Expanse 03 - Abaddon’s Gate (54 page)

“Okay,” Holden said, “you’ve got no room to complain. As I recall, I was the one who cleaned your bunk after that experiment with vodka goulash.”

“He’s got a point,” Alex said. “That was damn nasty.”

“I just about shat out my intestinal lining, that’s true,” Amos said, his expression philosophical, “but I’d still put that against the captain’s coffee farts.”

Alex made a fake gagging noise, and Amos buzzed his lips against his palm, making a rude sound. Naomi looked from one to the other like she didn’t know whether to laugh or smack them.

“I don’t get gas,” Holden said. “I just like the taste of real coffee better.”

Naomi put her hand on Clarissa’s forearm and leaned close. Her smile was gentle and unexpected.

“Have I mentioned how nice it is to have another woman on the ship?” she asked.

It was a joke. Clarissa understood that. But it was a joke that included her, and her tears surprised her.

 

 

“I appreciate your saying all that about Bull,” a man’s voice said. Clarissa, moving through the ship, didn’t recognize it. An unfamiliar voice in a spaceship caught the attention like a strange sound in her bedroom. She paused. “He was a friend for a lot of years, and… and I’ll miss him.”

She shifted, angled back toward the other crew cabins. Holden’s door was open, and he sat in his crash couch, looking up at his monitor. Instead of the tactical display of the ships, the stations, the Rings, a man’s face dominated the screen. She recognized Fred Johnson, traitor to Earth and head of the Outer Planets Alliance. The Butcher of Anderson Station. He looked old, his hair almost all gone to white, and his eyes the yellow color of old ivory.

“I asked a lot from him,” the recording went on. “He gave a lot back to me. It… it got me thinking. I have a bad habit, Captain, of asking more than people can give sometimes. Of demanding more than I can fairly expect. I’m wondering if I might have done something like that with you.”

“Gee, you think?” Holden said to the screen, though as far as she could see he wasn’t recording.

“If I did, I apologize. Just between us. One commander to another. I regret some of the decisions I’ve made. I figure you can relate to that in your own way.

“I’ve decided to keep the
Behemoth
in place. We’re sending out soil and supplies to start farming on the drum. It does mean the OPA’s military fleet just lost its big kahuna. But it looks like we’ve got a thousand planets opening up for exploration, and having the only gas station on the turnpike is too sweet a position to walk away from. If you and your crew want to help out with the effort, escort some ships from Ganymede out to the Ring, there might be a few contracts in it for you. So that’s the official part. Talk about it with the others, and let me know what decisions you come to.”

Fred Johnson nodded once to the camera, and the screen fell to the blue emptiness and split circle of the OPA’s default. Holden looked over his shoulder. She saw him see her.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

They were silent for a moment. She didn’t know what to say. She wanted to apologize too, to walk down the path Fred Johnson had just showed her, but she couldn’t quite.

She waited to see whether Holden would reach out to her. When he didn’t she pulled herself back down toward the crew quarters. Her stomach felt tight and uncomfortable.

They weren’t friends. They wouldn’t be, because some things couldn’t be made right.

She’d have to be okay with that.

 

 

Amos smelled of solvent and sweat. Of all the crew, he was the one most like the people she knew. Soladad and Stanni. And Ren. He came into the galley with a welding rig on, the mask pushed up over his forehead. He smiled when he saw her.

“You did a number on the place,” Amos said. She knew that if the occasion arose, he would be perfectly willing to kill her. But until that moment, he’d be jovial and casual. That counted for more than she’d expected. “I mean, you had a salvage mech. Those are pretty much built for peeling steel.”

“I didn’t at the end,” she said. “It ran out of power. The locker in the airlock was all me.”

“Really?” he said

“Yeah.”

“Well,” he said, pulling a bulb of the fake coffee from the machine and drifting over to the table. “That was pretty impressive, then.”

She imagined him working, the mask down to hide his face, the sparks, the flickering of his great hunched shadow. Hephaestus, the smith of the Gods, laboring in his underworld. It was the kind of association Clarissa Mao would make. Melba Koh would only have thought about the temperature of the arc, the composition of the plates he was fusing together. She could have both of those thoughts, but neither were really hers.

