“Word from a coyo on the cleaning crew is Holden’s alive. Locked down tight, but not dead.”
A tightness released in Bobbie’s gut. Whatever else happened, she hadn’t killed him. And more than that, when she found Amos, she’d have it on her side. She felt a deep gratitude that she’d run into Saba before he’d found him. She had to let Alex know. And Naomi. And everyone. The relief was profound.
“That’s … Okay. What’s the worrying?”
“Message from the union. From the spy repeater.”
“Wait,” Bobbie said, following him as he walked toward his cabin. “We’ve got communications lines open? I thought we shut that down.”
“Turned it back on for this,” Saba said. “It ate a missile right after. Drummer thought it was worth burning the channel for.”
“Something big, then?”
“Come see.”
Saba had Drummer’s message up on his cabin’s monitor. The change in her face was shocking. It wasn’t only that the president looked tired and thinner. She looked older, like the last few weeks had been measured in years instead of days. Saba didn’t speak, but started the message from the beginning. Bobbie listened until the end, then played it again, making sure she understood. The loss of Pallas, and the loss of time.
“Well,” she said. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah,” Saba said. “Got my people going through all the information we intercepted. All that’s finished decrypting, anyway. Nothing about lost time or boiling up the vacuum.”
“Even if we found something, it’s not like we can sneak a message back if the repeater’s dead.”
“Not sneak one, no,” Saba agreed. “Can shout, though. If it was the right time. Medina’s not home anymore. Not for us. When we scatter, maybe send something back down to People’s Home. Tell them what we’ve got to tell them. If we get anything.”
“Fair point,” Bobbie agreed. “And that is the plan now, right? Clear a path and evacuate as many as we can before the new ship gets here?”
“Already putting out the word to the underground,” he said. He sounded as tired as she was. “Just the ones we trust. Saying to get ready. Window opens, and get to the ships and go. Everyone someplace different. Harder to kill us if we’re not in one place.”
“Even better if they don’t know who went where,” Bobbie said. “I’d love to find a way to take out Medina’s sensor arrays when we go.”
“Would be sweet,” Saba said, his voice dull.
“You holding up okay?” Bobbie asked.
Saba shrugged toward the image of Drummer still on the screen. “That woman is my heart, and I lost her. Lost my ship. Lost my place for my people. Got an enemy ship killing my cities and stations, and now it can turn off minds in a whole system at once. Got another one like it braking toward me. Got all those Marines in power armor ready to shoot me and mine through the brainpan, and the loosest mouth on a thousand worlds is in the enemy’s jail. So given so, I’m all right.”
“Holden won’t rat us out. He’s given a lot of unvetted press releases over the years, but that’s not the same as this.”
“They have him, they’ll have us. Not talking him down, but these people were Mars before they were this. Ask anyone in the OPA from the old days. Martian interrogation, it’s a question of how long until the break. Never if. Better that he’d died.”
“We can move,” Bobbie said. “Do you have any holes that Holden didn’t know about?”
“Few,” Saba said, reluctantly. “But fewer now. My people are moving now. Still room for you and yours, but there won’t be. Not for long. And …”
He shook his head.
“And what,” Bobbie said. “If there’s something more, I need to know.”
Saba shrugged and nodded at the screen. “When it comes, if it comes, the one system we can’t go to? Sol. Anyplace else, I can try for. Anyplace else, I can go. But no matter where it is, she won’t be there. Wasn’t so bad when the repeater still was, but with it gone, it feels …”
A tear tracked down Saba’s brown cheek. Bobbie looked away.
It was so easy to forget all the others. Not just Saba, but all of them. The crews of all the ships trapped in
the dock beside the Roci. The children in Medina’s schoolrooms, the medical staff in the clinics. The artists playing music live outside the cafés out of love of doing it. Medina Station had been the nearest thing to a void city before the void cities were built. It was a home for a generation of people, and every one of them was carrying something now that made their days harder. She thought of the prisoners in the public jail, the angry man who’d come to watch them. Who had he lost back on Sol? What was keeping him awake in the nights?
There were so many families, so many crews, parents and children, lovers and friends, whose lives had been changed past recognition since Laconia gate had opened. It wasn’t just her and the Roci crew. It wasn’t just Saba. Everyone was dancing on this same landslide, and no one knew how to make it end well.