Alex drank, put down the bottle, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “So if there’s a profiteer on the base, they could take the opportunity to lift some equipment that survived, sell it on the black market, and call it lost.”
“Exactly. I mean to some degree, that’s always happening, but right now, with things a little chaotic and getting weirder all the time?”
“And with Mars losing a lot of its people to colony ships.”
“Yeah, that too,” Bobbie said. Her expression was hard. Alex sat forward, his elbows on the table. The smell of trout and black sauce still hung in the air, though the plates were gone by then. On the screen at the front of the restaurant, a young woman in a parody of business wear danced to a computer-generated pop tune. Alex hadn’t been able to make out the language; at a certain speed every language sounded equally meaningless.
“You’re telling me that you’re investigating the sources of black market military equipment flowing off Mars.”
“Weapons,” Bobbie said. “Medical supplies. Ammunition. Power suits. Even ships.”
“And you’re doing it on your own, for fun, because of something Chrisjen Avasarala said to you.”
“I’m kind of working for her.”
Alex laughed. “I’m almost afraid to point this out, but you started off saying you needed a favor. You haven’t told me what the favor is.”
“A lot of the guys on Hecate won’t talk to me. I’m a marine, they’re Navy. There’s that whole thing. But you know them, and even if you don’t, you’re one of them in a way I’m not going to manage this lifetime. I was wondering, as a favor, if you could help me dig a little.”
Alex had nodded at the time, but what he’d said was “Let me think about it.”
And now, because it was Bobbie and because he needed something in his life to actually have a moment of real closure, he was going to see her one last time to tell her the answer was no. He had a ship to get back to. If there was something he could do for her from there, he’d be pleased to lend a hand. His first priority now was getting off Mars and not coming back.
He reached the end of her corridor. The iron lanterns were glowing, creating the illusion of a street back on Earth centuries before. The echo of a place that neither he nor Bobbie had ever been, and still it was pleasant and comforting. He walked slowly, listening to the almost-silent chucking of the recyclers as if, just behind them, he could catch the murmur of the flowing Thames.
Somewhere nearby a man shouted once and briefly. It was Innis Shallow after all. Alex walked a little faster. At Bobbie’s door, he paused.
It was closed, but not solidly. A black smudge, perfectly round and dented into the flesh of the panel, marked it just where the latch met the frame. A thin line of light at the door’s edge showed where the frame had bent, the ceramic shattering. The man’s voice came again, a low mutter rising to a final, powerful snap. It was coming from inside Bobbie’s rooms.
Alex’s heart beat triple time as he pulled out his hand terminal and tapped quickly, quietly to the local system’s emergency services link. He thumbed in an alert request and a confirmation, but didn’t fill in the details screen. There wasn’t time for it. He stood before the door, his hands in fists, wishing as hard as he’d ever wished anything that Amos was there too.
He pushed the door open and rushed in.
Bobbie was at the table, sitting in one of the two chairs. Her arms were behind her. Her legs were splayed out before her, too long for the chair to accommodate. There was blood on her mouth and down the side of her neck. A man in gray coveralls was pointing a gun at the back of her head.
Two other men, dressed in the same gray, turned toward Alex. Both of them had automatic pistols in their fists. A fourth man, this one in a causal suit the color of ash and a bright blue shirt, turned to Alex, his expression equal parts surprise and annoyance. When he saw Alex, his eyes went wide.
“Fuck!” the man in the suit said, the syllable almost lost in the noise of cracking wood. Bobbie moved faster than Alex could follow, shrugging the chair she was bound to into splinters and grabbing the gunman behind her by the wrist. He screamed and something wet happened to his arm.
One of the pistol men fired wildly, the stuttering report assaulting Alex’s ears. He rushed forward shouting and barreled into the man in the suit. Together, they staggered back. The other man’s knee rammed into Alex’s groin, and the world dissolved into blinding pain. Alex slid to his knees, trying to hold the man by his suit jacket. The guns continued their barrage and the stink of spent powder filled the air.