Nemesis Games (Expanse 5)

“Got flustered.”

“That’s military-grade flustered, all right,” Bobbie said. “Well, hopefully, this’ll be a milk run to Luna.”

Alex nodded and took a sip of coffee from his bulb. “You think that’ll happen? You really think it’s over?”

Bobbie’s silence was an answer.

They spent the rest of the meal on less fraught subjects: how training for marines and Navy were different and which one was better; Alex’s stories from Ilus and the slow zone; speculation about what exactly Avasarala was going to do once they got the prime minister to Luna. It was all shop talk, and Alex found it easy and pleasant. He hadn’t crewed with her in years, but she was good to talk to, good to be around. In another life, he could imagine shipping with her. Well, in the military anyway. He couldn’t quite place her on a water hauler like the Canterbury, and he wondered what it would have done to have her on the Roci. Part of what made the Rocinante home was that the crew was so small, and had so much shared context. There was an intimacy that living in quarters with the same handful of people for so long gave. Anyone coming in – even someone as competent and smart and easygoing as Bobbie – would have had to contend with that, and there was nothing that screwed up a crew like having one person who felt excluded.

He was still thinking about that, chewing the next-to-last mouthful of so-called eggs and listening to Bobbie tell a story about free-climbing on the Martian surface, when the Klaxons went off.

“All hands to battle stations,” the calm, crisp voice said between whoops of the alarm. “This is not a drill.”

Alex was up and heading toward his crash couch before he fully registered what was going on. Bobbie was beside him. They both threw their breakfast trays and drink bulbs into the recycler on the way out, long training identifying anything that wasn’t bolted down as a potential projectile if the ship’s vector changed too suddenly. The staccato vibration of the PDCs was already ringing in the decks, but Alex couldn’t imagine what could have gotten near enough for that kind of close combat without being noticed. The alarms were still going off when they reached the corridor and one of the marines – Sergeant Park, his name was – gathered them up.

“No time to get you to your quarters. There are some spare couches we can put you up in over here.”

“What’s going on?” Alex said, trotting to keep up.

“The relief ships are firing on us,” Park said.

“What?” Bobbie snapped.

Park didn’t break stride, opening a hatch into an empty meeting room and ushering them in. Alex dropped into the embrace of a crash couch, strapping himself down with an efficiency of long habit and deep training. His mind was tripping over itself.

“Someone faked military transponder codes?” he said.

“Nope, they’re our birds,” Park said, checking Alex’s straps.

“Then how —”

“We hope to beat that answer out of them when the time comes, sir,” Park said. He switched to Bobbie’s chair and checked her straps too while he spoke. “Please remain in your couches until we signal that it’s safe to get out. Not sure what we’re looking at, but I expect this may get —”

The ship lurched hard, snapping the gimbals of the couches forty-five degrees to the deck. Park shifted, bracing just before he hit the wall.

“Park!” Bobbie shouted, reaching for the straps that held her in. “Report!”

“Remain in your couch!” the marine shouted from behind Alex and below him. The press of thrust gravity sank him deep into the gel. A needle slid into his leg, pumping a cocktail of drugs into his bloodstream that would lessen the danger of stroke. Jesus, this was more serious than he thought.

“Park!” Bobbie said again, and then a string of obscenities as the marine stumbled out the door and into the corridor, leaving them behind. “This is fucked. This is so fucked.”

“Can you get anything?” Alex shouted, even though she was only a meter and a half away. “My control panel’s locked out.”

He heard the sound of her breath over the distant vibrations of the PDCs, the deeper tones of missiles launching. “No, Alex. I’m getting the stand-by screen.”

A loud fluting groan passed through the deck, rattling the couches as they shifted again. Whoever was at the helm, they were putting the ship through its paces. Along with the deep, recognizable reports of the ship’s weapons, there were other sounds, less familiar ones. Alex’s mind turned all of them into damage from the enemy, and at least some of the time, he was sure he was right. His throat was tight, and his gut hurt. He kept waiting for a gauss round to pass through the ship, and every second it didn’t happen made it feel more likely that it would.

“You doing all right?” Bobbie said.

“Just wish I could see what was going on. Or do somethin’ about it. Don’t mind fighting, but I hate being spam in a can.”

His stomach lurched, and for a long moment, he mistook the sudden weightlessness for nausea. His crash couch shifted to his left, Bobbie’s to her right, until they could almost see each other.

“Well,” Bobbie said. “They got the drive.”

“Yup. So that thing where you and Avasarala thought maybe someone was appropriating MCRN ships and supplies?”

“Look pretty smart now, don’t we?”