She was on the float now. Later, when the ship was under way and thrust gravity pinned her to the deck, she’d still be on the float. Her world had been constructed around stories about who she was. Jules-Pierre’s daughter, Julie Mao’s sister, the crew lead on the
Cerisier
, instrument of her father’s vengeance. Now she was no one. She was a piece of baggage on her old enemy’s ship going from one prison to another, and she didn’t even resent it. The last time she’d felt this nameless, she’d probably been in an amniotic sac.

“What was the problem?”

“Hmm?”

“You said I really did a number on something. What’s the problem?”

“Deck hatch between the machine shop and here gets stuck. Ever since you crumpled it up. Binds about half open.”

“Did you check the retracting arm?”

Amos turned to her, frowning. She shrugged.

“Sometimes these door actuators put on an uneven load when they start to burn out. We probably swapped out four or five of them on the trip out here.”

“Yeah?”

“Just a thought,” she said. And then a moment later, “When we get back to Luna, they’re going to kill me, aren’t they?”

“If you’re lucky, yeah. UN still has the death penalty on the books, but they don’t use it much. I figure you’ll be living in a tiny cell for the rest of your life. If it was me, I’d prefer a bullet.”

“How long until we get there?”

“About five weeks.”

They were silent for a moment.

“I’ll miss this place,” she said.

Amos shrugged.

“Actuator arm, huh? Worth checking. You want to help me take a look?”

“I can’t,” she said, gesturing at the clamp on her leg.

“Shit, I can reprogram that. Least enough to get you down to the machine shop. We’ll grab you a tool belt, Peaches. Let’s crack that thing open.”

An hour later, she was running her hand over the frame of the door, looking for the telltale scrape of binding sites.
This was me
, she thought.
I broke it
.

“What’cha think, Peaches?” Amos asked from behind her.

“Feels good to fix something,” she said.

A
nna sat in the observation lounge of the
Thomas Prince
and looked out at the stars.

The lounge was a dome-shaped room where every flat surface was a high-definition screen displaying a 360-degree view of the outside. To Anna, sitting in it felt like flying through space on a park bench. It had become her favorite place on the ship, with the stars burning in their bright steady colors, no atmosphere to make them twinkle. They felt so close now. Like she could reach out and touch them.

Her hand terminal beeped at her to remind her that she was in the middle of recording a video message. She deleted the time she’d spent looking at the stars and started the recording again.

“So, that letter from the conference bishop turned out to be a request for a formal meeting. Apparently some people have complained about me. Probably Ashford. Neck deep in his own legal problems with the OPA and still finding time to make trouble for everyone else. But don’t worry about it. They’ll ask, I’ll answer, I’ve got pretty good reasons for everything I did. I have lots of offers of support from people I worked with on the fleet. I probably won’t need them. Speaking of which, I’ve invited my friend Tilly Fagan to come visit us in Moscow. She’s abrasive and cranky and has no social filters at all. You’ll love her. She can’t wait to meet Nami.”

Anna paused to attach a picture she’d taken of Tilly to the message. Tilly was looking at the camera through narrowed eyes, just seconds from telling Anna to “get that fucking thing out of my face.” She held a cigarette in one hand; her other was pointing accusingly. It was not the nicest picture of Tilly she had, but it was the most accurate.

“Speaking of Nami, thank you so much for the videos you sent. I can’t believe how enormous she’s gotten. And crawling around in full gravity like she was born to it. She’ll be walking again in no time. Thank you for taking her home. Sometimes I wish I’d just gone with you. Most of the time, actually. But then I think about all the things I did inside the Ring, and I wonder if any of it would have turned out as well if I hadn’t helped. It seems arrogant to think that way, but I also believe that God nudges people toward the places they need to be. Maybe I was needed. I still plan on being very contrite when I get back. You, the bishop, Nami, my family, I have a lot of apologizing to do.”

As clear as if she’d been in the room, Anna heard Nono say,
You never ask for permission, you just apologize later
. She laughed until her eyes watered. She wiped them and said to the camera, “You’re still here, Nono. Still in my head. But I’d trade anything to have you hold me. The
Prince
will take another month to get back. It’s an eternity. I love you.”

