Tiamat's Wrath

Chapter Forty-Seven: Naomi

Alex?”

“I see it,” he shouted. “What do we do?”

A wave of disorientation washed through her, like she had started floating again without having stopped the first time. The ship jumped and shuddered around her as she pulled up the record of Amos’ mission and cross-checked. It looked real. If it was false, it was convincing.

The plan was to hit the platforms and then burn hard to get away before the enemy forces could get back. She’d given them a wide window for it. Adding in a surface landing and extraction …

But if she didn’t, and Amos really was waiting. Or Jim.

“Naomi?” Alex asked again. “What do we do?”

“Take out the platforms,” she said. And then, “First. We take out the platforms first.”

“If we’re going to land, we have to slow down,” Alex said.

She needed time. She didn’t have it. The Roci shifted hard, then fell away, slamming her against her straps as their rail gun fired.

“Get me options,” she said.

“Coming up,” Alex said, and the thrust alert came on. They were flying into the enemy barrage, and she was slowing them down. “Ian! Tell the others to match my course. We’re putting on the brakes.”

She pulled up the tactical, and the drive came on, pushing her back into her couch and the coolness of the gel. She couldn’t tell if it was the evasive dodging or the changes in acceleration or her own sense of doom that left her feeling nauseated, but it didn’t matter. She pulled up the tactical display, ran it through the Roci’s system, and prayed to nothing in particular that a solution existed.

Their information on the defense grid was pieced together from Transport Union ships that had moved through the system. Five weapon platforms, flat black and resistant to radar. They were in higher orbits than the alien construction platforms, and spaced around the planet in a web that put any approaching ship in the sights of at least two and usually three. They were already firing at Naomi’s little strike force, and whatever technology they were using to compensate for the rounds they fired, it didn’t make a heat or light plume that she could use for targeting.

The construction platforms were closer to the planet, long and articulated, with filaments coming off of them like something in a microscope slide of contaminated water. They shimmered with light. There were five of those too, all of them in near-equatorial orbit.

The plan had been to approach with the ships close together so that they would all be covered by the same defenses and dilute the incoming fire between them. Then, when they were close, the Cassius and the Prince of the Face would split off, wrapping around the spinward side of the planet while the Roci and the Quinn cleaned up anti-spinward. Then they would all burn hard for the ring gate and the hundreds of systems beyond to hide in.

That had been the plan. Now it was the same, but slower. More time in the enemy crosshairs. Less chance of escaping unharmed.

Ian shouted over the din of PDC fire, drive resonance, and thruster burn. “Cassius is requesting permission to break off. They’re ready to make their run.”

“Confirmed,” Naomi shouted. “Let’s do this.”

“With them gone, the bad guys are going to have more guns for us,” Alex said. “We’re about to get real bumpy.”

“What the hell has it been up to now?” Ian asked.

“Walk in the park, kid,” Alex said.

On her tactical display, the Cassius turned, its drive plume leaning in toward the other three as it slid toward the far side of the onrushing planet. A few seconds later, the Prince of the Face did likewise. As they slid away, a new bloom of fast movers jumped up from the Laconian defenses.

“How many of these missiles can we take?” Naomi shouted, and a voice she didn’t know yelled back, PDCs at sixty percent as if that answered her question.

“We can start doing damage of our own in eighty seconds,” Alex said. “Seventy-nine.”

“Lock on the construction platforms,” Naomi said. Her legs felt like they were on the verge of cramping. Her monitor was throwing three low-priority medical alerts. She ignored them. The ship moved hard to port, fighting to get out of a rail gun’s firing arc. They were getting close enough that dodging after the rail gun fired was getting hard.

“Permission to hit their weapons, Captain?”

“No,” Naomi said. “The construction platform goes down first.” She might die. They all might die. Even if they did, they didn’t have to lose.

She fought the temptation to grab weapons control herself. The fear and the tension left her muscles trembling, and the evasive shifting was coming faster and harder. She wanted a sense of control. Of being able to bend the next minutes to her will. Trusting a crew she’d barely met with everything was like flying blind.

“Prince of the Face reporting that the Cassius took a rail-gun hit,” Ian shouted.

“How bad?” Naomi asked, already pulling up the sensor array data to see for herself. By the time Ian spoke, she knew.

“The Cassius is gone.”

The odds shifted in her mind again. If the Prince of the Face was lost too, it would mean looping around Laconia to catch the surviving platforms. She’d only just taken on the risk by slowing down, and she was already paying the price.

She took comms control and opened a connection to the Prince of the Face. As soon as it went through, she started talking.

“This is Naomi Nagata of the Rocinante. Kill your braking burn. Go back to the initial strategy. In fast, kill the construction platforms, and burn for the gate. Do not decelerate further. Do not wait for us.”

