The figure twitched. Something bloomed out from its back. On the display, it looked so small. The arms rose up, the legs bent. Vapor sprayed from the figure. Atmosphere. Blood.
“She caught a PDC round,” Jillian said. “She’s gone.”
Alex didn’t hear her. He heard her, but he wouldn’t understand. Grief like an electrical shock ran through his body, humming and violent and damaging.
“I can get to her,” Alex said, turning back to his controls. Something was wrong with the juice on his couch. He couldn’t catch his breath. “It’s going to be a hell of a ride, but we can… we can…”
His controls flickered as Jillian locked him out.
“Give me the fucking controls,” he shouted. “We have to get her!”
“Alex,” Caspar said, and his gentleness was unbearable. The suit of powered armor drifted. It was still heading toward the Tempest. Inertia carrying her toward her destination even after it didn’t matter. Even after she was gone. He tapped at the controls the same way, like there was a way to roll time back just a little.
“Fuck. Fuck,” Alex shouted. The lemony taste of vomit hit the back of his throat. He swallowed hard, forcing it back down. The plan had failed.
Bobbie was gone.
“What do we do?” Caspar said, and there was panic in his voice. Before Alex could answer, the sensor feed died with an audible click and the radiation alarms started screaming.
The Heart of the Tempest had stood alone against the combined forces of Earth, Mars, and the Belt and won. It had put all humanity under Laconia’s yoke. It was the living symbol of why all resistance against High Consul Duarte would always be in vain.
When their sensors finished their override reset, it was gone.
Without the protection of the Storm’s eerie skin, the burst of X-rays and gamma radiation would have killed them all. As it was, half the crew was too sick to get out of their crash couches. The medical bay was filled with people sloughing off the lining of their gastrointestinal tracts. The ship’s supply of antiradiation pharmaceuticals was already down to nothing, and if the cancer rate followed the models, their oncocidals would be going down next.
The ship itself was injured too. Not even broken. Injured. The regenerative plating that covered the Storm had started developing blisters and thickening like the first stages of skin cancer. The vacuum channels that routed power failed sometimes for no clear reason, becoming so unreliable that the repair crews started putting in copper wire backup circuits, the metal taped to the inside of the corridors. The drive still burned, even if it ran a little dirty.
They’d won. It hadn’t been possible, but they’d done it. Coming out unscarred would have been too much to ask.
Alex cycled between numbness and grief with the regularity of a clock. When he could stand it, he watched the newsfeeds from around the system replaying the explosion he hadn’t been able to see because he was too close when it happened. The best one was from Earth. A handheld camera filming a child’s kite competition was pointing at the right section of sky when the light reached there, and the brightness against the blue had been like a small, brief sun, even at that distance.
Everyone in the system was tracking the Storm as it made its way toward the ring gate. No one had the nerve to follow it. The newsfeeds were thick with analysis. The attack had been in retaliation for the crackdown on Ceres. It had been an inside job, and stood as evidence that the Laconian Navy itself was rife with factions and dissent. It was the first step toward the underground retaking Sol system or the inciting incident that would force the high consul to glass the whole system. Nine times out of ten, the speakers were celebrating Laconia’s defeat. There were other stories: Spontaneous demonstrations on Mars and Rhea calling for Laconian withdrawal. The official announcement from TSL-5 that the Laconian political officer’s position was being held empty until regular communication through the gate network was reestablished. A dozen pirate feeds springing up, accusing the Laconians of taking risks in the dead systems that put the whole human race under threat.
It wasn’t chaos, or if it was, it was no more than usual. It was the blossoming of hope where there had been no hope before. It was everything Bobbie had intended it to be, except for one detail.
For himself, the radiation sickness was bad, but the physical distress at least kept his mind busy. When he felt well enough to work, he threw in with the repair crews. He wasn’t surprised when Jillian Houston—Captain Houston—called him into her office. He’d been expecting it.
The cabin was small and spare. Laconian officers didn’t show off. Another thing they’d inherited from Mars. Alex remembered his own commanders embracing the same austerity, back when he’d been a different man and the universe had made sense. The few decorations and belongings that had been Bobbie’s were on the desk. Jillian looked thinner than before, and paler too. The radiation sickness had hit her harder, but it hadn’t stopped her.
“Alex,” she said. Her voice was gentler than usual. Like now that she’d taken power, she didn’t have to be as aggressive. “I wanted you to… I thought she’d have wanted you to take care of her things.”
“Thank you,” Alex said, reaching for them.
“Please sit.”
He did. Jillian leaned forward, her fingers steepled. “We need repairs. We need to regroup. And we need to go to ground before Laconia gets their shit together and sends ships after us.”
“All right,” Alex said. His heart wasn’t in it. Maybe it was because he was sick. Maybe it was grief. Where one started and the other stopped was difficult if not impossible to locate.
“I’ve decided to take us back to Freehold. We have the support there. And the Storm’s home base facility. We can get her back up to trim. Resupply from the colony. Plan our next moves.”
She looked at him like she expected him to say something. He wasn’t sure what that would be. He considered the things on the table. A tunic. A little glass-and-ceramic commendation she’d gotten from the UN, signed by Chrisjen Avasarala. He was surprised there wasn’t more, and he was a little surprised there was even that much.
“I think that’s a good plan,” he said. “The risky part will be getting through the gates, but with no Medina Station, we don’t have to try to sneak out in a supply ship. That makes it easier.”
When Jillian spoke again, there was a thickness in her voice like passion or sorrow. Or rage. “Draper was a good captain. And a better war leader. She made this ship what it is, and no one on the Storm will ever forget her or the sacrifice she made for us.”
“Thank you,” Alex said.