Besides, she is kind of saving the world. That’s got to help.
The enormous oaken doors of the Hall of Elders swing open at Noemi’s touch. She strides through without so much as a sideways glance at the people watching her, agog. Beside her march Abel, Ephraim, Virginia, Dagmar Krall, and a half dozen of Remedy’s top medics; behind them walk about ten Genesis guards, although their weapons remain holstered.
Noemi doesn’t slow her steps until they’re almost to the doors of the Council chamber. Two guards there in ceremonial saffron cloaks look from her to each other and back again before they open the doors to let them all in.
Only five of the elders sit there, including three she saw at the hospital before. Good care has seen them through; even on a world as egalitarian as Genesis, elders get attention the average citizens can’t expect. Darius Akide is among those present, his expression almost neutral until he realizes who’s walking beside her.
Abel smiles at him. “Hello, Dr. Akide. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
“Model One A,” Akide whispers. The resemblance to a younger Burton Mansfield no doubt tipped him off. “Dear God.”
“That’s my designation, but I prefer to go by Abel. Professor Mansfield told me a great deal about your work; I understand you even helped design me. We should make time for a long discussion later on.”
Akide blinks, but returns to the usual serene calm of an elder within minutes. “And these are our doctors? These are our new warriors?”
“That we are,” Dagmar Krall says. “Any enemy of Earth’s is a friend of mine—assuming, of course, you’re not too proud to accept our help.”
The taunt darkens Akide’s gaze. Noemi doesn’t like it either, but she’s not about to turn the Vagabond fleet away for something as petty as that. Surely Akide wouldn’t either—but it takes him a long few moments to answer.
Noemi holds her breath until Akide finally says, “So be it.”
And with that, Genesis gets to live.
Or so Noemi thinks at the time. Within the next hours, as the medical teams roll out planetwide, she realizes how dire the situation is.
Noemi left Genesis in a state of plague and panic. She returns to it in a state of shock and grief. Some cities have even buried hundreds in mass graves. The breakdown of normal record-keeping and communications means the teams have to go town to town to find and treat the sick—in some places, almost house to house. Already it’s clear the new drugs help considerably; Ephraim is optimistic that, with the information the Razers got about the new Cobweb virus, they can design even more effective treatments within days. But the death toll on Genesis remains horrific. Nothing Noemi’s done can change that.
When she returns to the Gatsons, she finds Mr. Gatson weak but recuperating. He doesn’t know where Mrs. Gatson is. Nobody does. There’s no way to be sure whether that’s because of chaos at overburdened hospitals or because Mrs. Gatson died in a huddle of unknown people and is now buried in an unmarked grave. Noemi promises to find out. Mr. Gatson only nods. His gaze is far away, and while he briefly takes her hand, he doesn’t welcome her back home.
She continually checks and rechecks long-range sensor reports. Nothing else has come through the Gate—yet. The Vagabond fleet remains in place, unchallenged, an entire day after their arrival. When Noemi receives a summons to a military hearing, she assumes they’ll want more information about how this strange alliance came together, and about how the discovery of Haven could affect the Liberty War.
But that’s not what her superior officers want to discuss.
“Not even in uniform, Vidal?” says Kaminski, the exact same guy who prosecuted her after her return from journeying around the Loop. His neck is nearly as thick as his head, and his veins stand out as if engorged with anger every second of every day. Of course he’s perfectly healthy; maybe being a total ass makes you immune. “You can’t even show basic respect to your former commander?”
Noemi doesn’t answer him. She speaks only to Yasmeen Baz, who is again here, apparently to defend her. “My uniform was lost on my mission. I’d never intentionally disrespect you, Captain Baz. Please believe that.”
Kaminski can’t endure being ignored. “You override the highest decisions of the Elder Council itself, substituting your judgment for their own, and you call that respect?”
“That’s what this is about?” Noemi’s astonishment makes her gape. It’s all she can do to keep talking. “You’re prosecuting me? I thought this was just to ask me about how I got the fleet together!”
“Which, in my mind, is a very good question.” Baz sounds neither defiant nor angry, only tired. Maybe she was sick, too, but if so, the lines of Cobweb are hidden by her uniform or her head scarf. “Whatever issues the Council has with Vidal should be taken up by the Council directly.”
“Disobedience to our government is a military offense. A court-martial offense,” hisses Kaminski.
“What disobedience?” Noemi protests.
Kaminski smirks; clearly he thinks he’s got her. “You were ordered to present Genesis’s surrender to Earth authorities. You patently failed to do so.”
“Yes, because I patently got kidnapped.” She catches herself. Sarcasm is conduct unbecoming an officer. “It was impossible for me to deliver my surrender while I was in Burton Mansfield’s custody, or while I was stranded on Haven.”
“And after that?” Kaminski says. “Upon your return to Earth’s system, did you contact their government?”
“I—no, I didn’t.” Hanging on to her temper is getting harder by the second. “I’d been able to summon help by then. An entire fleet. That changed things—”
“So you made up your own mind!” Kaminski retorts. “On your own, without any input from the Council or any other Genesis authority, you decided the situation had changed enough to merit ignoring your orders. And in so doing you not only continued a war that was meant to end, but escalated it.”
This is more than Noemi can take. “I
