NOW.
She heard him grunt and took it as assent.
Alex shouted, his voice strangled by effort and the g forces pressing at them. “Rail-gun fire. Brace. For. Evade.”
The Roci bucked, lurched. At this distance, the rail-gun fire could still be dodged. The closer they came, the harder that would become. She pulled up the targeting arrays, and the beautiful blue-green sphere sprouted five red lines, as bent as tree limbs. The platforms. The targets.
TARGET ALL FIRE ON THE PLATFORMS, she typed. FIRE AT WILL.
It was too soon, but only by a little bit. And there was a chance for a lucky shot. Every second they spent in the firing arc of Laconia was another chance to die. Worse, another chance to fail.
INCOMING TORPEDOES FROM THE WHIRLWIND. ETA 140 MINUTES. Naomi deleted the message. By then, everything would be over.
“Cut the brake,” she shouted. “Do it now.”
The Roci fell onto the float and snapped around 180 degrees, ready to accelerate again. Ready to flee as soon as the enemy was finished. There would only be one run past the planet. If they missed, they lost.
The ship jerked, and Alex took them out of the path of another rail-gun round. The chatter of the PDCs ran through the flesh of the Roci like the ship was talking to itself and it was angry. Naomi’s jaw ached with the tension and fear and the joy. The small, jagged red lines grew a fraction larger.
“Captain?” Ian said. “I have something.”
“Not as helpful as you think,” Naomi snapped. “What do you have?”
“I’m not sure,” Ian said, and passed the comms controls to her monitor. It was an incoming message from the surface of Laconia, coded with an out-of-date underground encryption schema. An evac request.
Amos’ evac request.
“Alex?” she said, and the ship jumped again, slamming her left and then right again, her crash couch whipping like the seat in a carnival ride. “Alex?”
“I see it,” he shouted. He was out of breath. “What do we do?”
Chapter Forty-Five: Teresa
The Mammatus died, burning through Laconia’s gate and being dismembered by the enemy ships, two nights before her birthday. The celebration was held in one of the minor ballrooms, with the same tasteful and understated decorations she always had. Silk banners with bright designs, glass candles that she’d loved when she was eight and been saddled with ever since, flowers raised in hydroponic farms in the city proper.
Soft music played over hidden speakers, all of it by composers and performers living on Laconia. Half of the guests were politicians and cultural figures—adults who’d come mostly to say they’d been there and to see who was in favor. The other half were her peer class and their families. They were dressed in stiff formal blues, just like she was. None of them seemed happy to be there. That was fair. To them, it was like having to go to school an extra session. They were nice to her. They had to be.
The sense of strained pleasure almost made her happy. All the adults had smiles like masks. They made a show of congratulating her, as if not dying for fifteen years in a row was an achievement to be proud of. But even while they pretended to be impressed by how mature and composed she looked, their eyes were darting around the room, trying to find her father. She had to play her role, but at least so did they. No one talked about the invasion. Not even Carrie Fisk, wearing a champagne-colored gown and a fixed grin, looking like she wanted to bolt for the door. Camina Drummer wasn’t there, and Teresa wondered what had happened to her. Either she’d lost control of the Transport Union and wasn’t anyone anymore, or she’d been part of planning the invasion, in which case she was lucky if she wasn’t in the pens.
Teresa didn’t care. She had her own problems.
It was still thirty interminable minutes before the dinner was served when Ilich escorted her to
the dais at the back of the room. The crowd got quiet without being prompted. Like they’d been trained. She’d been trained too. She knew what to do.
“I want to thank all of you for coming tonight,” she lied with a smile. “I am honored to be in your company now, and for all the years that I’ve lived here among you. My mother, as you all know, died when I was very young. And my father carries his own burdens. He can’t be with us here tonight because his duties to all of us don’t allow him time even for simple, honest pleasures like this.”
Plus which, he’s out of his fucking mind. Lost to all of you and to me as well, but I’m the only one who knows it, you poor fuckers. She grinned widely at the pattered soft applause, taking an angry pleasure in the raw perversity of the situation.
