James Corey - Nemesis Games

Park didn’t break stride, opening a hatch into an empty meeting room and ushering them in. Alex dropped into the embrace of a crash couch, strapping himself down with an efficiency of long habit and deep training. His mind was tripping over itself.

“Someone faked military transponder codes?” he said.

“Nope, they’re our birds,” Park said, checking Alex’s straps.

“Then how —”

“We hope to beat that answer out of them when the time comes, sir,” Park said. He switched to Bobbie’s chair and checked her straps too while he spoke. “Please remain in your couches until we signal that it’s safe to get out. Not sure what we’re looking at, but I expect this may get —”

The ship lurched hard, snapping the gimbals of the couches forty-five degrees to the deck. Park shifted, bracing just before he hit the wall.

“Park!” Bobbie shouted, reaching for the straps that held her in. “Report!”

“Remain in your couch!” the marine shouted from behind Alex and below him. The press of thrust gravity sank him deep into the gel. A needle slid into his leg, pumping a cocktail of drugs into his bloodstream that would lessen the danger of stroke. Jesus, this was more serious than he thought .

“Park!” Bobbie said again, and then a string of obscenities as the marine stumbled out the door and into the corridor, leaving them behind. “This is fucked. This is so fucked.”

“Can you get anything?” Alex shouted, even though she was only a meter and a half away. “My control panel’s locked out.”

He heard the sound of her breath over the distant vibrations of the PDCs, the deeper tones of missiles launching. “No, Alex. I’m getting the stand-by screen.”

A loud fluting groan passed through the deck, rattling the couches as they shifted again. Whoever was at the helm, they were putting the ship through its paces. Along with the deep, recognizable reports of the ship’s weapons, there were other sounds, less familiar ones. Alex’s mind turned all of them into damage from the enemy, and at least some of the time, he was sure he was right. His throat was tight, and his gut hurt. He kept waiting for a gauss round to pass through the ship, and every second it didn’t happen made it feel more likely that it would.

“You doing all right?” Bobbie said.

“Just wish I could see what was going on. Or do somethin’ about it. Don’t mind fighting, but I hate being spam in a can.”

His stomach lurched, and for a long moment, he mistook the sudden weightlessness for nausea. His crash couch shifted to his left, Bobbie’s to her right, until they could almost see each other.

“Well,” Bobbie said. “They got the drive.”

“Yup. So that thing where you and Avasarala thought maybe someone was appropriating MCRN ships and supplies?”

“Look pretty smart now, don’t we?”

The couches shifted again as maneuvering thrusters on the ship’s skin fought against the massive inertia of steel and ceramic. The throbbing of PDCs and report of missile launches made a rough background music, but it was a quiet that caught Alex’s attention.

“The bad guys,” he said. “They stopped shooting.”

“Huh,” Bobbie said. Then a moment later, “Boarding action, then?”

“What I was thinking.”

“Well. How long do you want to stay in these couches before we go try to scare up some weapons?”

“Five minutes?”

“Works for me,” Bobbie said, taking out her hand terminal. “I’ll set a timer.”

The door of the meeting room cycled open at three minutes, twenty-five seconds. Three marines floated through in light battle armor, bracing against the doorframe and holding assault rifles at their sides. The first one – a thin-faced man with a scar running down the side of his nose – moved forward. It struck Alex that if the bad guys, whoever they were, had Martian warships, they probably also had Martian armor, but the thin-faced man steadied himself against the desk.

“Mister Kamal. Sergeant Draper. My name’s Lieutenant de Haan. The ship’s going to be maneuvering, so we’ll need to be careful, but I need you to come with me now.”

“Roger that, sir,” Bobbie said, popping the straps on her couch loose and shifting to launch for the door. Alex was only a beat behind her.

The marines moved through the weightless halls with practiced efficiency, cover to cover with one always in firing position at the back, another at the front, and Bobbie and Alex in the center of the formation. Twice, the ship lurched with Alex in the middle of a jump from one handhold to the next. The first time, he caught himself on a different support, but the second, he bounced off a bare length of deck, spinning through the air until one of the marines grabbed him and hauled him to safety. The one-sided sounds of battle grew first louder and then more distant. One bulkhead failed to open, reporting vacuum on the other side, and they had to backtrack. Like a restless dream, the journey seemed to go on forever and also be over almost as soon as it had begun.

On the bridge, the captain was strapped into her couch, the prime minister in the couch beside her. All around, the crewmen at their stations were rattling information to one another, and Alex caught bits of it, his mind forming a picture of their situation almost without knowing what exactly he’d heard to inform it. The main drive was down. The comm array was unable to transmit either broadcast or tightbeam. There were hull breaches near engineering, the armory, and aft storage. Missiles could still be fired, but the guidance systems were down. No one mentioned the two frigates that had been flying with the ship since the main escort had been pulled away. Alex figured that meant they were dead.

“We are under attack and being boarded,” the captain said, her voice remarkably calm. “The original escort force is also now under concentrated attack, and will be unable to come to our relief. We have put out a broad distress call, but it seems unlikely in the extreme that anyone could make it here in time to affect the outcome of the conflict. We are preparing to offer a vigorous defense, but if we are unable to assure your safety, it may become necessary for you to evacuate.”

“Into the middle of a firefight?” Alex said.

“It isn’t optimal,” the captain said. “With respect, my first priority has to be the safety of the prime minister.”

“Of course, Skipper,” Bobbie said at the same time that Alex said, “That’s sounding a mite ominous.” The captain ignored both of them.

“We have half a dozen rescue pods prepped. Protocol is to give each of you an armed escort in the pod, and release them all at once, in hopes of distributing enemy attention and giving each of you the best possible chance of being overlooked.”

“That’s a shitty plan,” Alex said to the captain, then turned to the prime minister. “You know that’s a shitty plan, don’t you, sir?”

Smith nodded. His face was flushed, and a thin sheen of sweat danced across his neck and jowls, surface tension adhering it to his skin.

“Yeah,” Bobbie said. “Pods don’t have an Epstein. You’d be dropping us out there to get shot. And we have a racing yacht right here. The Razorback ’s built for speed.”

The captain raised her hand, demanding silence. “What I was going to say? We can commandeer the Razorback for the prime minister, give her a pilot and an escort guard, but that means I’m still dropping two civilians into a meat grinder.”

“Why the hell would you do that?” Bobbie interrupted. “We’ve got a pilot and an escort right here. Don’t we? We can put Prime Minister Smith in the bunk and take the couches. Alex has more experience piloting that ship than any of you, and – all respect to Lieutenant de Haan – I can shoot as straight as anyone you’ve got. It’ll be tight, but it’s totally possible.”