Naomi forced her eyelids open. Her feet hit the decking before the dream she’d been in loosed its grip on her mind. There had been a fire. She’d been talking to it … she felt herself forgetting, the dream dissolving like sugar floss in water.
Amos rolled off his bunk with a grunt of pain and went to help Clarissa up. Alex was tugging his jumpsuit up over thin, brown legs. The new voice belonged to a girl too young for the split-circle tattoo on the back of her hands.
“What’s going on?” Bobbie said. “We got a problem?”
“Saba got word we need to go, so we go. Now go.”
“Where is he?” Bobbie asked.
“Gone,” the girl said, and then she was gone too. Light spilled into the bunk from the door she hadn’t closed. The voices and sounds of metal against metal were loud and panicky, but they weren’t battle. There wasn’t gunfire. The fear and the urge to motion that grabbed Naomi’s heart were still as violent.
“You good, Peaches?” Amos asked. Clarissa nodded, and pulled her hair back into a ponytail like she was getting ready to go to work. There was more color in her cheeks since she’d gotten the new medicine. If Amos hadn’t found a supply, they’d have been carrying her right now. Heaven. Small favors. Like that.
They piled out into the corridor, and Naomi paused, looked back. There were no tools, no terminals, nothing left behind but traces of hair and DNA. Which would be plenty enough to identify them.
“Naomi?” Alex said from the hall. “Everyone else is getting out mighty quick here. We should maybe—”
She moved quickly, decisively, pulling blankets and pillows and sheets up in her arms. They were cheap, so they pressed down to almost nothing. Another small favor. She shoved them into the makeshift recycler feed at the end of the hall. Maybe it wouldn’t make a difference. Maybe she’d been foolish to take the time. It didn’t matter. She’d done what she’d done.
A lot of her life was like that now.
Saba was at the service doorway that led out to the rest of the station. The vast body of Medina that the underground didn’t control. His jaw was tight, and there was a darkness around his eyes that the brown of his skin couldn’t hide.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Had word from one of ours in system logistics. Laconia’s slated this section for survey. If they’re going to find our holes here, best we not be in them.”
“Well. We knew it would come.”
He pressed a hand terminal into her palm. “This is yours. Cooked profile. Got one for alles la along with. Rooms, jobs. Don’t scratch the chrome, it’ll come off, but it’s what I could do fast.”
“Thank you,” Bobbie said as he passed one to her.
“Messages too. Just text. And just to me. Your circle is your circle.”
Naomi nodded. It felt like being young again, in all the worst ways. Amos, Alex, and Clarissa were already moving toward the common corridor, Bobbie trotting to catch up to them. Naomi put her hand on Saba’s arm. “The false identities don’t have to hold up long. We’re close to doing this. No despair.”
Saba’s eyes softened. “My lady wife is back in Sol leading the fight against these bastards. And I will move worlds to wake up beside her again. Just once more.”
Naomi thought of Jim, and the ache of fear in her stomach. Saba touched her shoulder, and pushed her gently away toward her friends. Her crew. Her family, less one.
The inner layer of Medina’s drum could have been any of the old spin stations. Wider, common corridors with room for carts and foot traffic both, ramps that led up toward the soil and false sun of the inner face or down toward the vacuum beneath her feet. She hadn’t stepped outside Saba’s hidden dens since they’d lost Jim. Now, walking with the normal inhabitants of Medina, trying to fit in with the midshift patterns, she kept noticing how open everything felt. In another context, it might have been a relief. Now it left her feeling exposed as a mouse in cat territory.
She plucked up the terminal that Saba had given her, trying to look bored as she checked who she was, where she lived, all the answers she’d need to give the Laconians if she was stopped. She’d seen plenty of faked identities before, and this one was decent. The real question was how deeply Saba’s moles had been able to get into the Laconian datasets. With the link between Medina and the
Wide screens showed the station newsfeed. Laconian propaganda, but maybe true, some of it. They were playing images of Sol system and the war there. She didn’t watch that, but when it shifted, she paused. A young woman with olive skin and a wide jaw in Laconian blues. The text below her said, ADMIRAL JAE-EUN SONG OF THE EYE OF THE TYPHOON. And on the other side of the screen, a young man. Santiago Singh, governor of Medina.
