Tiamat's Wrath (Expanse 8)

“Copy that,” Caspar said. He pulled off the heavy hooded jacket he was wearing and handed it to Alex. Alex put the jacket on and passed his terminal to Caspar. The kid would wander the station for a couple hours. Anyone who was tracking Alex by terminal location would be sent on a merry chase. It was unlikely that anyone was tracking any of them. The terminals were as stripped down and anonymized as it was possible to make them. If their false identities had been cracked, they would probably already have been picked up by security and in

terrogated by Laconian operatives. But Bobbie had laid down the operational security law, and they all followed her rules to the letter.

Caspar took the terminal and stuffed it into his jumpsuit pocket, then gave Alex a cheery little wave and headed for the door. “Wait,” Alex said.

“Everything okay?” Something in Alex’s tone had put a little worry line between the younger man’s eyes. Nothing is okay, Alex wanted to reply, but didn’t.

“Just be careful. Something happens to you, it doubles my workload.” He tried to make it a joke, but it fell flat. The line between Caspar’s eyes deepened.

“I don’t need you to daddy me, Alex. I know my job.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Alex said, then leaned against the wall and rubbed his eyes. His headache made him want to press his face against it. Only a thin layer of composites and insulation separated him from the natural tunnel. Maybe some ice that was as old as the solar system itself would be cool enough to numb the throb in his temples.

“It’s no big deal,” Caspar said. “But my father pulled up stakes when I was seven. I didn’t need one then, and I don’t now.”

“Fair enough. Truth is…”

Caspar waited. Alex heaved a sigh.

“Truth is I’m worried shitless about my own kid, and I’m just projecting onto you. Don’t take it as anything else, okay?”

Alex waited for Caspar to leave, but he didn’t. Instead he sat down on a stack of boxes labeled SOY NOODLES and crossed his arms. “You think the Laconians know it was us?”

“What? No, I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t fuck around, Alex. I have family too.”

“It’s not that,” Alex said. He spotted a small bag of dehydrated onion flakes and picked it up. It felt cold in his hand, and heavenly when he pressed it to his temple. Caspar sat on his boxes, staring and bouncing one knee impatiently.

“Then what is it?”

“He’s getting serious,” Alex said. “Maybe even married. Probably married. It’s just making me think about how much I don’t want to mess things up for him. You always think you’re going to leave things better for your kid than you found them for yourself. That’s not working out for me.”

Alex moved his bag of onions to the other side of his head, but it had started to warm up.

“Worrying feels like you’re at least doing something,” Caspar said. “I get it. When I started flying for the union, I worried about my mom so that I wouldn’t feel guilty for leaving her behind.”

“You’re too smart for your age,” Alex said. “But yeah, that’s probably it. Or close enough. I was a shit father long before I left my family to play revolutionary.”

“I dunno,” Caspar said, then stood up. “My father took off because my mother asked him to stop spending the rent money on pixie dust. You’d win father of the year if it was down to a two-man race.”

“Thanks,” Alex said, and surprised himself by laughing. “That’s a hell of a compliment.”

Alex’s terminal buzzed in Caspar’s pocket. The kid pulled it out, then said, “Cap wants to know where the fuck you are.”

“On my way.”

The dining room was an abandoned storage space about six meters square with spray foam insulation walls and a carbon fiber door that didn’t even have a latch. Piping that entered through the walls and then just ended hinted at a past as a machine room, though what infrastructure used to occupy the space was lost to history. A tiny green chalk X had been placed on the lower left-hand corner of the door and was surrounded by other graffiti. The graffiti was mostly gang boasts and assertions of sexual prowess. The green X meant the room had been swept for surveillance less than thirty hours ago and found to be clean. If it had been red, the underground would have left the devices in place and abandoned the room.

Bobbie was waiting for him when he arrived. Impatience in the former Marine eluded most people. She didn’t pace. She never bounced a knee or a foot. The only time he’d ever heard her crack her knuckles was before they sparred in the gym. But Alex knew something was up the moment he walked into the room. She was standing perfectly still, but she was stiff, as though she was half flexing every muscle in her body.

“You’re late,” she said.

“I got caught up talking to Caspar at the drop, and now you’re kind of scaring me.”

“We have the battleship that shrugged off the combined fleets of Earth, Mars, and the Transport Union cruising toward us because we killed a high-ranking Laconian officer. If you weren’t already scared, you’re fucking stupid, and I know you’re not fucking stupid, Alex,” Bobbie said.

“Copy that, Gunny. It’s a fair point,” Alex said, and raised his hands in mock surrender. The dining room was his least favorite place to meet, mostly because there was nothing in it to sit on. Instead he found a patch of wall without any pipes sticking out of it and leaned into the foam of the insulation. “Why don’t you get me up to speed?”