“A ship is trying to leave from port 11, pad B9. It’s full of food we could really use here. If it makes it off the ground, do we have an OPA gunship close enough to intercept?”
There was a long pause; then, with a chuckle, Amos said, “You know we do, boss. Who’m I actually saying this to?”
“Call that ship and have them disable the freighter. Then have an OPA team secure it, strip it of everything, and scuttle it.”
Amos just said, “You got it.”
Naomi closed up the terminal and put it back into her pocket.
“Don’t test us, boy,” she said to the goon, a hint of steel in her voice. “Not one word of that was empty threat. Either you give these people the cargo, or we’ll take the whole damned ship. Your choice.”
The goon stared at her for a moment, then motioned to his team and walked away. Port security followed, and Holden and Naomi had to dodge out of the way of the crowd rushing up the dock and to the loading bay doors.
When they were out of danger of being trampled, Holden said, “That was pretty cool.”
“Getting shot standing up for justice probably seemed very heroic to you,” she said, the steel not quite gone from her voice. “But I want to keep you around, so stop being an idiot.”
“Smart play, threatening the ship,” Holden said.
“You were acting like that asshole Detective Miller, so I just acted like you used to. What I said was the kind of thing you say when you’re not in a hurry to wave your gun around.”
“I wasn’t acting like Miller,” he said, the accusation stinging, because it was true.
“You weren’t acting like you.”
Holden shrugged, noticing only afterward that it was another imitation of Miller. Naomi looked down at the captain’s patches on the shoulder of her Somnambulist jumpsuit. “Maybe I should keep these …”
A small, unkempt-looking man with salt-and-pepper hair, Chinese features, and a week’s growth of beard walked up to them and nodded nervously. He was literally wringing his hands, a gesture Holden had been pretty sure only little old ladies in ancient cinema made.
He gave them another small nod and said, “You are James Holden? Captain James Holden? From the OPA?”
Holden and Naomi glanced at each other. Holden tugged at his patchy beard. “Is this actually helping at all? Be honest.”
“Captain Holden, my name is Prax, Praxidike Meng. I’m a botanist.”
Holden shook the man’s hand.
“Nice to meet you, Prax. I’m afraid we have to—”
“You have to help me,” Prax said. Holden could see that the man had been through a rough couple of months. His clothes hung off him like a starving man’s, and his face was covered with yellowing bruises from a fairly recent beating.
“Sure, if you’ll see the Supitayaporns at the aid station, tell them I said—”
“No!” Prax shouted. “I don’t need that. I need you to help me!”
Holden shot a glance at Naomi. She shrugged. Your call.
“Okay,” Holden said. “What’s the problem?”
Chapter Twelve: Avasarala
A small house is a deeper kind of luxury,” her husband said. “To live in a space entirely our own, to remember the simple pleasures of baking bread and washing our own dishes. This is what your friends in high places forget. It makes them less human.”
He was sitting at the kitchen table, leaning back in a chair of bamboo laminate that had been distressed until it looked like stained walnut. The scars from his cancer surgery were two pale lines in the darkness of his throat, barely visible under the powdering of white stubble. His forehead was broader than when she’d married him, his hair thinner. The Sunday morning sun spilled across the table, glowing.
“That’s crap,” she said. “Just because you pretend to live like a dirt farmer doesn’t make Errinwright or Lus or any of the others less human. There’s smaller houses than this with six families living in them, and the people in those are a hundred times closer to animals than anyone I work with.”
“You really think that?”
“Of course I do. Otherwise why would I go to work in the morning? If someone doesn’t get those half-feral bastards out of the slums, who are you university types going to teach?”
“An excellent point,” Arjun said.
“What makes them less human is they don’t fucking meditate. A small house isn’t a luxury,” she said, then paused. “A small house and a lot of money, maybe.”
Arjun grinned at her. He had always had the most beautiful smile. She found herself smiling back at him, even though part of her wanted to be cross. Outside, Kiki and Suri shrieked, their small half-naked bodies bolting across the grass. Their nurse trotted along a half second behind them, her hand to her side like she was easing a stitch.
“A big yard is a luxury,” Avasarala said.
“It is.”
Suri burst in the back door, her hand covered in loose black soil and a wide grin on her face. Her footsteps left crumbling dark marks on the carpet.