And her. It would be nice if somehow he found a way to save her back. Or if Jim suddenly swept down from the stars to gather her up. She chuckled. God knew he’d try. Always blundering into being the hero, her Jim. Now he’d know what it had felt like for her all those times he’d squared his jaw and run off into near-certain death because it was the right thing. Pity she wouldn’t be there to point it out to him. He might not connect those dots himself. Or he might. He’d changed over the years, and he wouldn’t change back.
Danger. Do not approach. Explosive hazard. She’d lost count again. Two minutes? One? She didn’t know. She found herself humming a melody she’d heard as a child. She didn’t know the words to it. They might not have even been in a language she knew. It didn’t matter. She was glad for the song’s company. Grateful. More than that, she was grateful that she wasn’t going to die nauseated. Okay, fine. If this is what I get, this is what I get. Not a life without regrets, but none I can’t live with. None I can’t die with.
Still, she thought to the universe, if it isn’t a problem, I wouldn’t say no to a little more.
Something moved off to her left, streaking out from behind her. Huge and metal and shining brightly in the sun. It looked like a missile, pointing back toward the sun as it retreated. Its drive wasn’t firing. That seemed weird and kind of random. She wondered if —
The impact came in the center of her back, hard as an assault. An arm wrapped around her shoulder and a leg around her waist locking her immobile. She squirmed by reflex, trying to escape the attack, but whoever it was had her cold. She couldn’t escape. She felt the other person’s free hand fumbling at her suit. Something hard and metal pressed against her thigh where the air bottles would go.
Her ears popped as the pressure in the suit suddenly changed. A clean, vaguely astringent smell filled her nose. A fresh bottle. She almost laughed. She was being held in a rescue hold. The newcomer did something else she couldn’t quite figure, and then locked a tether to her waist and released her. When they rotated together, face-to-face, the newcomer grabbed Naomi’s helmet and pressed her own against it.
“Bobbie?” Naomi said.
“Hey,” the Martian ex-marine shouted, grinning. The sound carried from suit to suit by the conduction, and it made her sound terribly distant for someone who was holding Naomi in her arms. “Imagine meeting you here, right?”
“I’d say it’s really good to see you,” Naomi shouted back, “but that seems weirdly understated. The ship! It’s rigged to lose bottle containment if another ship sets off its proximity alert.”
Bobbie scowled and nodded. Naomi saw the woman’s mouth moving as she relayed the information to someone. To Alex. She watched Bobbie listen to something she couldn’t hear. She looked older than the last time Naomi had seen her. She looked beautiful. Bobbie said something else into her mic, then pressed their faceplates together again.
“I’m going to start moving us around,” Bobbie shouted. “We need to point our feet toward the sun. Low profile. Suck up less heat, okay?”
Naomi buzzed with questions that didn’t need answers. “Okay,” she shouted back.
“Are you in immediate medical distress?”
“Probably. It’s been a really hard day.”
“That’s funny,” Bobbie shouted in a voice that meant it wasn’t funny. “Are you in immediate medical distress?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“All right. Put your arms over my shoulders and lock your forearms.” Bobbie pulled back a few centimeters and demonstrated the forearm lock. Naomi made the Belter sign that meant roughly Acknowledged and understood. A few seconds later, Bobbie’s armor fired thrusters, and Naomi’s weight came back. She was being lifted up, carried into the stars. The sun-bright drive plume of the Chetzemoka passed them, dwarfing the small, dark box of the ship itself. It fell away toward the sun and slowly, over the course of long, eternal minutes, vanished below them.
They didn’t fit in the pinnace. Not really. It was made for one, maybe two, and it had four with one of them in powered armor. The air was hot and thick, and the recyclers were starting to throw alerts and errors. Alex had shut down the reactor and switched to batteries so they wouldn’t be generating as much heat.
“I mean, we could make a burn for it,” Alex said, “but we got people coming from both directions and half as many crash couches as we’ve got folks.”