Expanse 05 - Nemesis Games
“I didn’t see anything happen,” Amos said. “The newsfeeds and the mess after were bad enough.”
“Where were you?”
“Bethlehem,” Peaches said.
Erich turned back to them. There was no anger in his face, or fear, or even wariness. That was good. “So you’re headed south, then? How bad is it up there?”
“Not that Bethlehem,” Amos said. “The one in the Carolina admin district.”
“Where the Pit is,” Peaches said, raising her hand like a kid in a classroom. Then a second later, “Was.”
Erich blinked and leaned against his desk. “Where the third strike hit?”
“Close to there, yeah,” Amos said. “Lost that tequila you gave me with the hotel, so that sucked.”
“All right. How are you still alive?”
“Practice,” Amos said cheerfully. “Here’s the thing, though. I’ve got a job. Well, Peaches has a job, and I’m in. Could use some help.”
“What kind of job?” Erich asked. A sharpness and focus came into his voice, talking business. It was like watching someone wake up. Amos turned to Peaches and waved her on. She hugged stick-thin arms around her torso.
“Do you know Lake Winnipesaukee?”
Erich frowned and nodded at the same time. “The fake lake?”
“Reconstituted, yeah,” she said. “There’s an enclave on Rattlesnake Island. The whole place is walled. Independent security force. Maybe fifty estates.”
“I’m listening,” Erich said.
“They have a private launchpad built out onto the lake. The whole point of the place is that you can drop there suborbital or down from Luna or the Lagrange stations, and be walking distance from home. Everyone there has a hangar. Probably nothing with an Epstein, but something that could get us to Luna. Going through the road, you couldn’t get past the checkpoints, but there’s a way in from the water. The boathouse locks are compromised. Put in the right code, and they pop open even if the security chip’s not in range.”
“Which you know how?” Erich said.
“I used to summer there. It’s how we got in and out when we went slumming.”
Erich looked at Peaches like he wasn’t sure how she’d gotten in the room. His laugh was short and hard, but it wasn’t a no. Amos picked up the pitch. “Idea is we get in, grab a ship, and head for Luna.”
Erich sat down on the ball, his legs wide, and rolled a few centimeters back and forth, his eyes half-closed. “So what’s the score?”
“The score?” Peaches asked.
“What are we taking? Where does the money come in?”
“There isn’t any,” Peaches said.
“Then what do I get out of it?”
“You get out of here,” Amos said. “Place was kind of a shithole 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 fucking 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 fuckwit decided to prove he’s got a tiny little dick and his mama didn’t hug him enough when he was a kid? Fuck that! You hear me, Timmy? Fuck that!”
Amos looked at his hands and tried to think what to do next. His first impulse was to laugh at Erich’s maudlin bullshit, 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 fuck 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 bitch 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 fuck 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 pissed 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 shit times turn into normal and turn back to shit, 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, shitty 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 passed 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 ship
s 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 compassion and decency and kindness flourish in any gravity or none. Earth has been bloodied, but we will not be debased. Not on my fucking 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 massive 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.
“Esá bitch needs sa yutak cut,” Cyn said. His face was dark with rage. “Lesson á 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.
“Esá 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 class, 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 class, 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 reassuring. 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?”
“Redistribué, yeah? Alles la food and supplies they got heading out for the Ring? Más 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 mass. 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 passionate 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 t
he 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.