Fred moved carefully, and the camera stayed close on his face. He was hurt then, and hiding it. She’d heard once that birds back on Earth would do everything they could to hide that they were ill. Any visible weakness was an invitation to attack. The comparison made Fred Johnson seem vulnerable. Maybe everything was vulnerable now. “The attackers are in custody, and we hope very soon to have a clear idea who was behind this.” Something about that caught her. It was odd, knowing Marco, that he hadn’t made a press release of it. He’d brought her here to show off, hadn’t he?
Or had he? She was supposed to bring the Rocinante with her, and they’d been disappointed when she didn’t. Was the ship what he’d really wanted? Or Jim? She wondered with a sense of dread what would have happened if she hadn’t come alone.
And then, as if thinking had summoned him, Monica Stuart ended the interview with Colonel Fred Johnson, voice of the OPA and director of Tycho Station, and turned instead to Captain James Holden.
Her breath stuttered.
“I understand you were working as a bodyguard for Colonel Johnson,” Monica said.
“Yes, that’s true,” Jim said with a little grimace. He hadn’t done a very good job of it apparently. “It wasn’t really needed. The people who infiltrated the security team turned out to be a very small minority. He wasn’t ever in real danger.”
He was lying. Naomi pushed her food away.
“Is it true that there was a secondary target? There are some people reporting that the attack may have been cover for some kind of theft.”
Annoyance flashed in Jim’s eyes. She wondered if anyone else saw it. Monica was probably pushing into territory that they hadn’t agreed on. Or had agreed to avoid. “They’re not reporting that to me,” Jim said. “As far as I know, apart from some damage to the station, the coup was a total failure.” Another lie.
“Switch the feed!” someone shouted. A chorus of agreement rose. Someone called Jim something insulting, and Cyn glanced over at her and then away. Naomi went back to her food. The hot sauce burned her lips, but she didn’t mind. The screen switched to a major newsfeed from Earth. The reporter was a young man in a black raincoat. The text said he was in someplace called Porto. The buildings behind him were a mix of ancient and new, with thick, muddy water tearing at them all. On the higher ground behind him, there were rows of sacks. No, body bags.
“That was him, wasn’t it?”
She didn’t know how long Filip had been standing behind her. The girl to her left nodded to Filip and fled. The boy took the empty seat. Wisps of stubble stretched along the line of his jaw, black against the golden brown of his skin. He turned to look at her, and his eyes took a moment to find her, like he was drunk. “That was the man you left us for, si no?”
Cyn grunted like he’d been hit. Naomi didn’t know why. The question was so wrong it was actually funny.
“Not how it played,” she said. “But yes. I ship with him.”
“He’s handsome,” Filip said. She wondered whose voice he was echoing. It didn’t sound like Marco. “Wanted to say, about your being here? Wanted to say.”
But then he didn’t go on to actually finish the thought. She wondered whether she saw regret in his eyes, or if she was imagining it because she wanted it to be there. She didn’t know what to say, how to answer. It felt like there were many versions of her – the captive, the collaborator, the mother reunited, the mother who went away – and all of them spoke differently. She didn’t know which was her real self. If any of them.
Probably, it was all.
“Not the way I’d have chosen,” she said, stepping through the words like they were sharp. “But that’s true of a lot of things, yeah?”
Filip nodded, looked down. For a moment she thought he’d move away, and didn’t know whether she wanted him to stay or go.
“It’s me up there now, you know,” Filip said. “On the feed? That’s me.”
The reporter was older than Filip, broader across the face and shoulders. For a moment, she tried to see a resemblance between them, and then like walking into a freezer, she understood.
“Your work,” she said.
“Gave it to me as a present,” Filip said. “The stealth coating on the rocks? I led the team that retrieved it, me. Without me, none of this.”
He was boasting. It was in the corner of his eyes and the tightness of his lips how badly he wanted her to be impressed. To approve. Something like rage shifted in her gut. On the screen, the reporter was listing relief organizations and religious groups. People who were trying to organize help for the refugees. As if anyone on the planet didn’t need refuge now.