“We cleaned that up for you,” Bobbie called, her voice seeming to come from miles away and with all the treble stripped out. “You can come on up. Might want to hold your breath through here, though. There’s some particulates.”
Alex pulled himself forward, the prime minister following close behind. They passed Bobbie and four new marines that swelled their escort to six. He hadn’t seen Bobbie in armor since the fight on Io. With the other marines around her, the massive armor adding to her normal bulk, she seemed at home. And more than that, she seemed wistful, knowing that it was an illusion.
“Looks good on you, Draper,” Alex called as he passed. Half-deafened by the firefight, he only felt the words in his throat. Bobbie’s smile told him that she’d heard them.
In the hangar, the Razorback hung in clamps built to accommodate ships much larger than she was. It was like seeing an industrial lathe with a toothpick in it. The flight crew hung on to handholds around it, gesturing Alex and Bobbie and the prime minister on. By the time Alex got to the ship, the massive hangar doors were already starting their opening cycle. The flight chief was pushing a vacuum suit at him and shouting so he could hear her.
“We’re coordinating with fire control. The PDCs’ll try to get you a clear run, but be careful. You run into our own rounds, and that’d just be sad.”
“Understood,” Alex said.
She gestured toward the hangar doors with her chin. “We’re not taking the time to evacuate the bay completely, but we’ll get you down to maybe half an atmosphere. Little bit of a pop, but you shouldn’t spring a leak.”
“And if I do?”
She held out the environment suit again. “You’ll have some bottled air to suck on while you figure something out.”
“Well, not a great plan, but it’s a plan.”
“Imperfect circumstances,” the flight chief agreed.
Alex shrugged the suit on as the prime minister, already wearing his, slipped into the pinnace and toward the back bunk. The Razorback was a yacht. A hot rod, made for zipping around outside an atmosphere, the philosophical descendant of ships that didn’t lose sight of the shore. And more than that, she was old. The girl who’d first flown her had been dead or something stranger for years, and the ship had been old before she went. Now they were going to fly it through an active battle zone.
He checked the last of the seals on his suit, and started for the Razorback. Bobbie was in the entry, looking in. When she spoke, it was through the suit radio.
“We’ve got a little problem, Alex.”
He squeezed in beside her. Even before she’d been in combat armor, Bobbie had made the interior of the ship seem a little undersized. Looking from her to the second couch now, she made it look ridiculous. There was no way she was going to fit.
“I’ll have them stop the launch sequence,” Alex said. “We can get you in a normal EVA suit.”
“There are boarders on the ship. Looking for us. For him,” Bobbie said. “There isn’t time.” She turned to look at him. On the other side of the helmet, her expression was rueful. “I’m only seeing one option here.”
“No,” Alex said. “You’re not staying. I don’t give a shit. I’m not leaving you behind.”
Bobbie shifted, her eyes wide. “What? No, I meant take out the couch and use the suit motors to brace me. Did you think I was —”
“That. Do that. Now,” Alex said.
Bobbie leaned forward, the magnetic boots locking onto the deck of the Razorback, and one hand clamped against the frame. With the other, she gripped the base of the crash couch and lifted. The bolts sheared off like she was tearing paper, and she tossed the couch out into the hangar. The gimbals shifted and turned under the spin. Bobbie scuttled in, pressing hands and feet against the walls and deck and pushing until the suit was wedged in as solidly as if it had been part of the superstructure.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m good.”
Alex turned back to the flight chief. The woman saluted him, and with his heart in his throat he returned it. The marines who’d escorted them – who’d risked their lives to get them this far – had already gone. Alex wished he’d thought to thank them.
“I’ll get to my station, and then we’ll get you out,” the flight chief said. “You be careful out there.”
“Thank you,” Alex said. He pulled himself into the ship, closed the hatch, and started running through the checklist. The reactor was hot, the Epstein drive showing green across the board. Air and water were at capacity, and the recyclers ready. “You in place back there, sir?”
