Chapter Eighteen: Naomi
Naomi is unofficially part of the crew now. It's an uneasy situation. Everyone knows who she is. Anybody could easily snitch her out to the laconians. But most of these people are running away from something and if one person snitches, there's a whole domino set of secrets that could fall. Naomi wants to send a message to Saba. They go to the captain and he says no. He's not gonna snitch or throw her in the brig, but he doesn't love her being on his ship and putting everyone at risk and he's not gonna do anything that increases that risk. There's a message from Laconia. All ring gate transport has been suspended. Something big must have happened. I suppose we'll find out what in Elvi's chapter.
Chapter Nineteen: Elvi
They've been burning hard to get through the ring gate and out of this system with this sun that looks like it might go super nova. As a result, everyone's fragile physical bodies are in a lot of pain. But they made it through to the slow zone. Because of what's happening to them on their side of their ring gate laconian authorities are real worried about what might happen to the station and slow zone. So they're evacuating the slow zone. This is real problematic cause there's a lot of ships to get out in a short period of time. Their ship is going back to the laconian system.
She and Fayez are talking about the what ifs. Elvi's thinking about the magnet gun and the gamma radiation and it's making her worry but she's not exactly sure about what.
Something goes wrong and they're on the float. Their sensors are dead from whatever happened. A lot of their cameras that are normally hidden away in hardened compartments are also damaged. The slow zone is all different now. It used to be blackness with the little ring gates. Now it's all crazy rainbow colorful. The ship before them that was supposed to go through to laconia went dutchman. They take a look around and two of the gates are gone.
Chapter Twenty: Teresa
T-Dawg has a fun interaction with former governer's daughter ( you remember him, he wanted to kill most of the people on medina station cause of the terroism so they killed him instead. ) where they play the prisoners dimla (or wahtever it's called) and monster freaks out when T-Dawg betrays her. T-Dawg's dad sends forher. He tells T-Dawg about the blast or whatever it is in the system Elvi was in and then about the two missing ring gates and says what do we do now. T-Dawg's like, how the fuck would I know, I'm just a kid. Then he's like, ok we make it multiple choice, do we send through another exploding ship or not? And T-Dawg is like hells no and he's like. Wrong, we're sending through another exploding ship. Then he's like, maybe you'll understand better after you go through the protomolecule treatments like I have and you are imortal too. Right now, you're just human.
Chapter Twenty-One: Elvi
Elvi agrees with T-Dawg that sending through another bomb ship is a bad idea.
The sun in that empty system was created to do just this very thing. The admirla describes it as a boobie trap. You do whatever long enough in that system and materials are gonna come through the gate that cause the sun to release a gamma burst. Not what suns normally do, so it can't be a natural sun.
there's a problem with the bomb ship idea. they're not sure it will go dutchman this time. Last time they had the bomb ship ready to go the second the other ship went dutchman. This time there's been a significant amount of time gone by. If they just send through the bomb ship right now it might not go dutchman, but if they send through a bunch of other ships until one goes dutchman the Aliens that killed the protomolecule aliens might not get the point.
There's some readings Elvi wants the Admiral to see. The admiral thinks that this might be a ploy to trick him into not doing the bomb ship. The Admiral sends the data to Medina station and the Typhoon to see if they agree that this new data meant they shouldn't send through the bomb ship.
Then suddenly there are tendrils of darkness attacking them. Elvi orders an evacuation. She wakes up to find her face is stuck to the deck with her blood. Fayes is still alive. He lost a foot in the dark tentacle attack. Elvi has a big chunk of her thiegh missing.
Chapter Twenty-Two: Teresa
Four laconian viewpoints in a row.
T-Dawg's telling Amos the story of monster getting all angry at T-Dawg playing the prisoners dilema game. Amos calls her the angriest person he's ever met. T-Dawg says she's not that angry. Amos talks about the difference between furstration anger and scared anger. Amos says he doesn't have a lot of scared anger these days. He's got LOTS of frustartion anger. But Bobbie beat him up and he's been a lot less angry since. T-Dawg says it's nice to be in the cave. Never too hot or too cold. T-Dawg says shes got nothing to be scared of. Amos says "what about assasins with pocket nukes" and T-Dawg laughs at it like it's a joke. Maybe she thinks it is. Amos knows it's not. Something happens and Amos says it's time for T-Dawg to go. T-Dawg is all "see you soon" and Amos is obviosly not listening to her. He's too busy thinking about whatever it was that happened.
A drone with coloneol ilich shows up and he's like, we gotta go now. T-Dawg does not understand. His nice guy teacher personality is gone. Now he's just an army man getting angry that someone's not following his orders. T-Dawg demands to know how he knew where she was. He tells her there's a tracker in his jaw. They always know where she is, but Duarte approves of her teenage rebeliion. It's a natural part of growing up. One doesn't grow up to be a complete person without a rebelious phase. Something is really wrong with T-Dawg's dad. The theory is that because Duarte has been doing these protomolecule experiements on himself, he's much more like the protomolecule aliens and so the attacks from the aliens that killed the protomolecule aliens are effective on him but not on other humans. T-Dawg is like, am I in charge now? Ilich is like, no, Duarte is still in charge. You gotta tell everyone you remember your dad telling you that he's busy with science people and is not to be disturbed.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Naomi
Naomi gets a tiny ship and goes to the auberon system. It's very similar to earth so it's thriving. Her contacts is one of the people that were Opa that crewed on the roci while she was kidnapped by Marco.
I wish I knew where Philip was.
