Expanse: Nemesis Games Part 3

"Okay," Holden said. "But you'll come back before the repairs are done, right?"

Alex smiled. "Plan to."

Chapter Three: Naomi.

The Golgo table was set for opening throws, the first and second goals untouched and the field still empty. The throbbing ba.s.s line from the Blauwe Blome's main room was a vibration in the deck and a murmur that wasn't too loud to talk over. Naomi hefted the steel ball in her hand, feeling the subtle play between ma.s.s and weight, different at every gravity. Across from her, Malikah and her teammates from the repair crew waited. One of them was drinking a Blue Meanie, the bright azure fluid staining his mouth like lipstick. It was three years no, four? since Naomi had played a game of Golgo, and these people played every Thursday. Naomi hefted the ball again, sighed, and spun it. Instantly, the opposition b.a.l.l.s sprang out to hold her short, matching her spin and trying to co-opt her throw.

It was the sort of response you played against a beginner. Naomi was rusty, but she wasn't a beginner. The table registered, ending the throw, and Naomi's marker appeared, well past the field's half mark. Her team cheered, Malikah's groaned. Everyone smiled. It was a friendly game. Not all of them were.

"Next up, next up!" one of Naomi's new teammates shouted, waving his wide, pale hand. His name was Pere or Paar. Something like that. She retrieved the steel ball and tossed it to him. He grinned at her, his eyes only flickering down her body and back. Poor little s.h.i.t. Naomi stood back, and Malikah moved to stand with her.

"You still got it," Malikah said. She had a beautiful voice, the accents of Ceres Station mellowing the harsher tones of the deep Belt.

"Spent a lot of time playing it when I was here last," Naomi said. "You never forget what you did when you were young, right?"

"Even if you want to." Malikah laughed, and Naomi laughed with her.

Malikah lived in a set of rooms three levels down and thirty degrees spinward from the club. The last time Naomi had been in it, the walls had been draped with silk patterned in brown and gold and the air had been rich with the artificial sandalwood incense that wouldn't clog the air recyclers. Naomi had slept in a bag on the deck for two nights, falling asleep to recorded harp music and the murmuring voices of Malikah and Sam. Only Sam was dead now, and Naomi was back together with Jim, and humanity was heir to a thousand suns within a two-year burn. Being there, laughing with Malikah and the repair crews, Naomi couldn't tell if she was more astounded by how much things had changed or how little.

Malikah touched Naomi's shoulder, her brow furrowed. "Bist aja?"

"Was thinking," Naomi said, falling into the rhythm of Belter slang only roughly. Golgo wasn't the only thing she was rusty with.

Malikah's mouth turned down at the corners even as the Golgo table erupted in shouts of glee and dismay. For a moment, Sam was there too. Not the actual woman with her red hair and cheerful obscenity and habit of using childish terms boo-boo, owie to describe things like meteoroid-breached hulls. Only the s.p.a.ce where she had been, and the two women sharing the knowledge that someone was missing.

Paar-or-Pere pa.s.sed the ball on to the next player Sakai, the new chief engineer while the opposing team clapped him mockingly on the back. Naomi moved forward to a.s.sess the damage. Being around Belters just Belters was weirdly comforting. She loved her crew, but they were two Earthers and a Martian. There were some conversations that she could never have with them.

She could tell when Jim arrived without turning around. The players across the table from her all looked past her as one. Their eyes went wide, and an air of excitement washed over them. No one said it, but they might as well have Hey! Look! It's James Holden!

It was easy to forget that Jim was who he was. He'd started two wars, and played some role in ending them both. He'd captained the first human ship through the Ring, or the first one that survived anyway. He'd been on the alien base in the center of the slow zone and come back. He'd survived Eros Station and the death of the Agatha King. He'd been to New Terra, the first human colony on a nonhuman planet, and forged a weird, awkward peace there. It was almost embarra.s.sing, seeing everyone react to that Holden: the one on the screens and in the newsfeeds. She knew Jim was nothing like that James Holden, but there was no point saying it. Some things stayed secrets even when you told them.

"h.e.l.lo my love," Jim said, putting his arm around her. In his other hand, he had a grapefruit martini.

"For me?" she said, taking the c.o.c.ktail.

"Hope so. I wouldn't drink it on a dare."

"Hoy, coyo!" Paar-or-Pere said, holding up the steel ball. "Want a throw?"

The laughter around the table was buoyant. Some of it was delight James Holden playing Golgo with us! and some was cruel Watch the big shot suck. None of it had anything to do with the actual man. She wondered if he knew how much he changed the nature of a room just by walking into it. At a guess, he probably didn't.

