The excitement in Alex’s chest felt like champagne bubbles. Bright and dancing. He’d forgotten what a good break felt like after all the dread. It was astounding to think how close he’d come to scrubbing the mission, leaving the waldoes abandoned in the air duct, and calling it impossible. And if this was the key that let them get themselves and everyone else in the underground off Medina before the Typhoon appeared, his balking would have pissed their best chances away.
Holden’s gambit had worked. He’d thrown himself to the wolves so that they’d have this,
and it was everything they’d hoped for. Everything but having him back, and maybe that too.
“Is there anything in there about where the prisoners are held?” he asked.
“There is,” Naomi said, her inflection landing on the words in a way that meant it was the first thing she’d looked for. All the rest of it was important, but that part—where Holden was, how to get him out—was a settled issue in her mind. That was enough for Alex. He could hear the details later, so long as there were details to hear.
“Problemas son,” Saba said, shifting his weight. “Maybe is too good, yeah? Maybe is designed to look like something it’s not.”
“You think it’s fake?” Naomi asked.
Saba made a ticking sound with his tongue and teeth. “No. But can’t make the assumption without risking everybody’s ass, yeah? Hoping more than not. If it is what it is, it won’t stay secret for long. Too proud a victory, yeah? Someone finds out, gets a little drunk, then everyone knows.”
“You don’t trust your people’s discipline?” Bobbie asked.
Saba pointed at the closed door. “My people are the crew on the Malaclypse. These others weren’t mine until they stopped being Drummer’s. And she’s had five or six layers of bureaucrats between. It’s not I don’t trust, it’s that I don’t trust blind. People are people. Fucked up like we all are, it amazes me when we can even make a sandwich.”
“A man of infinite cynicism,” Naomi said, but Alex could hear the calm behind the words. Whatever she was seeing there, it soothed her more than he’d been able to. And then, “Bobbie, when you were active Martian Marine Corps, did your Goliath suits have a command override?”
“A what?” Bobbie said.
“Command override. Something that let your commanding officer shut the suit down?”
“Sure, we called it a radio. CO said stand down, and we did. What are you seeing?”
Naomi leaned back so that Bobbie—and since he was right there, Alex—could see better. Back when he’d been in the service, there had always been a clear chain of command, and procedures in place for when someone bucked it. Most of the time it involved MPs dragging someone off for a little summary roadside attitude adjustment followed by a court-martial. Maybe it was different in the Marines, but he was pretty sure he hadn’t seen anything like what was outlined on the screen.
“They can … they can turn them off?” Bobbie said, her voice caught between outrage and laughter. “Because that right there looks like it’s saying the governor can push a button and turn all those pretty suits of power armor into a couple thousand sarcophagi.”
“Life-support functions stay in place,” Naomi said. “But disables the weapons and comm systems, and freezes all the joints.”
Alex whistled appreciatively. “These folks must really be scared of mutineers.”
“Well,” Bobbie said. “Think about how they got here. Duarte managed to build a schismatic faction inside the MCRN big enough to start his own navy. Going on with the assumption that no one would ever try the same thing on him would seem stupid. He’s not stupid. This solve in particular, though …”
“Seems a mite overaggressive,” Alex said.
“And it’s always the aggressor who exposes their weakness,” Bobbie said. She put her hand on Naomi’s. “What are the chances we could spoof that lockdown signal?”
“Get me one of their powered suits,” Naomi said, “and I’m pretty sure we could manage it.”
“The Storm, Medina’s scopes, and the Marines,” Bobbie said. “This looks like we can build a plan that’s three for three.”
“And the prisoners,” Naomi said. “Freeing the prisoners.”
She meant Holden, Alex knew. Bobbie did too.
“Goes without saying,” Bobbie said.
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Singh
Singh found it unsettling to think of a time before Laconia. He’d been young enough when his parents made the crossing that he had virtually no memories of anything but Laconia as home. And yet, Laconia wasn’t even the first of the thirteen hundred worlds to be colonized. First, there had been a ball of mud and water that the settlers called Ilus.
The government of Earth, faced with the daunting prospect of surveying, studying, then exploiting the potentially vast riches of these new worlds, did what it always did. It gave out a government contract to a civilian company to do it for them. But when the prospecting vessel from Royal Charter Energy arrived at what the UN was calling New Terra, they found a couple hundred squatters already there digging up mineral resources and calling themselves an independent government.
A lot of violence later, RCE left the planet, Ilus had its own charter from the UN, and it was, up until recently, a founding member of Carrie Fisk’s Association of Worlds and an exporter of lithium and heavy metals.