Expanse 05 - Nemesis Games, Page 36

  A real despair rose up in her throat, and she pushed it back down. It was what Marco wanted, so she would do anything, feel anything except that. She considered the screen. The ship looking like a box held together with one line of solder and some epoxy.

  “You’re stealing it from your own son,” she said. Marco frowned. Naomi pointed toward the screen with her chin. “The Chetzemoka. I told Filip he could have it when we were here. That’s his ship. You’re stealing it from him.”

  “Necessity of war,” Marco said.

  “Shitty parenting.”

  His jaw slid forward. His hands balled in fists. For a moment, she thought he was going to make it easy. He’d show whatever audience he was playing for who and what he really was. He got his temper back in time, and she wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed.

  “If you’d stayed in your place, James Holden would have lived. But you stepped out. Put yourself where you didn’t belong. Because of you, he’s going to die.”

  Naomi stood up, rubbed her eye with the back of her hand. Her false voice repeated through the mess hall – “Tell James Holden I am in distress…”

  “Anything else?”

  “You pretend you don’t care,” Marco said. “But you do.”

  “You say so.” She shrugged. “I got a little bump. It’s giving me a headache. Or something is. Going to med bay get it fixed, yeah?”

  “You can pretend —”

  “Can I pretend in the med bay? Or do you need to go on impressing me?” It was too much. She felt a flood of words hammering up behind all she’d said. You are an egomaniac and a sadist and I can’t believe I ever thought I loved you and If Jim dies, I will by God find a way to make the bottle on this ship fail and we’ll all go to hell behind him. But engaging was also a trap, so she didn’t. She let the silence break the rhythm of Marco’s performance and saw his shoulders shift when he gave up and stepped off the stage in his head.

  “Miral!” he yelled, and as the sounds of one of the crew moving from the quarters grew louder, “You abused the freedom I gave you. You can’t expect to keep it.”

  “Too dangerous to leave free?” she asked, then licked her fingertip and ticked off a mark on an imaginary board. “One point for me, then.”

  In the med bay, a woman she didn’t know ran tests to make sure Naomi wasn’t bleeding in her brain; that none of the bruises she had were crush wounds bad enough to kill the muscle, flood her body with potassium, stop her heart. Miral leaned against the supply cabinet, reciting obscenities – bitch, puta, cunt – with a half-focused rage. After spending all those days running inventory, Naomi knew everything in the cabinet. First drawer: gauze and bandages. Second drawer: one-use blood cards for maybe a hundred different field tests. Third drawer: emergency medical supplies like decompression kits, adrenaline shots, defibrillating tape. Naomi stared at Miral as he recited his litany. He glanced away, and then returned the stare, enunciating each word a little more sharply.

  The medic had her sit up, the cushion of the medical table crackling under her shifting weight. The analgesic was a spray that went in Naomi’s mouth. It tasted like fake cherry and mold.

  “Maybe take it easy for a couple days, yeah?” the medic said.

  “Best I can,” Naomi agreed, hopping down from the bed. She straight-kicked Miral in the crotch, sending him sprawling into the cabinet and cracking two of her toes. She ignored the stab of pain in her foot and launched herself onto him, pounding at his head and neck. When he rolled, she rolled with him. The cabinet doors were open, spilling test cards and preloaded hypodermics across the floor. Miral’s elbow swung up, glancing off her jaw but still hard enough to make her ears ring.

  She fell to the side, her belly to the deck, decompression kits the size of her thumb pressing into her face as Miral writhed around to kneel on her back. The medic was screaming. Naomi tried to turn, tried to evade the punches, but she couldn’t. The pain bloomed between her shoulder blades. And then, like time skipping, the weight was off her. She rolled to her side. Karal had Miral in a submission hold. He struggled and cursed, but the old Belter’s eyes were flat and dead.

  “Be angry con sus séra that she got you unexpected,” Karal said. “Marco pas beat her down, you sure as fuck don’t, sabe pendejo?”

