A buzz was slipping into his voice. His annoyance might be with her. It might be with the universe or the unjust nature of chance. Or maybe he hadn’t gotten laid in too long. She didn’t know how he lived his life. She steeled herself to take the brunt of it, whatever it was.
“I also understand that this is alarming and of interest, but I do think it’s a distraction from your primary objective.”
Primary objective. He wasn’t saying Duarte’s name. Not even here. It was a misplaced discretion. Teresa Duarte had been breaking bread with the enemy for almost a year. Naomi Nagata and the whole underground knew by now that Duarte was shattered. They might not know that he’d taken the trouble to resurrect himself, but they probably did.
He was trying to keep his secrets secret, even when there was every reason to think his beans were well and truly spilled. Her stomach hurt. She realized Trejo had been speaking while her mind wandered, and she rolled the message back.
“。 . . from your primary objective. I need your focus here, Colonel. I am spinning a lot of different plates right now, and while I appreciate your enthusiasm, I need you to keep in mind that you are one part of something much, much larger. Trust me to take care of this whatever the fuck this was. You do your job. We will get through this clusterfuck together, just the same way we always have. The more you get off-mission, the less useful your mission becomes to Laconia.”
The message ended. It wasn’t quite a threat, which was nice. It wasn’t quite not one either. Do the job I asked or I’ll pull your Omega status. He hadn’t said it. He hadn’t needed to.
Tanaka carefully enunciated the word fuck into the still air of her office, squeezed the last wine from the bulb, and hauled her way out into the corridor and toward the bridge. She was already composing her reply. I have returned to the pursuit of the asset we discussed. I remain convinced she is the most likely path to completing the mission. Before she sent it, though, she had to make it true.
It wasn’t until she pulled herself to a stop on the bridge that she realized she hadn’t been there since the event. At the stations, half a dozen crew in sharp Laconian blue were unnaturally focused on their screens. She had a terrible memory of being at lower university and walking into a study group room that suddenly went quiet. She didn’t know if they were laughing at her or frightened of her. Her scarred cheek began to itch, and she took some pride in letting the irritation swell to pain without scratching it.
She cast her gaze around the bridge like she was aiming a weapon. She picked out all the little flaws—the places where the couches were beginning to wear, where the fabric had been replaced and didn’t quite match. Something about these imperfections soothed her.
Botton was at the captain’s station, strapped into his crash couch though there was no thrust gravity. When he saw her, he undid his restraints, pushed himself up to a mag-booted approximation of standing, and braced. She nodded, and he relaxed.
“I have had word from Admiral Trejo,” she said.
Botton nodded. Was there a smile hidden there? Without wanting it, she remembered the taste of whiskey on his tongue, richer and peatier than when she drank it herself. The feel of it warming his throat. She had been in a cacophony of different minds, but that one, she recognized. She had been inside Botton in a way more intimate than even the most authentic sex. Had he experienced something like that with her? Was he, right now, recalling one of her trysts with inappropriate men? She suddenly felt violated and exposed, but he hadn’t said a word.
If she had glimpsed inside Botton’s actual and genuine mind, that was fine with her. But if he or other people had been able to access her private memories, know her—even for a moment—the way she knew herself ? That was like waking up to find herself in mid-fuck with a stranger. She’d navigated her whole life on the unbroken membrane between her public self and her private one. The idea that the separation might have been ripped open put her on the edge of almost animal panic.
She realized she’d been silent a beat too long. “The Science Directorate is sending survey ships to investigate the event and the hallucinations that accompanied it.” She hit the word hallucinations just a degree harder than she needed to. She meant You felt something, you recalled something, you experienced something. Don’t assume it was truth.
“Copy that, Colonel,” Botton said. “I will recall our people from the other ships at once.”
She glanced at the screen he’d been working at. It was the scan of the ring space that the Derecho had been making in the moment when whatever had happened had happened. She gestured toward it with her chin, and asked the question with her eyebrows.