James Corey - Nemesis Games

“And if I do?”

She held out the environment suit again. “You’ll have some bottled air to suck on while you figure something out.”

“Well, not a great plan, but it’s a plan.”

“Imperfect circumstances,” the flight chief agreed.

Alex shrugged the suit on as the prime minister, already wearing his, slipped into the pinnace and toward the back bunk. The Razorback was a yacht. A hot rod, made for zipping around outside an atmosphere, the philosophical descendant of ships that didn’t lose sight of the shore. And more than that, she was old. The girl who’d first flown her had been dead or something stranger for years, and the ship had been old before she went. Now they were going to fly it through an active battle zone.

He checked the last of the seals on his suit, and started for the Razorback . Bobbie was in the entry, looking in. When she spoke, it was through the suit radio.

“We’ve got a little problem, Alex.”

He squeezed in beside her. Even before she’d been in combat armor, Bobbie had made the interior of the ship seem a little undersized. Looking from her to the second couch now, she made it look ridiculous. There was no way she was going to fit.

“I’ll have them stop the launch sequence,” Alex said. “We can get you in a normal EVA suit.”

“There are boarders on the ship. Looking for us. For him,” Bobbie said. “There isn’t time.” She turned to look at him. On the other side of the helmet, her expression was rueful. “I’m only seeing one option here.”

“No,” Alex said. “You’re not staying. I don’t give a shit. I’m not leaving you behind.”

Bobbie shifted, her eyes wide. “What? No, I meant take out the couch and use the suit motors to brace me. Did you think I was —”

“That. Do that. Now,” Alex said.

Bobbie leaned forward, the magnetic boots locking onto the deck of the Razorback , and one hand clamped against the frame. With the other, she gripped the base of the crash couch and lifted. The bolts sheared off like she was tearing paper, and she tossed the couch out into the hangar. The gimbals shifted and turned under the spin. Bobbie scuttled in, pressing hands and feet against the walls and deck and pushing until the suit was wedged in as solidly as if it had been part of the superstructure.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m good.”

Alex turned back to the flight chief. The woman saluted him, and with his heart in his throat he returned it. The marines who’d escorted them – who’d risked their lives to get them this far – had already gone. Alex wished he’d thought to thank them.

“I’ll get to my station, and then we’ll get you out,” the flight chief said. “You be careful out there.”

“Thank you,” Alex said. He pulled himself into the ship, closed the hatch, and started running through the checklist. The reactor was hot, the Epstein drive showing green across the board. Air and water were at capacity, and the recyclers ready. “You in place back there, sir?”

“Ready as I’m likely to get,” the man replied.

“You hang on tight,” Alex said to Bobbie. “This might get rough, and you’re not in a crash couch.”

“Yeah I am,” she said, and he could hear the mischievous grin in her voice. “I’m wearing mine.”

“Well,” Alex said softly. “Okay, then.”

The clamp lights went from engaged to warning to open, and the Razorback was on the float. Emergency Klaxons sounded, the noise softened by the thinned atmosphere, and the massive hangar door began to open. The change in exterior pressure rang the pinnace like a hammer blow. Alex aimed for the widening gap full of darkness and stars, and hit it. The Razorback leaped out into the vacuum, eager and hungry. The display marked a dozen ships too small for his naked eye to see, and the long, curving shapes of PDC fire like tentacles waving through the void.

“Taking control of the comm laser,” Bobbie said.

“Roger that,” he said. “This is going to get bumpy.”

He threw the Razorback out the hangar doors at full speed and into the narrow lane between the battleship’s PDCs firing on full auto. He spun the pinnace between the lines of high-velocity tungsten, hoping they were enough to stop any missiles the ambushing ships fired at them from point-blank range. And then, from behind them, fast-moving bogies in wave after wave. The Razorback ’s display turned into a solid mass, the density of the missile swarm too much for the screen to differentiate between them. The entire arsenal of the battleship launched all at once, and keyed to target on the pinnace’s comm laser frequency.

“We’ve got our escort,” Alex said. “Let’s get out of here. How many gs can you take back there, Draper?”

“If I break a rib, I’ll let you know.”

Alex grinned, spun the pinnace toward the sun, and accelerated – two g, three, four, four and a half – until the system started complaining that it couldn’t inject him with anything through the EVA suit. He hit the suit’s crude helmet controls with his chin and injected himself with all the amphetamine it had in its tiny emergency pack. The enemy ships seemed unsure what had just happened, but then they began to turn, thin red triangles on the display. Exhaust plumes competed with the stars behind him as he fell toward the sun, toward Earth and Luna and the rattled remnants of the UN fleet. Alex felt a bloom of joy welling up in his chest, like shrugging off a weight.

“You can’t take the Razorback ,” he said to the tiny red triangles. “We are gone and gone and gone.” He switched the radio to general. “How’s everyone doing back there?”

“Fine,” the prime minister gasped. “But will we be accelerating like this for much longer?”

“Bit longer, yes, sir,” Alex said. “Once we get some breathing room, I’ll cut us back to just a g.”

“Breathing room,” the prime minister said, the words labored. “That’s funny.”

“Five by five here, Alex,” Bobbie said. “Is it safe to pop my helmet? I’d rather not run through all my bottled air when there’s fresh in the ship.”

“Yeah, that’s fine. Same back there, Mister Prime Minister.”

“Please. Call me Nathan.”

“You got it, Nate,” Alex said. The sun was a sphere of white. He pulled up the nav computer and started plotting in paths to Luna. The fastest would take them inside the orbit of Mercury, but the pinnace wasn’t rated for more than half an AU from the coronal surface. So that was going to be a little tricky. And Venus wasn’t anyplace that he could gracefully use to slingshot. But if Avasarala was sending out an escort to meet them, she might be able to get a boost off the planet. So heading that direction might make sense.

“Alex?” Bobbie said.

“I’m here.”

“That thing about not leaving me behind? You really meant that, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did.”

“Thank you.”

He felt a blush rising even against the pressure of the burn. “Welcome,” he said. “I figure you’re crew now, right? We look out for each other.”

“No soldier left behind,” she said. It might have been the gs, but something about her tone made it sound like she meant something deeper by the words. Like she’d made a promise. She grunted. “Alex, we’ve got fast-movers coming in. I think the bad guys are throwing missiles at us.”

“You ready to disappoint them, Gunny?”

“Oh hell yes,” Bobbie said. “How many bullets have we got in this magazine?”

Alex switched the display. The cloud of escort missiles resolved into a numbered list, all in white with identifying serial numbers beside each of them. Even the list filled the screen. He switched to a field summary. “A little shy of ninety.”