Persepolis Rising (Expanse 7)

SAVE JIM.

She drew a line through them.

Chapter Forty-Four: Bobbie

Tag,” Katria said, then turned to look at her. A ghost of a smile touched the other woman’s lips, and Bobbie wondered just exactly how much of the violence of their first meeting was really forgotten and forgiven. “You ready to play a game?”

After half a beat, Naomi’s gaze tracked over to her. Exhaustion had yellowed her sclera, and her skin had an undertone of ash. She put a hand on Naomi’s shoulder to steady her as much as anything.

“Take care of the kids until I get back.”

“I wil

l. Good hunting.”

The words were a little punch in the gut. Hope you kill someone. Some other Marine who had the bad luck to be born on the wrong side of this. Who’s as loyal to his people as you are to yours. Whoever they are, I hope you get them before they get you. The truth of it was, despite everything, there was a joy in this. She’d spent some of the most important years of her young life training for moments like this one, and as much as she wanted to have grown and matured, aged into a woman of peace, part of her still really liked it.

“Thanks,” Bobbie said, and stepped out.

“Bobbie … I’m sorry.”

Bobbie nodded as Katria scooped up her toolbox. They walked together toward the intersection with a larger corridor. The door closed behind them with a soft click and the whir of the lock. Katria chuckled under her breath, but Bobbie didn’t ask why. She didn’t much want to know.

Most of the people in the corridor were walking, but there were a few carts loaded with containers. At one intersection, a man was driving a loading mech, moving it from one warehouse to another. It was a four-point harness. If she got in by his side, she could loop one arm around his neck and choke him out while she unbuckled him from the controls with the other. Drop him out, swing around, and strap herself in. It would probably take thirty seconds. Maybe less. Easy peasy.

As they walked, she felt herself relaxing, sinking down into her hips as she walked. Lowering her center of gravity. She whistled a little, softly. Katria raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. The screens along the walls announced that the security forces were closing in on the terrorist cell that had blown up the oxygen tanks, but Bobbie didn’t see anyone giving the pair of them a second glance, much less closing in.

There was a sparseness about the halls. Even with the carts and the people, there was an emptiness showing through. Part of it had to be that, with no ships coming in or out of the station, there just wasn’t as much to do as there would have been. But part of it was also fear. People staying in their holes. Staying out away from the checkpoints. Out of trouble.

They took the ramp down, away from the inner surface of the drum. There weren’t many places on the drum that came close to the skin of the station. Most of the outer layers had been designed with radiation shielding in mind. Water tanks, storage for ceramic and metal and steriles. Service halls with anti-spalling covered in paint and conduit and pipes. But there were a few junctions near service airlocks where only a few layers of steel and ceramic and foam separated their feet from the outside. It reminded her of being on one of the old Donnager-class battleships. The bare functionality of the design belonged to a different generation from the residential levels or the inner face of the drum.

The hallway where Katria stopped looked just like the sections they’d been walking through, but she checked the section identifiers painted on the walls and the pipes, then stamped her foot on the deck like she was listening for something in the way it rang.

“Here?” Bobbie asked.

“This is the place. Boost me up.”

Bobbie locked her fingers together into a cradle, and Katria put her foot into it. She didn’t weigh much. Bobbie hauled her up toward the ceiling. Could have kept her there for hours, she thought. Katria caressed the ceiling with her palm, then found what she was looking for, pressed hard enough that Bobbie felt it, and slid a panel aside. A little gap, hardly more than a decimeter, between the panel and the structural beam above it. Katria hoisted her toolbox, checked its orientation, and slid it into place. She pulled the ceiling tile back and tapped Bobbie on the shoulder to be put down.

“That’s it?”

“No,” Katria said, and pulled a bit of black tape from her pocket. After a moment’s consideration, she curled it around a bit of pipe just beside the bomb, then took her hand terminal out and shifted to a screen Bobbie had never seen before. A rough, grainy image of the hallway appeared on it, including her and Katria from the tape’s perspective.

Katria stood directly under the bomb, then tapped her own image on the screen. Red script came up—LOCKED—and she put the terminal back in her pocket.

“Now, that’s it,” she said.

“Okay,” Bobbie said. “Let’s go outside.”

The maintenance airlock was uncrewed. Two vac suits hung in the lockers, a large gray transport box with its lid open and unsealed, and inside of that, a yellow ceramic box beside them with ZEMÎ TOR stenciled on it in black.

The transport box’s wheels were retracted, the steering handle stowed on its side. The walls and lid were only a little thicker than the real thing. Whatever they were using for shielding, it was thin. She hoped it was light too.

Bobbie put on the environment suit, checked her seals and air supply. She and Katria checked each other. The suit had a magnetic tether built into it, a ribbon as wide as her hand and thick as her pinky, dirty from years of use. The airlock itself was set into the floor. The little platform to carry them out to the drum’s surface, and hopefully not fling them out into the emptiness of the slow zone. With both of them and the box, it was a tight fit. Bobbie watched the suit’s sleeve puff out a little as the lock cycled out the air.

Katria pressed her helmet against Bobbie’s and shouted. With only physical conduction to carry the sound, her voice was distant and muffled. “Last chance to back away.”

Bobbie smiled and made an obscene gesture. She could see Katria laughing, but she couldn’t hear it. The lock cycled, and the platform descended.