An RPG launched toward her, and time seemed to slow. The dark body of the grenade with a brightness behind it like a ship and its drive plume. Jillian tried to step back, as if that could help. The doors hissed closed, and then rang like a gong. The skin of the Gathering Storm was probably the only thing on the station that the Laconian couldn’t blow a hole through. Another quarter second, and the grenade would have detonated in Jillian’s lap. But that was for later.
“Bridge, this is Captain Houston. Report.”
As the inner airlock doors cycled open, Caspar’s voice came over her hand terminal. “Drive’s prepped, but we’re missing some crew.”
“They’re too late. No way to get them in now. Is the Rocinante launched?”
“No, still in dock.”
Where the fuck are you, Kamal? she thought. Into her handheld she said, “Prep for launch.”
“Aye, Captain,” Caspar said, and she heard the fear in his tone.
When she reached the lift, she checked her security report. Eighteen high-priority alerts tracked the Laconian from where she’d first opened fire, and then through the base, time codes of broken doors and gunfire alerts marking the Laconian’s passage through space and time like a borehole chewed through wood. She tried to guess which way Kamal and his people would go. Another alert lit up, but it wasn’t automated. Station security asking her what the plan was. The tightness in her throat was that she didn’t know what to tell them. The base was compromised, and it was her fault. One prisoner for thousands of civilian lives had seemed like an obvious trade at the time, but it had brought her here. Dwelling on the postmortem of her error was for later.
“Kamal, report,” she said, and for a terrible half second thought he might not reply. Then the speaker ticked once, hissed, and his out-of-breath voice came gasping to her. “By the water tanks. Heading for the dock.”
“Get there and get out,” she said. “I’ll clear the path.”
Caspar was in his crash couch on the bridge when she reached it. Amanda Feil was strapping in at comms. Natasha Li had the gunner’s controls up, even though she was sitting at her usual station. All the other couches were empty. Jillian slung herself into her own. The one she’d taken when Draper left. For the very first time, the chair didn’t feel right. It suddenly felt much too large for her.
“Launch when ready,” she said. “Li, target the Sparrowhawk as soon as we’re clear of the dock.”
“Disable or destroy?”
“Kill the fuck out of them.”
The Storm shifted under her, tilting her crash couch and then pressing her into it as the ship left its home port for what Jillian understood in that moment would be the last time.
Behind her, Draper Station burned.
The funny thing was she didn’t even like Kamal. She never had. She’d always felt like his faux-folksy grandpa act had a hidden contempt for her and people like her. She still remembered when the Rocinante had come to Freehold as a threat and taken her father away. Maybe on some level she’d never forgiven him for that. Or maybe she was just reaching for bullshit psychological justifications because she was ashamed of how things had worked out. Flip a coin, win a prize.
The Storm thumped twice as two torpedoes were ejected from the launcher. On Li’s screen she could see the tiny dots that represented them speeding off toward a targeting diamond with the name Sparrowhawk floating next to it. The Derecho was the same class as the Storm, but with the advantage of recent repair and resupply and the knowledge and expertise of the people who’d built her. The Sparrowhawk was smaller, and it had taken some damage in New Egypt.
Jillian looked at the tactical map of Freehold system. The little solar disk on her display made the vastness seem comprehensible. That was an illusion, but a useful one. Here was the ring gate. Here were the ships that the underground had in-system—half a dozen rock hoppers and an ancient ice hauler, none of them ready for a full-scale battle. Here was the Storm.
There were the enemies, focusing in on Draper Station and on her, the indicators for her two homes—her base and her ship— still so close together they overlapped. She pressed her fingertips into her lips until it hurt a little. There was the planet and her family and everyone she’d grown up with that the fuckers had threatened to glass. Here were the planets of Freehold system that didn’t sustain life.
Here was the problem that, if she solved, she could live, and if she couldn’t, she would die.
“Status on the Sparrowhawk?” she said.