Expanse: Nemesis Games Part 39

"Then what do I get out of it?"

"You get out of here," Amos said. "Place was kind of a s.h.i.thole before someone dropped the Atlantic on it. It's not getting better."

Erich's wasted, tiny left arm squeezed tight to his body. "Let me get this straight. You've got a score where I go seven, maybe eight hundred kilometers, sneak past some private mercenary death squad, boost a ship, and the payoff is that I get to leave everyone and everything I've got here? What's next? Russian roulette where if I win, I get to keep the bullet?" His voice was high and tight. He bit the words as he spoke them. "This is my city. This is my place. I carved my life out of the f.u.c.king skin of Baltimore, and I spent a lot doing it. A lot. Now I'm supposed to put my tail between my legs and run away because some Belter f.u.c.kwit decided to prove he's got a tiny little d.i.c.k and his mama didn't hug him enough when he was a kid? f.u.c.k that! You hear me, Timmy? f.u.c.k that!"

Amos looked at his hands and tried to think what to do next. His first impulse was to laugh at Erich's maudlin bulls.h.i.t, but he was pretty sure that wasn't going to be a good idea. He tried to think what Naomi would have said, but before he came up with anything good, Peaches stepped toward Erich, her arms out to him like she was going to give him a hug.

"I know," she said, her voice choked with some emotion Amos didn't place.

"You know? What the f.u.c.k do you know?"

"What it's like to lose everything. How hard it is, because you keep thinking it can't really be gone. That there's a way to get it back. Or maybe if you just act like you still have it, you won't notice it's gone."

Erich's face froze. His bad hand opened and closed so fast, it looked like he was trying to snap the tiny pink fingers. "I don't know what you're talking -"

"There was this woman I knew when I went in. She killed her children. Five of them, all dead. She knew it, but she talked about them all like they were still alive. Like when she got up tomorrow, they'd be there. I thought she was a lunatic, and I guess I let that show, because she stopped me one day at the cafeteria and said, 'I know they're dead. But I know I'm dead too. You're the only b.i.t.c.h here thinks she's still alive.' And as soon as she said that, I knew exactly what she meant."

To Amos' astonishment, Erich started to weep and then blubber. He fell into Peaches' open arms, wrapping his good arm around her and crying into her shoulder. She stroked his hair and murmured something to him that could have been I know, I know. Or maybe something else. So clearly something sweet and touching had just happened, even if he wasn't clear what the f.u.c.k it was. Amos shifted from one foot to the other and waited. Erich's wracking sobs grew more violent and then started to calm. It must have been fifteen minutes before the man pulled himself out of Peaches' embrace, limped to his desk, and found some tissue to blow his nose.

"I grew up here," he said, his voice shaking. "Everything I've ever done every meal I ever ate, every toilet I ever p.i.s.sed in, every girl I ever rolled around with? It's all been inside the 695." For a second, it looked like he was going to cry again. "I've seen things come and go. I've seen s.h.i.t times turn into normal and turn back to s.h.i.t, and keep telling myself this is like that. It's just the churn. But it's not, is it?"

"No," Peaches said. "It isn't. This is something new."

Erich turned back to the screen, touching it with the fingertips of his good hand. "That's my city out there. It's a mean, s.h.i.tty place, and it'll break anyone who pretends different. But... but it's gone, isn't it?"

"Probably," Peaches said. "But starting over's not always bad. Even the way I did it had some light in it. And what you've got is better than what I had."

Erich bowed his head. His sigh sounded like something bigger than him being released. Peaches took his good hand in both of hers and the two of them were silent for a long moment.

Amos cleared his throat. "So. That means you're in, right?"

Chapter Thirty-nine: Naomi.

She didn't have days. Hours maybe. For all she knew, minutes. And the plan still had holes in it.

