Caliban's War: Book Two of the Expanse series (76 page)

Putting Mei back in the transport cart was one of the hardest things Prax had ever done. He wanted to carry her against him, to press his face against hers. It was a primate reaction, the deepest centers of his brain longing for the reassurance of physical contact. But his suit wouldn’t protect her from the radiation or near vacuum of Io’s sulfuric atmosphere, and the transport would. He nestled her gently against two other children while Amos put the other four in a second cart. The smallest of them was still in newborn diapers. Prax wondered if she had come from Ganymede too. The carts glided against the station flooring, only rattling when they crossed the built-in tracks.

“You remember how to get back to the surface?” Amos asked.

“I think so,” Prax said.

“Uh, Doc? You really want to put your helmet back on.”

“Oh! Right. Thank you.”

At the T intersection, half a dozen men in security uniforms had built a barricade, preparing to defend the lab against attack. Because Amos tossed in his grenades from the rear, the cover was less effective than the locals had anticipated, but it still took a few minutes to clear the bodies and the remains of the barricade to let the carts roll through.

There was a time, Prax knew, that the violence would have bothered him. Not the blood or bodies. He’d spent more than enough time doing dissections and even autonomous-limb vivisection to be able to wall off what he was seeing from any particular sense of visceral horror. But that it was something done in anger, that the men and women he’d just seen blown apart hadn’t donated their bodies or tissues, would have affected him once. The universe had taken that from him, and he couldn’t say now exactly when it had happened. Part of him was numb, and maybe it always would be. There was a feeling of loss in that, but it was intellectual. The only emotions he felt were a glowing, transforming relief that Mei was here and alive and a vicious animal protectiveness that meant he would never let her leave his sight, possibly until she left for university.

On the surface, the transports were rougher, the wheels less suited to the uneven surface of the land. Prax followed Amos’ example, turning the boxes around to pull them rather than push. Looking at the vectors, it made sense, but it wouldn’t have occurred to him if he hadn’t seen Amos doing it.

Bobbie was walking slowly toward the
Rocinante
. Her suit was charred and stained and moving poorly. A clear fluid was leaking down the back.

“Don’t get close to me,” she said. “I’ve got protomolecule goo all over this thing.”

“That’s bad,” Amos said. “You got a way to clean that off?”

“Not really,” she replied. “How’d the extraction go?”

“Got enough kids to start a singing group, but a little shy of a baseball team,” Amos said.

“Mei’s here,” Prax said. “She’s all right.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Bobbie said, and even though she was clearly exhausted, she sounded like she meant it.

At the airlock, Amos and Prax got in and nestled the transports against the back wall while Bobbie stood on the rough ground outside. Prax checked the transport indicators. There was enough onboard air to last another forty minutes.

“All right,” Amos said. “We’re ready.”

“Going for emergency blow,” Bobbie said, and her armored suit came apart around her. It was a strange sight, the hard curves and layers of combat plate peeling themselves back, blooming out like a flower and then falling apart, and the woman, eyes closed and mouth open, being revealed. When she put her hand out for Amos to pull her in, the gesture reminded Prax of Mei seeing him again.

“Now, Doc,” Amos said.

“Cycling,” Prax said. He closed the outer door and started fresh air coming into the lock. Ten seconds later, Bobbie’s chest started to pump like a bellows. Thirty seconds, and they were at seven-eighths of an atmosphere.

“Where do we stand, guys?” Naomi asked as Prax opened the
transport. The children were all asleep. Mei was sucking on her first two fingers, the way she had when she was a baby. He couldn’t get past how much older she looked.

“We’re solid,” Amos said. “I say we get the fuck out of here and glass the place.”

“A-fucking-men,” Avasarala’s voice said in the background.

“Copy that,” Naomi said. “We’re prepping for launch. Let me know when you’ve got all our new passengers safely in.”

Prax pulled off his helmet and sat beside Bobbie. In the black sheath of her base garments, she looked like someone just coming back from the gym. She could have been anybody.

“Glad you got your kid back,” she said.

“Thank you. I’m sorry you lost the suit,” he said.

She shrugged.

“At this point, it was mostly a metaphor anyway,” she said, and the inner airlock opened.

“Cycle’s done, Naomi,” Amos said. “We’re home.”

I
t was over, except that it wasn’t. It never was.

“We’re all friends now,” Souther said. Talking to him without lag was a luxury she was going to miss. “But if we all limp back to our corners, we’re more likely to stay that way. I’m thinking it’s going to be a question of years before either of our fleets are back up to what we were. There was a lot of damage.”

“The children?”

“Processing them. My medical officer’s in communication with a list of doctors who deal with pediatric immune problems. It’s just about finding their parents and getting them all home now.”

“Good,” she said. “That’s what I like to hear. And the other thing?”

Souther nodded. He looked younger in low gravity. They both did. Skin didn’t sag when there was nothing to tug it down, and she could see what he’d looked like as a boy.

“We’ve got transponder locks on a hundred and seventy-one packages. They’re all moving sunward pretty fast, but they’re not accelerating or evading. Pretty much we’re standing back and letting them get close enough to Mars that disposal is trivial.”

“You sure that’s a good idea?”

“By ‘close,’ I mean still weeks away at current speed. Space is big.”

There was a pause that meant something other than distance.

“I wish you’d ride back on one of ours,” Souther said.

“And be stuck out here for another few weeks with the paperwork? Not going to happen. And besides, heading back with James Holden and Sergeant Roberta Draper and Mei Meng? It has all the right symbolism. Press will eat it up. Earth, Mars, the Outer Planets, and whatever the hell Holden is now.”

“Celebrity,” Souther said. “A nation of its own.”

