Expanse: Nemesis Games Part 20

"It's time," she said, her voice gentle. She remembered all the drama feeds and films with a mother waking her child up for school. This was the closest thing she would ever have to that, and against her best judgment, she savored it. "Filip. We can go now."

His eyes opened, and for a moment, he wasn't wholly awake. He looked confused. Vulnerable. Young. And then his focus sharpened, and he was himself again. His new self. The one she didn't know.

They cycled the front door and stepped out into the corridor. The cool rotation breeze smelled of damp and ozone. She was still holding Karal's cousa half-eaten in her off hand. She took another bite, but it had gone cold and the roux was clotting. She dropped what was left in the recycler and tried not to see it as a metaphor for anything else.

Cyn loomed up from the door, his face in its resting scowl. He looked older. Harder. She missed who he'd been when they were young. She missed who she'd been.

"Ready to go, Knuckles?" Cyn asked.

"h.e.l.l, yes," she said, and he looked at her more closely. Hearing, maybe, something more in the words than only the affirmation.

The ship was a simple transport skiff so small that the docking clamps holding it seemed about to crush its tarnished sides in. It didn't have an Epstein drive, so most of the hold would be taken up by the propellant ma.s.s. It would have to fly teakettle, and even then, a fair stretch of the way they'd be on the float. It was one step better than getting EVA suits and a bunch of extra air bottles, but it would do what they needed. Naomi had bought it at salvage rates, routing money from her share in the Rocinante through two anonymized accounts, one on Luna, the other on Ganymede. The final owner of record was Edward Slight Risk Abatement Cooperative, a company that had not existed before it appeared on the registration forms and that would vanish again when the ship was disposed of. The transponders would announce it as the Chetzemoka. In all, it represented about half of everything Naomi could call her own, and her name wasn't on any of the paperwork.

It didn't seem like enough. It seemed like too much. She didn't know what it seemed like.

Filip waited in the bay outside the boarding gantry, and so she did too. Cyn and Karal and Miral stood far enough away to give them something like privacy. The berth was a rental s.p.a.ce with a red-numbered counter on the wall measuring the minutes left under agreement before its ownership changed. The metal and ceramic walls had the foggy look of sealant breaking down from the constant radiation of s.p.a.ce. The air stank of lubricant. Someone had left an old poster on the wall, the split circle of the OPA with a hemisphere of Mars and one of Earth as the circle. Not just OPA, but militant OPA.

They'd been her people, once.

The others arrived. Josie and Old Sandy. Wings, whatever his real name was. A thick-faced, sorrow-eyed woman with one missing tooth that Naomi hadn't seen before. A shaven-headed man with livid scars webbing the dark flesh of his scalp and the limp of an unhealed foot wound. More. Each of them nodded to Filip as they pa.s.sed, their expressions a mix of respect and indulgence. All of them knew him better than she did. All of them would ship with him when he left. The ache behind her breastbone would have concerned her any other time. Just now, she knew what it was.

Soft tears threatened, but she blinked them back. Bit her tongue to stop them.

"All well?" Filip asked.

She laughed, and the tightness around her heart grew harder. "Well enough. As soon as the registry updates, we can file a plan and go."

"Good."

"Do you have a moment?"

His gaze flickered up to hers, something like anxiety in his eyes. A heartbeat later, he nodded once and pointed to the corner with his chin. They walked together, and the others gave them s.p.a.ce. Naomi's heart beat like she was in danger. She could feel her pulse in her throat.

At the wall of the berth, she stopped. Filip turned to face her. The memory of him as an infant, toothless and grabbing onto her finger with a grin of unmistakable pride intruded powerfully into her mind and she took a moment to shove it away.

"It's been good seeing you," she said.

For a moment, she thought he wouldn't answer, then, "You too."

"The ship," she said. "When it's done, it's yours, all right?"

Filip looked over her shoulder toward the gantry. "Mine?"

"I want you to have it. Resell it, keep the money for yourself. Or hold it, if you want. Yours, though. No one else."

He tilted his head. "You're not coming with?"

"I didn't come here to join back in," she said, then sighed. "I came because he said you were in trouble. I came because of you. Whatever he's doing, whatever he's having you do, I can't be part of it. Not before. Not now either."