She sat in the mess, hunched over a bowl of bread pudding. People pa.s.sed through from the crew quarters, some wearing Martian uniforms, some their normal clothes, a few in a new Free Navy uniform, but the other tables stayed empty apart from her and Cyn. Before she'd been almost crew. Now she was a prisoner, and as a prisoner, her schedule had changed. She'd eat when other people weren't eating; she'd exercise when other people weren't exercising; she'd sleep in the dark with her door locked from the outside.

She was grateful for it. She needed the quiet of her own mind now, and strangely, she felt comfortable there. Something had happened in the last days. She couldn't put her finger on when or how, but the dark thoughts had either vanished or else grown so vast she couldn't see their horizons. She didn't think she was crazy. She had felt her mind fishtailing out from under her one time and another in her life, and this was very different. She understood she might die, that Jim might die, that Marco might sail from success to success, that Filip might never forgive or even understand her. And she could tell that all of those facts mattered to her, and mattered deeply. But they didn't overwhelm her. Not anymore.

The umbilical linking the ships was fifty meters at full extension. Not even as wide as a soccer field. The link between the ships was between the cargo-level airlocks, where it was easier to access engineering and move supplies, which left the crew-level airlocks unused. There were EVA suits in the lockers there. With a strip of welding tape or a crowbar, she could get one in only a couple of minutes. Get into the suit, out the Pella's airlock, force the airlock on the Chetzemoka all in the time between the drives cutting off and the Chetzemoka firing her maneuvering thrusters. There were no calculations for it. It would be very, very close, but she thought it was possible. And since it was possible, it was necessary.

There were problems, of course, that needed solving. For one thing she didn't have welding tape or a crowbar, and with her escorts now treating her as untrustworthy, her opportunity to steal either while running an inventory was gone. Second, once Marco saw she'd taken an EVA suit and made the jump, she had no way to keep him from firing a missile at the Chetzemoka. Or worse, finding some way to disable the proximity trap and come back for her. If she could get a suit on the sly, though, so that the inventory said they still had a full complement, they might think she'd killed herself. If she was dead, she posed no threat. She knew the inventory system well enough, she thought she could force an update. She knew she could, given enough time and access. But she only had hours. Maybe hours. Maybe less.

A familiar, sharp voice came from the screen where a newsfeed was still playing to the empty room. "Secretary-General Gao was more than the leader of my government. She was also a close personal friend, and I will miss her company deeply."

Avasarala's expression was careful, composed. Even through the screen and a couple hundred thousand kilometers, she radiated certainty and calm. Naomi knew it might all be an act, but if it was, it was a good act. The reporter was a young man with close-cut dark hair who leaned forward and tried to look up to the task of interviewing her. "The other casualties of the war have -"

"No," Avasarala said. "Not war. Not casualties. These aren't casualties. They're murders. This isn't a war. Marco Inaros can claim to be an admiral in command of a great navy if he wants. I can claim to be the f-Buddha. That doesn't make it true. He's a criminal with a lot of stolen ships and more innocent blood on his hands than anyone in history. He's a monstrous little boy."

Naomi took another bite of bread pudding. Whatever they used to make the raisins wasn't convincing, but it didn't taste bad. For a moment, her thoughts weren't on welding tape and inventory cheats.

"So you don't consider this an act of war?"

"War by who? War is a conflict between governments, yes? What sort of government does he represent? When was he elected? Who appointed him? Now, after the fact, he's scrambling to say he represents Belters. So what? Any petty thug in his position would want to call it war because it makes him sound serious."

The reporter looked like he'd swallowed something sour and unexpected. "I'm sorry. Are you saying this attack isn't serious?"

"This attack is the greatest tragedy in human history," Avasarala said, her voice deep and throbbing. She dominated the screen. "But it was carried out by shortsighted, narcissistic criminals. They want a war? Too bad. They get an arrest, processing, and a fair trial with whatever lawyer they can afford. They want the Belt to rise up so they can hide behind the good, decent people who live there? Belters aren't thugs, and they aren't murderers. They are men and women who love their children the same as any of us. They are good and evil and wise and foolish and human. And this 'Free Navy' will never be able to kill enough people to make Earth forget that shared humanity. Let the Belt consult its own conscience, and you'll see compa.s.sion and decency and kindness flourish in any gravity or none. Earth has been bloodied, but we will not be debased. Not on my f.u.c.king watch."

