James Corey - Nemesis Games

“How is she?” Alex asked, nodding toward the hand terminal. Bobbie turned the recording off and frowned at the newly blank screen.

“Heartsick, I think. Devastated. But she’ll never let it show. This is what she always feared the most. And now it’s happened, and she can’t even look away, because she’s the one who has to… fix it. Only it can’t be fixed, can it?”

“Naw, I guess not.”

“They’re taking us to Luna.”

“I figured as much,” Alex said. Something in his voice caught Bobbie’s attention.

“You don’t want to?”

“Honestly? I want to go home. Get back on the Roci with my crew, and after that, I care a whole lot less where we go. Be nice if it was somewhere they weren’t shooting at us.”

“That would be a plus,” Bobbie said. “Don’t know where that is.”

“Lot of planets out there. My experience with colonies is, ah, a little checkered, but I can see the appeal of a new start.”

“There aren’t any new starts,” Bobbie said. “All the new ones pack the old ones along with them. If we ever really started fresh, it’d mean not having a history anymore. I don’t know how to do that.”

“Still, I can dream.”

“Right there with you.”

At the other table, two of the men rose, carrying their trays to the recycler. The man and woman who stayed glanced over at Alex and Bobbie, and then pretended they hadn’t. Alex took a bite of his sandwich. The greasy cheese and fake butter were like being young again. Or else like remembering how long it had been since he was young.

“Any word on the assholes who shot at us?”

“They’re still fighting with the escort ships. Withdrawing, but not retreating. The escort isn’t looking to engage as long as they can keep the bastards from getting close to us.”

“Yeah, all right.”

“Seem weird to you too?”

“Little bit,” Alex said. “Seems like a pretty piss-poor ambush if you don’t actually ambush anyone.”

“It’s because of us,” Bobbie said. “You and me. We were in the right place at the right time. We forced the bad guys to make their play too soon. If we hadn’t, it wouldn’t be just the secretary-general that died. Honestly, I think that’s why we’re getting treated this well. Smith knows it could have gone a lot worse without us.”

“You’re probably right. It’s just…”

“You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“Yeah.”

“Me too. We’re jumpy. Why wouldn’t we be? Someone just broke pretty much all of human civilization overnight.”

The words hit Alex like a blow. He put down his sandwich. “They did, didn’t they? I don’t know who we are now. I don’t know what this does.”

“Me neither. Or anyone else. But we’ll figure it out. And whoever did this, we’ll find them. We’re not going to let them win.”

“No matter what game they’re playing.”

“No matter what,” Bobbie agreed.

Billions were dying right now, and no way to save them. Earth was broken, and even if it survived, it would never go back to what it had been. Mars was a ghost town, the terraforming project at its heart falling to pieces. The aliens that sent the protomolecule hadn’t needed to destroy humanity. They’d given humans the opportunity to destroy themselves, and as a species, they’d leaped on it. Alex pushed away an angry tear, and Bobbie pretended she hadn’t seen it.

“Yeah,” he said. “Still. I’m going to feel a lot better when the relief ships get here.”

“Amen,” Bobbie said. “Still, I wish it was more than just six ships coming. Well, seven. Six and a half.”

“Six and a half?”

“Relief ships picked up a commercial hauler somewhere. Nonmilitary. It’s called the Chetzemoka ?”

Chapter Twenty-eight: Holden

“Cover for some kind of theft,’ ” Holden said again. “I mean what the hell was that?”

Fred Johnson kept walking. The gently curving corridor with its view of the construction sphere was like Tycho Station’s boast that it had not been destroyed. The people they passed nodded to Fred and Holden. Some wore green armbands in solidarity, and more than a few of those had the OPA split circle with an additional split at ninety degrees to the first. Others had a stylized globe and the words ONE PEOPLE OPA & EARTH. The physical damage to the station was for the most part limited to the engineering and drive levels at the bottom of the sphere and Fred’s office on the ring, but Holden couldn’t help feeling that the deeper injury was to Tycho’s story about itself. Not long ago, Tycho – like Ceres – had been one of the jewels of the outer planets. Part of a greater argument about the independence of the Belt.

Now that Belters had attacked it, it had become something else. The sense of unity with Earth wasn’t so much a real sympathy for the government that had so recently been the enemy, than a statement of separation from the OPA. Tycho Station for Tycho Station, and fuck anyone who crossed them.

Or he may have been projecting, since he was feeling more than a little like that himself.

“She was being a journalist,” Fred said. “That kind of thing? It’s what they do.”

“We just saved her life. If it wasn’t for us, she’d have been carried off the station to God knows where and… I don’t know. Tortured or something.”

“That’s true,” Fred said. They reached the lift, passing through doors that opened in anticipation of them. Fred’s rank still had its privileges, and first priority on lifts was one. “But we also lied to her. And she knew it.”

Holden bit back an objection because it wasn’t much more than We did not and he knew that actually they did. It wasn’t something he’d have done, just a few years before. Then, he’d have told the truth, the whole truth, and let the chips fall wherever they fell. He didn’t know if it bothered him more that he’d changed or that he hadn’t noticed it until someone else pointed it out.

Fred looked over to him with a weary smile. “ ‘Be angry at the sun for setting if these things anger you.’ A poet named Jeffers said that.”

“Yeah, but was he talking about journalists and politicians lying to each other?”

“Matter of fact, he was.”

The lift shifted and dropped. Fred leaned against the back wall with a groan.

“We didn’t have to do that,” Holden said.

“Yes we did,” Fred said. “After a loss, the most important thing for a leader to do is be seen. And be seen walking under their own damned power. Sets the narrative.”

“Still.”

“It’s something I can still do,” Fred said. “I’m sure as hell going to do it.”

Fred’s old office was still being repaired. Until its walls and floor didn’t open on vacuum, Drummer had set up a space for him near the overfull brig. It was a smaller space, less comfortable and less imposing. Holden couldn’t be in it without feeling like Fred had given himself a demotion. Or had accepted without complaint the one the universe had handed to him.

Fred settled in behind his desk and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. “The truth is that almost everything we do here won’t even be a footnote in the history books.”

“You don’t know that. You’re just feeling discouraged,” Holden said, but Fred was already pulling up his work on the desk monitor.

“I had two messages last night. Well, more than that, but two that were interesting. The first was from Earth. Avasarala was on Luna when it happened, and she’s putting together a response.”

“A response?”

“A diplomatic conference. The Martian prime minister was already en route. She wants me to be there too. To ‘represent the slightly less batshit wing of the OPA.’ If humanity really rests on that woman’s diplomatic skills… well, that’ll be interesting.”