Expanse: Nemesis Games Part 49

Jim's hair was in wild disarray, but he looked handsome in it. She took his arm. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

"Don't know," she said.

"Would coffee improve whatever it is?"

"Couldn't hurt," she said.

In the main room of the suite, Amos and Bobbie were talking about methods of unpowered travel, each of them subtly outdoing the other and both clearly aware of it and having fun. Alex grinned to her and Jim when they sat at the breakfast bar, and then poured them both demita.s.ses of slow-pouring espresso with thick brown creme at the top. Naomi sipped, enjoying the heat and the rich complexity hidden inside the bitterness.

"You're looking better," Alex said.

"Feeling better. Thanks. Bobbie, the missing ships you were looking for. They were all MCRN, right? Navy?"

"Ships. Weapons. Supplies. The whole thing," Bobbie said. "I guess we know what happened to them now."

"No colony ships, though?"

The big woman frowned. "I wasn't looking for any."

"What's up?" Jim asked.

Naomi swirled the espresso in her little bone-colored cup, watching the whorls form and vanish in the low gravity. "The missing ships come in two flavors. Military vessels from Mars that the Free Navy have now, and then colony ships that went missing on their way out to new systems. And I make sixty, maybe seventy percent matches with the Free Navy ships to old military records. I can't find one match with the missing colony ships. I can't see a pattern in what systems they were going to or what they were carrying. And I don't know what hijacking them could have gained for Marco."

Amos made a low grunting sound in the back of his throat.

"Yeah," Naomi said, as if the sound had been words. "Something in the ring gates is eating ships."

Epilogue: Sauveterre

"I have a tracking number," the captain of the little freight ship said for what had to be the sixth or seventh time. "I have landing papers and a tracking number straight from Amatix Pharmaceuticals. I know the shipment arrived on Medina six months ago. I have a tracking number."

Sauveterre sipped smoked tea from a bulb as he listened. He would have preferred whiskey from a gla.s.s, but he was on duty and the Barkeith was on the float. The first did for the whiskey, the second for the gla.s.s. Granted, the captain's office was private and he could have done whatever he pleased. And, he supposed, he did. Keeping to his duty was a more pleasing thing for him than whiskey, which was as it should be.

"Sabez you got a tracking number, Toreador," the voice from Medina Station said. "Amatix, though? Esa es Earth-based. No Earth-based companies on Medina."

The Barkeith was a Donnager-cla.s.s battleship. A small city in s.p.a.ce, run with machined precision and capable of turning not only the little freighter but Medina Station to particles smaller than grains of sand. But it and the rest of Duarte's fleet were waiting for permission from traffic control on Medina to proceed through the next ring gate and begin the second, stranger leg of their journey. It was an overabundance of etiquette on the fleet's part, but there were reasons for that. Not the least being the general reluctance to use heavy weapons too near the alien station that hung inert in the vast non-s.p.a.ce between the rings. They weren't ready for that to awaken again. Not yet.

A light knock came at the door. Sauveterre straightened his tunic. "Come." Lieutenant Babbage opened the door, bracing with a handhold on its frame. She looked anxious as she saluted. Sauveterre let her hold the position for a moment before answering her salute and allowing her to enter.

"I have been en route for ten months!" the captain of the Toreador shouted. "If the colony doesn't get this shipment, they're f.u.c.ked."

"Have you been listening to this?" Sauveterre asked, nodding toward the speakers.

"No, sir," Babbage said. Her skin was ashen under the brown. Her lips pressed thin.

"uzgun, Toreador," Medina Station said. "You need to dock for medical, wir koennen -"

"I don't need to dock for medical! I need my f.u.c.king supplies! I have a tracking number that puts them on your station, and I will not -"

Sauveterre cut them off and took another sip of tea. "They've been going more or less like that for the better part of an hour. It's embarra.s.sing on their behalf."

"Yes, sir."

"Do you know why I wanted you to hear it?"

She swallowed her fear, which was good, and her voice didn't tremble when she spoke, which was better. "To demonstrate what happens when there is a breakdown in discipline, sir."

"The end point of it, anyway. Yes. I've heard you violated dress code. Is that true?"

"It was a bracelet, sir. It belonged to my mother, and I thought..." Her voice trailed off. "Yes, sir. That report is true, sir."

"Thank you, Lieutenant. I appreciate your candor."

"Permission to speak freely, sir?"

Sauveterre smiled. "Granted."

"With respect, sir, the dress code was MCRN regulation. If we are going to enumerate transgressions against code, there are some larger ones that might also be worthy of examination. Sir."

"You mean like being here at all."

Her expression was hard. She'd overplayed her hand, and she knew it. It happened. Embarra.s.sment and the childish need to stamp her feet and say it wasn't fair. He wouldn't have gone there in her place. But since it was on the table, it was on the table. No way but forward.

"We are in a time of flux, that's true. With the elected government failing its obligations, Admiral Duarte has taken authority and responsibility for the fleet on himself. I, following the chain of command, am carrying out his orders. You, also following the chain of command, are expected to follow mine. This is an independent initiative of the fleet. It's not a free-for-all."

