Nemesis Games (Expanse 5)

The mid-shift meal was refried noodles and beer. The newsfeed was set to a system-wide report, and she watched it avidly for the first time, not for what it said, but what it didn’t. Food and water reserves were running out in North America and Asia, with Europe only a few days better. Relief efforts from the southern hemisphere were hampered by a growing need for supplies locally. She didn’t care. It wasn’t Jim. Medina Station had gone dark; the basic carrier signal remained, but all queries were being ignored, and she didn’t care. The Martian minority speaker of parliament back in Londres Nova was calling for the prime minister to return immediately to Mars, and she only cared a little. Every story that wasn’t about a ship blowing up at Tycho Station was a victory. She ate fast, sucking down the sweet, pale noodles and slamming back the beer, as if by hurrying her meal, she could rush the ship, the attack.

Her opportunity.

She and Cyn spent the next half shift going through engineering and the machine shop, making sure everything was locked down. In a ship full of Belters, she had no doubt it all would be, and it was. The ritual of it was reassuring, though. The sense of order and control over a ship’s environment was a synonym for safety. Belters who didn’t triple-check everything had been weeded out of the gene pool fast, and seeing the regularity of the shop gave her an almost atavistic sense of comfort. And also, without being obvious, she checked the location of the flawed toolbox with its misshapen hasp and then carefully didn’t look at it again. She felt obvious, sure that by so clearly cutting the box out of her awareness, she was actually calling Cyn’s attention to it.

The relationship between the dark thoughts and the nearly unbearable swelling of excitement in her heart didn’t occur to her until Cyn’s hand terminal chimed and he called the work to a halt.

“Wrócic´ do tu crash couch, yeah,” he said, touching her shoulder. His hand was gentle but strong. She didn’t pretend ignorance, didn’t try to disguise her anxiety. It would just read as being scared of the battle anyway.

When they got to her quarters, she strapped in and Cyn checked her. Then, to her surprise, he sat by her side for a moment, his mass shifting the balance of the couch. His muscles rippled under the skin with even his smallest movements, but he still managed to seem boyish and shy, like his body was a costume. “Zuchtig tu, sa sa?”

Naomi smiled the way she imagined she would have if she’d meant it. “Of course I’ll be careful,” she said. “Always am.”

“La, not always, you,” Cyn said. He struggled with something. She didn’t know what. “Close quarters, means a lot of maneuvering. Don’t have a couch to catch you, then you get a wall, yeah? Maybe a corner.”

Fear flooded her mouth with the taste of copper. Did he know? Had he guessed? Cyn flexed his hands, not able to meet her gaze.

“En buenas mood, you. Happy, ever since you and Marco. So I’m thinking maybe you think there’s something to be happy for, yeah? Maybe a way out don’t have doors.”

Suicide, she thought. He’s talking about suicide. He thinks I’m going to unstrap in the middle of the battle and let the ship beat me to death. While she hadn’t consciously considered it before, it was the kind of thing the dark thoughts would have brought her. And worse, the thought brought no surprise with it, but only a sense of warmth. Almost of comfort. She wondered whether that had been in her mind, whether the danger inherent in her plan was its drawback or a covert way for the bad thoughts to find their expression. That she wasn’t sure unnerved her.

“I plan to be here when this is over,” she said, biting the words as if to convince herself as much as her guard.

Cyn nodded. The ship’s system sounded the maneuvers warning, but the big man didn’t get off the couch. Not yet. “Esá? Hard for us and you both. We come through, yeah? All of us, and you too.” He was staring at his hands now like something might be written there. “Mi familia,” he said at last. “Remember that. Alles lá son family, y tu bist also.”

“Go strap in, big guy,” Naomi said. “We can finish this after.”

“After,” Cyn said, shot a smile at her, and rose. The second warning came, and Naomi leaned back into the gel, just as if she meant to stay in its cool embrace.

On the bridge, Marco was no doubt being smooth and calm, playing the part of the Martian captain, reassuring everyone he could that everything was under control now that he was there. They’d believe him too. He was in a Martian ship with a solid, known transponder. He was probably using Martian military encryption. That he could be anything other than what he seemed would be as inconceivable to them as it was obvious to her.

She wanted to care, but she didn’t. She didn’t have time.

The sound of missiles firing and the mutter of PDCs came as the room lurched thirty degrees to the left, her couch hissing on its gimbals. She popped the straps loose and sat up, pulling her leg away from the needle. If she’d been sure it wasn’t a sedative, she’d have waited for the injections. Too late. The couch shifted back to neutral position. She hopped down to the floor and walked quickly and steadily for the corridor. She kept her arms wide, fingertips against the walls on either side, and slid her feet across the deck. Knees bent, center of gravity low, she told herself.