Teresa caught sight of Elvi Okoye in the back of the room. Yellow gown, and her husband at her side. She was holding a wineglass in her fist like she was trying to break the stem. She knew too.
“All of you have been a family to me as I grew up,” Teresa said. Ilich’s words didn’t sound like something she’d say, but none of them knew her well enough to catch it. “I am humbled. And I am grateful.” Another round of applause, and Teresa bowed her head like she was actually grateful. Like she actually cared whether the enemy ships burning from the edge of the system reduced everyone in the room to ash.
You’re one of the angriest people I know. She wore the words now like a shawl, smiled and made her little bows as if they weren’t statements of contempt.
“Please enjoy this evening as both my guest and my father’s,” she said, and stepped down. The guests turned back to each other, oppressed and anxious and thinking less about her than the return of the Gathering Storm and its pirate fleet. Reminiscing less about Teresa Duarte’s childhood and more about the violent death of the Heart of the Tempest.
Teresa made her way across the ballroom, avoiding Ilich and Connor and Muriel. She found Elvi and her husband not far from where she’d seen them. From the dais, Elvi had looked stressed. Close up, she looked angry.
“Is everything all right?” Teresa asked.
Elvi started, snapped out of whatever other place her mind had been by Teresa’s voice. For a moment, she didn’t speak, and when she did, it wasn’t convincing. “Fine. Everything’s fine.”
“Well,” Teresa said. “Except.”
Elvi nodded, the movement hinging in her chest so that it seemed less like agreement, more like someone preparing for violence. “Yes. Except,” Elvi said.
The chime rang, calling them all to the dining room like the most privileged cattle in the universe. When they started walking, Teresa stayed at Elvi’s side. Her husband was using a cane and wincing as he walked. That was fine. Teresa wanted to go slowly.
“I was wondering, Dr. Okoye,” Teresa said. “The Falcon.”
Again, it took Elvi a moment to come back. “What about it?”
“I wondered how the repairs were going. With everything that’s going on… I mean, it is built for sustained high burn. It has breathable liquid crash couches.”
Elvi shuddered.
“Those are unpleasant,” her husband said.
“But still. If the fighting got close? You’d be able to use it to get away?”
Elvi and her husband exchanged a look that Teresa couldn’t quite read. Like there was another conversation going on that she couldn’t quite hear.
“Unfortunately,” Elvi said, “the Falcon was deeply, deeply compromised.”
“I got a new foot, toenails and all,” her husband said. “But that ship’s still in pieces.”
“I really don’t think it’ll come to evacuation,” Elvi said. “None of those ships are even going to get close to the planet. And everything Admiral Trejo has at his disposal will be used to keep us all safe.”
“Maybe you should put a push on the repairs, then,” Teresa said. It came out sharper than she’d meant it to, but Elvi laughed. That was interesting.
“Maybe I should,” she sighed, and then they were in the dining room, and Teresa was escorted to the high table with Ilich and a half dozen guests more honored than Elvi Okoye.
The meal was a feast. Fresh pasta. Lobster tails taken from actual lobsters. Gently marbled steak grown from the finest samples. The centerpieces were all Laconian flowers, and they smelled of mint and iron and resin. No one asked after Dr. Cortázar. That, Teresa had come to understand, was one of the unwritten rules. When someone disappears, don’t ask why. She wondered if they’d mention her after she left. Assuming she could find a way.
She looked over at the table where Elvi Okoye sat. Her husband was telling a story, his hands shifting in exaggerated gestures for the delight of their tablemates. The doctor was lost in her own thoughts. Teresa wondered whether they’d been lying about the Falcon. She wasn’t sure, and she wasn’t even sure how she’d find out.
Regretfully, she discarded the plan to have them escape the invasion and take her along. She’d have to find another plan.
Days passed. Weeks. The invasion proved harder to stop than anyone liked. The state newsfeeds kept a brightly optimistic view, treating the threat as more of an annoyance by disgruntled idiots than an actual danger to the empire. She still had the access her father had given her to high-level secret reports and briefings, but even if she hadn’t, she’d have known the reports were bullshit.
