Chapter 102 Half free—Tasha

Chapter 102 Half free—Tasha
The first thing I did when Da Vinci's ship cleared the Moon's atmosphere was go find Garron.

He was in the lower operations room of the Med-Nochtia base, the one that had been a food storage facility three months ago and was now the closest thing the revolution had to a command center, maps spread across every surface, his people moving in and out with reports that he processed without looking up from whatever he was currently reading.

He looked up when I came in.

"He's on his way," I said.
Garron nodded. "I know. Kellan confirmed the transit." He set down the report. "What do you need?"
"Gladivea," I said. "Fourteen domes. Men of Moon has operational control across all of them. I want to start taking them back."

He looked at me for a moment, then at the map on the table, then back at me.

"Haruki is already positioned near the outer ring of dome four," he said. "Grandisfield has people in domes one and two. I can move three units from Med-Nochtia within the hour." He paused. "You'd be coordinating across four separate entry points simultaneously."
"Alright," I said.
"And you want to lead it?"
"Yes."

He studied me for another second, the thick mustache, the pale face giving nothing away, and then he turned to the map and started pointing.

We moved on dome four first because Haruki was already there and because dome four sat at the junction of three transit lines that connected to six of the remaining thirteen, meaning holding it meant controlling movement across almost half of Gladivea's network.

I came in from the eastern maintenance corridor with eight of Garron's people and found Haruki waiting at the junction exactly where he said he'd be, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and his single eye tracking our approach the whole way.

"You're two minutes late," he said.
"Traffic," I said.
He almost smiled.

Men of Moon had four operatives holding the dome's central control node, the room that managed atmosphere, transit connections, and communication relays for the surrounding structures. 

We came through the maintenance infrastructure. It was over in four minutes.

The operatives were restrained and moved to holding, the control node transferred to Garron's technical team who had it running under new authorization codes before I'd finished catching my breath.

Haruki stood at the central console watching the status displays update.

"One," he said.
"Thirteen to go," I said.
He looked at me with his one eye carrying everything two used to.
"Then let's move," he said.

Domes one and two fell before midday, Grandisfield's people coordinated through the comm. He appeared on the comm feed from Med-Nochtia himself at one point, his face calm and deliberate on the small screen.

"Dome two is clear," he said. "Transit line seven is ours. Push toward dome six when you're ready."
"Already moving," I said.
"Tasha." He paused. "You're doing well."

Coming from Grandisfield that was approximately equivalent to a standing ovation from anyone else.

Dome six took longer. Men of Moon had reinforced it after the first three fell, pulling operatives from dome nine to supplement the existing team.

I redirected Haruki there with four people while I took dome six with Garron's unit.

Dome six was ugly. Forty minutes of close corridor work, nobody able to move freely, every decision made in the half second between one problem and the next. Two of Garron's people took injuries that needed attention. None of them were critical.

When the control node came online under our authorization I leaned against the wall outside it and breathed for a moment.

My comm opened. Haruki.

"Dome nine is clear," he said.
"How?" I said.
"They left eight people," he said. "Eight people and a lot of confidence." A pause. "And… that didn't help them obviously."

That made five.

The news about Victoria came through on Garron's command channel three hours later, flagged urgent, the report brief and unambiguous.

Men of Moon communications out of Earth had dropped significantly in the preceding two hours. And a single confirmed report from an intelligence contact in Earth's financial district described an explosion in a private building, fourth floor, one casualty confirmed as Victoria Vanderhold.

I read it twice.

Then I walked into the room where Garron and Haruki were reviewing the next dome's approach and put the report on the table between them.

Garron read it. Haruki read it over his shoulder. The room was quiet for a moment.

Then one of Garron's people, a young woman who had been running communications from the corner, said "yes" under her breath like she'd been holding it in, and somebody else laughed, and the room came alive.

Garron didn't cheer. He wasn't the cheering kind. But something settled in his expression, some long-held tension releasing by a fraction.

"Your Da Vinci—" he said, looking at me. 
"He's not my Da Vinci," I said.
"He walked onto Earth alone and killed Victoria Vanderholt," Garron said. "He went from running Men of Moon missions to standing in front of five thousand soldiers in three months." He looked at me steadily. "That's quite something."

I felt the warmth move up my neck before I could stop it.

"He is," I said. "Something."

Haruki was staring at me with his one eye which I chose to ignore.

"Dome ten," I said, picking the report back up and moving toward the map. "Let's keep moving."

We took dome ten before evening.

Dome eleven had a problem we hadn't anticipated, a secondary Men of Moon team that had been stationed there specifically as a response unit rather than a holding force, trained and equipped differently than the operatives we'd been moving through all day, faster and less predictable in how they used the space.

We lost two hour on dome eleven.

We took it anyway.

Dome twelve fell to Grandisfield's people while Haruki and I were still catching our breath from eleven.

Six domes.

I stood in the control node of dome twelve as the status display updated, the transit connections across the six held domes showing green, the eight remaining domes still red, the whole map of Gladivea laid out in a color pattern that was slowly, dome by dome, shifting toward something that had never existed before on this colony.

Haruki came and stood beside me. We looked at the map together.

"Well, that was probably easier than I would have thought," he said.
"It was the right time," I said.

The remaining eight sat in front of us, and the night was still young, and somewhere below Earth's atmosphere Da Vinci was looking for Adrian Rothmere, and the Moon outside the dome kept doing what it had always done, indifferent and constant, waiting for whoever was going to be standing on it when everything finally settled.