“There you go,” Amos said. “We go back into burn, make sure you got that leg in the right place. Hyperextend that again right now, we’ll pop your kneecap off, okay?”
“Right,” Prax said, starting to sit up.
“I’m sorry as hell to do this, Doc,” Amos said, putting a hand on his chest, pushing him back down. “I mean, you’re having a lousy day and all. But you know how it is.”
Prax frowned. Every muscle in his face felt bruised.
“What is it?”
“All this bullshit they’re saying about you and the kid? That’s all just bullshit, right?”
“Of course,” Prax said.
“Because you know, sometimes things happen, you didn’t even mean them to. Have a hard day, lose your temper, maybe? Or shit, you get drunk. Some of the things I’ve done when I really tied one on? I don’t even know about until later.” Amos smiled. “I’m just saying if there’s a grain of truth, something that’s getting all exaggerated, it’d be better if we knew it now, right?”
“I never did anything that she said.”
“It’s okay to tell me the truth, Doc. I understand. Sometimes guys do stuff. Doesn’t make ’em bad.”
Prax pushed Amos’ hand aside and brought himself up to sitting. His knee felt much better.
“Actually,” he said, “it does. That makes them bad.”
Amos’ expression relaxed, his smile changed in a way Prax couldn’t quite understand.
“All right, Doc. Like I said, I’m sorry as hell. But I did have to ask.”
“It’s okay,” Prax said, standing up. For a moment, the knee seemed like it might give, but it didn’t. Prax took a tentative step, then another. It would work. He turned toward the galley, but the conversation wasn’t finished. “If I had. If I had done those things, that would have been okay with you?”
“Oh, fuck no. I’d have broken your neck and thrown you out the airlock,” Amos said, clapping him on the shoulder.
“Ah,” Prax said, a gentle relief loosening in his chest. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.”
The other three were in the galley when Prax and Amos got there, but it still felt half full. Less. Naomi and Alex were sitting across the table from each other. Neither of them looked as ruined as Prax felt. Holden turned from the wall with a formed-foam bowl in either hand. The brown slurry in them smelled of heat and earth and cooked leaves. As soon as it caught his nose, Prax was ravenous.
“Lentil soup?” Holden asked as Prax and Amos sat on either side of Alex.
“That would be wonderful,” Prax said.
“I’ll just take a tube of goo,” Amos said. “Lentils give me gas, and I can’t see popping an intestine next time we accelerate being fun for anyone.”
Holden put a fresh bowl in front of Prax and handed a white tube with a black plastic nipple to Amos, then sat beside Naomi. They didn’t touch, but the connection between them was unmistakable. He wondered whether Mei had ever wanted him to reconcile with Nicola. Impossible now.
“Okay, Alex,” Holden said. “What’ve we got?”
“Same thing we had before,” Alex said. “Six destroyers burning like hell toward us. A matching force burning after them, and a racing pinnace heading away from us on the other side.”
“Wait,” Prax said. “Away from us?”
“They’re matching our course. Already did the turnaround, and they’re getting up to speed to join us.”
Prax closed his eyes, picturing the vectors.
“We’re almost there, then?” he said.
“Very nearly,” Alex said. “Eighteen, twenty hours.”
“How’s it going to play out? Are the Earth ships going to catch us?”
“They’re gonna catch the hell out of us,” Alex said, “but not before we get that pinnace. Call it four days after, maybe.”
Prax took a spoonful of the soup. It tasted just as good as it smelled. Green, dark leaves were mixed in with the lentils, and he spread one open with his spoon, trying to identify it. Spinach, maybe. The stem margin didn’t look quite right, but it had been cooked, after all…
“How sure are we this isn’t a trap?” Amos asked.
“We aren’t,” Holden said. “But I don’t see how it would work.”
“If they want us in custody instead of dead,” Naomi suggested. “We are talking about opening our airlock for someone way high up in the Earth government.”
“So she is who she says she is?” Prax asked.
