Nemesis Games (Expanse 5)

The warehouses near the port were in a constant state of flux. The pressure of commerce and efficiency kept every space in use with as little downtime between rental agreements, loading, and unloading as could be arranged. The sign on the tempered glass door read OUTER FRINGE EXPORTS, but in a week, a day, an hour, it could have been anything.

A young man at the counter smiled up at her. He had close-cropped hair and skin several shades darker than her own. The steel-rimmed glasses could have been an affectation or an interface device. She’d never seen him before.

“Hi,” she said.

“Miss Nagata,” the man said as if they were old acquaintances. “It’s been some time. I’m

sorry to say we don’t have any work that would be suited to your ship at this time.”

“Not what I’m here for,” she said. “I need to charter a ship. And I need to do it very quietly.”

The man’s expression didn’t change. “That can be an expensive problem.”

“It needs to carry a crew no larger than twenty.”

“How long would you need it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would it be hauling cargo?”

“No.”

The man’s eyes lost their focus for a moment. The glasses were an interface, then. Naomi crossed her arms.

One in a hundred, she thought, I show up with my own warship ready to carry people off Ceres. One in twenty, I know how to find someone who will. She wondered what the one-in-five plan was. What was the sure thing.

The man’s focus came back to her.

“I think we may be able to help,” he said.

Chapter Fifteen: Alex

The ride to the hospital was a thing out of a nightmare. As the transport sped through the corridors, the painkillers started to take effect. The combination of ache and sharpness in his body shifted into a deep and troubling sense of simply being wrong. Once, when they were near the emergency admitting entrance, time stuttered as his consciousness slipped away and back again. None of the medics paid him much attention.

They were all focused on Bobbie.

The big woman’s eyes were closed, and a pale plastic tube came out of her mouth, keeping her jaw open. From where he rode, Alex could make out only parts of her gurney’s readout, and he wasn’t sure how to interpret what he was seeing. The medics’ voices were clipped and tense. Words and phrases like attempting to reinflate and stabilizing and maintaining pressure pushed Alex toward the edge of panic. Bobbie’s body, what he could see of it, was limp. He told himself she wasn’t dead. If she were dead, they wouldn’t be trying to save her. He hoped that was true.

At the emergency ward, he found himself wheeled into an automated surgical bed not that different from the ones on the Rocinante. The scan probably took a minute and a half, but it seemed to go on forever. He kept turning to the side, looking for Bobbie, then remembering she was in a different room now. Even then he didn’t understand how much his injuries and painkillers had compromised his mind until the police came and he tried to explain what had happened.

“So how did the woman with the power armor fit into it?” Bobbie asked.

She was sitting up in her hospital bed. Her gown was thick, disposable paper with Bhamini Pal Memorial Hospital printed on it like a pattern, dark blue over light. Her hair was pulled back into a loose bun, and deep bruises darkened her left cheek and her knuckles. When she shifted, the movement was careful. It was the way Alex moved after he’d worked out too hard and felt a little sore. He hadn’t been shot twice – once through her left lung, once in her right leg – and he’d seriously considered taking a wheelchair to go between his room and hers.

“I meant you,” Alex said. “I was having trouble coming up with your name.”

Bobbie chuckled. “Yeah, they’re going to want to talk to you again. I think the version they got was a little muddled.”

“Do you think… Should we not be talking?”

“We’re not under arrest,” Bobbie said. “The only one of the other guys that’s still breathing lawyered up before he got here. I’m pretty sure they’re not going to be looking at us if they want to throw someone in jail.”

“What did you tell them?” Alex asked.

“The truth. That a bunch of thugs broke into my rooms, tied me up, and started taking turns between kicking the shit out of me and asking why I was meeting with Alex Kamal.”

Alex pressed his thumb against his upper lip until it ached a little. Bobbie’s smile carried a load of sympathy.