James Corey - Nemesis Games

“Thank you for flying with us,” a pleasantly nondescript face said from the video screen next to the exit. The voice was carefully crafted to have no specific regional dialect or obvious gender markers. “We hope to see you again soon.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Amos said to the screen with a smile.

“Thank you, sir,” the face replied, actually seeming to look him in the eye. “TransWorld Interplanetary takes your comments and suggestions seriously.”

A short tube ride from the landing pad to the spaceport visitors center later and he was in the customs line to enter New York City and officially walk on Earth soil for the first time in twenty-some years. The visitor center stank of too many bodies pressed too tightly together. But under it there was a faint, not-unpleasant odor of rotting seaweed and salt. The ocean, just outside, seeped into everything. An olfactory reminder to everyone passing through the Ellis Island of the space age that Earth was absolutely unique to the human race. The birthplace of everything. The salt water flowing in everyone’s veins first pulled from the same oceans right outside the building. The seas had been around longer than humans, had helped create them, and then when they were all dead, it’d take their water back without a thought.

That, at least, wasn’t a lie.

“Citizenship, guild, or union docs,” the bored-looking man at the customs kiosk said. It appeared to be the only job left in the building not done by a robot. Computers, it seemed, could be programmed to do almost anything but sense when someone was up to no good. Amos had no doubt a full body scanner was looking him over, measuring his heart rate, his skin moisture levels, his respiration. But all of those things could be faked with drugs or training. The human behind the counter would be looking to see if he just seemed wrong.

Amos smiled at him. “Sure,” he said, then pulled up his UN citizenship records on his hand terminal and the customs officer’s computer grabbed them and compared them to the database. The officer read his screen, his face betraying nothing. Amos hadn’t been home in almost three decades. He waited to be directed off to the additional security line for a more thorough search. It wouldn’t be the first unfamiliar finger up his ass.

“Okay,” the customs officer said. “Have a good one.”

“You do the same,” Amos replied, not able to fully keep the surprise off his face. The customs guy waved an impatient hand at him, telling him to move along. The person waiting behind him in line cleared their throat loudly.

Amos shrugged and moved across the yellow line that legally separated Earth from the rest of the universe.

“Amos Burton?” someone said. An older woman in an inexpensive gray suit. It was the sort of thing mid-level bureaucrats and cops wore, so he wasn’t surprised when the next thing she said was, “You need to come with us now.”

Amos smiled at her and considered his options. Half a dozen other cops were converging on him in the tactical body armor high-risk entry teams wore. Three of them had tasers out, the other three semiautomatic handguns. Well, at least they were taking him seriously. That was sort of flattering.

Amos raised his hands over his head. “You got me, Sheriff. What are the charges?”

The plainclothes officer didn’t respond, and two members of the tactical team pulled his hands behind his back and cuffed him.

“I’m wondering,” Amos said, “because I just got here. Any crimes I’m going to commit are theoretical at this point.”

“Shush now,” the woman said. “You’re not under arrest. We’re going to take a ride.”

“And if I don’t want to?”

“Then you’ll be under arrest.”

The port authority police station was pretty much exactly like every other police station Amos had ever spent time in. Sometimes the walls were industrial taupe; sometimes they were government green. But the concrete walls and glass-fronted offices looking out over a crowded bull pen of desks would have been just as comfortable on Ceres as it was on Earth. Even the burnt-coffee smell was the same.

The plainclothes cop took him past the desk sergeant with a nod and deposited him in a small room that didn’t look like the interrogation rooms he was used to. Other than a table and four chairs, the only other furnishing was a massive video screen covering most of one wall. Plainclothes sat him in a chair across from it, then left the room, closing the door behind her.

“Huh,” Amos said, wondering if this was some new interrogation technique in the cop playbook. He leaned back in the chair to get comfortable, maybe try to catch some shut-eye after the nauseating shuttle ride.

“What is this? Nap time? Someone wake him the fuck up,” a familiar voice said.

Chrisjen Avasarala was on the screen, looking down on him, her face four times its real size on the giant monitor.

“Either I’m not in any trouble, or I’m in all of it,” Amos said with a grin. “How you doin’, Chrissie?”

“Good to see you too. Call me that again and I’ll have an officer beat you gently with a cattle prod,” Avasarala replied, though Amos thought he caught a hint of a smile on her face.

“Sure thing, Madam Uber Secretary. This a social call, or…?”

“Why,” Avasarala said, all traces of humor gone, “are you on Earth?”

“Came to pay respects to a friend who died. Did I forget to file a form or something?”

“Who? Who died?”

“None of your fucking business,” Amos said with a false amiability.

“Holden didn’t send you?”

“Nope,” Amos replied, feeling the anger start to warm his belly like a slug of good scotch. He tested the restraints, calculating his odds of getting out of them. Of fighting his way past a room full of cops. It made him smile without realizing it.

“If you’re here for Murtry, he isn’t on Earth right now,” Avasarala said. “He claims you beat him half to death in the Rocinante ’s airlock during the flight back. Do you mean to finish the job?”

“Murtry swung first, so technically, that was self-defense. And if I’d wanted him dead, don’t you think he’d be dead? It’s not like I quit hitting him because I was tired.”

“So what, then? If you have a message for me from Holden just spit it out. If Holden is sending messages to someone else, tell me who and what they are right now.”

“Holden didn’t send me to do shit,” Amos said. “Am I repeating myself? I feel like I’m repeating myself.”

“He —” Avasarala started, but Amos cut her off.

“He’s the captain of the ship I sail on, he ain’t the boss of my fucking life. I’ve got personal shit to do, and I came here to do it. Now either book me for something or let me go.”

Amos hadn’t realized Avasarala was leaning forward in her chair until she relaxed back into it. She let out a long breath that turned into a sigh. “You’re fucking serious, aren’t you?”

“Not known for my comic stylings.”

“All right. But you understand my concern.”

“That Holden is up to something? Have you met that guy? He’s never done anything secretly in his life.”

Avasarala laughed at that. “True. But if he’s sending his hired killer to Earth, we —”

“Wait, what?”

“If Holden was —”

“Forget Holden. You called me his hired killer. Is that how you guys think of me? The killer on Holden’s payroll?”

Avasarala frowned. “You’re not?”

“Well, mostly I’m a mechanic. But the idea that the UN has a file on me somewhere that lists me as the Rocinante ’s killer? That’s kind of awesome.”