Expanse 05 - Nemesis Games

  “Ez maldecido igaz,” Cyn said, nodding. “Everything changed after everything.”

  Karal looked up. His expression was a mix of camaraderie and regret that meant Everything changed after the Gamarra.

  Naomi smiled back. It had, and she was sorry too. Being here, with these men, brought up a kind of nostalgia that seeped into everything. All of them would have liked her to tell her stories – being on Eros, riding the first ship through the gate, trekking out to the first colony on the new worlds. Cyn and Karal wouldn’t ask, and so the new one followed their lead. And she kept her own counsel.

  Filip was asleep in the next room, his body curled into a comma, his eyes merely closed. They weren’t the profoundly shut eyes of a sleeping baby. The rest of the cell were in other safe houses. Smaller groups drew less attention, and even if they lost one group, the rest could go on. It wasn’t something anyone had said. The strategy was familiar and strange at the same time, like a once-favorite song heard again after years of being forgotten. Karal scooped up the cousa, lifting it off the heating element and spinning it on his fingertips in the same motion. Naomi held out her hand, and he set the cracker down on her palm, their fingers brushing against each other. The simple physical intimacy of close companionship. Of family. It had been true once, and that it was less true now was forgiven by the fact that they all knew it wasn’t what it had been. Since she’d arrived, they’d all been careful not to let conversation stray into anything that put too fine a point on the gap of years she’d been absent.

  And so when she broke the unspoken covenant, they would know she’d meant to. And as much as she didn’t want to undo the fragile moment, the only thing worse than talking about it was leaving it all unsaid.

  “Filip is looking well,” she said, as if the words carried no extra significance. She bit the cracker, roux and onion flooding her tongue and the back of her nose with salt and sweet and bitter. She talked around it. “He’s grown.”

  “Has,” Cyn said, his voice cautious.

  Naomi felt years of grief and anger, loss and betrayal at the back of her throat. She smiled. Her voice didn’t waver. “How’s he been?”

  Cyn’s glance at Karal was nothing, a flicker almost too fast to notice. They were in dangerous territory now. She didn’t know if they were looking to protect her from the truth or Filip and Marco from her. Or if they only didn’t want a part of the drama that had been and still was her old lover and their son.

  “Filipito’s been good,” Karal said. “Smart boy, and focused. Ser focused. Marco seen after him. Kept him safe.”

  “Safe as any of us ever are,” Miral said, trying to make the words light. The hunger of curiosity was in the man’s expression. He hadn’t been there when Naomi and Marco had been together. It was like the rest of them were having a conversation, and half the words Miral couldn’t hear.

  “Que a mí?” Naomi asked.

  “We all told him the truth,” Karal said, a hardness coming into his voice. “Not going to lie to our own.”

  Cyn coughed once. He looked at her sideways, like a guilty dog. “When he got old enough to ask, him, Marco tells him how things got harsh. Too harsh. His mother, she needed to step away from it. Put ellas kappa together.”

  “Ah,” Naomi said. So that was the story of who she was. The one who’d been too sensitive. Too weak. From where Marco sat, it might even look like the truth.

  But then what must it have been to see who she’d become? XO of the Rocinante, survivor of Eros Station, traveler to new worlds. Looked at that way, “too harsh” was a strange thing. Unless it meant she just didn’t love her son enough to stay. Unless what she’d run from was him.

  “Filipito, he’s solid,” Cyn said. “Be proud of him.”

  “Nothing but,” Naomi said.

  “So,” Miral said, his voice fighting and failing for casual. “You ship sui James Holden, yeah? What’s that like?”

  “Steady work. No room for promotion,” Naomi said, and Cyn laughed. After a moment, Miral joined in ruefully. Only Karal kept quiet, and that might only have been from concentrating on the hot plate.

  Naomi’s hand terminal chimed. She picked it up. Two more messages from Jim. Her fingertip was a centimeter from the button to accept them. His voice was a few small movements away, and the thought pulled at her like a magnet. Hearing him now, even just his recorded voice, would be like taking a long shower in clean water. She pushed the messages into her hold queue. Soon, and then all of them. But if she started now, she wouldn’t stop, and she wasn’t done yet. Instead, she put in a connection request to the address the Outer Fringe Exports representative had given her. A few seconds later, the connection hiccupped to life, a red border marking that the channel was secure.

  “Ms. Nagata,” the young man said. “How can I help you today?”

  “Waiting on the ship,” she said. “Need to know where we stand.”

  The man’s eyes unfocused for a moment, then his smile sharpened. “We’re waiting for the title transfer to update in the base registry, ma’am.”

  “So the payment’s gone through?”

  “Yes. If you’d like, you can take possession now, but please be aware you can’t be cleared to leave port until the registry updates.”

  “That’s fine,” she said, getting to her feet. “Where’s she berthed?”

  “Dock six, berth nineteen, ma’am. Would you like a representative present for the handover?”

  “No,” she said. “Just leave the keys in the ignition, and we can take it from here.”

  “Of course. It’s been a pleasure.”

  “Likewise,” Naomi said. “Have a better one.”

  She dropped the connection. Cyn and Miral were already gathering their few things. Karal scooped up the last cousa from the hot plate with one hand and unplugged it with the other. She didn’t need to tell them to alert the others. Cyn was already doing it. Without changing, the air in the room felt suddenly too thick, the heat from the hot plate and their bodies too oppressive. Naomi stepped through the doorway.

  “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.

  “Hell, 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 mass. 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 space 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 space. 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 passed, 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 space. 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, God 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 embarrassed 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 fucked 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 désolé, 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 space 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 fr
om the massive, 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, feckless, 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 asshole 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-ass. At least he knows there’s a problem. Realizing you’ve got shit on your fingers is the first step toward washing your hands.”