Apart from the peer class, her lessons were ignored now. She only saw Ilich at meal times. He didn’t repeat his threat to force-feed her, but he didn’t need to. She understood the terms of their relationship now. Having lost control over so many other things, he made up for it by controlling her. There was nothing she could do about it.
“They’ve slipped this time,” Ilich said. “They panicked. That great huge ship of theirs lost part of its magnetic bottle, and they’re all going to defend it.”
“That doesn’t seem like a bad idea,” Teresa said, forcing herself to take another spoonful of the corn chowder. It should have tasted good, but the texture was slimy and it was too sweet. She swallowed and didn’t gag.
They were sitting in an enclosed courtyard with ivy growing up the walls and artificial lights that mimicked the sun. The actual weather was a snowstorm that was covering the gardens in white up to her ankles. Muskrat had been running through it with a wide canine grin and little balls of ice forming on her coat. Ilich hadn’t let her in with them while they ate because she stank of wet dog.
“It wouldn’t be if there was any way for them to actually mount a successful defense. They’ve survived as long as they have by running away. We could kill any of them whenever we chose to, but Trejo was waiting.”
“For what?”
“For this,” Ilich said. He did love the sound of his own voice. The calm, patient instructor unfolding for the clueless little girl how the universe really worked. It had seemed like kindness for so many years. Now it looked like condescension. “The three Martian battleships are the irreplaceable core of their makeshift fleet. And when you have something that important, it’s natural to try to protect it. But it’s an emotional response, not a tactical one. And that’s why they’re going to pay for it.”
He had said all the same things at breakfast—eggs, sweet rice with fish, seared spinach with almonds—and she let him repeat himself now. Nothing he said mattered to her anymore.
“The Whirlwind will go through them like they weren’t there. There’ll be some cleanup afterward. We won’t get all of them. But their major ships? They’re even putting the Storm in harm’s way for this. It’ll be a bloodbath. And I—”
His handheld chimed. Ilich scowled and accepted the connection. Teresa put down her spoon and took a sip of water. Trejo’s voice was clear, and it was tense.
“I’d like a word with you in the tactical office, Colonel.”
Ilich didn’t speak, only nodded, rose, and walked away. Teresa was forgotten behind him. Which suited her just fine. When he was around the corner, she got up and opened the door for Muskrat. Th
e dog trotted in, huffing under her breath. Teresa took out her handheld and opened the tactical reports.
There was a moment of sorrow. They came now and then. The memory of her father telling her that she could be the leader they needed her to be. That he wanted to train her with all the things he knew, just in case. She’d been a different girl then. He’d been a different man. She missed both of them. But the pain faded quickly, and she didn’t lose anything by letting it go. It always came back.
The tactical reports were strange, and it took her a moment to understand what she was looking at. The broken-down battleship had repaired itself somehow. And the fleet of enemy ships was running away, but not for the far edges of the system. They were going to the gate. Most of them, anyway. Almost all of them.
All of them but four. And those were in a path to Laconia. It was suicide. Four ships against the Whirlwind. Unless they had a secret weapon the way they had in Sol system…
But no, the Whirlwind couldn’t stop them. It had already gone too far, and even with the braking burn, its vector was still away from the planet. It was fighting its own mass and momentum like a swimmer struggling against the outgoing tide. The destroyers were in the same position. They’d been tricked. Lured away with only the planetary defense grid to protect them.
Which, in fairness, it probably could. Four ships weren’t much. They’d do some damage, though. And there was only one target. She was sitting in it.
She knew she should be scared, but she wasn’t. She put down her handheld, scratched Muskrat’s back, and thought. It didn’t even feel like solving a problem so much as remembering something she’d always known. She pulled up a map of the system and added in the enemy ships, their burn times. A lot would depend on how they made their braking burns, but Ilich had taught her enough about battle tactics that she could make an educated guess. Make a plan. If she called the enemy down, they’d kill her or take her as a prisoner. She needed something she could trade for passage. She didn’t know what that was.
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