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“Well, good that on’t be the first ones getting shot at I ets shot at all Got to ad”
“You mean because Duarte and his people are a bunch of traitors to the republic who all deserve to hang for treason?”
“And theft Don’t forget theft And not warning anyone when the Free Navy was looking to kill a few billion people I ones, but it’s easier to stomach that after the assholes are all dead”
Bobbie strapped herself into a crash couch “This ot stabbed in his bathtub fifteen years ago”
“A reed The diht on his face was splashing up from the uration”
“It’s not enough,” Bobbie said “We need more crew”
“We did it this way for years before you and Claire joined up It works better than you expect Hey … Look, since there’s a chance that soh Medina Station, would you mind if I kept Holden and Naomi on the ship’s channel? Just in case?”
Bobbie hesitated Part of her bridled at the prospect of having personnel eren’t on the operation still be in the co the for an answer Sheelse
“Of course not,” Bobbie said “They’re family” Alex’s faint slad she’d said it that way She opened a connection to Aet ourselves into position”
The slow zone—gates, Medina Station, and the alien hub station with the rail guns—was only tiny if compared to the vastness of normal space The whole voluuesses she’d seen about how ates open and stable, probably equally energetic, but controlled by forces they were still struggling to ates, a darkness thatever ca a little claustrophobic, with only a sphere a million klicks across to move in
Even that constrained, Medina Station would have been too small to see on her monitor if it had all been rendered to scale Instead, she had a ith the full systeun emplacements—on one side of hertactical displays of the Roci in the needle-thin radar shadow of Medina, the Tori Byron, and Laconia gate respectively A countdown timer marked the minutes and seconds until this Adh Her shoulders were tight She felt like they were in thewhat nuh She didn’t like how much she liked it
“Medina’s sensors are getting so deck
“Throw me the update, please,” Bobbie said, and the screen with Laconia gate on her ate itself, enhanced in false color to ate The wavering stars beyond it, and a looo out behind it, Bobbie could tell it was a big ship Maybe it was their Donnager-class battleship And that in itself would be the Laconiansa statement
Unless it was so else
The ship that ca anic shape of it The way the false color struggled to litch or so for sea Herto some kind of ancient sea creature from the deep trenches of Earth