He was in the one actual couch at the front of the pinnace. Bobbie sat curled near the mutilated deck where another couch had once been. The door to the cabin was open, and the prime minister of Mars floated there in a sweat-stained undershirt. He made the place seem dreamlike. For herself, Naomi floated near the ceiling. Alex had set the wall screens to show the outside, but it was all so much less vivid than the real thing. It didn’t fool her.
The Chetzemoka was below them, a spinning black dot against the overwhelming white sun. She caught glimpses of it at the edges of the floor where the screen stopped. Alex had also had the Razorback’s system highlight the incoming UN escort ships and, in blue, the Rocinante.
“So,” Alex said. “XO. You’re… ah. Out here. That was kind of unexpected.”
“Wasn’t thinking to see you either, Alex,” Naomi said. Her blood felt strange in her veins. Sluggish and bright at the same time. And she was having trouble focusing her eyes. Her hands had lost the worst of the swelling, though. The hours of work between the hulls had probably worked all the extra fluid back in where it belonged. Something like that. Her entire body hurt, and she was still discovering how profound her nausea had been as layers of it she hadn’t recognized resolved. Her twenty-second sunburn from the jump off the Pella was swollen and tender to the touch, but not blistered. It would peel once it had healed enough. When she’d gotten into the Razorback, and the ship had been sealed, she’d drunk a liter of water from a bulb and she hadn’t had to pee yet. The dehydration headache was starting to lose its hold. Bobbie had offered her painkillers, but something in Naomi resisted the idea of doing anything else to her body until she’d seen the inside of a medical bay.
She realized that her consciousness had flickered out when it came back. Bobbie and the prime minister were talking about good noodle restaurants in the major neighborhoods of Londres Nova. The air was thick and close and stank of bodies. She was sweating in her crappy EVA suit. The blue dot that was the Rocinante had grown a halo, the drive pointing toward them as it slowed to match their course.
In the corner of her eye a blackness flickered and was gone.
“Alex,” she said, and then coughed so long and hard Bobbie had to brace her. When her lungs were clearer, she tried again. “Alex. Can you spare a couple of those missiles?”
“Depends, XO,” Alex said. “What did you want me to do with them?”
“Kill that ship,” Naomi said.
“It’s all right,” Alex said. “We warned everyone about how it’s booby-trapped. No one’s going to —”
“Not because of that. Just because it’s time for it to go.”
Because I tried to give it to my son instead of a childhood. Because I spent my own money to get it, and it turned into a trap for me and the people I love. Because everything about that ship was a mistake.
“Ah. Looks like it’s registered to an Edward Slight Risk Abatement Cooperative. They going to be okay with us knocking their bird into the sun?”
“It’ll be fine,” Naomi said.
The prime minister lifted his finger. “It seems to me that —”
“Missiles away,” Alex said, then smiled an apology. “You’re the head of my government, Nate, but she’s my XO.”
“Nate?” Naomi said. “You’re on a first-name basis now?”
“Don’t be jealous,” Alex said and pulled up a panel. Against the sun, the ship was nothing. A tiny darkness spinning below them like a fly. And then it was gone.
I’m sorry, Filip, she thought.
She turned her head toward the approaching Rocinante. It was closer.
Chapter Forty-eight: Holden
I
f the medical bay could have raised its eyebrows and made judgmental little tsk-tsk sounds, it would have. Instead, the readout threw a list of amber-colored alerts so long that the first few scrolled off the screen before Holden could read them. Naomi grunted when the needle poked into her vein and the medical expert system’s custom cocktail started flowing into her. Holden sat beside her, holding her other hand.
The transfer from the Razorback had been easy enough. Once they’d matched course, Alex snugged the pinnace up against the airlock, and all four of them had come over together. Holden had been waiting on the other side of the lock, not quite willing to believe that they were really back. Fred Johnson was there too in his greeting-a-political-grandee outfit. It was strange to see Fred visibly change roles, holding his body differently, his expression changing so subtly and profoundly it seemed like the shape of his skull had shifted. It left Holden a little curious about how much the old man presented to him was also tailored to the situation. Chances were, he’d never know.