“We both know Alex’s going to die in that pilot’s chair. Bobbie’s at home here. Clarissa’s health isn’t great. And I don’t know, but if she decides to try a skilled-nursing facility on Ceres or something, I get the feeling Amos may go with her.”
Holden let that idea sink in. He didn’t understand the bond between Amos and Clarissa except that it was fierce and platonic and had lasted through years. If it was love, it didn’t look like any version he’d ever experienced, but it didn’t look like anything else either. He ran his mind over the idea of Amos still on the Rocinante without Clarissa. He’d never considered it before. It was a melancholy prospect.
“Yeah, maybe,” Holden said. Then, a
moment later, “Yeah.”
“We’re getting up to the same age Fred was when he stroked out on a burn. And you’ve been on daily anticancer meds for more than half of your life now. It doesn’t matter how good they are, that’s going to take a toll on your system. Leave you a little more fragile. So the other thing we can do? Sell our shares. Head down to Titan, pick a resort, and enjoy our retirement.”
No, Holden thought. No, I will never leave this place and these people. This is my home, and no matter what the dangers and threats and fights are, I will stand this ground. This is where I belong. Where we all belong.
Only what came spilling out of his mouth was “God, that sounds wonderful. Let’s do that.”
Naomi leaned forward, her brows furrowed. “Really? Because I’ve got a half dozen other arguments I’ve been working on for why it’s not a terrible idea.”
“Oh yeah, hold on to those,” Holden said. “I’m going to flip my opinion back and forth for weeks. But right now, living in a dome on Titan with you sounds like the single best idea anyone has ever had.”
“You wouldn’t feel like it made you less of a man?”
“Nope.”
“That you were letting the universe down by not taking on every fight there was? Because I worked on that one for a while. I’ve got some good lines practiced up.”
“Keep ’em,” Holden said. “You’ll need them later. But right now, I’m sold.”
Her face relaxed. He could still see the woman she’d been when they were on the Canterbury. Time and age, sorrow and laughter had taken some of the curve out of her cheek, left her skin a little looser at her neck. They weren’t young anymore. Maybe you could only really see that someone was beautiful when they’d grown into themselves. He moved to kiss her—
—and drifted off the crash couch.
With the thrust suddenly cut, leaning up had pushed him into the cabin, twisting as he floated. He reached back with his foot automatically, trying to hook it into one of the holds, but the ship was flipping, so it took a couple tries. Naomi had already braced herself on the frame of the crash couch.
“Well,” Holden said. “I guess Drummer changed her mind about letting Houston come to Medina. That’s disappointing.”
“Weird that Alex wouldn’t sound the alert first, though,” Naomi said, and then tapped her system console. “Alex? Everything all right?”
“I was about to ask you,” the pilot said through the speaker. “We have a change of plan?”
Holden pulled his hand terminal out of his pocket. “Amos? Did you just do a flip-and-burn?”
“Hey, Cap,” Amos’ real voice said behind him as the big man floated into the doorframe. “Wasn’t me. We got something going on?”
A chill ran down Holden’s back that had nothing to do with temperature. Naomi was already on it, querying the Roci’s logs and control systems, but Clarissa’s voice came from the speaker before she could find anything.
“I received an alert from the air recyclers,” she said, her reedy voice stronger than usual. “It got a manual command from engineering to drop oxygen output to zero and flood nitrogen.”
“That’s not good,” Holden said. “We shouldn’t do that.”
“I had an aftermarket override in place. No one changes my environmental settings without my say-so,” Clarissa said, as calmly as if she didn’t mean, My paranoia just saved our lives. “I’d like to know what’s going on, though.”
“Engineering, the machine shop, and the reactor are all locked down,” Naomi said, scrolling through system screens faster than Holden could follow. “I think I’ve got the drive shut down, but I can’t—”
But Holden was already pulling himself out of the room. Amos hauled himself flat against the wall of the corridor as he flew past, then followed along behind him. Through the galley, to the lift, then down one level. His heart was tripping over, the pulse tapping at his eardrums, but it was just adrenaline. Just fear. There wasn’t anything wrong with the air.
He hoped that was true.
The brig wasn’t really a brig so much as one of the crew cabins that had been set aside, the door controls isolated from the system and disabled on the inside. Over the years, nearly a dozen prisoners had spent days or weeks or months in it. Now the door stood halfway open, the control panel flickering and throwing error codes. Holden pulled himself toward it cautiously—doors and corners were where they got you—but when he reached it, he was already sure what he’d find.
The cabin stood empty apart from bits of floating debris. Anti-spalling cloth floated in ribbons. Bits of fluff from the mattress, like February snowflakes that never fell. Bright lines showed where the storage drawer had been pried off its runners and a length of the guide pulled free. A wall screen floated beside the bunk, and the exposed electronics showed where the door locks had been shorted out.