Nemesis Games (Expanse 5)

In the cabin, she sat on the couch, her legs folded up under her. He leaned against the wall, his mouth tight, his chin high. She wondered what he was thinking. What he wanted and feared and loved. She wondered if anyone had ever asked him.

I can’t take it anymore, she thought. Just say I can’t take it anymore.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I worry about you.”

“Not so much you wouldn’t betray me,” he said, and that untied the knot. Yes, if she lied to him, it would be betraying him, and for all her failures, she’d never done that. She could. She could do it. It wasn’t that she was powerless before the decision; it was that she chose not to.

“The warning I sent?”

“I have dedicated my life to the Belt, to freeing the Belters. And after we did everything we could to keep you safe, you spat in our faces. Do you love your Earther boyfriend that much more than your own kind? Is that it?”

Naomi nodded. It was like hearing all the things Marco was too polished to say out loud. There was real feeling behind them in a way she would never hear from Marco. Maybe never had. He’d soaked up all his father’s lines, only where Marco’s soul was safe and unreachable in its deep self-centered cyst, Filip was still raw. The pain that she had not only left him, but left him for a man from Earth lit his eyes. Betrayal wasn’t too strong a word.

“My own kind,” she said. “Let me tell you about my own kind. There are two sides in this, but they aren’t inner planets and outer ones. Belters and everyone else. It’s not like that. It’s the people who want more violence and the ones who want less. And no matter what other variable you sample out of, you’ll find some of both.

“I was harsh to you the day the rocks dropped. But I meant everything I said. Your father and I are now and always were on different sides. We will never, ever be reconciled. But I think despite everything, you can still choose whichever side you’d like. Even now, when it seems like you’ve done something that can’t be redeemed, you can choose what it means to you.”

“This is shit,” he said. “You’re shit. You’re an Earth-fucking whore, and always have been. You’re a camp follower, looking to sleep your way into anybody’s bed who seems important. Your whole life’s that. You’re nothing!”

She folded her hands. Everything he said was so wrong it didn’t even sting. It was like he was calling her a terrier. All she could think of it was, These are the last words you’re going to say to your mother. You will regret them for the rest of your life.

Filip turned, pulled open the door.

“You deserved better parents,” she said as he slammed it behind him. She didn’t know if he’d heard.

Chapter Forty: Amos

Between walking and biking, scrounging up food, and picking a route that avoided the dense populations around the Washington administrative zone, the seven-hundred-odd kilometers between Bethlehem and Baltimore had taken them almost two weeks. The four-hundred-odd klicks from the arcology to Lake Winnipesaukee took a couple hours. Erich sent out Butch – whose name was something else that Amos couldn’t remember even after they told him – and two others, then sent him and Peaches to wait in another room while he had some conversations.

Twenty minutes later, Amos and Peaches and Erich and ten men and women were standing on the roof of the arcology loading into a pair of transport helicopters with the Al Abbiq Security logo on the side. Erich didn’t say if they were stolen or if he’d been paying off the security force, and Amos didn’t ask. Pretty much an academic issue at that point.

The landscape they passed over was bleak. The ash fall had slowed, but not stopped. The sun was a ruddy smear on the western horizon. Below them, cities bled into each other without so much as a tree or a swath of grass between them. Most of the windows were empty. The streets and highways were filled with cars, but few of them were moving. They swung out to the east as they passed by New York City. The great seawall had been shattered, and the streets flooded like canals. Several of the great towers had fallen, leaving holes in the skyline.

“Where is everyone?” Peaches shouted over the chop of the rotors.

“They’re there,” Erich shouted back, gesturing with his bad arm and holding on to the strap with his good. “They’re all there. It’s just there’s not as many as there were last week. And more than there are going to be.”

Over Boston, someone fired a missile toward them from the roof of a commercial shopping district, and the copters shot it down. The sky to the east was the low bruise-dark that made Amos think of storm clouds. In the west, the sunset was the color of blood.

“We gonna have trouble with the rotors icing up?” Amos asked the pilot, but he didn’t get an answer.

They set down at an airfield a few klicks south of the lake, but Amos got a look before they landed: low hills holding the water like it was being cupped in a massive palm. There were maybe a dozen islands scattered across the lake, some as crowded with buildings as the shore, others with little tame forests if someone rich enough for the luxury lived there. The landing platform was a square of floating ceramic with red and amber lights still blinking for visual landings.

When they actually got to the water’s edge, it wasn’t as pretty. The water stank of dead fish and a coating of ash lay across the surface like someone had sifted chalk dust over the whole place. Erich’s people waded in up to their thighs and dropped three packages that unfolded into hard, black pontoon boats. By the time they started toward the enclave on Rattlesnake Island, the sky was a perfect black. No stars, no moon, no backsplash of light pollution. The night was like sticking his head in a sack.

They spun

to the north side of the island where a wide bridge on a coated steel pier ran out toward the launching pad. Hangars and boathouses encrusted the shore, boxes for the toys of the wealthy as big as basic housing blocks for a thousand people. The pontoon boat they were in surged forward over the chop of the water. The boathouse they chose was painted bright blue, but outside the circles of their lights, it could have been anything. It only took a minute to find the keypad on a pole that poked up from the dark water. Peaches leaned over, stretched her thin arm, and tapped out a series of numbers. For a second, it looked like it hadn’t worked, then the boathouse doors silently rose and automatic lights came on. The interior was all wood paneling, rich red cedar, and enough room for a tennis court. An angry barking came out from the darkness as they steered inside.

A wolfhound stood on the deck of a little powerboat, its paws on the rail. The pontoon boats snugged up in the space next to the powerboat. Amos hauled himself up and the wolfhound darted toward him, growling and snarling. It was a beautiful animal, genetically engineered, he figured, for the gloss of its fur and the graceful lines of its face.

“Hey there,” Amos said, squatting down to its level. “Someone didn’t bother taking you along when they left, huh? That shit’s gotta suck.”

The dog shied back, uncertain and frightened.