Her hand terminal chimed, and she plucked it out of her pocket with a sense of dread. The message was from Alex, and all it said was WHEN YOU HAVE A MINUTE. The underground was still using encrypted back channels. The security forces wouldn’t see the message in their logs. But if Bobbie got picked up, or someone looked over her shoulder, the words would be innocuous. Saba’s cramped halls and corridors were the only place they could speak freely. Everywhere else on Medina had become the land of subtext.
She found an escalator and let it carry her down into the body of the drum. It wasn’t far to the entry to Saba’s alternate station, but they all had to be careful to see they weren’t followed. Their bubble of freedom was fragile, and once it popped, it wouldn’t come back.
Alex was waiting for her when she ducked into the access corridor. The flesh under his eyes looked ashy and his shoulders slumped like he was under a higher gravity than they were. He smiled, though, and that her friend seemed pleased to see her counted for a lot. For more than it should have, even.
“How’s the weather out there?” he asked as they made their way down toward the makeshift galley.
“Stormy,” she said. “Get the feeling it’ll get worse before it gets better too.”
“That was a given.”
In the galley, half a dozen of Saba’s people sat at the tables, talking. The air smelled like noodles in black sauce, but the food was gone. Bobbie wasn’t hungry anyway. One of Katria’s men, a crook-nosed guy named Jordao, nodded to her, smiling a little too widely. She nodded back with a sense of dread. This was not a time she wanted someone hitting on her.
“Any word?” she asked, her voice low even though security wouldn’t hear her. She wasn’t afraid of being found out here, but the wounds were fresh. Some things didn’t need to travel outside the family.
“On Holden, no,” Alex said.
“Okay,” Bobbie said. It cut her a little every time there was nothing, and she welcomed it. If it came back that she’d killed him, the hurt would be a million times worse. Every little wound was a good thing because it wasn’t the killing blow.
“That stuff Naomi pulled off the encryption machine? It’s working. Saba’s folks are able to dig through a bunch of stuff we intercepted before. Of course, the
He trailed off like his words were running out of pressure.
“So we won,” she said. “Go us.”
“Doesn’t feel like it, does it? I keep asking myself what the hell happened.”
“We lost Holden.”
Alex shook his head, tapped four fingertips on the table. “Yeah, and that’s hard, but something happened before that. We’ve faced all kinds of bad before now, and it never split up the family. It was always everyone else, never us. Now Naomi’s off in her room, and Amos is wherever the hell Amos is. You’re going for long walks. We used to be a crew. Now it’s me and Claire playing cards and worrying about everyone.” She heard the accusation in his voice, and she wanted to push back at him. Only he was right. Something deeper was wrong. Had been wrong.
In the hallway, Saba’s voice. A woman replied. It was all too quiet to make out the words. The people at the other table laughed about something. Bobbie hunched forward, her scowl deep enough to ache.
“Holden’s not just Holden,” she said, knowing it was an evasion but saying it anyway. “He’s the face of the
“Feels like that to them, sure,” Alex said, pointing to the others with his thumb. “But we lost him before, and it didn’t break us. Him and Naomi retiring was sad. And then he didn’t go away, and that was weird.”
“Yeah. The whole Captain Draper thing might have worked if he’d actually been out of the picture—”
Alex leaned forward, talking over her.
“But we know better. Whatever’s going on with Amos and you, it didn’t start when Holden left. Or when he came back. It was when that big-ass ship steamed through the gate from Laconia and fucked everything sideways. And now Naomi’s curling up in her bunk while everything’s still on fire.”
“She’s not helping with the decrypt?”
Alex shook his head once, sharply.
“She can’t pull back,” Bobbie said. “She’s the best tech on the station. Saba’s people are fine, but she’s better. She can’t just stop working because …”
Because her lover’s dead. Or worse. Bobbie felt the hurt and the guilt again.
“We need her,” Alex agreed. “I’ll have a talk with her if you want. Unless you want to be the one who kicks her butt?”
“I really don’t.”
