“I follow you,” Peaches said.
“You should put your guns down,” Amos said to Hat. “We’ve got just a shitload more of them than you do. So really.”
“You heard the man,” Butch said. “Guns on the ground, please.”
The security men glanced at each other.
“We could have just shot you,” Amos said. As Hat and his partner slowly lowered their guns to the pavement, Amos raised his voice again. “So Peaches, these guys? They go from being protectors of this big tribe with what’s-his-name and them inside the tribe to being protectors of their own little tribe, and those folks on the outside of it. It’s all about who’s in and who’s out.”
Hat lifted his hands, palms out, about shoulder high. Amos hit him in the jaw. It was a solid punch, and his knuckles ached from it. Hat staggered back, and Amos stepped forward twisting his body into the kick. It landed on Hat’s left kneecap and the man screamed.
“Thing is,” Amos called, “most of us don’t got room in our lives for more than six” – he straight-kicked Hat in the middle of the back as he tried to stand up – “maybe seven people. You get bigger than that, you got to start telling stories about it.”
Hat was crawling back toward the car. Amos put his knee on the man’s back, leaned down, and started emptying Hat’
s pockets and belt. Chemical mace. A Taser. A wallet with ID cards. A two-way radio. He found the unregistered drop gun strapped to the guy’s ankle. Each thing he took, he threw out to the edge of the water, listening for the splash. Hat was weeping, and Amos’ weight made it hard for him to breathe. The other one was standing perfectly still, like if he didn’t move Amos wouldn’t notice him. Wasn’t like he had a better strategy at this point.
Amos grinned at him. “Hey.”
The guy didn’t say anything.
“It’s okay,” Amos said. “You didn’t say you were gonna skullfuck my friends, right?”
“Right,” the other one said.
“Okay, then.” Amos stood up. “You should probably get him to a doctor. And then whoever else you’ve got on this shithole of an island, tell them what I did, and how I didn’t fuck you up because you hadn’t fucked with me. Okay?”
“All right.”
“Great. And then don’t come back around here.”
“I won’t.”
“We won’t,” Amos said. “You mean we won’t. Not you and not your tribe.”
“We won’t.”
“Perfect. No problems, then. And give Butch your stuff, all right? Drop gun too.”
“Yes, sir.”
Amos walked back toward the hangar. Sure enough, Peaches was standing in the doorway, her arms crossed. He wiped his hand. His knuckles were bleeding.
“See, that’s what civilization is,” he said. “Bunch of stories. That’s all.”
“So what if it is?” Peaches said. “We’re really good at telling stories. Everything just turned to shit, and we’re already finding ways to put it back together. Stokes and the other servants were ready to fight us or get killed, but then I knew his name and he remembered me, and now there’s a story where he wants to help us. You go out there and you send a message about how those guys should leave us alone. All of us. More than just six or seven. And, side note here, you know the Pinkwater guys are going to come back and try to kill you for that, right?”
“Just need ’em to take a long time gearing up,” Amos said. “Figure we’ll be off the ground by then.”
Stokes leaned in from behind Peaches, his expression apologetic. “About that? There is a small problem.”
The hangar was as tall as a cathedral, and the Zhang Guo stood in the middle of it like a piece of gargantuan art. The surface of the ship was worked to look like gold-and-silver filigree over a body of lapis. The drive cones had golden ideograms written on them in something that looked like gold but apparently didn’t melt at high temperature. He could tell from looking it didn’t have an Epstein drive. Twice as big as the Rocinante and maybe – maybe – a quarter as functional, it was as much an orbital shuttle as it was a confession of decadence.
And, more to the point, it didn’t run.
“The house power supplies are exhausted,” Stokes explained. “Without power, there’s no water recyclers. No heat. No network connections.”
“So,” Amos said. “You figured the smart move was to get a bunch of people who’ve never seen a working fusion drive to just fire one up so you could top off the batteries? That’s the kind of suicidal optimism you just don’t see every day.”