“Ready as I’m likely to get,” the man replied.
“You hang on tight,” Alex said to Bobbie. “This might get rough, and you’re not in a crash couch.”
“Yeah I am,” she said, and he could hear the mischievous grin in her voice. “I’m wearing mine.”
“Well,” Alex said softly. “Okay, then.”
The clamp lights went from engaged to warning to open, and the Razorback was on the float. Emergency Klaxons sounded, the noise softened by the thinned atmosphere, and the massive hangar door began to open. The change in exterior pressure rang the pinnace like a hammer blow. Alex aimed for the widening gap full of darkness and stars, and hit it. The Razorback leaped out into the vacuum, eager and hungry. The display marked a dozen ships too small for his naked eye to see, and the long, curving shapes of PDC fire like tentacles waving through the void.
“Taking control of the comm laser,” Bobbie said.
“Roger that,” he said. “This is going to get bumpy.”
He threw the Razorback out the hangar doors at full speed and into the narrow lane between the battleship’s PDCs firing on full auto. He spun the pinnace between the lines of high-velocity tungsten, hoping they were enough to stop any missiles the ambushing ships fired at them from point-blank range. And then, from behind them, fast-moving bogies in wave after wave. The Razorback’s display turned into a solid mass, the density of the missile swarm too much for the screen to differentiate between them. The entire arsenal of the battleship launched all at once, and keyed to target on the pinnace’s comm laser frequency.
“We’ve got our escort,” Alex said. “Let’s get out of here. How many gs can you take back there, Draper?”
“If I break a rib, I’ll let you know.”
Alex grinned, spun the pinnace toward the sun, and accelerated – two g, three, four, four and a half – until the system started complaining that it couldn’t inject him with anything through the EVA suit. He hit the suit’s crude helmet controls with his chin and injected himself with all the amphetamine it had in its tiny emergency pack. The enemy ships seemed unsure what had just happened, but then they began to turn, thin red triangles on the display. Exhaust plumes competed with the stars behind him as he fell toward the sun, toward Earth and Luna and the rattled remnants of the UN fleet. Alex felt a bloom of joy welling up in his chest, like shrugging off a weight.
“You can’t take the Razorback,” he said to the tiny red triangles. “We are gone and gone and gone.” He switched the radio to general. “How’s everyone doing back there?”
“Fine,” the prime minister gasped. “But will we be accelerating like this for much longer?”
“Bit longer, yes, sir,” Alex said. “Once we get some breathing room, I’ll cut us back to just a g.”
“Breathing room,” the prime minister said, the words labored. “That’s funny.”
“Five by five here, Alex,” Bobbie said. “Is it safe to pop my helmet? I’d rather not run through all my bottled air when there’s fresh in the ship.”
“Yeah, that’s fine. Same back there, Mister Prime Minister.”
“Please. Call me Nathan.”
“You got it, Nate,” Alex said. The sun was a sphere of white. He pulled up the nav computer and started plotting in paths to Luna. The fastest would take them inside the orbit of Mercury, but the pinnace wasn’t rated for more than half an AU from the coronal surface. So that was going to
be a little tricky. And Venus wasn’t anyplace that he could gracefully use to slingshot. But if Avasarala was sending out an escort to meet them, she might be able to get a boost off the planet. So heading that direction might make sense.
“Alex?” Bobbie said.
“I’m here.”
“That thing about not leaving me behind? You really meant that, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did.”
“Thank you.”
He felt a blush rising even against the pressure of the burn. “Welcome,” he said. “I figure you’re crew now, right? We look out for each other.”
“No soldier left behind,” she said. It might have been the gs, but something about her tone made it sound like she meant something deeper by the words. Like she’d made a promise. She grunted. “Alex, we’ve got fast-movers coming in. I think the bad guys are throwing missiles at us.”