"No," Jim said with a grin. "I'm terrible at this. Wouldn't know where to start."

Naomi leaned in toward Malikah. "I should go. Thank you so much for having me." It meant I am grateful to you for letting me be here with other Belters like I belong.

"You are todamas welcome, coya-mis," Malikah said. It meant, Sam's death wasn't your fault, and if it was I forgive you.

Naomi took Jim's elbow and let him steer her out to the main bar. The music rose as they pa.s.sed through the doorway, light and sound joining in a sensory a.s.sault. On the dance floor, people moved together in pairs or in groups. There had been a time, long before she'd met Jim, when the idea of getting very, very drunk and throwing herself into the press of bodies would have been an attractive one. She could remember the girl she used to be with fondness, but it wasn't a youth she cared to recapture. She stood at the bar and finished her martini. It was too loud to talk, so she amused herself watching people notice Jim, the game of is-it-or-isn't-it in their expressions. Jim, for his part, was amiably bored. The idea that he was the center of attention was foreign to him. It was part of what she loved about him.

When her gla.s.s was empty, she put her hand on his, and they pressed out to the public corridor outside the club. Men and women waiting to get in Belters, almost to a person watched them leave. It was night on Tycho Station, which didn't mean much. The station was built on three rotating eight-hour shifts: leisure, work, sleep. Who you knew depended on what shift you worked, like three different cities that all occupied the same s.p.a.ce. A world that would always be two-thirds strangers. She put her arm around Jim's waist and pulled him in against her until she could feel his thigh moving against hers.

"We need to talk," she said.

He tensed a little, but kept his voice light and airy. "Like man-and-woman talk?"

"Worse," she said. "XO and captain."

"What's up?"

They stepped into a lift, and she pushed the b.u.t.ton for their deck. The lift chimed, the doors moving gently closed, as she gathered her thoughts. It wasn't really that she didn't know what needed to be said. He wasn't going to like this any more than she did.

"We need to look at hiring on more crew."

She knew enough about Jim's silences to recognize this one. She looked up into his blank expression, his eyes blinking a fraction more quickly than usual.

"Really?" he said. "Seems to me that we're doing just fine."

"We are. We have been. The Roci's a military design. Smart. A lot of automation, a lot of redundancy. That's why we've been able to run her at a third of her standard crew for this long."

"That and we're the best d.a.m.ned crew in the sky."

"That doesn't hurt. Looking at skills and service, we've got a strong group. But we're brittle."

The lift shifted, the complex forces of station spin and car acceleration making the s.p.a.ce feel unsteady. She was sure it was just the movement.

"I'm not sure what you mean by brittle," Jim said.

"We've been on the Rocinante since we salvaged her off the Donnager. We've had no change in staff. No turnover. Name me one other ship you can think of where that's true. There were runs where the Canterbury had a quarter of the staff on their first mission together. And..."

The doors slid open. They stepped out, moving aside to let another couple go in. Naomi heard the others murmuring to each other as the lift doors closed. Jim was quiet as they walked back toward their suite. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and thoughtful.

"You're thinking one of them may not come back? Amos? Alex?"

"I'm thinking that a lot of things happen. Take a high burn, and sometimes people stroke out. The juice helps, but it's not a guarantee. People have been known to shoot at us. Or we've been disabled in a decaying orbit. You remember all that happening, right?"

"Sure, but -"

"If we lose someone, we go from running at a third of a standard crew to a quarter. Add to that the loss of nonredundant skills."

Holden stopped, his hand on the door to their rooms.

"Wait, wait, wait. If we lose someone?"

"Yes."

His eyes were wide and shocked. Little wrinkles of distress gathered at the corners. She reached up to smooth them away, but they didn't go.

"So you're trying to get me prepared for one of my crew dying?"

"Historically speaking, humans are pretty much at a hundred percent on that."

Jim started to say something, faltered, opened the suite door, and walked in. She followed, closing the door behind them. She wanted to let it drop, but if she did, she didn't know when they'd pick it back up.

"If we were running a traditional crew, we'd have two people in every position. If anyone got killed or disabled, someone else would be right there to step in."

"I'm not adding four more people to our ship, much less eight," Jim said, walking into the bedroom. Running from the conversation. He wouldn't actually leave. She waited for the silence and the distress and the worry that he'd made her angry to pull him back. It took about fifteen seconds. "We don't run this like a regular crew because we're not a regular crew. We got the Roci when everyone in the system was shooting at us. We had stealth ships blowing a battleship out from under us. We lost the Cant and then we lost Shed. You can't go through that and just be normal."

