Nemesis Games (Expanse 5)

“Just been, you.”

“Going again,” she said, turning away.

“Hell you are. Hey!” Naomi pretended to ignore the woman, listening as she scrambled down to come after her. She’d been a model prisoner up to now, and the defiance took Sárta by surprise. Well, it was meant to. The warning sounded again, and the count. Zero g in three. Two. Naomi put both hands on the doorframe. One. Up and down vanished, and she pulled her body into a tight curl and exploded out toward Sárta. Both her feet hit the guard in the belly, sending her back through the wide empty air of the room. She grabbed Naomi’s left shoe, prying it off as she spun away. It would take her seconds to reach the other side of the room and something to push against. That was her head start. Sárta was already shouting.

Naomi flipped herself through the hatch, then down the hall, too fast for safety. She had minutes. She had less than minutes. Had she really thought she could pry open a locker, pull on a suit, and cycle the airlock? The math had worked at the time. She couldn’t imagine it now.

Sárta was somewhere behind her, shouting. Raising the alarm. But Naomi was already around the corner. With sight lines broken, Sárta would have to guess where she’d gone. With luck, it would buy her a few more seconds. She only needed seconds. She only had them. The crew airlock was closed. She cycled the inner door open, then started pulling at lockers. If someone – anyone – had slipped up. Left one unlocked. The metal clanked and rattled under her fingertips as she tugged and tugged and tugged. Was the umbilical unhooked yet? Were they pulling it in? It seemed like they must be.

There were voices raised from down the hallway. Men and women shouting. One of them was Sárta. Another one was Cyn. She felt herself sobbing and ignored it. She couldn’t fail. She couldn’t. Not this time. Not now.

For a sickening second, she didn’t feel the decompression kit at her waist. She slapped the place where it had been pressed against her skin, and it was there. If she could just get a suit. She tried another locker. Her heart skipped as it opened. A simple EVA suit hung there, suspended in the null g by thin bands of elastic. She reached for it.

She stopped.

They’ll know the suit is missing, a small voice said in the back of her mind. They’ll know where you’ve gone. They’ll come after you.

Her breath was heavy and fast, her heart racing. The thing she’d been trying not to think for the last hours came to the front of her mind like an old friend. Fewer than fifty meters. It isn’t far. You can make it.

She c

losed the locker. The inner door of the airlock was open now. She launched herself toward it, forcing herself to pant. To hyperoxygenate. She couldn’t tell if the dizziness she felt was from too much oxygen or a kind of existential vertigo. She was really going to do this. Naked in the void. She braced her palms against the outer door of the lock. She expected it to be cold. That it was the same temperature as any decking seemed wrong.

Fifty meters in hard vacuum. Maybe less. Maybe it was possible. She couldn’t depressurize first. The long seconds matching the airlock to the outer nothingness would take more time than she had. She’d have to blow it out. Full pressure to nothing in a fraction of a second. If she held her breath, it would pop her lungs. She would have to blow herself empty first, let the void into her. All around her heart. Even if it worked, it would do her damage.

She could handle that.

The voices were loud and getting louder. Someone shouted, “Find the fucking bitch!” Cyn sloped in past the lockers. His eyes widened. Sárta was behind him. Good, she thought. Perfect. Let them see. The indicator went from green to red under her thumb. Cyn launched across the room with a wordless cry as the inner door started to close. For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t make it, but his hands caught the edge of the door and hauled himself through. She tried to push him back, but he forced his way in.

The airlock door closed behind him, the magnetic seals clacking. Naomi held the handhold by the control panel, waiting for him to hit her. To kick. To put her in a chokehold. The lock was small enough he could put flat palms on both doors. She couldn’t get away from him if he attacked, but he didn’t. On the other side of the door, Sárta was shouting. Naomi thumbed the emergency override. Three options appeared: OPEN SHIP DOOR, OPEN OUTER DOOR, RETURN TO CYCLE.

“Knuckles, no you hagas eso.” His hands were spread before him, wide and empty. “Bist bien. Bist bien alles.”

“What are you doing?” Naomi said, surprised to hear the pain in her voice. “Why did you do that?”

“Because you my people, yeah? We’re Belt. Born on the float. You, me. Alles la.” Tears were welling up in his eyes, waves sheeting over pupil and iris with no gravity to fight the surface tension. “We travel so far, vide – uns the promised land. And we go all of us together. Tu y mé y alles.”

“You aren’t saving me,” she said.

The big man crossed his arms. “Then I’m die trying. You’re my people. We look out for each other. Take care. Not going to stand by while you die. Won’t.”

She should have been panting, forcing oxygen into her blood. She should have been flying across the emptiness. Cyn floated, turning slowly clockwise a degree at a time, his lips pressed tight, daring her to deny him. Daring her not to see that she was loved here, that she had family here, that she belonged.

Someone hit the inner door of the lock. The voices were louder. More numerous. Naomi knew she could open the door, but if she did, Cyn wouldn’t be the only one going out it. If he’d wanted to, he could have beaten her down by now. That he hadn’t meant he’d chosen not to. Naomi’s heart felt trapped between stones. She couldn’t blow the door. She had to. She couldn’t kill Cyn. She couldn’t save him. Whatever you do now, she thought, you will regret it forever. Seconds passed.

Another voice. Filip on the other side of the airlock door. She could hear him shouting, telling her to open the door. He sounded frantic.

How the hell did she keep getting into these situations?

“Be strong,” Cyn said. “For Filipito, be strong.”

“Okay,” she said. She pushed her jaw forward in a yawn, opening her throat and her Eustachian tubes. Cyn yelped as she hit OPEN OUTER DOOR. Air tugged at her once, hard, as it evacuated. Adrenaline flooded her blood as she was assaulted invisibly on every square centimeter of flesh. The breath in her lungs rushed out of her, trying to pull her lungs along with it. Cyn grabbed at the airlock frame to keep himself inside, spun, screaming, was gone.

With her lungs empty, there was no reserve. She wasn’t holding her breath, surviving off the gas held inside her. Someone could hold their breath for a couple minutes. In the vacuum, she could make it maybe fifteen seconds unaided.

One thousand one. Naomi shifted, hand over hand, to brace against the inner door and look out. The void was there, the great dome of stars. The Chetzemoka glowed in sunlight brighter than the Earth had ever seen. The umbilical hung to her left, too bright to look at directly and more than halfway retracted. Her ribs ached; her eyes ached. Her diaphragm tugged at her gut, trying to inflate lungs squeezed to knots. If she’d had an EVA suit, it would have had attitude thrusters. Without them, she had one chance and no time to think about it. One thousand two. She launched.

For a moment, she saw Cyn in the corner of her eye, a flicker of pale movement. The sun was below her, vast and bright. Radiant heat pressed against her throat and face. The Milky Way spread out, arching across the endless sky. Carbon dioxide built up in her blood; she could feel it in the burning drive to breathe. The Chetzemoka grew slowly larger. One thousand five. Shadows streaked its side, every protrusion and rivet cutting the sunlight into strips of darkness. Everything fell slightly out of focus as her eyes deformed. The stars shifted from diamond points of light to halos to clouds, like the whole universe dissolving. She’d thought it would be silent, but she heard her heartbeat like someone hammering in the next deck.