"Sir," she said. She meant Yes, sir, but she hadn't said the yes part.

"Do you know what happens if I write you up for your failure to follow fleet discipline?"

"I could be demoted, sir."

"You could. If things continued, you could be drummed out. Removed from duty. Dishonorably discharged. Not over this, of course. This is small, but if it became large. You understand?"

"I do, sir."

"If you were discharged, what do you think would happen?"

She looked at him, confused. He gestured with his free hand, a sweep that gave her permission to speak.

"I... don't..." she stammered.

"I don't know either," he said. "Back at Mars, you'd have been released to civilian life. But where we're going, there is no civilian life. No human life at all. Do I turn you out to fend for yourself in the local food chain? Do I spend the time and resources it would take to send you back, and then back where? The forces that have taken control on Mars would see you as a traitor just the same as they would me. They'd throw you in the brig for life unless you cooperated with them. And if you were going to cooperate with them, then it wouldn't make sense for me to send you back in the first place. Would it?"

"No, sir." He could see understanding beginning to dawn in her eyes. Only beginning to, though. Humanity was so flawed. Not just her, but everyone. Half the population was below average intelligence. Half below average dedication. Average adherence to duty. The cruel law of statistics. It was astounding that as a race they'd managed as much as they had.

"Now that we are taking initiative," he said, "it is more important than ever that we maintain strict discipline. We're like the first long-haul missions back before anyone had an Epstein drive. Months, maybe years, as a community of warriors and explorers. There's not room for outsiders when there is no outside. I know you're upset that -"

"No, sir, I'm not -"

"I know you're upset that I'm coming down on you for something as minor as a bracelet. It seems trivial, and it is. But if I wait until it's not trivial, we come to matters of life and death very, very quickly. I don't have the lat.i.tude to take a cavalier position."

"I understand, sir."

"I'm glad to hear you say that."

He held out his hand, palm up. Babbage wiped away a tear with the back of her hand, and then dug in her pocket for a moment. When she put the bracelet in his hand, she paused, holding it for just a second longer. Whatever it meant to her, giving it over was a sacrifice. He closed his hand on the thin silver chain with its tiny sparrow-shaped pendant. He tried to make his smile gentle as he spoke.

"Dismissed."

When she had closed the door behind her, he turned back to his system. A new message had come in from Cortazar. His flesh crawled a little. Duarte's pet scientist had been sending more and more messages since the Belters had pulled the trigger. The man's enthusiasm unnerved Sauveterre. The man's personality was firmly in the uncanny valley, and his pleasure in the project they were undertaking at the new Laconia Station had a feeling of antic.i.p.ation that was almost s.e.xual.

Duty, however, was duty. He put Babbage's jewelry in the recycler and opened the message. Cortazar was too close to the camera or else had chosen for reasons of his own to be slightly out of focus. His wide chin and thin, black hair should have been unremarkable. Sauveterre rubbed his hands like he was trying half-consciously to wash them.

"Captain Sauveterre," the strange little man said. "I'm pleased to report that the sample arrived intact. Thank you very much for taking custody of it after its liberation. I am, however, distressed to hear that the fleet is running behind schedule."

"It's a few days over the course of months," Sauveterre said to himself and the screen. "We'll make it up."

"I know you are aware that both supplies and time are in short supply until the artifact has been brought to heel. In order to help make up for this shortfall, the research group has put together some plans and specifications for some of the modifications the Barkeith will need in order to dock with the artifact. Several of them can be started by your engineering teams en route. And of course, if you have any questions, I am at your disposal. Cortazar out."

The screen flipped to a series of technical drawings. There was more than enough about those to disturb him as well. They called all the alien technology by the name protomolecule, but of course, that far-traveled set of life-hijacking microparticles was only one object in a much grander toolbox. And if Cortazar had interpreted the top-clearance data from the MCRN probes correctly, what they had found would be much easier for humanity to tame and make use of.

Still, the changes Cortazar wanted for the Barkeith were unpleasantly organic. Less like they were fitting a new model of airlock on the ship, and more like they were carving it into some kind of colossal prosthesis.

It's the beginning of something very new and very powerful, and if good people don't step in to accept the power, bad ones will. It was what Admiral Duarte had told him the night he'd brought Sauveterre into the fold. It had been true then, and it was true now. He switched on the camera, adjusted his hair, and began recording.

"Message received. I will take the plans to my engineers at once. If they have any concerns, we will be in touch." Short, to the point, minimalist without being rude. Efficient. He hoped it would come across as efficient. He rewatched it to be sure and considered rerecording it and changing concerns to questions, but decided he was overa.n.a.lyzing it. As he sent it off, his system chimed.

"Captain, we have clearance from Medina."

"Do we now, Mister Kogoma? Kind of them. What was the resolution of their tracking number situation?"

"The freighter is moving in to dock with the station, sir."

Well, there was another ship for the skinnies to commandeer. If the Toreador had known which way the wind was blowing, they'd have hightailed it back to whatever hardscrabble planet they'd come from and tried to make do without whatever they had lost anyway. As it was, the Free Navy would just keep gobbling up the ships that came through, starving out the colonies. Weakening them. By the time the Belters figured out they were fighting a rearguard action against history, Duarte would be in position.

