She met Saba at the same public counter where they’d used the freezer, but this time they sat at the front like customers. The girl behind the counter turned up the music playing from her system speakers loud enough that they could barely hear each other, their words drowned in drums and strings and ululating voices. Saba looked as tired as she felt.
“Something happening back in Sol system,” he said. “Looks like the big fight. Not sure how it’s going to play.”
Half a dozen possibilities flashed through her sleep-starved mind ranging from the miraculously good to the catastrophically bad. It didn’t matter. Nothing that happened there changed what they were doing here. But Saba’s wife was there, back in the empty spaces where they’d all lived, once upon a time. She knew too well what that fear felt like.
“You have the list?” she asked.
Saba nodded and pressed a silver memory chip into her hand. “All the ships we could make contact with,” he said.
“How many?”
“Twenty-one.”
Naomi nodded. Twenty-one ships docked on Medina and waiting for their chance to load up and fly. It was more than she’d hoped for. It was also enough to pose some problems. “I don’t like having this many people knowing what’s going on.”
“It’s a risk,” Saba said, as if he were agreeing with something she’d said. “How does it make us for time?”
“If you don’t mind half of them vanishing in transit, we can go pretty fast,” Naomi said, more sharply than she’d intended. She shook her head, apologizing, but Saba ignored both the snappishness and the regret for it.
“Say we don’t. Everyone through the gates safe and sound. What does that look like?”
“I can’t know that until I look at the ship profiles. Mass, drive type, cargo. All of that’s going to make a difference.”
“Ballpark.”
“A hundred minutes. That’s conservative. I can probably find a way to make it less.”
The girl at the counter swung past, pouring fresh tea into their glasses. Tiny bits of mint leaf swirled in the reddish amber. Naomi took a sip while Saba scowled. “That’s a long time for the station’s eyes to stay blind. And a lot to lose if they find a way to put it back together.”
“Truth,” Naomi said.
Saba scratched his chin with the back of his hand. If they ever played poker together, it was a gesture she’d remember. His tell.
“Your technician. The one to break the system?”
“Clarissa.”
“Her, yeah. If she doesn’t do the thing and do it well, everyone on those ships is going to die from trusting me. Not disrespect, but it’s mine to say. Not sure she’s good for it.”
“Clarissa knows what she’s doing,” Naomi said. “She’s smart, she’s studied, and she knows this station. She broke it once already.”
“She’s as thin as wire,” Saba said. “I could blow her over from whistling.”
There was no humor in his face.
“I trust her with my life,” Naomi said. “No hesitation.”
“You’re asking me to trust her with more than that,” Saba said. “I don’t. Not that she doesn’t know, not that she’s unwilling or not to trust. But straight between us, sister. Putting all of us on one girl just this side of hospital? It’s not prudence.”
“I think you’re asking me for something.”
“You go with her,” Saba said. “Leave the prison work to me and mine. We’ll do that. You back up your crew.”
Naomi shook her head. “The prison’s mine,” she said. “Clarissa will do whatever needs doing. She’s got backup already. Jordao. Katria’s man. Unless you don’t trust him?”
“I don’t trust anyone,” Saba said. “Not him, not her, not you. But I work with what I have to work with, and I know you’re not going to run when things go harsh. Maybe Katria’s people will, maybe they won’t. You won’t. And … the sensors are more important than the prisons. We lose the prisons, we only lose the prisoners, savvy sa?”
He was right, and she knew it. Putting the success or failure of the mission in the hands of a medically fragile woman—however competent she was—and then not giving her the backup to deal with an emergent problem was bad practice. But in her imagination, Naomi saw the letters on her list as clearly as if she’d been reading them afresh. SAVE JIM. She shook her head. “Prison’s mine. Sensor arrays are hers. Won’t be a problem.”
Saba sighed as the music shifted key and tempo. A man’s voice growling like a bearing going bad lamented his own failings in a mix of Hindi and Spanish that she could almost follow. She looked Saba in the eyes until he looked away. “Work up a schedule, then. All the ship data’s on there. But do it fast. We have to distribute it by hand before we pull the trigger.”
“Two hours,” Naomi said. “I’ll have it ready.”