"Meaning what exactly?"

"This ship isn't a crew. We don't run it like a crew. We run it like a family."

"Right," she said. "And that's a problem."

They looked at each other across the room. Jim's jaw worked, objections and arguments getting stalled at his tongue. He knew she was right, and he wanted her to be wrong. She saw him realize there was no way out.

"Fine," he said. "When the others get back, let's talk about doing some interviews. Taking a couple people on for a mission or two. If they shake down right, we can look at keeping them on permanently."

"That sounds good," Naomi said.

"It's going to change the balance on the ship," Holden said.

"Everything changes," she said, putting her arms around him.

They ordered food from a fusion Indian restaurant, curry and genetically modified rice and textured fungal protein mostly indistinguishable from beef. For the rest of the evening, Holden tried to be cheerful, tried to hide his unease from her. It didn't even start to work, but she appreciated the effort.

After dinner, they watched the entertainment feeds until the time came in the comfortable rhythm of their day that she turned off the screen and drew him back to the bed. s.e.x with Holden had started off as a thrilling thing, years ago when they were first seeing exactly how stupid a captain and an XO sleeping together would be. Now, it was richer and calmer and more playful. And more comforting.

After, lying on the big gel-form mattress with the sheets in ropes at the foot, Naomi's mind wandered. She thought of the Roci and of Sam, of a book of poetry she'd read when she was a girl and a musical group one of the senior engineers had roped her into on the Canterbury. Her recollections had started taking on the surreal confusion of dreams when Jim's voice brought her back almost to wakefulness.

"I don't like having them gone."

"Hmm?"

"Alex and Amos. I don't like having them gone. If they get in trouble, we'll be here. I can't even just fire up the Roci and go get them."

"They'll be fine," she said.

"I know. I sort of know." He propped himself up on one elbow. "Are you really not worried?"

"A little maybe."

"I mean, I know they're grown-ups, but if something happened. If they didn't come back..."

"It would be hard," Naomi said. "We four have been what we rely on for a lot of years now."

"Yeah," Jim said. And then a moment later, "Do you know who this lady was Amos went back to check on?"

"No. I don't."

"You think she was his lover?"

"I don't know," Naomi said. "I got the feeling it was more of a surrogate mom thing."

"Hmm. Maybe. I don't know why I was thinking lover." His voice had started taking on the fuzzy edges of sleep. "Hey, can I ask an inappropriate question?"

"If memory serves."

"Why didn't you and Amos ever get together? I mean back on the Cant."

Naomi laughed, rolled over, put her arm across his chest. Even after shipping with him all this time, she liked the way his skin smelled. "Are you serious? Have you paid any attention at all to his s.e.xuality?"

"I don't think Amos and I are supposed to do that."

"It's not a place you want to be," Naomi said.

"Hmm. Okay. I was just thinking, you know. How much he followed you around back on the Cant. And he's never talked about leaving the Roci."

"He's not staying on the Roci for me," Naomi said. "He's staying for you."

"Me?"

"He's using you as his external, aftermarket conscience."

"No, he's not."

"It's what he does. Finds someone who has a sense of ethics and follows their lead," Naomi said. "It's how he tries not to be a monster."

"Why would he try not to be a monster?" The sleep-slurred words were like a blanket.

"Because he is one," Naomi said, her consciousness flickering across the line. It's why we get along.

The message came two days later, and without warning. Naomi was in an EVA suit, inspecting the work with Chief Engineer Sakai. He was in the process of explaining why they were looking at a different ceramic alloy for the connections between inner and outer hull when a priority message popped into her HUD. She felt a rush of fear, the aftermath of her talk with Holden. Something had happened to Alex. Or Amos.

"Hold on," she said, and Sakai answered with a raised fist.

She started the message. A flat transmission screen popped on with the split circle of the OPA, and when it flickered away, Marco was there. The years had thickened his face a degree, softened the curve of his jaw. His skin had the same richness and depth she remembered, and his hands, folded on the table wherever he'd recorded this, were as delicate. He smiled with the mixture of sorrow and amus.e.m.e.nt that was like falling backward through time.

The message halted, cut off by the suit's medical systems. Warnings for increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure. She chinned the override, and his voice stuttered softly into her ears, smoothing as the feed cohered.

"I'm sorry. I know you don't want to hear from me. If it helps, I'd just point out that I haven't done it before this. And I'm not doing it lightly now."