Persepolis Rising (Expanse 7)

They were silent for a long moment. Amos tried sitting up again, and managed it this time.

“All right,” Bobbie said. “I get it.”

“You do?”

“Close enough,” she said. “I get it close enough.”

She levered herself up to standing, then held a hand out to him. He took it, his hand on her wrist, hers on his. They pulled together and got him to standing. Her face was almost unmarked, but there were some bruises starting to show around her neck. “You really beat the shit out of me,” he said.

“Would have been easier to kill you,” Babs said, and grinned with bloody teeth. “But I feel like we still need your dumb ass.”

He nodded. She was right about both things.

“We should get you some ice,” he said.

“Fuck you,” she said. “If I did half my job, you’ll be stuffing your jock with every cold thing we have.”

“Yeah. You can have it when I’m done, though.”

She managed another bloody smile and turned toward the door.

“Hey, Babs,” he said. “No hard feelings, right?”

“Just next time you need to beat someone up, how about you don’t insult me first.”

He chuckled. It hurt.

“If I need to beat someone up, I’ve got a whole station full of possibilities. But if I’m looking to lose a fight, I’m pretty much down to just you.”

She took a second. “Fair point.”

It took him about five minutes to get to the head. He washed up the best he could, but he was going to need some fresh clothes, and washing his eye pulled the clot a little bit loose. It started bleeding again. He’d talk to Saba about getting someone to stitch it closed. But clothes first.

“Jesus Christ,” Peaches said when he stepped into the room. “What happened?”

“Huh? Oh, you mean this? Me and Babs were doing a little sparring. I put my face where it shouldn’t have been. It ain’t nothing.”

Her face balanced between not believing him and choosing to, despite the thinness of the lie. He looked at her collarbone, waiting for the thing to come up with some way to break it, but nothing came. So that was good.

“You need to be less rusty,” she said at last.

“That’s not wrong,” Amos said. “What’re you up to?”

“I was going to go smear some food on my mouth like a toddler,” she said.

“Sounds good,” he said. “I’ll go with you.”

Chapter Forty: Naomi

Wake up. We have to go,” someone said. “Now. Go, go, go.”

Naomi forced her eyelids open. Her feet hit the decking before the dream she’d been in loosed its grip on her mind. There had been a fire. She’d been talking to it … she felt herself forgetting, the dream dissolving like sugar floss in water.

Amos rolled off his bunk with a grunt of pain and went to help Clarissa up. Alex was tugging his jumpsuit up over thin, brown legs. The new voice belonged to a girl too young for the split-circle tattoo on the back of her hands.

“What’s going on?” Bobbie said. “We got a problem?”

“Saba got word we need to go, so we go. Now go.”