“Looks like it,” Holden said.
Alex raised a hand.
“Well, if it’s talk to some little gramma from the UN or get my ass shot off by six destroyers, I’m thinkin’ we can break out the cookies and tea, right?”
“It would be late in the game to go for another plan,” Naomi said. “It makes me damn uncomfortable having Earth saving me from Earth, though.”
“Structures are never monolithic,” Prax said. “There’s more genetic variation within Belters or Martians or Earthers than there is between them. Evolution would predict some divisions within the group structures and alliances with out-members. You see the same thing in ferns.”
“Ferns?” Naomi asked.
“Ferns can be very aggressive,” Prax said.
A soft chime interrupted them: three rising notes, like bells gently struck.
“Okay, suck it down,” Alex said. “That’s the fifteen-minute warning.”
Amos made a prodigious sucking sound, the white tube withering at his lips. Prax put down his spoon and lifted the soup bowl to his lips, not wanting to leave a drop of it. Holden did the same, then started gathering up the used bowls.
“Anyone needs to hit the head, this is the time,” he said. “We’ll talk again in…”
“Eight hours,” Alex said.
“Eight hours,” Holden repeated.
Prax felt his chest go tight. Another round of crushing acceleration. Hours of the couch’s needles propping up his failing metabolism. It sounded like hell. He rose from the table, nodded to everyone, and went back to his bunk. His knee was much better. He hoped it would still be when he next got up. The ten-minute chime sounded. He lay down on the couch, trying to align his body perfectly, then waited. Waited.
He rolled over and grabbed his hand terminal. Seven new incoming messages. Two of them supportive, three hateful, one addressed to the wrong person, and one a financial statement from the charity fund. He didn’t bother reading them.
He turned on the camera.
“Nicola,” he said. “I don’t know what they told you. I don’t know if you really think all those things that you said. But I know I never touched you in anger, even at the end. And if you really felt afraid of me, I don’t know why it was. Mei is the one thing that I love more than anything in life. I’d die before I let anyone hurt her. And now half the solar system thinks I hurt her…”
He stopped the recording and began again.
“Nicola. Honestly, I didn’t think we had anything left between us to betray.”
He stopped. The five-minute warning chimed as he ran his fingers through his hair. Each individual follicle ached. He wondered if this was why Amos kept his head shaved. There were so many things about being on a ship that didn’t occur to you until you were actually there.
“Nicola…”
He erased all the recordings and logged into the charity bank account interface. There was a secure request format that could encrypt and send an authorized transfer as soon as light-speed delivered it to the bank’s computers. He filled it all out quickly. The two-minute warning sounded, louder and more insistent. With thirty seconds left, he sent her money back. There was nothing else for them to say.
He put the hand terminal in place and lay back. The computer counted backward from twenty, and the mountain rolled back over him.
“How’s the knee?” Amos asked.
“Pretty good,” Prax said. “I was surprised. I thought there’d be more damage.”
“Didn’t hype
rextend this time,” Amos said. “Did okay with my toe too.”
A deep tone rang through the ship, and the deck shifted under Prax. Holden, standing just to Prax’s right, moved the rifle to his left hand and touched a control panel.
“Alex?”
“Yeah, it was little rough. Sorry about that, but… Hold on. Yeah, Cap. We’ve got seal. And they’re knocking.”
Holden shifted the rifle back to his other hand. Amos also had a weapon at the ready. Naomi stood beside him, nothing in her hands but a terminal linked to ship operations. If something went wrong, being able to control ship functions might be more useful than a gun. They all wore the articulated armor of the Martian military that had come with the ship. The paired ships were accelerating at a third of a g. The Earth destroyers still barreled down toward them.
“So I’m guessing the firearms mean you’re thinking trap, Cap’n?” Amos asked.
“Nothing wrong with an honor guard,” Holden said.
Prax held up his hand.
“You don’t ever get one again,” Holden said. “No offense.”
“No, I was just… I thought honor guards were usually on the same side as the people they’re guarding?”