“You ready to disappoint them, Gunny?”
“Oh hell yes,” Bobbie said. “How many bullets have we got in this magazine?”
Alex switched the display. The cloud of escort missiles resolved into a numbered list, all in white with identifying serial numbers beside each of them. Even the list filled the screen. He switched to a field summary. “A little shy of ninety.”
“That should get us where we’re going. Looks like pretty near all their ships are burning hard for us too. How would you feel about taking a few potshots at them by way of discouragement?”
“It’ll keep them at a distance, anyway. I figure their PDCs’ll probably take them down before they can do any real damage, but apart from that I’m not opposed,” Alex said. “Except… hold on.” On his list, he switched to the enemy flotilla. It took him a few seconds to find what he was looking for. He marked the Pella. “Not that one. We don’t shoot that one.”
“Understood,” Bobbie said.
No soldier left behind, Alex thought. That goes for you too, Naomi. I don’t know what the hell’s going on out there, and I don’t see how this plays out yet. But I’ll be damned if I’m just leaving you behind.
Chapter Thirty-five: Naomi
Back before, when she had been a girl and not known any better, it had been hard for her to cast Marco as the bad guy in their pairing. Even after the Gamarra, it had been difficult. Even after he’d taken Filip away. She’d grown up around poverty. She knew what bad men looked like. They raped their wives. Or beat them. Or their children. That was how you knew them for what they were. Marco was never that. He never hit her, never forced himself on her, never threatened to shoot her or throw her out an airlock or pour acid in her eyes. He’d pretended kindness so well she would doubt herself, make herself wonder if she was the one being unreasonable, irrational, all the things he implied she was.
He never did anything that would have made it easy for her.
After she’d reached her quarters, the door had locked. She hadn’t bothered trying to raise help or leave her little room since. She knew a cell when she was in it, and she’d known with a certainty like her own mortality that sooner or later, Marco would come.
He sat across from her now, still in his Martian military uniform. His eyes were soft, his lips pressed into a smile of amusement and regret. He looked like a poet. A man well bruised by the world, but still capable of passion. She wondered if he practiced the expression in a mirror. Probably, he did.
The wound on her head had stopped bleeding. Her joints all ached, and a vast bruise was blooming on her left hip. Even her fingertips felt like she’d scraped the first layers of skin off them, leaving them weeping and raw, though actually they just looked a little pinker than usual. She drank the same version of chamomile tea that the Rocinante made, and it felt like having a secret ally. She recognized that wasn’t a perfectly sane thought, but comfort was comfort.
The mess was empty, the screens turned off and the crew sent away. Even Cyn and Karal were absent. The implication was that whatever they said there was private, but it probably wasn’t. She could imagine Filip on another deck, watching. It felt like a setup. Everything about Marco felt like a setup. Because everything was.
“I don’t know why you do these things to me, Naomi,” Marco said. There was no anger in his voice. No, that wasn’t true. The anger was there, but hidden behind the mask of disappointment. “You used to be better than this.”
“I’m sorry. Did I upset your plans?”
“Well, yes,” Marco said. “That’s the thing. Used to be, you knew better. Used to be you at least tried to understand what was going on before you jumped in. Professional. This, though? Took a difficult thing and made it worse. Now what could have been gentle is going to be hard. I just want you to understand why I’m going to do what I’m going to do so you see I didn’t have a choice.”
There was a smart thing to do. She knew it. A wiser woman would have cried, begged forgiveness. That it would be insincere was the point. It was a mistake to give Marco anything real. Better to be thought weak. Better to be underestimated and misunderstood. She knew that, but she couldn’t do it. When she tried, something deep within her pushed back. Maybe if she pretended to be weak, it was too possible that it would become true. Maybe she was pretending to be strong.
Naomi spat on the deck. There was a little blood along with her saliva. “Save the air.”