For a long moment, Filip didn't move. Her throat felt too narrow, like she couldn't get air through it.

"I understand," her son said. Her son who was leaving again. Who was going back to Marco and everything he was.

"Your father isn't a good man," Naomi said, the words spilling out. "I know you love him. I loved him too once, but he isn't..."

"You don't have to justify it," Filip said. "You did this for us, and I appreciate it. This is all you're willing to do, and that's disappointing, but he told me it might happen this way."

"You could come with me." She hadn't meant to say it, but as soon as she did, she meant it to her marrow. "The ship I'm on needs crew. We're independent and we're well stocked. Come do a tour with me, yeah? Get to... get to know each other?"

For the first time, a real expression cracked her son's reserve. Three thin lines drew themselves between his brows and he smiled with what could have been confusion or pity. "Kind of in the middle of something," he said.

She wanted to beg. She wanted to pick him up and carry him away. She wanted him back. It hurt worse than sickness that she couldn't have him.

"Maybe after, then," she said. "When you want it, you say it. There's room for you on the Rocinante."

If Marco lets you, she thought, but didn't say. If he doesn't hurt you as a way to punish me. And then, a moment later, G.o.d this will be weird to explain to Jim.

"Maybe after," Filip said, nodding. He put his hand out, and they held each other by the wrist for a moment. He turned first, walking away with his hands in his pockets.

The sense of loss was vast and oceanic. And it was worse because the loss wasn't happening now. It had happened every day since she'd left. Every day that she'd lived the life she chose instead of the one Marco had prescribed for her. It only hurt so badly now because she was seeing what all those days summed to and feeling the tragedy of it.

She didn't see Cyn and Karal coming up until they were there. She wiped her eyes with the heel of her palm, angry and embarra.s.sed and afraid that a kind word would shatter the composure she still had. A kind word or a cruel one.

"Hoy, Knuckles," Cyn said, his landslide-deep voice low and soft. "So. No chance kommt mit? Filipito's something. Know he's tight and thin right now, but he's still on mission. When he's not running herd, he can be funny. Sweet too."

"I left for reasons," Naomi said, the words feeling thick and muddy and true. "They haven't changed."

"Your son, him," Karal said, and the accusation in his voice was calming because she knew how to answer it.

"You know those stories about a trapped wolf chewing itself free?" she said. "That boy's my paw. I'll never be whole without him, but I'm f.u.c.ked if I'll give up getting free."

Cyn smiled, and she saw the sorrow in his eyes. Something released in her. It was done. She was done. All she wanted now was to go listen to every message Jim had left her and find the fastest transport back to Tycho that there was. She was ready to go home.

Cyn spread his arms, and she walked into them one last time. The big man folded around her, and she rested her head on his shoulder. She said something obscene and Cyn chuckled. He smelled of sweat and incense.

"Ah, Knuckles," Cyn rumbled. "Didn't have to fall this way. Suis desole, yeah?"

His arms tightened around her, pinning her arms to her sides. He reared back, lifting her feet off the deck. Something bit at the flesh of her thigh and Karal limped back, needle still in his hand. Naomi thrashed, slamming her knee into Cyn's body. The vicious embrace pressed the air out of her. She bit Cyn's shoulder where she could reach it and tasted blood. The big man's voice was soft and lulling in her ears, but she couldn't tell what the words were anymore. A numbness spread along her leg and up into her belly. Cyn seemed to fall with her locked in his arms, but he never landed. Only spun backward into s.p.a.ce without his legs ever leaving the deck.

"Don't do this," she gasped, but her voice seemed to come from far away. "Please don't do this."

"Had to, Knuckles," Cyn said. "Was the plan immer and always, sa sa? What it's all about."

A thought came to her and then slid away. She tried to land her knee in his crotch, but she wasn't sure where her legs were anymore. Her breath was loud and close. Over Cyn's shoulder, she saw the others standing beside the gantry to the ship. Her ship. Filip's ship. They were all turned to watch her. Filip was among them, his face empty, his eyes on her. She thought she might have cried out, but it could only have been something she imagined. And then, like a light going out, her mind stopped.

Chapter Twenty: Alex.