“Reconegut, Rocinante,” a voice came back. The accent was pure Ceres Station. “Geh cahn Allah, sa sa?”

On her tactical display, the Prince of the Face’s drive plume died, and the ship seemed to leap ahead, rushing toward its target by burning less.

“We’re almost in range,” Alex said.

“I don’t care how much you have to dance,” Naomi said. “Just get us there.”

“Ten more fast movers coming from the defense platform,” Ian said. “PDCs are at fifty.”

“Alex?”

“Doing what I can,” he said. “Give me thirty more seconds.”

Naomi opened a channel to the Quinn. “Report.”

“We took a few rounds in engineering and our machine shop,” a young man’s voice answered. “We’re okay for now.”

“Rocinante is lining up a shot. Cover us.”

“Copy that,” the Quinn said.

The Roci slammed to port, and then again. Naomi’s crash couch whirled, keeping the impacts against her back no matter what direction they came from.

“I really. Wish. They had fewer rail guns,” Alex said from between clenched teeth.

“At least we can dodge,” Naomi said.

“We can until we can’t,” Alex said, and the Roci stuttered under her as their own rail gun fired. She pulled up the image of the alien platform, still much too far away to see with the naked eye. Even with the Roci’s system stabilizing the image, it jumped and vibrated. Naomi leaned in, willing the shot to hit. At this distance, even a mistiming in the shot, a small unanticipated vibration, could mean they’d failed.

The image whited out for a second as an enemy missile died close enough to their line-of-sight to confuse the sensors. It came back in time for her to see the platform shudder and shift. The complex structure seemed to pull in like it was wrapping itself around an injury. It thrashed once, a widespread spasm. The shimmer of lights danced along its spine and out through the structures of its arms, and then it began to unspool. Like a tight-wound thread dropped into water, it relaxed and spread. The rigid shape softened and collapsed on itself, scattering through the emptiness over a vast Laconian ocean. Bright lines of energy like lightning or dying nerve impulses shot along it as it grew dark and drifted apart. The Roci shook and shuddered as the alien structure gently, gracefully died.

Alex let out a sigh that was part relief and part awe. Naomi knew exactly what he meant. She tried to open a connection to the Prince of the Face, to report the kill and check in, but the body of the planet blocked it, and there weren’t any repeaters she could use. From here on in, she had to go on faith.

Alex turned off the drive. They’d braked. If they’d kept it going, the Roci would have started moving away from the planet again. They were in orbit now. Being on the float should have been a relief. It felt like a threat.

“Where’s the next one?” Naomi asked.

“Coming up,” Alex said. “It’s behind the horizon line now. We’ll have it in eight and half minutes.”

“Let’s start knocking down some of these weapons platforms. See if we can get a little peace.”

The Roci kicked again, and the PDC chatter was joined by the deeper, subtle thrum of the torpedoes launching. Naomi found herself grinning despite the pain.

“What’s that?” Naomi said. On the surface of the planet, near the center of one of the continents, a brightness was lighting the thick clouds from beneath. City lights. The capital. Laconia. And just north of it, a bright and burning light, rising up through the atmosphere in a perfectly straight line of fire and smoke.

“Huh,” Alex said. “That’s surface-based rail guns.”

“Were we expecting those?”

“First I’ve heard of them.”

“That’s going to make landing a lot harder.”

“Yes, it is,” Alex said, and dragged the Roci out of the path of the incoming fire. “Kind of makes you wish the pickup was a little farther from the most guarded part of the planet, really.”

“We’d meant to do this a long time ago,” Naomi said. “It looks like they built up in the meantime.”

She checked her maps. The city was almost beneath them now. This was as close to Jim as she had been in years. If the Prince of the Face was on time and target, there was only one platform left. On her monitor, one of the Laconian weapons platforms blew, taken out by a combination of a rail-gun round from the Quinn and two of the Roci’s remaining torpedoes.

It would be so easy to order the drop. Fall through the rough Laconian air, make the pickup, and kill the last platform on her way out.

If she was sure she’d make it. If she was so convinced that she’d live through it that she could risk wasting everything they’d done until now. And she wasn’t.

“Steady as she goes, Alex,” Naomi said.

A sudden bang like a detonation shook the ship, deafening her. She waited for the hiss of lost air, the silence of the vacuum, and it didn’t come.

“What was that?” she shouted.

“Debris hit,” Ian said. “We’ve got a hole in the outer hull.”

“Watch our pressure. If we start leaking, tell me.”

“You got it.”

“I’ve got the last one,” Alex said.

Fast movers on our back. PDCs at thirty percent. Naomi pulled up the visual tracking. They were so close now, she could see the curve of Laconia in the scopes, the milkiness of its high atmosphere.

A connection request came in. The Prince of the Face had cleared the planet and had line of sight for a tightbeam. She accepted it.