  “Sa sa,” Miral said, and Karal let him go. The medic, standing in the corner, was a picture of silent rage. Miral rubbed his neck and glared at Naomi where she still lay on the deck. Karal walked over to look down at her.

  “Bist bien, Knuckles?”

  She nodded, and when Karal put out his hand, she took it and let him help her up. When she started for the door, Miral began to follow. Karal put a hand on the man’s chest. “I got this, me.”

  Naomi hung her head as they walked, her hair falling over her face like a veil. The steady pressure of acceleration left her knees and spine aching even more than her wounds. All through the ship, malefic faces turned to her. She could feel the hatred coming off them like heat from a fire. When she passed through the mess, the Chetzemoka was still on the screen, the docking umbilical linking them. They’d need to cut thrust when they unhooked it, or it would fall to the side, trailing along the ship like a limp tentacle. That would be how she knew she was too late. It hadn’t happened yet.

  At her quarters, Karal came in behind her and closed the door. With two of them in the tiny space, it felt cramped and uncomfortably intimate. She sat on the crash couch, arms crossed, her legs tucked under her, and looked at him, her expression carrying the question. Karal shook his head.

  “You got to stop this, Knuckles,” he said, and his voice was surprisingly gentle. “We’re in king shit here. Esá la we’re doing? History, yeah? Changing everything, but for us this time. I know you and him ain’t right, but tu muss listen him. Yeah?”

  Naomi looked away. She just wanted him to leave, but Karal didn’t go. He sank down, his back against the wall, his knees to his broad chest.

  “I heard the plan where we gehst con du? Bring you in? Fought it, me. Mal cóncep, I said. Why cut open the scar? Marco said was worth it. Said you were going to be in danger when it all came, and Filip, he deserved to see his mother, yeah? And Marco’s Marco, so si.”

  Karal rubbed his palms over his head. It made a soft hissing sound, almost too faint to hear. Naomi felt an inexplicable urge to touch him, to offer some comfort, but she didn’t. When he spoke again, he sounded tired.

  “We’re little people in big times, yeah? Time for Butchers and Marco – men and history-book things. Other pinché worlds. Who wants that? Just you let this pass, yeah? Maybe your Holden, he doesn’t take the bait. Maybe something else trips before he gets here. Maybe you get small and you live through this. That so bad? Doing what needs to live through?”

  She shrugged. For a time, the only sound was the clicking of the air recycler. Karal lifted himself up with a grunt. He looked older than she thought of him. It was more than just the years, she thought. For a moment, she was young again, back on Ceres with Filip bawling in his crib while she watched the news of the Augustín Gamarra. It occurred to her for the first time that everyone on that ship had watched Earth die in real time the way she’d seen the firefly light of the Gamarra rise and fade on the newsfeed, looped a dozen times while the reporter spoke over it. She wanted to say something, but she couldn’t, so she just watched as Karal opened the door then closed it behind him. The lock slid closed. She wiped the wet from her eyes, and – once she was sure he wasn’t coming back – spat the decompression kit into her hand.

  Wet with her saliva and no bigger than her thumb, it was the sort of thing any mech driver kept with her. A tiny ampoule of injectable oxygenated artificial blood, and a panic button that would make an emergency medical request for an airlock to cycle. Military ships like the Pella and Roci ignored that sort of request as basic security. The Canterbury and other commercial ships usually allowed it, filled as they were with civilians who posed a greater threat to themselves than pirates or boarders
did. She didn’t know how the Chetzemoka would respond to it, but there was only one way to find out. The only other things she needed were an EVA suit and a clear idea of when the ships would cut thrust.

  Then it was a matter of taking control of the ship, maybe blowing the core, and getting the hell away from Marco. Again. She felt a pang of regret at the thought of Filip – and Cyn and Karal and all the people she’d known once and cared for. Even loved. It was an echo of greater pain, and she could ignore it.