War, Sauveterre thought as he pulled himself to the command deck, had long since ceased to be about controlling territory. The job of a military was to disrupt its enemies. Generations of low-scale war in the Belt hadn't been an attempt to hold Vesta Station or Ceres or any of the dozens of little floating supply hubs in the vast emptiness. It had always and only been about keeping the OPA or any other Belt force from coalescing into an organized force. Until the rules changed, and that organized force became useful. The Free Navy would have made itself decades before if men like Duarte had let it. Now that the Belt finally had it, they would find just how useless it was.

As long as it kept Earth and what was left of Mars busy for a few years. After that... The reward of audacity was the chance to steer history.

The command deck was in trim. Everyone in their couches, the displays freshly cleaned, the controls polished. The Barkeith would arrive at Laconia Station as smart and sharp as she had left Mars. And they wouldn't be wearing bracelets. He drew himself down to his command station and strapped himself in.

"Mister Taylor, sound the acceleration alert. Mister Kogoma, inform the fleet and Medina Station that we are proceeding."

"Sir," the tactical officer said, "permission to open weapon ports."

"Are we expecting action, Mister Kuhn?"

"Not expecting, sir. An abundance of caution."

Kuhn didn't trust the skinnies either. That was fair. They were a bunch of thugs and cowboys who thought that because they had guns, they had power. Sauveterre thought it was early for the Free Navy to start double-crossing Duarte, but they were stupid and impulsive. It didn't do to a.s.sume an amateur force would make the same decisions as a professional. "Permission granted. And warm up the PDCs while you're at it. Mister Kogoma, please advise the fleet to do likewise."

"Yes, sir," Kogoma said.

The Klaxon sounded and Sauveterre settled into his couch, the sensation of weight returning over the course of seconds. The transit to the Laconia ring was short. The s.p.a.ce between the rings was almost claustrophobic compared with the vastness of real, open vacuum. And dark. Starless. The physics wonks said that there wasn't any s.p.a.ce on the other side of the rings. That whatever bubble they all existed in ended not in a barrier, but in some more profound manner that he couldn't picture. He didn't need to.

The Laconia gate drew closer, a handful of stars burning solid and clear on the other side of it, and growing as they came near. The exhaust plumes of the fleet vanguard glowed brighter as they pa.s.sed through. There would be new constellations there. A different angle on the galaxy, like a whole new sky.

"Approaching the ring, sir," Keller said from the navigation controls. "Pa.s.sing through in three. Two..."

Keller fell apart. No, that wasn't right. Keller was where she had been, sitting as she had been sitting. But she was a cloud now. All of them were clouds. Sauveterre held up his hands. He could see them so perfectly: the ridges of his fingertips, the s.p.a.ces between the molecules, the swirl and flow of his blood beneath them. He could see the molecules in the air nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide all bouncing madly against each other, obscuring some more profound s.p.a.ce between them. A vacuum that penetrated them all.

I'm having a stroke, he thought. And then, No. Something else is wrong.

"Kill the drive!" he shouted. "Turn about!" And the waves of his words pa.s.sed through the visible but invisible air in an expanding sphere, bouncing against the walls, shuddering where they intersected with the cries of fear and a blaring Klaxon. It was beautiful. The cloud that was Mister Keller moved her hands and miraculously didn't slip through the vast emptiness of her control deck.

He saw the sound coming in the rush of molecules before it reached him and he heard the words. "What's going on? What's happening?"

He couldn't see the image on the screens to know if the stars were there. All he could sense were atoms and photons of the thing itself, not the pattern they made. Someone was screaming. Then someone else.

He turned and saw something move. Something else, not another cloud like himself, like the others, like matter. Something solid but obscured by the emptiness of material like a shape in the fog. Many shapes, neither light nor dark, but some other thing, some third side of that coin, pa.s.sing through the s.p.a.ces between the s.p.a.ces. Rushing toward them. Toward him.

Sauveterre did not notice his death.

Acknowledgments.

While the creation of any book is less a solitary act than it seems, the past couple of years have seen a huge increase in the people involved with The Expanse in all its incarnations, including this one. This book would not exist without the hard work and dedication of Danny and Heather Baror, Will Hinton, Tim Holman, Anne Clarke, Ellen Wright, Alex Lencicki, and the whole brilliant crew at Orbit. Special thanks are also due to DongWon Song and Carrie Vaughn for their services as beta readers, Ben Jones and Jordin Kare for their help figuring out what happens when a thruster misfires, and also to the gang from Sakeriver: Tom, Sake Mike, Non-Sake Mike, Porter, Scott, Raja, Jeff, Mark, Dan, Joe, and Erik Slaine, who got the ball rolling.

The support team for The Expanse has also grown to include Sharon Hall and Ben Roberts, Bill McGoldrick, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, and Naren Shankar among many, many others at Alcon Television, the Sean Daniel Company, and Syfy. Especially Alan for the Boom Coffee and Kenneth for essentially everything else.

And, as always, none of this would have happened without the support and company of Jayne, Kat, and Scarlet.