James Corey - Nemesis Games

“Que a mí?” Naomi asked.

“We all told him the truth,” Karal said, a hardness coming into his voice. “Not going to lie to our own.”

Cyn coughed once. He looked at her sideways, like a guilty dog. “When he got old enough to ask, him, Marco tells him how things got harsh. Too harsh. His mother, she needed to step away from it. Put ellas kappa together.”

“Ah,” Naomi said. So that was the story of who she was. The one who’d been too sensitive. Too weak. From where Marco sat, it might even look like the truth.

But then what must it have been to see who she’d become? XO of the Rocinante , survivor of Eros Station, traveler to new worlds. Looked at that way, “too harsh” was a strange thing. Unless it meant she just didn’t love her son enough to stay. Unless what she’d run from was him.

“Filipito, he’s solid,” Cyn said. “Be proud of him.”

“Nothing but,” Naomi said.

“So,” Miral said, his voice fighting and failing for casual. “You ship sui James Holden, yeah? What’s that like?”

“Steady work. No room for promotion,” Naomi said, and Cyn laughed. After a moment, Miral joined in ruefully. Only Karal kept quiet, and that might only have been from concentrating on the hot plate.

Naomi’s hand terminal chimed. She picked it up. Two more messages from Jim. Her fingertip was a centimeter from the button to accept them. His voice was a few small movements away, and the thought pulled at her like a magnet. Hearing him now, even just his recorded voice, would be like taking a long shower in clean water. She pushed the messages into her hold queue. Soon, and then all of them. But if she started now, she wouldn’t stop, and she wasn’t done yet. Instead, she put in a connection request to the address the Outer Fringe Exports representative had given her. A few seconds later, the connection hiccupped to life, a red border marking that the channel was secure.

“Ms. Nagata,” the young man said. “How can I help you today?”

“Waiting on the ship,” she said. “Need to know where we stand.”

The man’s eyes unfocused for a moment, then his smile sharpened. “We’re waiting for the title transfer to update in the base registry, ma’am.”

“So the payment’s gone through?”

“Yes. If you’d like, you can take possession now, but please be aware you can’t be cleared to leave port until the registry updates.”

“That’s fine,” she said, getting to her feet. “Where’s she berthed?”

“Dock six, berth nineteen, ma’am. Would you like a representative present for the handover?”

“No,” she said. “Just leave the keys in the ignition, and we can take it from here.”

“Of course. It’s been a pleasure.”

“Likewise,” Naomi said. “Have a better one.”

She dropped the connection. Cyn and Miral were already gathering their few things. Karal scooped up the last cousa from the hot plate with one hand and unplugged it with the other. She didn’t need to tell them to alert the others. Cyn was already doing it. Without changing, the air in the room felt suddenly too thick, the heat from the hot plate and their bodies too oppressive. Naomi stepped through the doorway.

“It’s time,” she said, her voice gentle. She remembered all the drama feeds and films with a mother waking her child up for school. This was the closest thing she would ever have to that, and against her best judgment, she savored it. “Filip. We can go now.”

His eyes opened, and for a moment, he wasn’t wholly awake. He looked confused. Vulnerable. Young. And then his focus sharpened, and he was himself again. His new self. The one she didn’t know.

They cycled the front door and stepped out into the corridor. The cool rotation breeze smelled of damp and ozone. She was still holding Karal’s cousa half-eaten in her off hand. She took another bite, but it had gone cold and the roux was clotting. She dropped what was left in the recycler and tried not to see it as a metaphor for anything else.

Cyn loomed up from the door, his face in its resting scowl. He looked older. Harder. She missed who he’d been when they were young. She missed who she’d been.

“Ready to go, Knuckles?” Cyn asked.

“Hell, yes,” she said, and he looked at her more closely. Hearing, maybe, something more in the words than only the affirmation.

The ship was a simple transport skiff so small that the docking clamps holding it seemed about to crush its tarnished sides in. It didn’t have an Epstein drive, so most of the hold would be taken up by the propellant mass. It would have to fly teakettle, and even then, a fair stretch of the way they’d be on the float. It was one step better than getting EVA suits and a bunch of extra air bottles, but it would do what they needed. Naomi had bought it at salvage rates, routing money from her share in the Rocinante through two anonymized accounts, one on Luna, the other on Ganymede. The final owner of record was Edward Slight Risk Abatement Cooperative, a company that had not existed before it appeared on the registration forms and that would vanish again when the ship was disposed of. The transponders would announce it as the Chetzemoka . In all, it represented about half of everything Naomi could call her own, and her name wasn’t on any of the paperwork.

It didn’t seem like enough. It seemed like too much. She didn’t know what it seemed like.

Filip waited in the bay outside the boarding gantry, and so she did too. Cyn and Karal and Miral stood far enough away to give them something like privacy. The berth was a rental space with a red-numbered counter on the wall measuring the minutes left under agreement before its ownership changed. The metal and ceramic walls had the foggy look of sealant breaking down from the constant radiation of space. The air stank of lubricant. Someone had left an old poster on the wall, the split circle of the OPA with a hemisphere of Mars and one of Earth as the circle. Not just OPA, but militant OPA.

They’d been her people, once.

The others arrived. Josie and Old Sandy. Wings, whatever his real name was. A thick-faced, sorrow-eyed woman with one missing tooth that Naomi hadn’t seen before. A shaven-headed man with livid scars webbing the dark flesh of his scalp and the limp of an unhealed foot wound. More. Each of them nodded to Filip as they passed, their expressions a mix of respect and indulgence. All of them knew him better than she did. All of them would ship with him when he left. The ache behind her breastbone would have concerned her any other time. Just now, she knew what it was.

Soft tears threatened, but she blinked them back. Bit her tongue to stop them.

“All well?” Filip asked.

She laughed, and the tightness around her heart grew harder. “Well enough. As soon as the registry updates, we can file a plan and go.”

“Good.”

“Do you have a moment?”

His gaze flickered up to hers, something like anxiety in his eyes. A heartbeat later, he nodded once and pointed to the corner with his chin. They walked together, and the others gave them space. Naomi’s heart beat like she was in danger. She could feel her pulse in her throat.

At the wall of the berth, she stopped. Filip turned to face her. The memory of him as an infant, toothless and grabbing onto her finger with a grin of unmistakable pride intruded powerfully into her mind and she took a moment to shove it away.

“It’s been good seeing you,” she said.

For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer, then, “You too.”

“The ship,” she said. “When it’s done, it’s yours, all right?”

Filip looked over her shoulder toward the gantry. “Mine?”