The old woman sat back in her seat, her eyes fiery and defiant. The reporter glanced into the camera and then back to his notes. "The relief effort on Earth is, of course, a ma.s.sive undertaking."

"It is," she said. "We have reactors in every major city on the planet running at top efficiency to provide power for -"

The screen went blank. Cyn put his hand terminal down on the table with an angry click. Naomi looked up at him from behind her hair.

"Esa b.i.t.c.h needs sa yutak cut," Cyn said. His face was dark with rage. "Lesson a totas like her, yeah?"

"For for?" Naomi said, shrugging. "Kill her, and another one will take her place. She's good at what she does, but even if you did slit her throat, there'd just be someone else in the same chair saying the same things."

Cyn shook his head. "Not like that."

"Close by."

"No," he said, his chin jutting a centimeter forward. "Not like that. Alles la about big social movements y ages of history y sa? Stories they make up later so it makes sense. Not like that, not real. It's people do things. Marco. Filipito. You. Me."

"You say so," Naomi said.

"Esa coyo on Mars who traded us for all the ships and told us where to find supplies? He's not 'Martian economic despair' o 'rising debt ratios' o 'income and access inequality.' " With each pretentious invented term, Cyn wagged his finger like a professor lecturing a cla.s.s, and it was funny enough that Naomi chuckled. He blinked at the sound, and then smiled a little shyly. "La coyo la is just some coyo. He's a man made a deal with a man who talked up some otras, and we did things. Who people are, it matters, yeah? Can't replace them."

His gaze was on her now, not a professor lecturing a cla.s.s, but Cyn lecturing her. She scooped the last bite of pudding into her mouth. "Get the feeling you're saying something," she said around it. Cyn looked down, gathered himself. She could see the effort more than she could understand it.

"Filipito, he needs you. No sabez la, but he does. You and Marco are you and Marco, but no you take the coward's out."

Her heart jumped a little. He thought she was in despair, that she might give in to the dark thoughts. She wondered what brought him to the conclusion, and whether it was a mistake he was making or something he could see in her that she couldn't. She swallowed. "You telling me not to kill myself?"

"Be a bad thing to say?"

She stood up, her soiled bowl in her hand. He rose with her, following as she headed for the recycler. The weight of her body was rea.s.suring. There was still time. They hadn't cut the drives yet. She could still figure her way over. "What should I do, then?"

It was Cyn's turn to shrug. "Come with. Be Free Navy. We go where they need us, do what needs doing. Help where they need help, yeah? Already eight colony ships on target."

"Target for what?"

"Redistribue, yeah? Alles la food and supplies they got heading out for the Ring? Mas a anyone ever gave the Belt. Take that, feed the Belt, build the Belt. See what es vide when we're not scrabbling for air y ejection ma.s.s. Gardens in the vacuum. Cities make Tycho Station look some rock hopper's head. New world without a world to it, yeah? None of this alien bok. Blow the Ring. Burn it. Get back to people being people, yeah?"

Two women walked by, heads bent toward each other in pa.s.sionate conversation. The nearer one glanced up, then away, then back. There was venom in her gaze. Hatred. The contrast was stark. On one hand, Cyn's vision of a future where Belters were free of the economic oppression of the inner planets of the central axioms that had formed everything in Naomi's childhood. In her life. Civilization built by them and for them, a remaking of human life. And on the other, actual Belters actually hating her because she had dared to act against them. Because she wasn't Belter enough. "Where does it end, Cyn? Where does it all end?"

"Doesn't. Not if we do it right."

There was nothing in her cabin that could help her, but since she was confined there and alone, it was where she searched. Hours. Not days.