She picked up the pillow she’d brought with her and held it tight to her chest. “This is you and Nami. This is both of you. I love you both so much.”

She killed the recording and sent it off, winging ahead of the
Prince
to Nono at the speed of light. Still too slow. She wiped away the tears that had accumulated at the corners of her eyes.

Outside, a flare of white light lit the sky, a line of fire a few centimeters long. Another ship in the flotilla, returning home. One of the
Prince
’s escort ships, to be so close. Finally going back, but without many of the sailors she’d brought to the Ring. Families would be waiting for her to bring their loved ones home, only to receive flags, posthumous medals, letters of sympathy. It wouldn’t be enough to fill the holes those lost people left in their lives. It was never enough.

But the ships from Earth, Mars, and the various stations of the outer planets
were
going home. And they were bringing news of the greatest opportunity humanity had ever been offered. In the midst of all the sadness and tragedy, hope.

Would Nami spend her life at one of those points of light she could see right now? It was possible. Her baby had been born into a world where her parents couldn’t afford to give her a sibling, where she’d have to work two years just to prove to the government she was worth receiving an education. Where resources were rapidly diminishing, and the battle to keep the waste from piling up used more and more of what was left.

But she’d grow up in a world without limits. Where a short trip took you to one of the stars, and the bounty of worlds circling them. Where what job you did or what education you pursued or how many children you had was your choice, not a government mandate.

It was dizzying to think of.

Someone walked into the lounge behind her, their footsteps clicking. “Tilly, I just sent—” Anna started, but stopped when she turned around and saw Hector Cortez.

“Doctor Volovodov,” he said, his tone a mild apology.

“Doctor Cortez,” she replied. The renewed formality between them seemed silly to Anna, but Hector insisted on it. “Please, sit.” She patted the bench next to her.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he said, sitting and staring out at the stars. Not looking at her. He didn’t look her in the eye anymore.

“Not at all. Just recording a message home and enjoying the view.”

They sat silently for a few moments, watching the stars.

“Esteban lost,” Cortez said, as if they’d been talking about that all along.

“I don’t— Oh, the secretary-general. He did?”

“Nancy Gao is the new SG. You can see Chrisjen Avasarala’s fingerprints all over that one.”

“Who?”

Cortez laughed. It sounded genuine, a nice loud rumble coming up from his belly. “Oh, she would love to hear you say that.”

“Who is she?”

“She’s the politician no one has ever voted for, that runs the UN like her own personal fiefdom and keeps her name out of the press. The fact that she controls your home government and you’ve never heard of her means she’s very, very good.”

“Oh,” Anna said. She was not a political creature. She felt that politics was the second most evil thing humanity had ever invented, just after lutefisk.

There was another long silence. Anna wondered where Tilly was, and if she’d show up and rescue her from the awkwardness of the moment.

“You backed the right horse,” Cortez finally said. “I picked a bad one. I hope you won’t hold that against me. I’ve grown to respect you a great deal, in spite of our differences. I wouldn’t like it if you hated me.”

“I don’t, Hector,” Anna said, taking his hand in both of hers and squeezing it. “Not at all. It was terrible, what we all went through. We all made bad decisions because we were afraid. But you’re a good man. I believe that.”

Cortez gave her a grateful smile and patted her hand. Anna nodded her head at the star field splashed across the wall.

“So many stars,” she said. “Some of them might be ours someday.”

“I wonder,” Hector replied, his voice low and sad. “I wonder if we should have them. God gave man the Earth. He never promised him the stars. I wonder if He’ll follow us out there.”

Anna squeezed his hand again, and then let it go. “The God I believe in is bigger than all of this. Nothing we ever learn can be an attack on Him as long as that’s true.”

Cortez gave a noncommittal grunt.

“I want her to have them,” she said, pointing at the spray of light around her. “My little Nami, I want her to have all of that someday.”

“Whatever she finds out there,” Cortez said, “just remember it’s the future
you
chose for her.”

His words were full of hope and threat.

Like the stars.