Botton blushed. That was unexpected.
“I have been . . . reviewing the event,” he said. “It was an exceptional moment.”
“You have an opinion about it? Something you feel you should share with your commanding officer?” She said it coolly. It wasn’t a threat, unless he thought it was. And then it was.
Botton didn’t hear the warning. His stance softened, his gaze turned inward. She wondered, if the event happened again just then, what she might find in the place behind his eyes.
“The . . . hallucinations. I found them very unpleasant.”
“As did I,” Tanaka said.
“Yes, Colonel. I feel as though understanding what happened might better help to put the experience behind me. And I would very much like to put it behind me.”
Tanaka tilted her head. There was an echo of her own fear in his voice. It occurred to her for the first time that she wouldn’t be the only one who had felt the gestalt as a violation. For all she knew, Botton had secrets of his own to nurture and protect. It left her liking Botton a degree better.
“I’m sure the Science Directorate will be better equipped to make sense of this than we are,” she said. “How long before we can be underway?”
“Transferring our crew back from the ships could take several hours.” It sounded like an apology. She liked that too.
“As soon as they arrive, inform the remaining ships that they are to stay here until the survey ships arrive and debrief them.”
“They aren’t going to like that. Several of the captains have expressed a strong preference to leave the ring space as soon as possible.”
“Any ship that leaves before being given permission will be labeled a criminal vessel and destroyed on sight by Laconian forces,” Tanaka said.
“I will make sure they understand.”
She took a deep breath. At the workstations, the other crew could have been living in different dimensions for all the reaction they showed to her conversation. On Botton’s screen, the ring gates flared white. And the alien station at the ring space’s heart matched them. The Derecho’s sensor arrays lowered their sensitivity to keep from whiting out. When the image returned a second later, the rings were glowing points all around the surface of the slow zone.
I’m missing something. The words were like a whisper in her ear. Something the captain of the Preiss had said. Or something about the newly glowing gates. Or had Botton accidentally said something that would unlock the mystery, or better, give her control over it?
“We have evidence that something made a transit to Bara Gaon system in approximately the right time frame,” Botton said. “Shall we proceed there?”
“Yes,” Tanaka said. “Alert me when the full crew has returned.”
She clicked on her mag boots, used her ankle to turn her body and to stop it, then launched herself back toward the lift. Behind her, someone let out a long, stuttering breath as if they’d been holding it the whole time she’d been there.
Bara Gaon was an active system. If the Rocinante had fled there, it was because they hoped to use contacts in the underground to cover their passage. Any data she got from the official sources, she’d have to double-check herself in case it had been corrupted. Her mind ran forward along the path of the chase, and it was a relief.
She needed to go to the ship’s gymnasium and punch a heavy bag. I used to be a boxer when I was young. The thought wafted through her mind like she’d heard someone say it. It wasn’t her voice. She ignored it. She needed to eat. She needed to report back to Trejo. She needed to track down the Rocinante. She needed to find Winston Duarte or whatever he had become. She felt duty sliding in around her mind like blinders, cutting away the distractions.
She had a mission and a score to settle. Unthinking, she scratched her wounded cheek.
She was missing something.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Jim
Jim couldn’t sleep. He lay on the crash couch, the gentle one-third g of the burn settling him into the gel, and tried to will himself into a sense of peace and rest that wouldn’t come. Naomi, beside him, had curled onto her side, her back toward him. There had been a time when he’d slept with the lights entirely off, but that had been before Laconia. Now he kept them low—less than a single candle would have been but enough that when he woke from a nightmare, the familiar outlines of the cabin would be there to ground him. He hadn’t had a nightmare. He hadn’t slept at all.
Naomi murmured something in her sleep, shifted, and settled. Years of experience told him she was sloping down into the deepest levels of dream. Another few minutes and she’d twitch once like she was catching herself from falling, and after that, she’d snore.