Be ready for the change when it comes. The ship twitched around her. The walls and deck showed nothing, her eyes promising her that everything was solid, quiet, and stable as her own mass pushed her, falling toward one wall and then the next, and then – worst – forward where there was nothing to catch herself against. It was worse than weightlessness. The struggles of a mind to interpret up and down in the absence of gravity could be disorienting, but this was something else. She rattled down the hallway like dice in a cup, moving forward when she could, bracing herself against the walls when the motion was too violent.

In the lift, she selected the machine shop and gripped the handholds as the mechanism dropped her down the body of the ship. A concussion rattled her. The Martians fighting back. That was fine. Let them. She couldn’t give that struggle her attention. Not until hers was done.

The machine shop was empty, all the tools locked in place, but with enough tolerance that when the ship lurched, they all rattled: metal against metal like the ship itself was learning to talk. She went for the compromised toolbox, but the deck fell away under her. She stumbled, her head crashing against the metal shelves. For a few seconds, the rattling seemed to recede. She shook her head, and drops of blood pattered on the wall and the deck.

Not a big deal, she told herself. Head wounds always bleed a lot. It doesn’t mean it’s serious. Keep moving.

The PDCs chattered, the sound moving through the body of the ship. She found the toolbox, popped open the restraint, pulled it out, and sat on the deck, cradling it. For a long, sick second, she thought the lock was different, solid, unapproachable, but that was wrong. A trick of the mind. It was fine. She pulled at the latch, worked her fingertips into the crevice that shouldn’t have been there, then pulled it wider, and pushed in again, driving her own skin and bone into it like a wedge. It hurt like hell, but she ignored it. The pressure of her body against the deck suddenly grew terrible. They were accelerating. She didn’t know why. Her back ached. It had been years since her spine had been asked to support her body during a heavy burn. Usually, she was lying on her back in gel around now.

With an indignant pop, the latch gave. The toolbox flew open, but nothing spilled. All the wrenches, epoxy welders, voltage meters, and cans of air and lubricant were strapped in place. She flipped through the close-packed layers to a line of Allen wrenches and plucked out the 10 mm. It was one of the advantages she had over Marco and his crew. She’d been living in a Martian ship for years. Knowing what tools opened which access panels was like recognizing the back of her own hand. She gathered up a voltage tester, a wiring crimp, and a light-duty soldering iron and stuffed them in her pockets. With any luck, she’d only need the wrench, but —

The deck drifted away under her, gravity suddenly gone. She couldn’t tell if she was spinning through the air or the ship was turning around her. She reached for the deck, the walls, but nothing was within reach besides the floating toolbox. That was good enough. She grabbed it in close to her belly, then pushed it away as reaction mass, and twisted to grab the workbench. Down came back, and the toolbox crashed down behind her as she stumbled. Another low boom rattled the ship. Knees and spine aching, she ran for the lift.

Gravity vanished again as she got into it. The PDCs were still chattering, but less now. She didn’t remember the last time she’d heard a missile fire. The battle was winding down. She willed the lift to travel faster. If the all clear sounded and other people got out of their couches before she was done, then Holden and the Rocinante and possibly a fair percentage of Tycho Station would die. With every slow meter the lift took her, she imagined it: the drive cycling up and then spilling out, a fire brighter than light that ate everything. The ship moved, slamming her against the wall hard enough to bruise, then released her to float free again. She killed the lift between the crew quarters and the airlock, bracing herself so that the deceleration didn’t leave her trapped in the middle of empty air.

The access panel was fifteen centimeters high and forty wide and opened on the major electrical routing through the center of the ship. If she’d cut through all the cables there with a welding torch, all the traffic would have rerouted instantly to other channels. Apart from a few warning indicators, nothing would happen. That was fine. She didn’t want to break the ship. She wanted to use it. Braced with both feet and one hand in the wall handholds, she worked the Allen wrench. The screws were integral to the plate and didn’t come free, but she felt it when the metal threads lost their grip. Three connections came off. Four. Five.

Six.

She could see the handset through the gap where the plate was beginning to come free. The ship shuddered under her, turning. She squeezed the wrench in her fist, seeing it fall away down the shaft even though it wasn’t happening. A thick red-black clot of blood slipped free of her hair, smearing itself across the pale wall. She ignored it. Seven connectors were loose. Eight. She heard voices from the crew quarters. A woman saying something she couldn’t make out, and a man answering no. Nine. Ten.

The plate came free. She scooped up the handset, checking its charge. The batteries were nearly full. Connection read good. She didn’t know which circuit was the broadcast and the first one she tried threw an error code. Cursing musically under her breath, she set it to diagnostic mode and started querying. It seemed to take forever before it came back. She cycled through the report with her thumb until she found it. Channel eighteen was a comm array using the D4/L4 protocols that the Rocinante did for broadcast. She thumbed in the override code that would let her send thirty seconds of diagnostic tones out, then deleted the file that held the tones. When the error came up, she told it to override to manual. She was almost weeping now. Her right foot slipped, and she grabbed for the open access panel. Her knuckles scraped something sharp and toothy. She grunted in pain and put her annoyance aside. No time.