There's a mind altering thing just like when Pallas was destroyed by the magnet gun. They were out fir three minutes. They r y to get a message to Saba but they get no response from the repeater on the other side of the ring gate. They send a probe and they find out it's cause the repeater isn't there.
" It was gone, and so were all the other repeaters like it. And the Eye of the Typhoon. And Medina Station and all the ships that had been quarantined inside the ring space. Only the alien station at the center remained, glowing bright as a tiny sun."
Chapter Twenty-Four: Bobbie
The crew is getting a little too settled in for Bobbie's taste. They're in the midst of a revolution. They shouldn't be happy that they found a bar that has mediocre fake ribs. They should be out there fucking up laconian ships. There's a lot of news feeds about the recent horrible things that have happened with the laconian talking heads saying they just need to give the science buero more time to figure all this out. Bobbie goes for a walk and her XO sends her a link to a video where the admiral talks about going back to Laconia. Bobbie gets the idea that attacking the big laconian ship after he leaves might be a good move.. So she goes to talk to Alex about it.. basically giving him an ultimatum,, he's in 💯 or he's our. He says he's in,, just he wants her to talk it over with Naomi first.
Interlude: The Dancing Bear
Holden is noticing things are wierd on Laconia. The evil scientist doesn't have time to play chess, theressa won't really talk to him, people in general are being wierd. Holden figures all this must be case something happened to Duarte. Also, Elvi and Faiez are in town so maybe he'll talk to them about it.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Naomi
Naomi is gonna run the underground now. She figures if she can communicate with everyone and get them on the same page before the Laconians can establish transport through the slow zone, they have a chance. All she needs is 1400 torpedoes and the perfect message to send out.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Elvi
Elvi Is brought into a meeting and is immediately part of the inner circle. She knows all about Duarte being out of commission and Teresa being next in line. She's tasked with trying to get Duarte back and also help won the war against the Aliens they know nothing about. She goes back home and Holden is there talking to Fayez. He waves and runs away. Fayez tells Elvi that Holden thinks the mad scientist is plotting a murder.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Teresa
Amos is dead. He was shot in the head.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Naomi
Things are going well with the underground. Communication is flowing. Little sabotaging is happening. They are inserting themselves into corrupt systems. She gets the message from Bobbie asking for permission to blow up the big ship. She says go for it. In that moment she realizes Bobbie and Alex will probably die trying. She also realizes that even if they live, her dream of getting the band back together is over. She and Hilden and Amos and Bobbie and Alex won't ever be getting together on the Roci again.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Elvi
Elvi gets to go talk to the evil scientist in the pit. Sh e talks about how Amos saved Fayez's life and evil scientist tells her Amos had a pocket nuke so he's a bastard and they have to find him and ask him what he was planning. Elvi is very confused cause she was to ld he was shot in the head. Evil scientist explains that bodies on this planet cant just be left alone cause the protomolecule on the planet reanimates them. At the moment Amos is missing and assumed zombie. But this is a highly guarded secret so the troops arent even given the order to guard dead bodies. Evil scientist brings Elvi to see two kids (1 boy 1 girl) that died here and are protomolecule zombies now. Elvi talks to the girl zombie and makes her super sad.
Chapter Thirty: Bobbie
Bobbie hears about an underground cell on Ceres that got caught. The message from Naomi comes in and she tells the crew its go time. Shes gonna be on a tiny shuttle to deliver the antimatter to the tempest. Alex is gonna be on the storm as the distraction to get tue tempest to go where they want so Bobbie can blow them up and hope her power suit is enough to keep her from gettimg bloqn up in the process.
Chapter Thirty-One: Teresa
Teresa's talking to Holden and her primary concern is whether Amos was a real friend or a faker.
He has been beat up a bunch. He tells her what he told the other guys. He doesnt know. He asks about Duarte and says he knows something is wrong with him or hed be here.
what he does know is that Amos, was a good… Well, he wasn’t really exactly a good person.
Evil scientist is 80% sure Holden is telling the truth.
Teresa goes back to school, which today is taking a tour of the museum. Evil scientist guy comes to take her away, probably to do evil science. They run unto Elvi and shes all like, if you need to do science on Tteresa, maybe we should talk to the Admiral. At this evil scientist tells Teresa to go back to the museum tour.
Chapter Thirty-Two: Bobbie
The plan goes ok except that bobbies ship get s hit and her pilot's dead and the antimatter torpedo is damaged. So bobbie has to go on a suicide run to get the torpedo headed toward the tempest. Fiirst Amos, now Bobbie. So sad. But at least Bobbie is accomplishing something Amos's death was so pointless. Mayabe he'll do something useful as a zombie.
Chapter Thirty-Three: Alex
The plan works, the Tempest is destroyed. They are nearly destroyed by the fallout from the antimatter bomb. Bobbie is dead. Everyone thats on the storm is gonna have cancer forever. So does the organic skin of the ship. The new captain says we're going back to freehold. Asks Alex to be their XO. Alex says, nah, I got my own ship.
Chapter Thirty-Four: Elvi
Elvi isn't a huge fan of laconian architecture. It's all huge but not particularly good looking. Well made high quality buildings that are boring as fuck. She makes good on her statement to evil scientist that the Admiral should be made aware of a plan in which Teresa might end up dead. The admiral doesn't seem very surprised or upset by this. He explains that they have two goals here. 1 get Duarte back in working order 2. Figure out how to safely retake the slow zone. If Teresa dies in the service of one of those goals, so be it.
Chapter Thirty-Five: Naomi
Naomi is leaving the system she's been hiding out in. She's gonna go to another system that's been pretty successful. She gets a message from Alex and decides to go to freehold and the Roci instead.
