The tightbeam picked up carrier, paused while it negotiated wavelength and data protocol, and then the connection was accepted, and Holden was looking up into the eyes of Marco Inaros. He’d seen pictures of the man. Watched the videos of his press releases. He knew the face as well as he might any third-rate celebrity. Thrust had pulled back Marco’s hair, stretched his skin, pushed his cheeks back and in. It made him look younger than he was. Holden hoped it was doing the same for him.
He hadn’t assumed that the Pella would brake enough to make conversation possible. Whatever he was going to do, he’d thought it would be in text. But now that they were facing each other, he thought this might be enough. The monitor was only about sixty centimeters from Holden. Marco’s would be about the same. It created the illusion that they were close to each other. He could see the little flaw in Marco’s hairline where it curved back at the right temple. The blood vessels in his eyes. It felt intimate. Almost embarrassing. And, motionless as they were, there was also an uncanny feeling, like looking into the mirror and seeing someone else looking back. Here was a man who’d taken on the fate of humanity like it was a part-time job, right here in front of him. Close enough to touch.
It was hard to be certain what emotions were actually in Marco’s expression and what Holden only imagined. A defiant sneer. Then confusion. Maybe they were there; maybe they were only what he expected to see. He was certain, though, that a malicious gleam came into the man’s eyes at the end. The effort of working his controls showed in Marco’s face, and Holden expected a message to come through. A taunt, an accusation. He was wrong.
Marco clicked away, and a new face appeared. Younger. Darker. As crushed by the acceleration, but unmistakable. Filip Inaros. The boy didn’t look at Holden, didn’t seem aware of him. Holden, it seemed, wasn’t showing on his monitor. Marco was only giving Holden a moment to look at the boy.
He didn’t know what he was supposed to see there. Maybe it was a vulgar masculine boast. She may be with you now, but I fucked her first. That seemed about Inaros’ level. Maybe it was to show that the son hated them as much as the father. But where looking at Marco had felt awkward, seeing Filip was actually fascinating. Holden couldn’t help searching for traces of Naomi in the younger, masculine face. The epicanthic fold at the corner of his eyes. The angle of his cheeks and the shape of his lips. The way he moved reminded Holden of Naomi struggling under a burden.
What struck him most was how young the boy looked. At that age, Holden hadn’t left Earth yet. Had still been waking up at the ranch in Montana, having breakfast with his many parents before going out to mend fences and check the turbines at the wind farm. Thinking of the Navy because Brenda Kaufmann had broken up with him, and he was sure he’d never get over her.
There were mistakes you made because you were young. Everyone made some of them.
Thrust cut out. Holden’s couch snapped to the side again, bucked as the rail gun fired, and slammed back into him. On his screen, the boy’s eyes widened as his couch swiveled. Something loud happened on the Pella. Someone shouted. The high whine of a medical alert. The tightbeam dropped as the thrust gravity on the Roci dropped back. Still more than usual, but after that long pushing at eight gs, his body’s response was profound and visceral. Naomi’s moan was half pain, half relief. People were shouting in his ear: delight and exaltation. His mouth tasted like blood. His elbow ached as he reached for the monitor, switching to tactical without the in-couch control. Alex’s voice, muffled like they were both underwater, reached him. That was great. We did it. We kicked their butts.
The Pella was burning away, still under high thrust, but racing away. A wave of the Rocinante’s torpedoes raced after them. Without thinking, he disarmed them.
His fingers hesitated above the screen, his mind falling apart and coming back together and falling apart again the way it did at the end of a long burn. The blood reperfusing through his brain carried strange, fleeting sensations. His left leg cold and wet, like he was standing in a river. The smell of burning hair. A sense of unfocused moral outrage that flickered and went out as suddenly as it had come. He pressed his hands to his eyes and coughed. Pain shot down his spine. His ears rang. Tinnitus.
No, not tinnitus.
“Jim.”
He wrenched himself around, fighting against the unnatural weight of his body. Naomi was struggling in her couch, futilely trying to rise in the heavy g. Her face was ashen. His half-functioning brain leaped to panic. She was hurt. Something’s wrong. This is my fault.
“What?” he said, his voice rough and phlegmy. “What happened?”
Bobbie came down from the cockpit, muscles straining on the ladder rungs. Naomi looked from him to her and back again. She was pointing at something, gasping to get words out.
“Fred,” Naomi said. “He’s having a stroke.”
“Oh,” Holden said, but Bobbie had already surged forward, undoing the straps and half lifting Fred out of his couch. At their current acceleration, the old man had to weigh over two hundred kilos. Bobbie nearly collapsed but stayed on her feet, her arms wrapped around his upper body, trying to pull him free of the restraints. Holden staggered to the lift and shouted up. “Alex! Cut thrust. Put us at a third of a g.”
“Hostiles are still—”
“If they shoot at us, do something clever. We’ve got an emergency.”
The gravity let go again. Holden’s spine lengthened. His knees felt like they were swelling. Bobbie, now carrying Fred in her arms, was on the lift, dropping toward the medical bay. Fred looked tiny cradled against her, his eyes closed. Holden told himself that the old man’s arm draped around Bobbie’s shoulder was clinging to her. Had strength. He didn’t know if it was true.
A cacophony of voices shouted in his ear. Everyone asking what had happened. What was going on.
“Steinberg!” he barked. “You’re on weapons. Patel, take the comms.” Then he pulled off his headset. The lift was coming back up for them, the gentle hum barely audible in the noises of the ship, and the only thing he had ears for. He willed it to go faster.
Naomi put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Really?”
Naomi shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know.”
The lift came. They loaded on, descending for the crew deck. If the Pella got itself back under control, it could loop around. The fight could start again at any second, catching them away from their crash couches. Holden knew they should be burning hard, rushing toward Tycho as fast as they could. He walked through the tight, military corridor, into the medical bay. It felt like he was in a different ship. Everything was just where it always was, but it seemed new. Fresh. Foreign.
Fred lay on the table, stripped to the waist. The autodoc was strapped to his arm, needles inserted into the veins. He looked weirdly vulnerable, as if he’d physically shrunk between the time he’d gotten into the crash couch and now. Bobbie stood over him, arms crossed, glowering like an angel out of the Old Testament. One of the scary kind. The kind that kept you out of paradise and killed armies in a single night. She didn’t look up as they came in.
“How bad is it?” Holden asked.
Somehow Bobbie made her shrug an expression of rage. “He’s dead.”
He didn’t know how Amos and Clarissa got the duty of preparing the body, but whatever the mechanism, it turned out to be a good fit. Amos stripped him, and Clarissa cleaned Fred’s skin with a damp cloth. Holden didn’t need to be there for it. Didn’t have to watch. Except that he did.