“… as a community, Mars has got its collective asshole puckered up so tight it’s bending light,” Chrisjen Avasarala continued behind him. “But the prime minister’s convoy has finally launched. When he gets to Luna, I’m hoping we can get him to say something that hasn’t already been chewed by half a dozen diplomats playing cover-your-ass. At least he knows there’s a problem. Realizing you’ve got shit on your fingers is the first step toward washing your hands.”
He hadn’t seen the old woman since Luna, but he could picture her. Her grandmotherly face and contempt-filled eyes. She projected a weariness and amusement as part of being ruthless, and he could tell Bobbie liked her. More, that she trusted her.
“In the meantime, you stay out of trouble. You’re no good to anybody dead. And if that idiot Holden’s plucking another thread in the same knot, God alone knows how he’ll fuck it up. So. Report in when you can.”
The recording ticked and went silent.
“Well,” Alex said. “She sounds the same as ever.”
“Give her that,” Bobbie agreed. “She’s consistent.”
Alex turned his couch to look back at her. Bobbie made hers look small, even though it was the same size as his own. The pinnace was doing a fairly gentle three-quarter-g burn. Over twice the pull of Mars, but Bobbie still trained for full g just the way she had when she was an active duty marine. He’d offered less in deference to her wounds, but she’d just laughed. Still, he didn’t need to burn hard.
“So when you said you were working with her?” Alex said, trying not to make it sound like an accusation. “How different is that from working for her?”
Bobbie’s laugh was a cough. “I don’t get paid, I guess.”
“Except for the ship.”
“And other things,” Bobbie said. Her voice was carefully upbeat in a way that meant she’d practiced hiding her discomfort. “She’s got a lot of ways to sneak carrots to me when she wants to. My job is with veterans’ outreach. This other stuff…”
“Sounds complicated.”
“It is,” Bobbie said. “But it all needs doing, and I’m in a position to do it. Makes me feel like I matter, so that’s something. Still miss being who I was, though. Before.”
“A-fucking-men,” Alex said. The lift of her eyebrows told him he’d said more than he’d meant to. “It’s not that I don’t love the Roci. She’s a great ship, and the others are family. It’s just… I don’t know. I came to it out of watching a lot of people I knew and kind of liked get blown up. Could have lived without that.”
Bobbie’s expression went calm, focused, distant. “You still dream about it sometimes?”
“Yeah,” Alex drawled. It felt like confession. “You?”
“Less than I used to. But sometimes. I’ve sort of come to peace with it.”
“Really?”
“Well, at least I’m more comfortable with the idea that I won’t come to peace with it. That’s kind of the same thing.”
“You miss being a marine?”
“I do. I was good at it.”
“You couldn’t go back?”
“Nope.”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “Me neither.”
“The Navy, you mean?”
“Any of it. Things change, and they don’t change back.”
Bobbie’s sigh was like agreement. The vast emptiness between Mars and the Belt, between the two of them and the distant stars, was an illusion made by curved screens and good exterior cameras. The way the space contained their voices was more real. The two of them were a tiny bubble in a sea immeasurably greater than mere oceans. It gave them permission to casually discuss things that Alex normally found hard to talk about. Bobbie herself was in that halfway space between a stranger and a shipmate that let him trust her but not feel a responsibility to protect her from what he thought and felt. The days out from Mars to Hungaria were like sitting at a bar, talking to someone over beer.
He told her his fears about Holden and Naomi’s romance and the panic attacks he’d had on the way back to Earth from New Terra. The times he’d killed someone, and the nightmares that eventually replaced the guilt. The stories about when his father died, and his mother. The brief affair he’d had while he was flying for the Navy and the regret he still felt about it.
For her part, Bobbie told him about her family. The brothers who loved her but didn’t seem to have any idea who or what she was. The attempts she’d made at dating since she’d become a civilian, and how poorly they’d gone. The time she’d stepped in to keep her nephew from getting involved with the drug trade.
Rather than trying to fold into the bunk, Bobbie slept in her couch. Out of unspoken solidarity, Alex did the same. It meant they wound up on the same sleep cycle. Bad for rotating watches, good for long meandering conversations.