  “Didn’t break me when I was a girl,” she said to the tiny black kit. “Don’t know why he thinks he can break me now.”

  Chapter Thirty-six: Holden

  Holden wanted badly to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. The most he’d been able to manage was a few hours’ unconsciousness that left him groggy and ragged. He’d been given the option of moving back into quarters on the station, but he’d refused. Even though he slept better with gravity holding him to the mattress, he didn’t want to leave the ship. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d shaved, but the patchwork of stubble on his cheeks and neck itched a little. During the work shifts, it wasn’t so bad. The new crew checked the systems they’d all checked before, looking for sabotage they hadn’t seen last time, and it gave him something to do. People to talk to. When they left, he ate in the galley, tried to sleep for a while, then wandered through the ship like he was looking for something but couldn’t remember what it was.

  And then, inevitably and against his better judgment, he checked the newsfeeds.

  “With the silence from Medina Station, all contact with the colonial planets has been lost. We can only speculate on the significance of the partial report from the Fólkvangr settlement concerning alien activity in the southern hemisphere of New Triton —”

  “A spokesman for the port authority said that Ganymede’s neutrality was a reflection of its universal importance and not a political statement —”

  “UN forces are en route, but it is not clear whether Prime Minister Smith is actually aboard the racing ship or if this is a distraction to pull the enemy’s attention away from a more traditional evacuation. Regardless, acting secretary-general Avasarala has announced a security zone covering the flight path of the pinnace, and all ships in the area have been advised to move beyond weapon range until such time as —”

  Light speed, he decided, was a curse. It made even the farthest corners of humanity’s reach feel close, and the illusion was a kind of poison. The delay between Tycho Station and Earth was a little less than a quarter of an hour, but to travel that far would take days. If Alex or Naomi died, he could know within minutes that they were gone. He floated in his restraints, the cabin lights turned off, and flipped through the feeds, jumping back and forth in case anything had happened, knowing that if it had, there was nothing he could do. He felt like he was standing on a frozen lake, looking down through the ice while the people he cared about most drowned.

  If he couldn’t know, if everything that was happening could happen someplace he couldn’t watch, then maybe he could look away. Maybe he could close his eyes and dream about them, at least. When a connection request came on his hand terminal, he was glad to get it.

  “Paula,” Holden said.

  “Holden,” the hacker replied. “Wasn’t sure what schedule you’re on. I was afraid I was calling in your sleep shift.”

  “No,” Holden said. He didn’t know why he felt defensive about being awake, but he did. “It’s fine. I’m fine. What have you got?”

  She grinned. “I have a smoking gun. I can transmit a report to you —”

  “No. I mean, yes. Do that. But am I going to understand what I’m seeing?”

  On the screen, she stretched, grinning. “I was about to head out to dinner. Meet me at La Fromagerie and I’ll walk you through the whole thing.”

  Holden pulled up the station directory. It wasn’t far. If Naomi died right now, the news would reach him just about when he got there. Maybe before. He pressed his palm against his sandpaper-dry eyes. “Sounds like a plan,” he said.

  “Meal’s on you.”

  “You’ve got me over a barrel, yeah, yeah. Be right over.”

  The restaurant was small, with what appeared to be real wooden tables but were certainly pressed bamboo from station hydroponics; no one charging even vaguely reasonable prices for the meals would have been able to afford something from an actual tree. Paula was at a table against the wall. The bench she sat on looked normal for her. When he sat across from her, his feet didn’t quite touch the deck.

  “Boss,” Paula said. “I already ordered.”

  “I’m not hungry. What have you got?”

  “Take a look,” she said, passing her hand terminal over to him. The screen was filled with a structured scatter of code, structures nested inside structures with repeated sections showing variations so subtle as to approach invisibility. It was like seeing a poem written in an alphabet he didn’t know.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “These two lines,” she said. “This sends the stop code to the bottle. These are the conditional statements that call it. For you, if you’d gotten to ninety-five percent, you’d have been a star. If you’d been in dock, which you probably would have, it would have taken a fair bite out of the station too.”

