Nemesis Games (Expanse 5)

“What’s it got to do with me?” Naomi asked, less forcefully than she intended.

Marco smiled. When he spoke, it was back in the voice of the cultured leader. The rough-cut Belter thug vanished behind his mask. “You’re one of us. Estranged, yes, but one of us all the same. You’re the mother of my son. I didn’t want you in harm’s way.”

She was supposed to ask what that meant. The path was laid out before her in lights. What do you mean, harm’s way? she’d say, and he’d tell her. Watch her eyes go wide. See the fear in her.

Fuck that.

“Didn’t want me,” she said. “Wanted the Rocinante, only that didn’t work out. Was it the ship? Or was it Holden? You can tell me. Did you want to show off in front of my new boyfriend? Because that would be kind of sad.”

She felt her breath coming fast, adrenaline pumping through her. Marco’s expression hardened, but before he could speak, the comms chimed and a voice she didn’t recognize echoed on the deck.

“Hast contact,” the woman said.

“Que?”

“Little one. Pinnace out from Mars. Talking to the Andreas Hofer.”

“Scout ship?” Marco snapped.

The pause stretched for seconds. Then, “Looks like just some pinché asshole wrong-placing it. Seen one, seen the whole strike force, though, yeah?”

“How long before the trigger impact?”

“Twenty-seven minutes.” There had been no hesitation. Whoever was on the other end of the comms had known the question was coming. Marco scowled at the control panel.

“Couldn’t have waited a little longer. Would have been prettier without. But fine. Take out the pinnace.”

“Toda?”

Marco looked over at Naomi, his dark eyes on her. A smile touched his lips. Theatrical asshole that he was.

“No. No es toda. Launch the assault on the Martian prime minister’s ship too. And tell the hunt group to get ready, so that when the duster runs, we can take him down.”

“Sabez,” the woman said. “Orders out.”

Marco waited, hand out like a challenge. “This is the way,” he said. “Make it so they can’t forget us. Take chains they fashioned to bind us and use them as whips. We won’t go down to darkness. They’ll respect us now.”

“And do what? Shut down the Ring?” Naomi said. “Start making your cheap bone drugs again? What do you think shooting a Martian politician’s going to do for ‘our people’? How does that help anybody?”

Marco didn’t laugh, but he softened. She had the sense that she’d said something stupid, and it had pleased him. Despite it all, she felt a twinge of embarrassment.

“I’m sorry, Naomi. We’re going to have to take this up later. But I really am glad you’ve come back. I know there’s a lot of harsh between us, and that we don’t see the world the same way. But you’ll always be the mother of my son, and I will always love you for that.”

He lifted a fist to the guards. “Make sure she’s secure, then get ready for hard burn. We’re heading to the fight.”

“Sir,” one guard said as the other took Naomi by the elbow. Her first instinct was to resist, pull back, but what would the point have been? She pushed off for the lift, her jaw tight, her teeth aching.

“One thing,” Marco said, and she turned, thinking he was speaking to her. He wasn’t. “When you lock her down, make sure it’s someplace she can watch a newsfeed. Today everything changes. Wouldn’t want her to miss it, yeah?”

Chapter Twenty-two: Amos

Reports at this hour are that a massive asteroid has impacted northern Africa. The Oxford Center in Rabat, five hundred kilometers west of the event, is estimating eight point seven five on the Richter scale at the epicenter.”

Amos tried again to lean back in his chair. It was an uncomfortable little piece of furniture. Just crappy lightweight plastic to start with, then molded in a factory by a machine that didn’t have to sit in it. His first guess was that it had been designed specifically to be awkward and ineffective if you tried to hit someone with it. And then they’d bolted it to the floor. So every five minutes or so, he placed his heels on the textured concrete and pushed back without even knowing he was doing it. The chair bent a little under the pressure, but didn’t get more comfortable, and when he gave up, it bounced right back into its old shape.

“— unseen since Krakatoa. Air traffic is being severely affected as the debris plume threatens both civilian and commercial craft. For further analysis of the situation on the ground, we are going now to Kivrin Althusser in Dakar. Kivrin?”

The screen jumped to an olive-skinned woman in a sand-colored hijab. She licked her lips, nodded, and started talking.