The crash couch was bolted to the deck with thick steel and reinforced ceramic canted so that any direction the force came from was compression on one leg or another. Any individual strut might have been usable as a pry bar, but she didn't have any way to unbolt the couch or break one free. So not that. The drawers were thinner metal, the same gauge, more or less, as the lockers. She pulled them out as far as they would open, examining the construction of the latches, the seams where the metal had been folded, searching for clues or inspiration. There was nothing.

The tiny black thumb of the decompression kit, she kept tucked at her waist, ready to go if she could just find a way. She felt the time slipping away, second by second, as she came up blank. She had to find a way. She would find a way. The Chetzemoka was so close to still be too far away.

If she didn't try to go when they pulled the umbilical? If she could sneak across now and hide there until they separated... If she could get to the armory instead, and maybe find a demolition mech that could act as an environment suit... or that she could use to cut through the bulkheads fast enough that no one shot her in the back of the head...

"Think," she said. "Don't spin and whine. Think."

But nothing came.

When she slept, it was for thin slips of minutes. She couldn't afford a deep sleep for fear of waking to find the Chetzemoka gone. And she lay on the ground with her hand clutching the base of the crash couch so that it would tug her awake if they went on the float.

What would Alex do? What would Amos do? What would Jim do? What would she do? Nothing came to her. She waited for despair, the darkness, the sense of overwhelming failure, and didn't understand why it didn't come. There was every reason to be devastated, but she wasn't. Instead there was only the certainty that if the dark thoughts did return, they would come in such strength that she wouldn't stand a chance against them. Oddly, even that was comforting.

When she knocked to go to the head, Sarta opened the door. Not that it mattered. She followed Naomi down the hall, then waited outside. The head didn't have anything of use either, but Naomi took her time in case inspiration came. The mirror was polished alloy built into the wall. No help there. If she could take apart the vacuum fans in the toilet...

She heard voices from the other side of the door. Sarta and someone else. The words were too soft to make out. She finished washing her hands, dropped the towelette in the recycler, and stepped into the corridor. Filip looked over at her. It was her son, and she hadn't recognized his voice.

"Filip," she said.

"Cyn said you wanted to talk to me," Filip said, landing the words equally as question and accusation.

"Did he now? That was kind of him."

She hesitated. Her hands itched with the need to find some way to put her hands on an EVA suit, but something in the back of her mind whispered If they think you're alive, they'll come for you. Anger and diffidence made the planes and angles of Filip's face. Cyn already thought she was bent on self-slaughter. It was why he'd sent Filip.

Her belly went heavy almost before she understood why. If Filip thought it too, if when she went missing, her son went to Marco and stood witness to her suicidal bent, it would be easier to believe. They might not even check to see if a suit was missing.

"Do you want to talk here in the hallway?" she said, her lips heavy, her mouth slow. "I have a little place nearby. Not s.p.a.cious, but there's some privacy."

Filip nodded once, and Naomi turned down the hall, Sarta and Filip following her. She rehea.r.s.ed lines in her mind. I'm so tired that I just want it to be over and What I do to myself isn't your fault and I can't take it anymore. There were a thousand ways to convince him that she was ready to die. But beneath those, the heaviness in her gut thickened and settled. The manipulation was cruel and it was cold. It was her own child, the child she'd lost, and she was going to use him. Lie to him so well that what he told Marco would be indistinguishable from truth. So that when she disappeared to the Chetzemoka, they would a.s.sume she'd killed herself, and not come after her. Not until it was too late.

She could do it. She couldn't do it. She could.

In the cabin, she sat on the couch, her legs folded up under her. He leaned against the wall, his mouth tight, his chin high. She wondered what he was thinking. What he wanted and feared and loved. She wondered if anyone had ever asked him.

I can't take it anymore, she thought. Just say I can't take it anymore.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"I don't know," she said. "I worry about you."

"Not so much you wouldn't betray me," he said, and that untied the knot. Yes, if she lied to him, it would be betraying him, and for all her failures, she'd never done that. She could. She could do it. It wasn't that she was powerless before the decision; it was that she chose not to.

