Джеймс Кори - Persepolis Rising

She climbed the short ladder up through the hatch into the cockpit, trying to enjoy the ache in her shoulders the way she'd once enjoyed the burn after an intense workout. As an old drill sergeant had told her, pain is the warrior's friend. Pain reminds you that you aren't dead yet.

"Yo," Alex said as she dropped into the gunner's chair behind him. "How's our girl look?"

"Old, but she can still get around."

"I meant the ship."

Bobbie laughed and called up the tactical display. Off in the distance, the planet Freehold. The mission. "My brother always complained I spent too much time looking for metaphors."

"An aging Martian warrior living inside an aging Martian warrior," Alex said, the smile audible in his voice. "Don't have to look too hard there."

"Not too aged to kick your ass." Bobbie zoomed in on Freehold on their tactical screen. A mottled marble of brown continents and green oceans, with the occasional white swirl of cloud. "How long?"

"We'll be there in a week."

"Talk to Jizz lately? How's my future baby daddy doing?"

" Giselle is fine, and she says Kit is doing great. Picked planetary engineering as his major at Mariner Tech."

"It is the hot job market right now," Bobbie agreed.

She'd been Alex's best man when he'd married Giselle, and she'd waited at the hospital on Ceres when Kit had been born thirteen months later. And now Kit was going into upper university, and Alex had been divorced for over a decade. He was her best friend, but he was terrible husband material. After his second failure at it Bobbie pointed out that if he just wanted something to hurt, she could break his arm for him and save everyone time.

But for all the unnecessary drama, Alex and Giselle's short-lived trainwreck of a marriage had produced Kit, and that made the universe a better place. The boy had all of Alex's laconic charm and all of his mother's regal good looks. Every time he called her Aunt Bobbie, she wanted to hug him until his ribs cracked.

"When you reply, make sure to tell Jizz I said 'fuck off,'" Bobbie said. The failure of the marriage wasn't entirely Giselle's fault, but Bobbie had picked Alex in the divorce, so acting like she blamed his ex for everything was part of the best-friend pact. Alex pushed against it, but she knew he also appreciated her saying all the things that he couldn't.

"I'll send Giselle your love," Alex said.

"And tell Kit that Aunt Bobbie says hi, and I want new pictures. Everything I have of him is a year old. I wanna see how my little man is filling out."

"You know it's creepy to flirt with a kid you've known his entire life, right?"

"My love is a pure love," Bobbie replied, then switched tactical to the mission parameters. Freehold had a population of just under three hundred, all Earth-born. They called themselves an Assembly of Sovereign Citizens, whatever that meant. But the colony-ship manifest had included a lot of firearms and ammunition. And with the weeks the Roci had spent dropping down toward Freehold's sun, the locals had had plenty of time to work themselves up.

Reading along with her, Alex said, "Captain'll need some backup down there."

"Yeah. Talking to Amos about that is the next thing on my list."

"Taking Betsy?"

"This is probably not a Betsy-level situation, sailor," Bobbie said. Betsy was Alex's nickname for the suit of Martian Marine Recon armor she kept in the ship's cargo bay. She hadn't put the thing on in years, but she kept it operational and charged anyway. It made her feel warm and comfortable knowing it was there. Just in case.

"Copy that," Alex said.

"Where is Amos, anyway?"

It was subtle, the difference between Alex being at ease and Alex trying to sound like he was at ease. "Ship thinks he's in the sick bay," Alex said.

Clarissa , Bobbie thought. Well, shit.

The Rocinante 's medical bay smelled like antiseptic and vomit.

The antiseptic came from the little floor scrubber that was humming around the room, leaving a trail of shiny decking in its wake. The acid-and-bile smell of vomit came from Clarissa Mao.

"Bobbie," she with a smile. She was on one of the med bay's couches, an autodoc cuff around her upper arm that buzzed and hummed and occasionally clicked. Claire's face would tighten at each click. Injections, maybe, or something worse.

"Hey, Babs," Amos said. The hulking mechanic sat at Claire's bedside reading something on his hand terminal. He didn't look up when Bobbie entered the room, but raised a hand in greeting.

"How're you feeling today?" Bobbie asked, grimacing internally as she said it.

"I'll be out of bed in a few minutes," Claire said. "Did I miss something on the pre-landing check?"

"No, no," Bobbie replied, shaking her head. She feared that Claire would tear the tubes out of her arm and leap out of bed if she said yes. "Nothing like that. I just need to borrow the lunk for a minute."

"Yeah?" Amos said, looking at her for the first time. "That okay with you, Peaches?"

"Whatever you need," she said, gesturing at the med-bay in general. "You will always find me at home."

"All right," Amos stood up, and Bobbie guided him out into the corridor.

Surrounded by the fading gray walls, and with the sick-bay hatch closed behind him, Amos seemed to deflate a little. He leaned his back against the wall and sighed. "That's tough to watch, you know?"

"How is she?"

"Good days and bad days, same as anyone," Amos said. "Those aftermarket glands she had put in keep leaking their rat shit into her blood, and we keep filtering it back out. But taking 'em back out would fuck her up worse, so ..."

Amos shrugged again. He looked tired. Bobbie had never really been able to figure out what the relationship between the Roci 's mechanic and his tiny counterpart was. They weren't sleeping together, and it didn't seem like they ever had. Most of the time they didn't even talk. But when Claire's health had started its decline, Amos was usually there by her side in the sick bay. It made Bobbie wonder if he'd do that for her if she got sick. If anyone would.

The big mechanic was looking a little thinner himself these days. Where most big men tended toward pudge in their later years, Amos had gone the other direction. What fat he'd had was gone, and now his arms and neck looked ropey with old muscle just under the skin. Tougher than shoe leather.

"So," he said, "what's up?"

"Did you read my briefing on Freehold?"

"Skimmed it."

"Three hundred people who hate centralized authority and love guns. Holden's going to insist on meeting them on their turf, because that's the kind of shit he does. He'll need backup."

"Yeah," Amos agreed. "I'll keep an eye on him."

"I was thinking maybe I should take this one," Bobbie said, nodding her head toward the sick-bay hatch. Not saying, She doesn't look good. Amos pursed his lips, considering.

"Yeah, okay," Amos said. "Atmospheric landing will probably shake the damn ship apart. I'll have plenty to do here."

Bobbie started to leave, then something made her stop. Before she knew she was going to say it, she asked, "How much longer?"

"Rest of her life," Amos said, then went back into the sick bay and closed the hatch behind him.

She found Holden and Naomi eating breakfast in the galley. The smell of scrambled eggs with powdered onions and what passed for peppers competed with brewing coffee. Bobbie's belly growled as soon as she walked into the room, and without a word Holden pushed a plate toward her and began slopping eggs onto it.

"Enjoy, because this is the last of the real eggs until we get back to Medina," Holden said as he dished her up.