“Que sa?” the man said.
“I’m tired,” Filip said.
“Be tired somewhere else,” the tech said. “I’ve got two more hours down.”
Filip put his heel against the crash couch and spun it. The tech reached out a hand, stopped it, and unstrapped. “Fine,” he said. “You’re so fucking tired, sleep then.”
The tech took his clothes, muttering under his breath, and left. Filip locked the door behind him and folded himself into the couch, still in his uniform that stank of sweat and the vac-suit seals. The tears tried to come then, but he bit them back, pushed the hurt down into his gut until it settled into something else.
Marco was wrong. His father had embarrassed himself because Holden and Johnson and Naomi got past them. It was like Miral said. Men got like that, and they said things they didn’t mean. Did things they wouldn’t do if they were thinking straight.
Filip hadn’t fucked it up. Marco was wrong, that was all. This time, he just got it wrong.
Words came into his mind, as clear as if they’d been spoken. Though he’d never heard her speak them, they came in his mother’s voice. Wonder what else he got wrong.
Chapter Thirty-One: Pa
Eugenia was a terrible place to put a base of operations. It was less an asteroid than a complex pile of loose scrap and black gravel traveling in company. Neither the asteroid itself nor the tiny moon that circled it had ever suffered the gravity to press them together or the heat it would take to fuse them. Eugenia and other duniyaret like it offered nothing solid to build on, no internal structure to shore up. Even mining it was hard, the tissue of the asteroid too fast to shift and fall apart. Build a dome there, and the air would seep out through the ground it was built on. Try to spin it up, and it would fly apart. The science station that Earth had built there three generations ago and abandoned was little more than a ruin of sealed concrete and flaking ceramic. A ghost town of the Belt.
The only things it had to recommend it at all were that it wasn’t inhabited already and its orbit wasn’t too distant from Ceres and the questionable protection of the consolidated fleet. And even that proximity was only temporary. With Ceres’ orbital period a couple percent faster than Eugenia’s, every day added a little bit to the distance between them, stretching the bubble of safety until it would eventually, inevitably pop. In fairness, if they were still using it to escape the Free Navy when Eugenia and Ceres drifted to the far side of the sun from each other, they’d have bigger problems.
Instead of trying to build on the surface of the asteroid, Michio’s little fleet had begun assembling a nakliye port that orbited around Eugenia’s main body: shipping containers welded one to another to make passageways, warehouses, airlocks. A tiny reactor was enough to keep the air circulating and enough heat to balance what was lost to radiation. It was temporary by design. Inexpensive, fast to assemble, and made from material so standardized and ubiquitous that a solution discovered once could be applied in a thousand other situati
ons. It grew from a seed of three or four containers, spreading out, connecting, reinforcing, making distance where distance was needed, bringing together where it was not, spreading like a snowflake the white of rotting sealant.
There were stories of the poorest Belters living in nakliye stations for years, but more often they were used as Michio used them: storage and refueling stations. Floating warehouses without taxes or tariffs to bite into the operating budgets of the prospector. Hyperdistilled water to give pirates reaction mass and potables and oxygen. The older siblings to the scattered supply dumps the Free Navy had consigned to the void. On her monitor, it looked like some ancient sea creature, still experimenting with multiple cells. And beside it, the Panshin, compact and sleek.
The ship had matched orbit so precisely it seemed motionless beside the port, as if the two were connected. The flares of working lights and welding torches studded the station’s skin, and the spidery shapes of mechs shepherded supplies to it from the Panshin. The Connaught had shut down its Epstein hours before to keep from slagging the port and the Panshin besides, and eased into her own gentle orbit on maneuvering thrusters. The deceleration burn was less like thrust gravity than a suggestion that Michio snuggle into her crash couch.
“They’re painting us. Should I acknowledge?” Evans asked.
Everything was a question with him now. Ever since the scare at Ceres Station, his confidence had shattered. It was a problem, but like so many of her problems, she wasn’t sure how to fix it. “Please do,” she said. “Let them know I’ll be coming over.”
“Yes, sir,” Evans said, turning to his monitor. Michio stretched, forcing her blood along its course. She didn’t know why she should feel anxious about seeing Ezio Rodriguez again. She had known him for years, on and off. Another partner in the ongoing struggle to keep the Belt from being used and discarded by the inners and their allies. Only now, he’d taken her side against the Free Navy. This would be the first time she’d breathed his same air since her relief effort had become what it had become. And what did you take to a meeting with a man who’d agreed with you enough to risk his life and the lives of his crew? A thank-you card?
Michio laughed, and Oksana looked over. Michio shook her head. It wouldn’t be funny out loud.
“The Panshin acknowledges, sir,” Evans said. “Captain Rodriguez is on the port.”
“Then the port it is,” Michio said, unstrapping herself. “Oksana, the ship’s yours.”
“Sir,” Oksana said, but there was a little disappointment in the word. She’d wanted to come along too, but someone had to keep an eye on Evans, and those two had been coming closer of late. Maybe having some time alone with Oksana would put Evans in a place where he could talk about what was bothering him. Better if the impulse came from him. Ordering someone to disclose their private fears wasn’t good leadership. And no matter how much Michio was his wife, she was also his captain.
The Connaught came to her place less than a kilometer from the Panshin and Eugenia port. That was Oksana showing off a little, but Michio didn’t mind. It made her transit short and easy. The vac suit was Martian, armored but not powered. Well-made, like everything Marco had bartered for. Bertold and Nadia came with, each carrying a sidearm. They passed out of the Connaught’s airlock and into the gap, moving slow to conserve fuel and talking about whose turn it was to cook that night while the stars slid between their feet. Michio felt the unexpected tug of happiness. It was amazing to think that people lived their whole lives on a planet’s surface and never had even one moment like this one, the closeness of intimate family and a vastness to rival God in the same breath.
The airlock was set halfway into one of the shipping containers, the walls cutting off the spread of the galaxy before they reached the door. All three cycled in together. As soon as the indicator went green, Michio checked her suit to confirm and then turned off her own oxygen supply and cracked open her seals.
The air inside the port stank of spent oxy-fuel and overheated metal. The percussion of someone’s music carried farther than the rest of the song, making the port throb a little. A steady, mechanical heartbeat. The lights were all unsoftened LEDs, sharp-edged shadows creeping along the ceramic walls as they pulled themselves through the long corridors. Magnetic pallets clung to the surfaces, making no distinction between wall, floor, and ceiling. Old hand terminals had been fixed to each, showing what it contained, where it had come from.
A woman in a transport mech shifted away to the side as they passed, the arms of the mech pulling in close like a spider. She saluted to Michio and Bertold and Nadia equally, with an air that said she didn’t know who they were and didn’t care. So long as they were on the same side, they were good with her.
They found Captain Rodriguez in one of the hubs. Nine containers opened their mouths in each of the six directions, fifty-four in all, and were meant to be packed full. Michio could tell at a glance that they weren’t. Ezio Rodriguez was a thin-faced man with a trim beard streaked with white, though the rest of his face looked young. He wore his hair cut to the scalp. His suit, like hers, was Martian design. Unlike her, he’d customized it: a starburst blazon on the back between his shoulder blades and the split circle of the OPA as if it were on an armband. Half a dozen other people were moving pallets in the containers around them, shouting to each other through the free air instead of using their radios. Their voices echoed.
“Captain Pa,” Rodriguez said. “Bien avisé. Been too long.”
“Captain,” Michio said. “The Connaught’s come to relieve you. Take our turn building and standing guard, sa sa?”
“Welcome to it,” Rodriguez said, spreading his arms. “Not much, y not nothing.”