"The warning I sent?"

"I have dedicated my life to the Belt, to freeing the Belters. And after we did everything we could to keep you safe, you spat in our faces. Do you love your Earther boyfriend that much more than your own kind? Is that it?"

Naomi nodded. It was like hearing all the things Marco was too polished to say out loud. There was real feeling behind them in a way she would never hear from Marco. Maybe never had. He'd soaked up all his father's lines, only where Marco's soul was safe and unreachable in its deep self-centered cyst, Filip was still raw. The pain that she had not only left him, but left him for a man from Earth lit his eyes. Betrayal wasn't too strong a word.

"My own kind," she said. "Let me tell you about my own kind. There are two sides in this, but they aren't inner planets and outer ones. Belters and everyone else. It's not like that. It's the people who want more violence and the ones who want less. And no matter what other variable you sample out of, you'll find some of both.

"I was harsh to you the day the rocks dropped. But I meant everything I said. Your father and I are now and always were on different sides. We will never, ever be reconciled. But I think despite everything, you can still choose whichever side you'd like. Even now, when it seems like you've done something that can't be redeemed, you can choose what it means to you."

"This is s.h.i.t," he said. "You're s.h.i.t. You're an Earth-f.u.c.king wh.o.r.e, and always have been. You're a camp follower, looking to sleep your way into anybody's bed who seems important. Your whole life's that. You're nothing!"

She folded her hands. Everything he said was so wrong it didn't even sting. It was like he was calling her a terrier. All she could think of it was, These are the last words you're going to say to your mother. You will regret them for the rest of your life.

Filip turned, pulled open the door.

"You deserved better parents," she said as he slammed it behind him. She didn't know if he'd heard.

Chapter Forty: Amos.

Between walking and biking, scrounging up food, and picking a route that avoided the dense populations around the Washington administrative zone, the seven-hundred-odd kilometers between Bethlehem and Baltimore had taken them almost two weeks. The four-hundred-odd klicks from the arcology to Lake Winnipesaukee took a couple hours. Erich sent out Butch whose name was something else that Amos couldn't remember even after they told him and two others, then sent him and Peaches to wait in another room while he had some conversations.

Twenty minutes later, Amos and Peaches and Erich and ten men and women were standing on the roof of the arcology loading into a pair of transport helicopters with the Al Abbiq Security logo on the side. Erich didn't say if they were stolen or if he'd been paying off the security force, and Amos didn't ask. Pretty much an academic issue at that point.

The landscape they pa.s.sed over was bleak. The ash fall had slowed, but not stopped. The sun was a ruddy smear on the western horizon. Below them, cities bled into each other without so much as a tree or a swath of gra.s.s between them. Most of the windows were empty. The streets and highways were filled with cars, but few of them were moving. They swung out to the east as they pa.s.sed by New York City. The great seawall had been shattered, and the streets flooded like ca.n.a.ls. Several of the great towers had fallen, leaving holes in the skyline.

"Where is everyone?" Peaches shouted over the chop of the rotors.

"They're there," Erich shouted back, gesturing with his bad arm and holding on to the strap with his good. "They're all there. It's just there's not as many as there were last week. And more than there are going to be."

Over Boston, someone fired a missile toward them from the roof of a commercial shopping district, and the copters shot it down. The sky to the east was the low bruise-dark that made Amos think of storm clouds. In the west, the sunset was the color of blood.

"We gonna have trouble with the rotors icing up?" Amos asked the pilot, but he didn't get an answer.

They set down at an airfield a few klicks south of the lake, but Amos got a look before they landed: low hills holding the water like it was being cupped in a ma.s.sive palm. There were maybe a dozen islands scattered across the lake, some as crowded with buildings as the sh.o.r.e, others with little tame forests if someone rich enough for the luxury lived there. The landing platform was a square of floating ceramic with red and amber lights still blinking for visual landings.