“We may be stretching the definitions a little here,” Naomi said. Her voice had just a trace of tension in it.
“She’s just a little old politician,” Holden said. “And that pinnace can’t hold more than two people. We’ve got her outnumbered. And if things get ugly, Alex is watching from the pilot’s seat. You are watching, right?”
“Oh yeah,” Alex said.
“So if there are any surprises, Naomi can pop us loose and Alex can get us out of here.”
“That won’t help with the destroyers, though,” Prax said.
Naomi put a hand on his arm, squeezing him gently.
“I’m not sure you’re helping, Prax.”
The outer airlock cycled open with a distant hum. The lights clicked from red to green.
“Whoa,” Alex said.
“Problem?” Holden snapped.
“No, it’s just-”
The inner door opened, and the biggest person Prax had seen in his entire life stepped into the room wearing a suit of some sort of strength-augmenting armor. If it weren’t for the transparent faceplate, he would have thought it was a two-meter-tall bipedal robot. Through the faceplate, Prax saw a woman’s features: large dark eyes and coffee-with-cream skin. Her gaze raked them with the palpable threat of violence. Beside him, Amos took an unconscious step back.
“You’re the captain,” the woman said, the suit’s speakers making her voice sound artificial and amplified. It didn’t sound like a question.
“I am,” Holden said. “I’ve got to say, you looked a little different on-screen.”
The joke fell flat and the giant stepped into the room.
“Planning to shoot me with that?” she asked, pointing toward Holden’s gun with a massive gauntleted fist.
“Would it work?”
“Probably not,” the giant said. She took another small step forward, her armor whining when she moved. Holden and Amos took a matching step back.
“Call it an honor guard, then,” Holden said.
“I’m honored. Will you put them away now?”
“sure.”
Two minutes later, the guns were stowed, and the huge woman, who still hadn’t given her name, tapped something inside the helmet with her chin and said, “Okay. You’re clear.”
The airlock cycled again, red to green, with the hum of the opening doors. The woman who came in this time was smaller than any of them. Her gray hair was spiking out in all directions, and the orange sari she wore hung strangely in the low thrust gravity.
“Undersecretary Avasarala,” Holden said. “Welcome aboard. If there’s anything I can-”
“You’re Naomi Nagata,” the wizened little woman said.
Holden and Naomi exchanged glances, and Naomi shrugged.
“I am.”
“How the fuck do you keep your hair like that? I look like a hedgehog’s been humping my skull.”
“Um-”
“Looking the part is half of what’s going to keep you all alive. We don’t have time to screw around. Nagata, you get me looking pretty and girlish. Holden-”
“I’m an engineer, not a damned hairstylist,” Naomi said, anger creeping into her voice.
“Ma’am,” Holden said, “this is my ship and my crew. Half of us aren’t even Earth citizens, and we don’t just take your commands.”
“All right. Ms. Nagata, if we’re going to keep this ship from turning into an expanding ball of hot gas, we need to make a press statement, and I’m not prepared to do that. Would you please assist me?”
“Okay,” Naomi said.
“Thank you. And, Captain? You need a fucking shave.”
Chapter Forty-One: Avasarala
A fter the Guanshiyin, the Rocinante seemed dour, mean, and utilitarian. There was no plush carpeting, only fabric-covered foam to soften corners and angles where soldiers might be thrown when the ship maneuvered violently. Instead of cinnamon and honey, the air had the plastic-and-heat smell of military air recyclers. And there were no expansive desk, no wide solitaire-ready bed, and no private space apart from a captain’s lounge the size of a public toilet stall.
Most of the footage they’d taken had been in the cargo bays, angled so that no ammunition or weaponry was in the image. Someone who knew Martian military vessels could tell where they were. To everyone else, it would be an open space with cargo crates in the background. Naomi Nagata had helped put the release together-she was a surprisingly good visual editor-and when it became clear that none of the men could manage a professional-sounding voice-over, she’d done that too.