  “And the new software? The one that the ship’s running now?”

  “Not in it,” Paula said. “This is where you get to be impressed with me finding two lines of uncommented code in a fusion reactor’s magnetic bottle driver.”

  “Very impressive,” Holden said, dutifully.

  “Thank you, but that’s not the cool part. Take a look at the trigger line. You see all those calls set to null? They’re all other system parameters that weren’t being used.”

  “Okay,” Holden said. From the brightness in her expression, he had the sense he should have seen something more in her words. Maybe if he’d been able to sleep…

  “This is an all-purpose trap. You want something to blow when they’ve been out of port for six days? Set that call there to about half a million seconds. You want it to go when the weapons systems are armed? This call right here set to one. There’s maybe a dozen different ways to set this thing off, and you can mix and match them.”

  “That’s interesting —”

  “That’s a smoking fucking gun,” Paula said. “Bottle containment failures don’t leave much by way of data. Not supposed to happen ever, but sometimes they do. The story has always been that accidents happen, what can you do? Ships blow up sometimes. This shows that someone built a tool specifically to make it happen. And to make it happen again and again and again, wherever they could sneak their code into the ship they decided had to die. What we have here is key evidence in maybe thousands of murders no one even knew were murders until right now.”

  Excitement tightened her voice, brightened her eyes. The unease in his gut grew thicker.

  I need to go do something, Naomi said in his memory. And I can’t have you involved in it. At all.

  Was this it? Was this what she’d been trying to keep separate from him, from the Rocinante? And what did it mean if it was? Paula was still looking at him, expectation in her eye. He didn’t know how to respond, but the silence was getting awkward.

  “Cool?” he said.

  Fred was sitting at Drummer’s desk, his elbows resting on the tabletop, his hands cradling his chin. He looked as tired as Holden felt. On the screen, Drummer and Sakai were in one of the interrogation rooms. The table that was usually between them had been moved askew, and Drummer was leaning back in her chair and resting her feet on it. Prisoner and guard were both drinking what looked like coffee. Sakai laughed at something and shook his head. Drummer grinned impishly. She looked younger. Holden realized with a start that she was wearing her hair down.

  “What the hell is this?” he asked.

  “Professionalism,” Fred said. “Building rapport. Establishing trust. She’s halfway convinced him that whoev
er he was working for was willing to crack the station open with him still inside it. Once he’s come around, we’ll own him. That man will tell us everything we ask and then try to remember something we didn’t think to dig for if we give him time. No one’s as zealous as a convert.”

  Holden crossed his arms. “I think you’re overlooking the beat-him-with-a-wrench stratagem. I favor it.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “In this case, I’d make an exception.”

  “No. You wouldn’t. Torture’s for amateurs.”

  “So? I don’t do this professionally.”

  Fred sighed and turned to look up at him. “The reckless tough-guy version of you is almost as tiring as the relentless Boy Scout was. I’m hoping your pendulum swings hit middle sometime soon.”

  “Reckless?”

  Fred shrugged. “Did you find anything?”

  “Yeah,” Holden said, “but it’s not in the fresh driver. We have a clean bill of health.”

  “Unless there’s something else.”

  “Yup.”

  “Sakai says there wasn’t.”

  “Not entirely sure I know how to respond to that,” Holden said. Then, a moment later, “So, I’ve been thinking.”

  “About the message from the Pella?”

  “Yeah.”

  Fred stood up. His expression was hard, but not without compassion. “I was expecting this fight, Holden. But there’s more at stake here than Naomi. If the protomolecule is being weaponized, or even just set loose again —”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Holden said. “Wait, no. That came out wrong. Of course that matters. It matters a lot. It just doesn’t change anything. We can’t…” He paused, swallowed. “We can’t go after her. I’ve got one ship, they’ve got half a dozen. Everything in me wants to fire up the engines and burn like hell after her, but it won’t help.”