Alex shut off the mic, and rubbed his cheek. They were on the float now, course matched with the mysterious ship only about fifty kilometers above them on the relative z-axis. The sun, larger by far than he’d ever seen it from Mars, glowed below them, heating the little pinnace almost to the limit of its ability to shed the energy. Behind him, Bobbie was watching the same feed he was.
“That doesn’t look good,” she said.
“Nope.”
As a boy, back on Mars, there had been a little improvised firework that his friends would sometimes make for fun. All it took was a length of light-duty pipe, a mining spike, and a single-use rocket motor. The way it worked, they’d spike one end of the pipe to a flat section of wall, fix the motor to the other end with industrial tape or epoxy with the thrust pointing off to one side. Fire the motor, and the whole thing turned into a ring of smoke and fire, the pipe spinning around its axis faster than the eye could follow, the flare of the motor exhaust blinding and flickering. Sometimes the motor came loose and bounced along the corridor, posing a threat to everyone watching. Sometimes the spike came loose. Most times, it just left a circle of scrapes and scorch marks on the stone of the wall that pissed off the maintenance crews. They called them fire weasels. He didn’t know why.
Above them, the Chetzemoka was spinning like a fire weasel. She wasn’t quite tumbling, but the circle she was burning in was tight. All the acceleration she’d been using to burn hard out toward the Belt and Holden was getting eaten now, each point on her pathway canceling out the point a hundred and eighty degrees off from it. Her exhaust plume was a jet of flame and plasma that would glass anything that tried to approach her unless it came from above or below. And if they did that…
“What do you think happened?” Bobbie asked.
“Maneuvering thruster fired off, never got balanced.”
“Can you match course with that? I mean even if we decided we wanted to?”
Alex pressed the tip of his tongue to the back of his teeth and willed Naomi to call him. To give him a sign that she was still alive. That he wasn’t about to risk his ship and his life and the lives of the people with him to rescue a corpse. “Might have to come up with something clever.”
He pulled up the tactical display. The Razorback and her cloud of missiles with no one left to shoot at. The Chetzemoka chasing its tail like a terrier that had gulped down its own body weight in uppers. Then, far distant, the UN escort decelerating in from the sun toward a matching course, and the Roci doing the same from the Belt. Everything was coming together right here – the head of the OPA, the prime minister of Mars, Avasarala’s best cavalry – because it was where Naomi Nagata was, and as long as Alex and Holden were drawing breath, they’d be looking out for their own.
The screen lit up with an incoming message, but not from the Chetzemoka. Alex accepted it, and Holden appeared on the screen. For about four seconds, the captain didn’t do anything but look into the camera and scratch his nose. He looked tired and thin. Alex felt the same way himself. Then a smile bloomed on Holden’s face, and he seemed more like himself again. “Alex! Good. Tell me what we’re looking at.”
“Well, we haven’t had any new messages since their radio cut out, but if that was an intentional message, this looks like about the worst definition of ‘in control’ I’ve seen in a while. This mystery ship’s not quite on the tumble, but she’s damned close. The way she’s chasing her tail, it’s not going to be easy making an approach, but I’m working on an idea. The Razorback wasn’t built for airlock to airlock. This here’s the kind of ride you land in a hangar. But we’ve got EVA suits for me and Nate. That’s the prime minister. I call him Nate now. Don’t be jealous. Anyway, I figu
re we put the Razorback at the center of the circle Naomi’s making with our nose up and our ass down, then match roll to the circle she’s making. Then as long as no one pukes in their helmet, we can send someone over to the airlock. Not sure it’ll work, but it’s the best idea I’ve got so far.”
He leaned forward while the tightbeam laser flew the four light-seconds out to the Rocinante, then the four light-seconds back. To judge from the shape of Holden’s face, he was probably at more than one g. Even if the Chetzemoka hadn’t gone into its surprise spin, the Razorback would have been the first to reach it. Holden’s temporary pilot was going to be buying Alex a beer, provided nothing new and unexpected blew up on them. Not that he’d have given good odds on that.
Five seconds in, he remembered that he’d wanted to mention that Bobbie had power armor. He didn’t say it, though, since it would just interrupt whatever Holden was saying right then that wouldn’t be back to Alex for a few more seconds. Light-delay conversations were all about etiquette and taking turns.
“Why don’t we try that as proof of concept?” Holden said. “If it looks like something we can do, I can have the Roci take your place when we get there. Then if we need to cut in through the hull, we can. Have you had any sign from Naomi?”
“Not yet —” Alex began, but it turned out Holden hadn’t been finished, just pausing for breath.
“Because that whole ‘Tell James Holden I’m in control’ thing was weird on a lot of levels. I checked the vocal profile of the message coming off the Chetzemoka – well, actually Fred did. It wouldn’t have occurred to me. Anyway, the way she said James Holden in the first warning message about the bad bottle drivers and the way it was in this new one? Exactly the same. Fred thinks the new message may have been faked. Only then the way it got modified before it shut off… I’m seeing something here, Alex. But I don’t know what it is.”
This time Alex waited until he was sure Holden was done before he started talking. “We haven’t had any sign at all, but it seems to me that someone on the ship’s been trying to raise a flag. And this flying in circles bit makes it seem a lot less like a Trojan horse. Nothing to gain by doing it, other than make everyone inside feel powerfully like throwing up. Honestly, I don’t know what we’re looking at here either, Cap’n, and I don’t think we’re going to know until we get someone inside.”
Eight long seconds there and back again. “I’m just worried that if she is in there and the ship’s out of control, we’re going to be sitting out here dithering while she needs us. I can’t stand the idea that we’ve come this close, and now we’re going to lose her. I know it’s a little crazy, but I’m a little crazy right now. I keep thinking of her being smashed up against the wall by the spin, and me out here where I can’t do anything.”
“Yeah, thruster misfires don’t work like that,” Alex said. “You don’t get any sideways impulse unless the thruster’s actually going. After that, you’ve got a little spin station action pushing the folks behind the center of spin down and the folks forward of it up, but all that is gonna be in line with the thrust from the drive, so all you actually get is —”
“Alex!” Bobbie said. “We’ve got something.”
He twisted on his couch, then turned it to face her. Bobbie’s eyes were on the wall screen. A panel was there, opened to the view from the upper camera. The Chetzemoka was still in its mad spin, but something had come off, floating now across the clear, empty void, stars behind it like the glittering pupil of a vast eye. The eye of the storm. Bobbie tried to zoom in on it the same moment Alex did, and the system made a confused, upset chime, the focus fluctuating wildly before coming to rest. A figure in an EVA suit. There were no lights on the suit, and its back was turned to them, the intense sunlight making the gray material shine almost too brightly to make out details.
“Is she alive?” Alex said.
“She’s moving.”
“How long ago did she come out?”
“Not long,” Bobbie said. “Seconds.”
The figure in the EVA suit lifted her arms, crossing them over her head. The Belter signal for danger. Alex felt his heart speed up.
“Alex!” Holden said, from four seconds ago. “What’s going on?”
“Someone came out of the ship. Let me figure this out, and I’ll be back with a report,” Alex said, then cut the connection. On Bobbie’s screen, the figure had shifted to a time signal. Five minutes.