The crew assembled in the medical bay, where the mechanic Amos Burton had changed the feed to display from her hand terminal. Now he was sitting on one of the patient beds, his legs crossed, smiling amiably. If Avasarala hadn’t seen the intelligence files on Holden’s crew, she’d never have guessed what the man was capable of.
The others were spread out in a rough semicircle. Bobbie was sitting beside Alex Kamal, the Martians unconsciously grouping together. Praxidike Meng stood at the back of the room. Avasarala couldn’t tell if her presence made him uncomfortable or if he was always like that.
“Okay,” she said. “Last chance for feedback.”
“Wish I had some popcorn,” Amos said, and the medical scanner flashed once, showed a broadcast code and then white block letters: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.
Avasarala and Holden appeared on the screen. She was speaking, her hands out before her as if illustrating a point. Holden, looking sober, leaned toward her. Naomi Nagata’s voice was calm, strong, and professional.
“In a surprising development, the deputy to Undersecretary of Executive Administration Sadavir Errinwright met with OPA representative James Holden and a representative of the Martian military today to address concerns over the potentially earth-shattering revelations surrounding the devastating attack on Ganymede.”
The image cut to Avasarala. She was leaning forward to make her neck longer and hide the loose skin under her chin. Long practice made her look natural, but she could almost hear Arjun laughing. A runner at the bottom of the screen identified her by name and title.
“I expect to be traveling with Captain Holden to the Jovian system,” Avasarala said. “The United Nations of Earth feel very strongly that a multilateral investigation into this is the best way to restore balance and peace to the system.”
The image shifted to Holden and Avasarala sitting in the galley with the botanist. This time the little scientist was talking and she and Holden pretended to listen. The voice-over came again.
“When asked about the accusations leveled against Praxidike Meng, whose search for his daughter has become the human face of the tragedy on Ganymede, the Earth delegation was unequivocal.”
Then back to Avasarala, her expression now sorrowful. H
er head shaking in an almost subliminal negation.
“Nicola Mulko is a tragic figure in this, and I personally condemn the irresponsibility of these raw newsfeeds that allow statements from mentally ill people to be presented as if they were verified fact. Her abandonment of her husband and child is beyond dispute, and her struggles with her psychological issues deserve a more dignified and private venue.”
From off camera, Nagata asked, “So you blame the media?”
“Absolutely,” Avasarala said as the image shifted to a picture of a toddler with smiling black eyes and dark pigtails. “We have absolute faith in Dr. Meng’s love and dedication to Mei, and we are pleased to be part of the effort to bring her safely home.”
The recording ended.
“All right,” Avasarala said. “Any comments?”
“I don’t actually work for the OPA anymore,” Holden said.
“I’m not authorized to represent the Martian military,” Bobbie said. “I’m not even sure I’m still supposed to be working with you.”
“Thank you for that. Are there any comments that matter?” Avasarala asked. There was a moment’s silence.
“Worked for me,” Praxidike Meng said.
There was one way that the Rocinante was infinitely more expansive than the Guanshiyin, and it was the only one that she cared about. The tightbeam was hers. Lag was worse and every hour took her farther from Earth, but knowing that the messages she sent were getting off the ship without being reported to Nguyen and Errinwright gave her the feeling of breathing free. What happened once they reached Earth, she couldn’t control, but that was always true. That was the game.
Admiral Souther looked tired, but on the small screen it was hard to tell much more than that.
“You’ve kicked the beehive, Chrisjen,” he said. “It’s looking an awful lot like you just made yourself a human shield for a bunch of folks that don’t work for us. And I’m guessing that was the plan.
“I did what you asked, and yes, Nguyen took meetings with Jules-Pierre Mao. First one was just after his testimony on Protogen. And yes, Errinwright knew about them. But that doesn’t mean very much. I’ve met with Mao. He’s a snake, but if you stopped dealing with men like him, you wouldn’t have much left to do.
Caliban;s war e-2 Page 41