“He’s not that bad once you get past the self-righteousness. And anyway, this is the ship I’m on, and there’s nothing it’s waiting to repair before it starts its burn. And I’ve already hired him. No one’s giving me any shit about discretionary spending right now.”

“All right,” Souther said. “Then I’ll see you back down the well.”

“See you there,” she said, and cut the connection.

She pulled herself up and launched gently across the ops deck. It would have been easy to push down the crew ladder shaft, flying the way she’d dreamed of as a child. It tempted. In practice, she figured she’d either push too hard and slam into something or else too gently and have air resistance stop her with nothing solid close enough to reach. She used the handholds and pulled herself slowly down toward the galley. Pressure doors opened at her approach and closed behind her with soft hydraulic hisses and metallic bangs. When she reached the crew deck, she heard the voices before she could make out the words, and the words before she saw the people.

“… have to shut it down,” Prax was saying. “I mean, it’s false pretenses now. You don’t think I could be sued, do you?”

“You can always be sued,” Holden said. “Chances are they wouldn’t win.”

“But I don’t want to be sued in the first place. We have to shut it down.”

“I put a notice on the site so it gives a status update and asks for confirmation before any more money gets moved.”

She pulled herself into the galley. Prax and Holden were floating near the coffee machine. Prax wore a stunned expression, whereas Holden looked slightly smug. They both had bulbs of coffee, but Prax seemed to have forgotten his. The botanist’s eyes were wide and his mouth hung open, even in the microgravity.

“Who’s getting sued?” Avasarala asked.

“Now that we have Mei,” Holden said, “Prax wants people to stop giving him money.”

“It’s too much,” the botanist said, looking at her as if he expected her to do something about it. “I mean …”

“Surplus funds?” Avasarala asked.

“He can’t
quite
retire on what he’s got,” Holden said. “Not in luxury, anyway.”

“But it’s yours,” Prax said, turning to Holden with something like hope. “You set up the account.”

“I took the
Rocinante’s
fees already. Trust me, you paid us generously,” Holden said, hand out in a gesture of refusal. “What’s still in there’s all yours. Well, yours and Mei’s.”

Avasarala scowled. That changed her personal calculus a little. She’d thought this would be the right time to lock Prax into a contract, but Jim Holden had once again ridden in at the last moment and screwed everything up.

“Congratulations,” Avasarala said. “Has either of you seen Bobbie? I need to talk to her.”

“Last I saw, she was heading for the machine shop.”

“Thanks,” Avasarala said, and kept pulling herself along. If Praxidike Meng was independently wealthy, that made him less likely to take on the job of rebuilding Ganymede for purely financial reasons. She could probably work the civic pride angle. He
and his daughter were the face of the tragedy there, and having him running the show would mean more to people than all the facts and figures of how screwed they’d all be without the food supplies back online. He might be the kind of man who’d be swayed by that. She needed to think about it.

Once again, she was moving slowly and carefully enough that she heard the voices before she reached the machine shop. Bobbie and Amos, both of them laughing. She couldn’t believe that she was walking in on an intimate moment, but it had that tickle-fight sound to it. Then Mei shrieked with delight, and Avasarala understood.

The machine shop was the last place in the ship, with the possible exception of engineering, that Avasarala would have thought about playing with a little girl, but there she was, arms and legs flailing through the air. Her shoulder-length black hair flowed around her in a whirl, following the gentle end-over-end spin of her body. Her face was bright with pleasure. Bobbie and Amos stood at opposite ends of the shop. As Avasarala watched, Bobbie caught the little girl out of the air and launched her back toward Amos. Soon, Avasarala thought, the girl would start losing her milk teeth. She wondered how much of all this Mei would remember when she was an adult.

“Are you people crazy?” Avasarala said as Amos caught the girl. “This isn’t a playground.”

“Hey there,” Amos said, “we weren’t planning on staying long. The captain and the doc needed a minute, so I figured I’d haul the kiddo down here. Give her the tour.”

“When they send you to play catch with a child, they don’t mean that she’s the f—that she’s the ball,” Avasarala said, moving across to him. “Give that child to me. None of you people has any idea how to take care of a little girl. It’s amazing you all lived to adulthood.”

“Ain’t wrong about that,” Amos said amiably, holding out the kid.

“Come to your nana,” Avasarala said.

“What’s a nana?” Mei asked.

“I’m a nana,” Avasarala said, gathering the child to her. Her body wanted to put the girl against her hip, to feel the weight bearing down on her. In microgravity holding a child felt odd. Good, but odd. Mei smelled of wax and vanilla. “How much longer before we can get some thrust? I feel like a f—like a balloon floating around in here.”

“Soon as Alex and Naomi finish maintenance on the drive computers, we’re out of here,” Amos said.

“Where’s my daddy?” Mei asked.

“Good,” Avasarala said. “We’ve got a schedule to keep, and I’m not paying you people for floating lessons. Your daddy’s talking to the captain, Mei-Mei.”

“Where?” the girl demanded. “Where is he? I want my da!”

“I’ll get you back to him, kiddo,” Amos said, holding out a massive hand. He shifted his attention to Avasarala. “She’s good for about five minutes, then it’s ‘Where’s Daddy?’”

“Good,” Avasarala said. “They deserve each other.”

“Yeah,” the big mechanic said. He pulled the child close to his center of gravity and launched up toward the galley. No handhold for him. Avasarala watched him go, then turned to Bobbie.

Bobbie floated, her hair sprayed softly out around her. Her face and body were more relaxed than Avasarala remembered ever having seen them. It should have made her seem at peace, but all she could think was that the girl looked drowned.

“Hey,” Bobbie said. “Did you hear back from your tech guys on Earth?”

“I did,” Avasarala said. “There was another energy spike. Bigger than the last ones. Prax was right. They are networked, and worse than that, they don’t suffer lag. Venus reacted before the information about the battle could have reached it.”