Persepolis Rising (Expanse 7)

Amos found the conduit he was looking for, lit up the torch, and opened a six-centimeter length of it, exposing the plastic-sheathed wire inside it without so much as melting the insulation. It was a good trick. Amos killed the torch.

“So,” Holden said again. “How’s it going?”

Amos paused. Turned to look at Holden.

“Ah,” the big mechanic said. “Sorry there, Cap. Were we having a conversation and I didn’t notice?”

“Kind of, yes,” Holden said.

“Babs ratted me out.” Amos’ voice was as calm as the surface of still water. Holden was pretty certain something big was swimming underneath it.

“Look,” he said, “we didn’t get where we are by me prying into things you didn’t want pried into. I don’t want to change that now. But yes, Bobbie’s worried about you. I am too. We’re going into some pretty dangerous times here, and if there’s anything that you need to get off your chest, now is a better time than later.”

Amos shrugged. “Nah, I get it. I got a little happy when we went on that last run. Opened up sooner than Babs would have liked. I’ll rein in some if it makes her feel better.”

“I don’t want to make an issue of it,” Holden said.

“It ain’t an issue, then,” Amos said, turning back to the conduit. He took a thick pair of pliers from his pocket, clamped them over the power cable, and started wrestling it out like he was

getting crab meat out of a shell. It looked really dangerous. “I’ll play nice. Cross my heart.”

“Okay, then,” Holden said. “Great. Glad we had this talk.”

“Anytime,” Amos said.

Holden hesitated, turned, and walked away. Bobbie was right. He didn’t know what was going on in Amos’ mind, but something definitely was. He was hard-pressed to think what the good version of that looked like. And if Amos was finally coming off the rails, he had no idea what would cause it or how to fix it.

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Bobbie

The representatives from the Voltaire Collective entered the meeting space like they were anticipating an attack. She would have felt the same if the positions were reversed. Three in the front with unencumbered hands, three in the back looking around like tourists coming to a casino for the first time in case something interesting or threatening would come from behind, and in the center, Katria Mendez. Her face was the expressionless calm of a player at a poker table. The kind that always left with more chips than she came with. Just seeing her made Bobbie’s cheek throb a little. Psychosomatic pain, but pain all the same. She registered the sensation but didn’t let it bother her.

Saba stepped forward, Holden at his side, and greeted them, waved them forward with smiles and Belter salutes. He let them check him for weapons first as a kind of social courtesy, and Holden did the same. The old phrase from back in the day came to Bobbie’s mind: There’s OPA and there’s OPA. Same now as it had been then. It was always a little eerie to see how comfortably the men and women of the Transport Union fell back into being criminals. And how well she and the crew of the Roci fit in with them when they did.

Amos stretched his shoulders and neck.

“I know,” Bobbie said. “I don’t like it either.”

“Don’t recognize the one with the nose,” Amos said, pointing with his chin toward Katria’s bodyguard. “The other ones, I’m pretty sure we danced with.”

Bobbie considered their faces. The one Amos was talking about stood in the rear, just behind Katria. He had olive skin, close-cropped hair, and a long nose that had been broken a couple times and not set right. A white scar marked one nostril like someone had slit it for him once. She was pretty sure she’d have remembered him if she’d run into him before. The others, she wasn’t as certain. Katria, obviously, and two of her guards at the front all seemed familiar enough.

“Maybe we’ll get to know him,” Bobbie said.

“Now you’re just flirting with me, Babs. Promising a good dustup when everyone else is here for talking.”

“Yeah, well,” Bobbie said. “A girl can dream.”

The banter felt almost normal, but she wasn’t easy with it. Not yet. She was plenty willing to play along for the moment, though. Katria caught her eye and nodded. Bobbie smiled, her cheek pulling at its new scab, and nodded back. It could have been respect between equals or the handshake at the start of a fight. Bobbie figured they’d all find out which soon enough.

The meeting space was new to her. A long, thin room that had been part of the water-recycling system recently enough that it still smelled a little bit of wet plant and sewage. Twice as long as it was wide, there was enough space for the Roci crew, Saba, and a half dozen of his most trusted crew. The ones who already knew the plan. It wasn’t a pleasant spot, but the cartography of the underground’s borders were shifting now, more and more often. The Laconian surveys had been finding the holes in the system surveillance, denying them free access to the corridors and units they’d made their own. They’d been spending more and more of their time in the monitored public spaces. Part of that had been reconnaissance for her plan. Part of that had been that there were fewer and fewer spaces left on Medina where they could speak freely.

All through the station, there were soldiers and crowd-suppression drones. It didn’t bother her, passing the people with haunted eyes, walking like the deck might be too fragile to support their mass. She understood them. The others, the ones who were laughing and talking and listening to music loud enough that she could hear the bass, bothered her more. They were acting like the open-air prisons and the power-armored Marines, the communications control and shift curfews were normal. And because of that, they were.

It wouldn’t be long before the Laconians started shipping through the slow zone again. Maybe she and the others would be allowed back on the Roci when that happened, but Bobbie found it hard to believe there wouldn’t be monitors placed in there too. It could take Naomi and Clarissa days or weeks to purge them all and make their ship fully their own again.

And by then, it would be too late anyway. Every day, every hour, brought the Typhoon’s arrival closer. And once it had cleared the Laconia gate, staying ahead of the occupying forces became orders of magnitude more difficult. Which was the optimist’s way of saying “impossible.” Bobbie felt the pressure of time slipping away like she was watching a door close, with her on the wrong side of it. If it hadn’t been for the time pressure, she wouldn’t have gone along with Saba’s suggestion to reach out to the Voltaire Collective. Or at least not so soon after she and Amos had kicked their asses.

The only good thing was that Katria and her people were just as screwed as Saba and Bobbie and Holden, and by the same things.