James Corey - Nemesis Games

The access panel was fifteen centimeters high and forty wide and opened on the major electrical routing through the center of the ship. If she’d cut through all the cables there with a welding torch, all the traffic would have rerouted instantly to other channels. Apart from a few warning indicators, nothing would happen. That was fine. She didn’t want to break the ship. She wanted to use it. Braced with both feet and one hand in the wall handholds, she worked the Allen wrench. The screws were integral to the plate and didn’t come free, but she felt it when the metal threads lost their grip. Three connections came off. Four. Five.

Six.

She could see the handset through the gap where the plate was beginning to come free. The ship shuddered under her, turning. She squeezed the wrench in her fist, seeing it fall away down the shaft even though it wasn’t happening. A thick red-black clot of blood slipped free of her hair, smearing itself across the pale wall. She ignored it. Seven connectors were loose. Eight. She heard voices from the crew quarters. A woman saying something she couldn’t make out, and a man answering no. Nine. Ten.

The plate came free. She scooped up the handset, checking its charge. The batteries were nearly full. Connection read good. She didn’t know which circuit was the broadcast and the first one she tried threw an error code. Cursing musically under her breath, she set it to diagnostic mode and started querying. It seemed to take forever before it came back. She cycled through the report with her thumb until she found it. Channel eighteen was a comm array using the D4/L4 protocols that the Rocinante did for broadcast. She thumbed in the override code that would let her send thirty seconds of diagnostic tones out, then deleted the file that held the tones. When the error came up, she told it to override to manual. She was almost weeping now. Her right foot slipped, and she grabbed for the open access panel. Her knuckles scraped something sharp and toothy. She grunted in pain and put her annoyance aside. No time.

“If you receive this,” she said, pressing the handset close to her lips, “please retransmit. This is Naomi Nagata of the Rocinante . Message is for James Holden. The software controlling the magnetic bottle has been sabotaged. Do not start the reactor without reloading the hardware drivers from a known good source. If you hear this message, please retransmit.”

Halfway through the last word, the handset chirped that the thirty seconds were up and returned to the base menu. She let the handset go, let herself go, floated back from the wall. She spread her arms wide and let the Allen wrench go. She hoped it had worked. It was the middle of a battle. There could be jamming to contend with if Marco wanted to keep what was happening unclear, but it was just as likely he was enjoying being a spectacle. And if she was right, if they were going after the Martian prime minister, the data coming off the battle would be gone over by the best intelligence services that still existed.

Jim wasn’t safe, not yet. She knew it, but for a moment, she didn’t feel it. The darkness would come back; the bone-crushing anxiety, and the guilt and the fear. She didn’t doubt that, but now, right now, she felt only light. She’d made her plan, and it had worked. Her warning would reach him or it wouldn’t. Either way, there was nothing more she could do. And on the bridge, right now, Marco was figuring out what exactly she’d done. The laughter that came boiling out of her throat felt like victory.

The voices from the crew quarters grew louder, more confused. Even though the all clear hadn’t been called, she heard people moving around. She recognized Cyn’s voice, raised in alarm. Her leg brushed against the wall, and she reached out to hook her wrist into the handhold. No point bothering with the lift. Hand over hand, she pulled herself along the shaft and then into the corridors. The faces that peered from the doorways were wide-eyed. One man started back when he caught sight of her. Naomi launched herself along the hallway with a kick and flew straight as an arrow, not even touching the handholds along the way to steady herself. Her shoulder ached. The wound on her scalp was bleeding again. She felt serene.

Cyn hauled himself around a corner, then braced and watched her, his jaw slack, his eyes round. She lifted a fist in greeting as she floated by.

“Anyone needs me,” she said, “I’ll be in my quarters, yeah?”

Chapter Thirty-three: Holden

Most of human history had static maps. Even in times of change and chaos, when civilizations had fallen in the course of a single night, the places remained more or less the same. The distance between Africa and South America was going to stay what it had always been, at least over the span of human evolution. And whether you called it France or the Common European Interest Zone, Paris was closer to Orléans than Nice. It was only when they moved out to Mars and then the Belt and the worlds beyond it that the distance between the great centers of human life became a function of time. From Tycho Station, Earth and Luna were almost on the far side of the sun. Mars was closer, but retreating with every hour. Saturn was closer than either and the Jovian moons farther away. That everything came closer and then farther apart was a given in Holden’s life; uncommented and unremarkable. It was only times like this that facts of orbital periodicity started to seem like a metaphor for something deeper.

As soon as Fred made the decision to go to Luna, Holden had moved his things back to the Rocinante . And then the rest of the crew’s possessions too. He’d found Amos’ clothes neatly folded and regimented in a rough canvas bag. Alex’s had been thrown haphazardly in a case, half in a mesh bag and half not, though which set was clean and which bound for the laundry, Holden couldn’t tell. Naomi’s things had been in his suite. A spare pair of boots, an unpaired sock, underwear. She’d left a model of a Martian combat mech – bright red and flat black and no bigger than his thumb – on the bathroom counter. He didn’t know if it held some special meaning to her or if she would even remember where she’d gotten it from. He was careful to take it with him, though. Careful to wrap it and put it in a cushioned box. It was the closest thing he had to taking care of the woman it belonged to, so that was what he did.

Being back in the Rocinante was like coming home, except that it was too empty. The narrow corridors of the crew deck seemed too wide. The occasional ticking and popping of the expansion joints adjusting to shifts in temperature were like the knocking of ghosts. When the repair team were somewhere he could hear them, Holden resented the voices and footsteps that weren’t his crew’s. When they were gone, the silence oppressed him.

He told himself it was temporary. That before long, he’d have Alex back in the cockpit and Amos down in engineering. Naomi beside him, telling him gently what he was screwing up and how to do it better. He’d go to Luna, and they’d be there. All of them. Somehow.

Except he still hadn’t heard from Naomi. He’d gotten a short text-only message from Mother Tamara that his parents were all right for now, but that ash was falling on the ranch like snow in winter. And nothing from Amos.

Sometimes people knew when they were saying their last goodbyes, but not always. Not often. Most people’s last parting of ways were so small, the people involved didn’t even notice them. Now, in the darkness of the command deck with a half-liter bulb of bourbon floating beside him and the audio system playing twelve-bar blues, Holden was pretty sure he’d said a couple of his own final goodbyes and not known it. He replayed everything in his head, his memories becoming less authentic and more painful every time he did.