When piloting a ship any ship there was a point where Alex's sense of his body reached out to subtly include the whole vessel. Coming to know how that individual ship felt as she maneuvered how the thrust gravity cut out as that particular drive shut down, how long the flip took at the midpoint of a run all of it made a deep kind of intimacy. It wasn't rational, but it changed how Alex felt about himself. His sense of who he was. When he'd gone from the ma.s.sive, stately heft of the colony-ship-turned-ice-hauler Canterbury to the fast-attack frigate that had become the Rocinante, it had been like turning twenty years younger.

But even the Roci had tons of metal and ceramic. She could spin fast and hard, but there was an authority behind the movement. Muscle. Piloting the racing pinnace Razorback was like strapping onto a feather in a thunderstorm. There was nothing to the ship but a blister the size of the Roci's ops deck strapped to a fusion drive. Even the engineering deck was a sealed compartment, accessible to technicians at the dock. It wasn't the sort of ship the crew was going to maintain; they had hired help for that. The two crash couches huddled close together, and the compartments behind them were just a head, a food dispenser, and a bunk too small for Bobbie to fit in. There wasn't even a system to recycle food, only water and air. A maneuvering thruster could spin the ship around twice in ten seconds with power output that would have shifted the Roci five degrees in twice the time.

If piloting the Rocinante required Alex to think of the ship like a knight's horse, the Razorback begged for attention like a puppy. The screens wrapped around the couches and covered the walls, filling his whole visual field with the stars, the distant sun, the vector and relative speed of every ship within a quarter AU. It threw the ship's performance data at him like it was boasting. Even with interior anti-spalling fabric a decade out of fashion and the grime and signs of wear on the edge of the couches, the ship felt young. Idealistic, f.e.c.kless, and a little bit out of control. He knew if he spent enough time to get used to her, the Roci would feel sluggish and dull when he got back. But, he told himself, only for a little while. Until he got used to it again. The thought kept him from feeling disloyal. For sheer power and exuberance, the Razorback would have been an easy ship to fall in love with.

But she wasn't built for privacy.

"... as a community, Mars has got its collective a.s.shole puckered up so tight it's bending light," Chrisjen Avasarala continued behind him. "But the prime minister's convoy has finally launched. When he gets to Luna, I'm hoping we can get him to say something that hasn't already been chewed by half a dozen diplomats playing cover-your-a.s.s. At least he knows there's a problem. Realizing you've got s.h.i.t on your fingers is the first step toward washing your hands."

He hadn't seen the old woman since Luna, but he could picture her. Her grandmotherly face and contempt-filled eyes. She projected a weariness and amus.e.m.e.nt as part of being ruthless, and he could tell Bobbie liked her. More, that she trusted her.

"In the meantime, you stay out of trouble. You're no good to anybody dead. And if that idiot Holden's plucking another thread in the same knot, G.o.d alone knows how he'll f.u.c.k it up. So. Report in when you can."

The recording ticked and went silent.

"Well," Alex said. "She sounds the same as ever."

"Give her that," Bobbie agreed. "She's consistent."

Alex turned his couch to look back at her. Bobbie made hers look small, even though it was the same size as his own. The pinnace was doing a fairly gentle three-quarter-g burn. Over twice the pull of Mars, but Bobbie still trained for full g just the way she had when she was an active duty marine. He'd offered less in deference to her wounds, but she'd just laughed. Still, he didn't need to burn hard.

"So when you said you were working with her?" Alex said, trying not to make it sound like an accusation. "How different is that from working for her?"

Bobbie's laugh was a cough. "I don't get paid, I guess."

"Except for the ship."

"And other things," Bobbie said. Her voice was carefully upbeat in a way that meant she'd practiced hiding her discomfort. "She's got a lot of ways to sneak carrots to me when she wants to. My job is with veterans' outreach. This other stuff..."

"Sounds complicated."

"It is," Bobbie said. "But it all needs doing, and I'm in a position to do it. Makes me feel like I matter, so that's something. Still miss being who I was, though. Before."

"A-f.u.c.king-men," Alex said. The lift of her eyebrows told him he'd said more than he'd meant to. "It's not that I don't love the Roci. She's a great ship, and the others are family. It's just... I don't know. I came to it out of watching a lot of people I knew and kind of liked get blown up. Could have lived without that."

Bobbie's expression went calm, focused, distant. "You still dream about it sometimes?"

"Yeah," Alex drawled. It felt like confession. "You?"