“Give me good news,” she said.

“Clar y muerte,” the Prince of the Face said. “Up to you now, boss.”

“Thank you for that,” Naomi said.

Another rail gun from the surface.

“Another what?” the Prince of the Face asked.

“We’re getting fire from the surface,” Naomi said. “It’s fine. Continue with your flight plan. Get out of here. Do it now.”

“Maybe etwas can can do,” the Prince of the Face said, but before she could ask what they meant, Alex said, “I’ve got lock.”

“Do it,” Naomi said.

The Rocinante bucked again. The rail-gun round left a faintly glowing trail, superheating the almost-absent air that it passed through. Naomi held her breath. The rail-gun round touched the distant platform, and her sensors went dead. She pulled up the ship status. All the sensor arrays had tripped to safe. Overloaded.

“What’s—” she started, and the ship screamed. She grabbed the edge of the crash couch as it whirled crazily. They were tumbling. A shock wave moved through the barely present gas out past the edge of turbopause, still strong enough to send them spinning like a kid’s toy that had been kicked. The lights flickered, died, and came back on again. The bones of the ship creaked, and the roar of maneuvering thrusters filled her ears as Alex fought to bring them back to stability. The sensor arrays were still resetting, and Naomi felt the rail-gun rounds cracking up from the surface unseen. She waited to hear them snap through her ship. Hole the reactor. End them.

When the sensor arrays blinked back, the construction platform was gone. A corona of superheated air danced where it had been, green and gold and red.

“I think they may have been making some more antimatter,” Alex said, dryly. “Not sure that was the best idea.”

Naomi didn’t respond. Something was happening on the surface of the planet. The ground defenses where the rail-gun rounds had originated was reading hot. Nothing was firing. She tried to connect the death of the platform with it, but the pieces wouldn’t fit. Something else had happened.

A connection request came. The Prince of the Face again. Naomi took it. “Did you do something? What did you do?”

“Still had demi-hold á plasma torpedoes, yeah?” the other ship said. “No use for. Dropped them on your rail-gun base, que? Clear your way. Question is what did you do? That a nuke?”

“Nothing so trivial as that,” Naomi said. “Thank you, Prince. We’re good. Now get out.”

“Already gone,” the ship said, and the connection dropped. She sent a tightbeam to the Quinn. It answered immediately.

“We’re seeing all enemy weapons platforms in the hemisphere disabled,” a young man said. “We have a half-hour window before anything cycles to this side of the planet.”

“Go,” Naomi said. “We have a pickup to make on the surface.”

They were silent long enough Naomi thought she might have lost the connection.

“We’re your escort, Rocinante. Do what you need to do, we’ll be here. If we were rated for atmo, we’d go with you.”

“Negative, Quinn,” Naomi said. “Burn for the gates. That’s an order.”

A moment later, the Quinn’s drive plume bloomed out bright and huge, and the Rocinante was left alone in the wide sky over Laconia. Naomi looked around her. There was smoke in the air, but no alarms were going off. Her crash couch had pushed one of her medical alarms back to normal, but the other two showed elevated cortisol and blood pressure. No one was shooting at her, and it felt strange.

“Alex?” she said. “Are we ready to go down?”

“Checking,” he said. “That debris hit fucked up our aerodynamics, but … I can make it work. It’ll be choppy as hell.”

“Can’t scare me,” Naomi said. “Get us down. As soon as you can.”

Below them, Laconia was in night. There was a beauty to it. Apart from a faint bioluminescence where the distant sea met the shore, the land was dark. The only light was shrouded by clouds. This was what Earth would have looked like, more or less, before the first electric light. Before the first satellite, the first orbital shuttle. Before Mars. Before Ceres. Before the Belt. It was the heart of a galactic empire, and still as bare as wilderness. Auberon and Bara Gaon had more cities. Earth had more history. Every place had the dream of what it could become.

Dreams were fragile things to build with. Titanium and ceramic lasted longer.

“Captain?”

She looked over at Ian. He was a boy. He was probably older than she’d been when the Canterbury died and she’d first set foot on the Rocinante, and he was just a boy.

“Kefilwe,” she said.

“I was wondering if I could take the comms controls back,” he said. “I … It’s my duty. If you …”

“Sorry,” Naomi said, shifting them back to his station. “Old habit. That was rude.”

“Just trying to feel useful,” he said through a tentative smile.

“All right,” Alex said. “We’re as close as we’re going to get. And more time won’t help us.”

“Take us down,” Naomi said. The maneuvering thrusters fired, slowing the ship and letting it drop. Alex turned them back toward the cloud-blanketed city already carried hundreds of klicks away by the planet’s rotation, tilted down the nose, and tapped his controls. The maneuvering thrusters roared again.

Less than a minute later, the Rocinante hit air.