He leaned forward, taking her hand in his. His grip was strong, like he was showing that he could hurt her, even if he wasn’t doing it right now. She thought, Well, that’s one way to make your subtext physical, and then chuckled.
“Naomi, I know we aren’t good, du y mé. I know you’re angry. But I know we were something once. We’re one body, you and me. Much as we try to be apart, our son means we will never be totally separate.”
She tried to pull her hand back, but he kept hold of it. She could pull harder or let him touch her, control her body even if it was only that much. The glimmer in his eyes was pleasure. His smile was a little more genuine, and it had an edge.
“You’ve got to understand what I’m doing here, it’s not for me. It’s for us.”
“Us?”
“Belters. All Belters. It’s for Filip. So when his turn comes, there’s still a place for him. Not just a footnote. Once upon a time there were a people who lived on moons and asteroids and the planets where life didn’t evolve. But then we found the gates, and those people died out because we didn’t need them. It’s why I have to do this. You don’t like my methods. I understand that. But they’re mine, and the cause is righteous.”
Naomi didn’t speak. The food processor let out a high whine that meant its water supply was getting low. She wondered if Marco knew that, or if it was just another meaningless noise for him.
“Pretty speech. But it doesn’t explain why I’m here. You didn’t need me here in order to break the system. Needed me for something else. You want to know what I think?”
“You told me,” Marco said, his grip on her hand tightening just a degree. “So the great James Holden wouldn’t come blow my house down. Seriously, you think too much of him. He’s not that impressive.”
“No, it’s worse than that. I think you wanted the Roci. I think you wanted my ship flying at your side when you did all this. But when I didn’t bring her, you fell back. Had Sakai rig her to blow. Because there is nothing original about you at all.”
His smile was as warm, but his eyes were cold now. Unamused. “Don’t follow,” he said.
“You start the conversation with Why do you make me hurt you when I love you so much? and now we’re at If I can’t have you, no one can. You can pretend we’re talking about the ship if you want. Doesn’t matter to me.”
Marco let her go and stood. He wasn’t as tall as she remembered him. “You got it wrong from the start. I wanted Fred Johnson – Butcher of Anderson Station, who killed people like you and me and Filip just because we were Belters. I wanted him isolated. Keep your ship out of his hands. Tried to get it brought, but no. Had Sakai try to disable her. Disable, sa sa? Had it rigg
ed to blow at three percent power. Blown off her aft, maybe didn’t even hurt anyone.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said, but he was on a roll now, pacing the length of the mess, his arms spread wide like a man giving a speech to an invisible crowd.
“Killing the ship wasn’t my plan. That’s what you pushed me into. What happens to Holden is your fault, not mine. That’s what you need to see. How things get worse when you start acting like you know. You don’t know, Naomi. You don’t know because I haven’t told you.”
She took a sip of her tea and shrugged. “So tell me.”
Marco grinned. “You notice when we cut thrust for a few minutes? Strange thing to do in the middle of a chase, don’t you think?”
The truth was, she hadn’t noticed. In her bunk, nursing her wounds, the shifts in ship gravity hadn’t been on her mind.
“Docking procedure,” he said and pulled his hand terminal from his pocket and chose something. The speakers on the screens clicked, hissed. No image appeared on them, but a voice came.
Her voice.
“This is Naomi Nagata of the Rocinante. If you get this message, please retransmit. Tell James Holden I am in distress. Comm is not responding. I have no nav control. Please retransmit.”
Marco touched something else on his hand terminal, and the screens sprang to life. Exterior cameras, probably connected to the point defense. The Chetzemoka burned not more than a hundred meters away, a docking tube clinging to her airlock like an umbilical cord. A ship that, if they dug hard enough, would trace back to her. The payments that had come from her accounts.
“Put it on intersecting course, more or less,” Marco said, his voice weary and sorrowful in a way she was certain hid glee. “Set the bottle to fail when the proximity sensors ping a ship. Didn’t have to be this way, but it does now.”