"Less than I used to. But sometimes. I've sort of come to peace with it."

"Really?"

"Well, at least I'm more comfortable with the idea that I won't come to peace with it. That's kind of the same thing."

"You miss being a marine?"

"I do. I was good at it."

"You couldn't go back?"

"Nope."

"Yeah," Alex said. "Me neither."

"The Navy, you mean?"

"Any of it. Things change, and they don't change back."

Bobbie's sigh was like agreement. The vast emptiness between Mars and the Belt, between the two of them and the distant stars, was an illusion made by curved screens and good exterior cameras. The way the s.p.a.ce contained their voices was more real. The two of them were a tiny bubble in a sea immeasurably greater than mere oceans. It gave them permission to casually discuss things that Alex normally found hard to talk about. Bobbie herself was in that halfway s.p.a.ce between a stranger and a shipmate that let him trust her but not feel a responsibility to protect her from what he thought and felt. The days out from Mars to Hungaria were like sitting at a bar, talking to someone over beer.

He told her his fears about Holden and Naomi's romance and the panic attacks he'd had on the way back to Earth from New Terra. The times he'd killed someone, and the nightmares that eventually replaced the guilt. The stories about when his father died, and his mother. The brief affair he'd had while he was flying for the Navy and the regret he still felt about it.

For her part, Bobbie told him about her family. The brothers who loved her but didn't seem to have any idea who or what she was. The attempts she'd made at dating since she'd become a civilian, and how poorly they'd gone. The time she'd stepped in to keep her nephew from getting involved with the drug trade.

Rather than trying to fold into the bunk, Bobbie slept in her couch. Out of unspoken solidarity, Alex did the same. It meant they wound up on the same sleep cycle. Bad for rotating watches, good for long meandering conversations.

They talked about the rings and the protomolecule, the rumors Bobbie had heard about the new kinds of metamaterials the labs on Ganymede were discovering based on observation of the Ring and the Martian probes reverse engineering what had happened on Venus. In the long hours of comfortable silence, they ate the rations that they'd packed and watched the scopes as the other ships went on their own ways: a pair of prospectors making for an unclaimed asteroid, the little flotilla escorting the Martian prime minister to Luna, a water hauler burning back out toward Saturn to gather ice for Ceres Station, making up for all the oxygen and hydrogen humanity had used spinning the rock into the greatest port city in the Belt. The tracking system generated tiny dots from the transponder data; the actual ships themselves were too small and far away to see without magnification. Even the high albedo of the Hungaria cl.u.s.ter only meant the sensor arrays picked them up a little easier. Alex wouldn't have identified that particular centimeter of star-sown sky as being different from any other if the ship hadn't told him.

The intimacy of the Razorback and shortness of the trip was like a weekend love affair without the s.e.x. Alex wished they'd thought to bring a few bottles of wine.

The first sign that they weren't alone came when they were still a couple hundred thousand klicks out from Hungaria. The Razorback's external sensors blinked and flashed, the proximity reading dancing in and out. Alex closed down the false stars and pulled up tactical and sensor data in their place.

"What's the matter?" Bobbie asked.

"Unless I'm reading this wrong, this is the time when a military ship would be telling us that someone out there's painting us."

"Targeting lasers?"

"Yup," Alex said, and a creeping sensation went up his spine. "Which is a mite more provocative than I'd have expected."

"So there is a ship out here that's gone dark."

Alex flipped through the databases and matching routines, but it was just standard procedure. He hadn't expected to find anything and he didn't.

"No transponder signal. I think we've found the Pau Kant. I mean, a.s.suming we can find her. Let's just see what we see."

He started a sensor sweep going in a ten-degree arc and popped open the comms for an open broadcast. "Hey out there. We're the private ship Razorback out of Mars. Couldn't help noticing you're pointing a finger at us. We're not looking for any trouble. If you could see your way to answering back, it'd ease my mind."

The Razorback was a racing ship. A rich kid's toy. In the time it took her system to identify the ship that was targeting them, the Roci would have had the dark ship's profile and specs and a target lock of her own just to make the point. The Razorback chimed that the profile data had been collected and matches were being sought. For the first time since they'd left Mars, Alex felt a profound desire for the pilot's chair in the Rocinante.

"They're not answering," Bobbie said.