Peaches was sitting at a workbench. The outfit they’d gotten during their bike trip to Baltimore looked pretty sketchy in the clean and tidy surroundings. Torn at the shoulder and still too big for her. She looked like she was swimming in it. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail with a zip tie and her hands were moving quickly and carefully over an open case of modular electronics. Her movements were as precise and flowing as an old recording of a piano player at the keys. She didn’t look up as he came in, but she smiled.
“Got something for you. Salvaged a hand terminal. Nice one. Even got it talking to the local network. Finish the configuration, and you’re good to go.”
Amos pulled the seat next to her out from the body of the ship. She handed him the terminal, but still didn’t meet his eyes.
“According to Chrissie, it ain’t salvage.”
“I liberated one, then. I was going to get one myself, but I can’t. I’ve got nothing to connect to.”
“Could use it like a disposable,” Amos said, starting to key his configuration information. “Get you access to feeds anyway.”
“Does it matter?”
“Well, if you don’t think it does, then maybe not.”
She sighed. There were tears in her eyes and a smile on her face. “We did it. We made it safely to Luna. Just like we hoped.”
“Yeah.”
“You know what I really missed when I was in the Pit? Anything that actually meant anything. They fed me, and they kept me alive, and we had this kind of support group thing where we could talk about our childhood traumas and shit. But I couldn’t do anything that mattered. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t talk to people outside the prison. I was just being and being and being until sooner or later, I’d die and they’d put someone else in my cell.”
She leaned forward, her elbows on the workbench. She’d burned the side of her thumb on something – a soldering iron, the barrel of a gun, something – and the skin was smooth and pink and painful-looking. “I won’t go back there.”
“Peaches, there’s no there to go back to. And anyway, I’m pretty sure Chrissie knows you’re on board here. She’s not pushing the issue, so as long as we stay cool and act casual —”
Her laugh was short and bitter. “Then what? You can’t take me with you anymore, Amos. I can’t go on the Rocinante. I tried to kill Holden. I tried to kill all of you. And I did kill people. Innocent people. That’s never going away.”
“In my shop, that’s just fitting in,” Amos said. “I appreciate that seeing the crew again could leave you feeling a little antsy, but we all know what you are. What you did. Including all the shit you did to us. This isn’t new territory. We’ll talk it through. Work something out.”
“I’m just afraid that if he doesn’t back your play, they’ll send me back, and —”
Amos lifted a hand. “You’re missing some shit here, Peaches. Lot of folks seem to be. Let me lay this out again. There’s no back, and it ain’t just the real estate. The government that put you in prison only sort of exists anymore. The planet that put you in prison is going to be having billions of people die in the next little bit. Making sure you serve your whole term doesn’t mean shit to them. There’s a new Navy between us and the Ring, and there’s still a thousand solar systems out there to fuck up the way we fucked up this one. Because what you’re doing right now? Yeah, you’re worrying about how it would go for you if none of that happened. And I’m thinking that you’re doing it because you’re not looking at the facts.”
“What facts?”
“It ain’t like that anymore.”
“What isn’t?”
“Any of it,” Amos said. “With Earth puking itself to death and Mars a ghost town, everything’s up for grabs. Who owns what. Who decides who owns what. How money works. Who gets to send people to prison. Erich just called it the queen of all churns, and he ain’t wrong about that. It’s a new game, and —”
His hand terminal chimed. Amos looked at it. The design was nicer than his old one, but the interface was a little different. It took him a few seconds to figure out what the alert meant. He whistled between his teeth.
“What is it?” Peaches asked.
He turned the screen toward her. “Seventy messages and twenty-three connection requests. Going back to before the rock dropped.”
“Who from?”
Amos looked at the list. “Alex, mostly. A few from the captain. Fuck. I got six hours of stored video with just Alex trying to talk to me.”
Peaches’ smile was thin, but it was a smile. “At least you have people.”
Chapter Fifty: Alex
“A
bicycle?”