And if real relationship-by-blood shared descent could mean any of those things, maybe family was always a metaphor.
He was still thinking about it when he got to Min’s hole. Her boys and the girl that she and her husband had adopted were all there, sharing a meal of fish and noodles when he arrived, and they all greeted him like they knew him, like his injuries were important to them, like they cared. He sat at the table for a little bit, making jokes and minimizing the assault and its aftermath, but what he wanted to do – what he did as soon as his sense of etiquette allowed – was excuse himself and head back to the guest room they’d set aside for him.
A message was waiting for him from the Roci. From Holden. Seeing the familiar blue eyes and tousled brown hair was weirdly displacing. Alex felt like part of him was already on the way back to the Rocinante, and he was a little surprised not to be there already.
“Alex. Hey, hope things are going well out there, and that Bobbie is good.”
“Yeah,” Alex said to the playback. “Funny you’d ask.”
“So, I’ve been looking into this thing with missing ships? And there’s a suspicious hit out at 434 Hungaria. Any chance you have access to a ship? If you need to rent one, feel free to pull the funds from my account. I’d like you to go see if a ship named the Pau Kant is sitting out there parked and dark. Specs on the transponder code attached to this message.”
Alex paused the playback, the skin at the back of his neck tickling. Missing ships was turning into a motif to his day, and it made him uneasy. He played the rest of Holden’s message, rubbing his chin as he did it. There was a lot less to it than he wanted to know. The records on the Pau Kant didn’t show it as a Martian vessel, or anything else in particular. Alex set his hand terminal to record, saw what he looked like in the display, combed his fingers through his hair, and started the message.
“Hey, Captain. Got your thing about the Pau Kant. I was wondering if I could get a little more information about that. I’m sort of in the middle of somethin’ a mite odd myself.”
He described what had happened to him and Bobbie in lighter tones than he actually felt. He didn’t want to scare Holden when there was nothing the man could do to protect him or Bobbie. Apart from saying that the attackers seemed to have been spooked that Alex had appeared on the scene, he left out the details of Bobbie’s investigation and Avasarala’s. It might have been paranoia, but transmitting that information without another couple levels of encryption seemed like asking for trouble. He did ask what other ships were supposed to have gone missing, and how it might relate to Mars before he signed off.
Maybe whatever Holden was looking into was just coincidence. Maybe the Pau Kant and the missing Martian warships were totally unrelated. Wasn’t where Alex would put his money, though.
He checked to see if there was anything from Amos or Naomi, and felt a little let down when there wasn’t. He recorded brief messages for the both of them and sent them out.
In the main room of the apartment the kids’ voices were loud, three conversations going on at the same time, each fighting to be heard over the others. Alex ignored them, accessing the local directory and looking up old names. People he could think of from his time in the service. There were dozens. Marian Costlow. Hannu Metzinger. Aaron Hu. He checked the directory against them, old friends and acquaintances and enemies, looking for who was still on Mars, still in the Navy, still someone who might remember him well enough to go out for a few beers and talk.
By the end of the evening, he had three, and he sent messages to each of them, then requested a connection to Bobbie. A few seconds later, she appeared on his screen. Wherever she was, it wasn’t the hospital. She had on a shirt with a green collar instead of the blue patient’s gown, and her hair had been washed and braided back.
“Alex,” she said. “Sorry about my brother. He means well, but he’s kind of a dick.”
“Everybody’s related to someone,” he said. “You wind up at his place or your own?”
“Neither one,” she said. “I need to hire a cleanup crew to get the blood off my floor, and I’m doing a solid security audit to figure out how they got in.”
“Yeah. Wouldn’t feel safe until that’s done,” Alex agreed.
“Right? And if there is a follow-up attack, I’m sure as hell not staying where it’s going to catch Ben and his wife in the crossfire. I popped for a hotel room. They’ve got their own security, and I can pay for extra surveillance.”
Min’s voice rose in the background, calling for calm. There was laughter in her tones, and he heard it echoed in the protests of her children. A tightness like a hand closed over his heart. He hadn’t thought about a follow-up attack. He should have.