“Yeah, that’s a good—” Bobbie started, then stopped when she noticed Amos stiffen in his chair. The big mechanic’s hand drifted toward his right hip and the gun that was no longer there since the Laconian weapon sweeps.
“Amos?” she said.
“Trouble on the move,” he replied with a gentle tilt of his head.
The people he’d nodded toward were a group of Belters, old-school OPA by the tats. They were walking through the drum section nearby. They wore coats too large and heavy for the constant perfect weather of Medina’s drum section, and several carried large bags. They kept their heads down and moved fast, like people with a purpose. She recognized one of them. Onni Langstiver, the asshole head of security.
“What’s over there?” Bobbie asked.
“Some offices? The banking section, and some administrative stuff,” Alex replied.
“The Laconians took it over,” Clarissa added.
“Here we go,” Amos said, and stood up. In the distance, the Belters were pulling things out of their coats and bags. Bobbie felt the surge of adrenaline in her blood the same moment as the calm descended on her: danger followed immediately by the well-cultivated response to danger. It felt like being home.
Bobbie looked around the little bar for likely cover. Nothing within ten steps looked like it would stop a bullet, so she grabbed Alex with one arm and Clarissa with the other and pulled them both to the ground with her. Amos was still standing up, watching the drama play out.
“Get down, you idi—” Clarissa started, but whatever else she was about to say was drowned out by the gunfire.
As he stepped out of the office complex, Singh made the mistake of looking up. The thin line of blazing full-spectrum light that ran down the center of Medina’s habitat drum blinded him, just a little. It cut a glowing streak across his vision, and filled his eyes with tears. Like looking into a sun, if instead of an orb several light minutes away, it was a line drawn in the sky and very close.
“Hold on a moment,” he said to his Marine escort, as he tried to get his vision back.
“Copy that,” the Marine replied, then said, “we’re oscar mike, triphammer two minutes from the cart. Rolling teams for cover to station ops.”
It took Singh a moment to realize that most of that was comm chatter to his security detail. He had nothing but respect for the Marines under his command and for the security they provided, but they did love their jargon and code names. A moment later he’d shaken most of the water out of his eyes, and the yellow-green afterimage line across his vision was fading.
“Okay, I’m ready.”
“Copy that,” the Marine replied, and pointed to a parking area about fifty meters away with three electric carts lined up and waiting. Lieutenant Kasik was hurrying toward him from the carts, waving a monitor that had been extended to its full size. He met them a few seconds later, puffing with exertion.
“I have the initial defense reports,” Kasik said, handing the monitor to Singh.
“Excellent.” Singh scrolled past a spreadsheet of incomprehensible numbers. “I hope there’s a summary?”
“Yes, sir, and the tech group is waiting for you in station ops to answer any questions. But the initial findings are very exciting.”
“Tell me.”
“What we can see,” Kasik said, “is the ring system converted all of the energy from the
“We knew that,” Singh replied with a frown.
“But … the energy released was orders of magnitude more than the energy the central sphere absorbed. The ring system amplified it. Exponentially. If the factor is consistent, we can create predictive models for input versus output very quickly.”
It was exactly what he’d hoped. The alien rings could be made into their own defenses, and the reconstruction of the defense battery skipped entirely. The
After that, it was just administration of the new empire. Singh tried to imagine the high consul’s pleasure, the possible rewards, and his imagination failed him. But one thing still bothered him.
“Why was it, Kasik, that we heard about this from a local? If this had gone overlooked—”
“I’m sure we’d have found it, sir. But we weren’t looking at the logs. We have additional data in Operations,” Kasik said. “And I’ve requested technicians for more analysis.”
