“We may need a minute or two, Boss.”
“When you can,” Naomi said, and hauled herself out and back to the workstation Elvi had given her.
The evacuation was progressing well. Every ship that was able to move was moving. Every ship that couldn’t had been docked with and their crews transferred off. Most were heading for the nearest exit. The Falcon and the Roci, at the center of the ring space, had the farthest to travel in order to reach a gate. Some few of the others were going across the ring space, heading for Bara Gaon or Sol or Auberon at the hardest burn they could manage.
“We’re ready,” Elvi said.
“That’s an exaggeration,” Fayez said. “We’ve reached an arbitrary level of fuck-it-good-enough. We’re calling that ready.”
Naomi turned. Fayez was fastened to the decking with mag boots; Elvi floated beside him. It made an illusion that he was in gravity and she, ethereal, was floating away like a balloon. Her thinness and atrophy helped sell it.
“We don’t have enough of the submersion couches for everyone,” Elvi said. “It’s going to limit how fast we can accelerate safely.”
Naomi looked at her tactical map one last time. There was nothing more she could do. She closed the display with the sense that it was her last moment as the head of the underground. She expected the relief she felt at the idea. The sorrow was more surprising.
“We can use submersion for the most vulnerable,” she said.
Fayez looked to his wife. “She means you, honey.”
“He’s right,” Naomi said. “I do.”
“If we had time, I’d push back on that,” Elvi said. “Five minutes to get everyone in place?”
“I’ll get to my couch now,” Naomi replied.
It was a standard enough design: a gel base on a gimbaled platform. It wasn’t the same kind that the Roci had used. The Laconian gimbals were silent, and the gel had an odd warmth that Naomi understood was supposed to help maintain circulation under high gs but made the couch feel uncomfortably fleshy. There was a temperature control, though, so as soon as she strapped in, she turned it down to a cooler level.
She used her hand terminal to check in with Amos. The lag was suspicious until she realized it was still trying to route through the Roci’s system. She shifted it to the Falcon, and the connection request was instantaneous.
“Hey, Boss,” the thing that had been Amos—that maybe sort-of still was—said.
“All of ours in place?”
“Yep. Muskrat’s a little anxious about the whole thing. Between the new digs and Tiny freaking the fuck out. The medical guy gave Tiny a little something to take the edge off. She’s sleeping now. He said she’s traumatized?”
“Seems plausible.”
“I don’t know how I got this old without someone telling me they had pills for that,” Amos said, and she could hear the disapproval in his tone. It reminded her of who he’d been before.
“There’s a big toolbox,” she said. “Everyone has to find their own way through.”
“I guess. Anyway, I’m strapped in. Tiny’s good. Dog’s good. And that’s us.”
Fuck, Naomi thought. That’s us.
“All right.”
“How’re you holding together?” Amos asked.
“I’ll see you on the other side,” she said, and let the connection drop.
A moment later, Elvi came over the ship-wide system telling everyone to strap in and prepare for hard burn. Naomi pulled up the exterior telescope and set it to track the station. To track Jim. She knew that for the most part, he’d be lost in the drive plume, but she did it anyway.
The countdown came. The crash couch needles bit into her, the juice flowed into her blood, and the Falcon slammed up into her from below.
Holden felt the ships leaving the space, one and then another. The ones still in the bubble of false space shifted toward the escapes, going mind-numbingly fast and still too slow. Holden willed them to go faster. To get out. To be safe.
The brightness of the gates, the light they passed between them, was unfolding for him as he grew more fully into the mechanism. It reminded him of the way babies learn without seeming to try— soaking up information and discovering pattern as part of growing into the being they were going to become. Part of him wished that he could stay longer, see more, die knowing something.
“Hard to let go of a bad idea,” Miller said as if he were agreeing. “I mean, I’m not the guy who can start throwing stones at someone for not wanting to give up the case, right?”