James Corey - Nemesis Games

“What was the answer for that?”

“Old friends, and the fact that you were Navy. You know ships. I’m just a ground-pounder. But that got me into talking about looking at black market issues back at home, and you asking around on Hecate for me and the dead guy and the guys who attacked me.”

“So the other dead guys.”

“Well, yeah. And after that, it seemed like they were a little suspicious when I said I didn’t know anything.”

Alex leaned forward. His body still felt weak and shaky. “At least they don’t think we’re part of… you know. That.”

The door opened softly, almost apologetically. The man who came in was older, his hair a well-crafted white. He wore a suit instead of a uniform or jumpsuit. He looked like a particularly avuncular lawyer. Two marines came in behind him in full armor. They didn’t acknowledge Alex or Bobbie, just took positions at either side of the door. The white-haired man beamed at Alex and then Bobbie and then back at Alex again.

“Mr. Kamal!” he said. His voice matched his appearance. “I’m so glad to see that you’re up and around. I was hoping to have a word with you about this present unpleasantness, yes?”

Alex shot a glance at Bobbie. Her shrug was almost invisible. This wasn’t someone she knew.

“Of course,” Alex said. “Anything I can do to help.”

“Good, good, good,” the man said, then lifted a finger. “But first.”

He sat down at the table, and an oddly mild scowl came over his face. Alex felt like they were about to be gently chided by the head of school. “Sergeant Draper, I was wanting to ask you why the government of Earth is demanding to speak with you. Have you been in contact with them?”

Bobbie’s face went gray and pale. Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, I am so sorry,” she said. “You look so different on video. I didn’t recognize you, sir. Alex, this is Prime Minister Smith.”

Alex hopped to his feet. “Oh! I’m sorry, sir. With everything going on out on Ilus and such, I didn’t follow the elections last time.”

One of the guards coughed in a way that might have hidden laughter. Prime Minister Smith’s scowl shifted to something slightly more authentic and nonplussed. He motioned Alex to sit back down. “Yes, well. No harm, of course. But, to the question. Have you been working with the government of Earth?”

“No,” Bobbie said. “I’ve had some conversations and I have a personal familiarity with one person. Chrisjen Avasarala. But that’s all.”

The prime minister nodded, his brows knitting. “Yes, I see. With the passing of the secretary-general and disarray of the assembly, Chrisjen Avasarala is the de facto legitimate government of Earth. And she has offered to… I believe the phrase was massage my balls with a paint scraper if anything happened to you.”

“That sounds like her,” Alex said.

“Yes, she is quite colorful. And she is also insisting that she be allowed to speak with you. I wonder what exactly it is you would tell her?”

“Nothing I wouldn’t say in front of you, sir,” Bobbie said. “I’m not a spy. She brought up some questions and concerns that seemed legitimate and interesting, and I followed up for my own sake. If you’d like, I’d be happy to walk you through everything I did and what I found.”

“You are close friends with Chrisjen Avasarala. You are flying with the crew of the Rocinante . You seem to have many contacts with Earth and the Belt, Sergeant.”

“Yessir,” Bobbie said, her gaze forward and slightly down. “Good that we’re all on the same side, then.”

The silence was longer than Alex liked. The prime minister laced his fingers across his knee. “I suppose it is at that,” he said. “So, why don’t we all go over what exactly you’ve found and how we can productively include our mutual friend Chrisjen in all of this.”

The debriefing lasted for hours. They had taken him to a separate room, and he’d told them the story of everything that had happened since the return from Ilus. Then another woman had come, and he’d told her. Then they’d brought him back to where Bobbie was, and asked the two of them questions that, by and large, they couldn’t answer. All in all, it had been gentle as interrogations went, and even so, it left him drained.

He had quarters of his own that night. A locker, a crash couch, a screen. Even his hand terminal back. The place was a little larger than his bunk on the Roci , tiny compared to the quarters on Tycho, and a little bit better than what he’d had back before he’d mustered out of the Navy. They’d even let him record messages for Holden and Amos and Naomi, though they were vetted by the ship’s system before being sent out. After that, he promised himself that he’d keep away from the newsfeeds.

It had been years since he’d smelled the air of an MCRN ship. The astringent bite of the air recyclers brought back memories. His first tour, his last one. A sense of growing melancholy stole over him that he didn’t recognize at first. Grief. And fear. All his anxieties over the crew of the Roci came back a hundred times over. He imagined being back on the ship without Amos. Or without Naomi. Or never seeing his ship again, never hearing Holden’s voice. An hour after he’d resolved to go to sleep, he gave up, turned the lights back on, and opened a newsfeed.

Mars was pledging drops of food and emergency supplies. Ganymede, back in control of her own docks, was diverting crops back to Earth. A group calling itself the Acadian Front had claimed responsibility for the attacks, but were discredited almost as soon as they’d made the claim. And on Earth, the riots had begun. Looting. He turned the feed back off and got dressed.

He opened a connection to Bobbie, and she accepted it almost immediately. Wherever she was, it wasn’t her bunk. The walls behind her were too far away, and the sound of her voice echoed a little. Her hair was pulled back from her face, her cheeks were flushed, and she was sweating hard.

“Hey,” she said, lifting her chin in a sharp nod.

“Hey. Couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d see what you were doing.”

“Just got done sparring. The lieutenant’s going to let me drill some.”

“They know you just got shot a little while ago, right?”

“You think a few bullet holes gets you out of training?” she said with a ferocity that left him wondering whether she was joking. “They’re even loaning me a suit.”

“You been in powered armor since Io?”

“Nope. So that’ll be… I don’t know. Either really cool or nightmare inducing.”

Alex chuckled, and she grinned. Her smile was like pouring water on a burn. “You heading straight for your bunk, or are you stopping by the mess first?”

“I could stand something to eat probably. Meet you there?”

It was an off-time for the mess. The alpha shift’s dinner was done, the beta shift’s lunch still an hour away. Bobbie was sitting alone at a table by the far wall, her hand terminal open before her. A group of three men and a woman sat not far from her, casting glances at her back and talking among themselves. Alex felt an instant protective surge, like he was back in lower university and one of his friends was being laughed at by another clique.

He grabbed a cheese sandwich and bulb of water, then came and sat across from her. The remains of meatloaf and gravy she’d wolfed down were on her plate and a familiar voice was coming from her terminal.

“— going to be monitoring anything we fucking say. If you wanted to discuss menstruation at great length and detail, this is probably our best chance. He’s always been squeamish about women, and no one likes a Peeping Tom, even if he is prime minister.”