“You,” she says to Gillian, who must know more about the vessel than most. “Where are the nearest emergency escape pods?”
“Near the cabins. In other words, up several decks.” Gillian remains crouched by her father’s side; Mansfield is trembling with terror, which would be satisfying at any other time. “We’d have to move through the main public areas of the ship to reach them.”
Realization sparks Noemi’s temper. “In other words, you had escape pods for the passengers but not for the crew.”
“The crew’s ninety percent mechs!” Mansfield snaps.
Noemi wonders whether they care about the lives of the other 10 percent.
Gillian adds, “If Remedy’s boarding the ship, then they’ll be in those same public areas. We can’t go there without turning the corridors into a shooting gallery, with us as the targets.”
“Okay, then,” Noemi says, thinking fast, “what’s the nearest area of the ship we could secure?”
“What do you mean, ‘secure’?” Delphine’s small hands cling to Noemi’s arm; her silky white caftan has glittering trim tinted pink by the alert lights.
The subtle vibration of the engines shifts under Noemi’s feet. They’re breaking free of the docking framework already. The Osiris is on the move, and regardless of who’s driving, Noemi doesn’t want to go where they’re headed. “I mean, we get weapons and barricade ourselves within an area of the ship that we can keep Remedy from taking.”
“There’s no point in this,” Vinh snaps. “We have mechs on board for this.”
“Exactly right.” Mansfield nods, as if he’s encouraging himself rather than the others. “The mechs will defeat the Remedy members.”
Maybe being rich and pampered turns you into an optimist. Noemi’s never had that luxury. “If the mechs win, great. If not, we need to be prepared.”
“Who put you in charge?” Vinh says.
Gillian rises to her feet and puts one hand on her bracelet—the one containing the trigger for the poison in Noemi’s arm. “That’s a very good question.”
Noemi’s gaze scans the partygoers around her, half of whom are still holding their glasses of fizzy wine instead of running for the escape pods as they were just told to do. They wear velvet capes, thigh-high boots, jewels the size of bumblebees on their fingers and in their ears. The terror on their faces makes them pathetic; otherwise they’d just be laughable. “I’m not in charge,” she says, “but I’m betting I’m the only person here with any military experience. Yes?”
A few of them glance around. Delphine timidly offers, “Probably.”
“All right, then,” Noemi says. “Since this ship is already on the move—”
“You don’t know that,” retorts Vinh.
Does this man not even know how to gauge when a large ship is in motion? “Yes, I do know that, and so does anybody else who’s paying attention to the vibrations under their feet. If your crew still has control of the engine room, where are they taking us?”
“You don’t need that information,” Gillian says sharply. The passengers look confused; it’s sinking in to them that Noemi isn’t just another partygoer.
“Fine, then. Doesn’t matter,” Noemi says. Her heart’s beating fast in her chest, because it’s not like she’s had tons of experience with this either. Taking on an entire Remedy army sounds like a good way to end up dead. She’s out of her depth—but less so than anyone else on board. That means she has to do what she can. “We still need to secure an area before Remedy’s forces fill every part of the ship.”
“How do you know that they haven’t already?” Apparently Vinh hopes to show her up, but he’s doing a really bad job of it.
“I know that because none of them are in here yet.” After giving that a second to sink in, which hopefully will keep him quiet for a while, she goes on. “All right. What weapons do we have on board?”
Mansfield draws himself up in his chair. “No weapon for you.”
But Gillian bends down to him. Her intense blue eyes focus on Noemi as she says, “It doesn’t matter, Father. She’s of use, for the moment, and we don’t want this ship to go far.” She puts one of his hands on her arm; to those around, it must look like a comforting gesture, but Noemi sees that Mansfield is now touching the bracelet that could kill her. More loudly, Gillian calls, “There are a handful of blasters in emergency lockers throughout the ship. They were intended for use if the ship was infiltrated during final construction—but nobody’s removed them.”
Noemi tries to take heart from that. “Okay, so, we’ll pick up a few weapons on our way to our base.”
“We have a base?” Delphine asks in a wavering tone.
“We’re about to. You guys know the layout of this ship better than I do,” Noemi says, thinking fast. What kind of place would they need? “What we need to do is—is seize control of one critical area as fast as we can. The main engine room, the food supply, something like that.”
“Won’t those areas be the first Remedy goes after?” says Vinh, who has a point for once.
She nods. “Yeah, they will. But we should still try to claim one, just in case Remedy does get control of the ship. We can negotiate on equal terms if we can hold just one room on the Osiris, as long as it’s the right room.”
Gillian stands up, and instantly the attention of the room shifts to her. That’s the authority they already know—a leading shareholder in whatever the hell the Columbian Corporation is—and are more comfortable with. “Follow me,” Gillian says to the passengers and Noemi both, as she opens the nearest door.
Normally Noemi would be relieved not to have to carry the burden of leadership alone in a situation like this. Now, not so much. But at least they have a guide.
She jogs through the corridor, alongside Shearer, ahead of the passengers huffing and puffing behind them.
