Part 5 (2/2)

”Well, it was a suicide attack, and the suicide half worked. The UN fleet in high orbit patrol reduced the freighter to gas a tenth of an AU from the planet. No damage, not much press. But it's possible those were all preliminary. That they're planning some big showy statement about how the Belt can't be ignored. The thing that scares the s.h.i.+t out of me is that no one can figure out what it will be.”

The gently sloping main corridor of the Tycho Station habitation ring was filled with workers. Holden didn't pay much attention to the station schedules, but he a.s.sumed the crowds pa.s.sing him meant it was s.h.i.+ft change. Either that, or an orderly evacuation with no alarms sounding.

”Yo! Holden,” someone said as they pa.s.sed.

”Hey,” Holden said, not sure who he was saying it to.

Celebrity was not something he'd figured out how to handle, yet. People would point, stare, whisper to each other when he walked by. He knew it generally wasn't intended as insult. Just the surprise people felt when someone they'd only seen on video screens before suddenly appeared in the real world. Most of the murmured conversations, when he could overhear them, consisted of Is that James Holden? I think that's James Holden.

”Holden,” a woman walking toward him down the corridor said, ”what's up?”

There were fifteen thousand people on Tycho, working in three different s.h.i.+fts. It was like a small city in s.p.a.ce. He couldn't remember if the woman speaking to him was someone he should know or not, so he just smiled and said, ”Hey, how's it going?”

”Same same,” she said as they pa.s.sed.

When he reached the door to his apartment it was a relief that the only person inside was Naomi. She sat at the dining table, a steaming mug of tea in front of her, a distant look in her eyes. Holden couldn't tell if she was melancholy or solving a complex engineering problem in her head. Those looks were confusingly similar.

He pulled himself a cup of water out of the kitchen tap, then sat across from her waiting for her to speak first. She looked up through her hair at him and gave him a sad smile. Melancholy, then, not engineering.

”Hey,” she said.

”Hey.”

”So I have a thing.”

”Is it a thing I can fix?” Holden asked. ”Point me at the thing.”

Naomi sipped at her tea, buying time. Not a good sign, because it meant this was something she wasn't sure how to talk about. Holden felt his stomach muscles tightening.

”That's kind of the problem, actually,” she said. ”I need to go do something, and I can't have you involved in it. At all. Because if you are, you'll try to fix it and you can't do that.”

”I don't understand,” Holden said.

”When I come back, I promise full and complete disclosure.”

”Wait. Come back? Where are you going?”

”Ceres, to start,” Naomi said. ”But it may be more than that. I'm not sure how long I'll be gone.”

”Naomi,” Holden said, reaching across the table to take her hand. ”You're scaring the s.h.i.+t out of me right now. There's no way you can jet off to Ceres without me. Especially if it's something bad, and I'm getting the feeling it's something really bad.”

Naomi put down her tea, and gripped his hand in both of hers. The fingers that had been holding the mug were warm, the others cool. ”Except that is what's happening. There's no negotiation on this. So, either I go because you understand and will give me the s.p.a.ce to handle this on my own, or I go because we've broken up and you no longer get any vote in what I do.”

”Wait, what?”

”Have we broken up?” Naomi asked. She squeezed his hand.

”No, of course not.”

”Then thank you for trusting me enough to let me handle this on my own.”

”Is that what I just said?” Holden asked.

”Yeah, pretty much.” Naomi stood up. She had a packed duffel on the floor next to her chair that Holden hadn't seen. ”I'll be in touch when I can, but if I can't, don't read anything into it. Okay?”

”Okay,” Holden replied. The whole scene had taken on a vaguely dreamlike feel. Naomi, standing at the end of the table holding her olive-green duffel bag, seemed very far away. The room felt bigger than it was, or else Holden had shrunk. He stood up too, and vertigo made him dizzy.

Naomi dropped the duffel on the table and wrapped both arms around him. Her chin was against his forehead when she whispered, ”I'll be back. I promise.”

”Okay,” he said again. His brain had lost the ability to form any other words.

After one last tight squeeze, she picked up her bag and walked to the door.

”Wait!” he said.

She looked back.

”I love you.”

”I love you too,” she said, and then was gone.

Holden sat back down, because it was that or sink to the floor. He finally pulled himself out of the chair a minute or an hour later; it was hard to tell. He had almost called Amos to join him for a drink when he remembered Amos and Alex were gone too.

Everyone was.

It was strange how nothing could change while everything did. He still got up every morning, brushed his teeth, put on a fresh set of clothes, and ate breakfast. He arrived at the repair docks by nine a.m. local time, put on a vacuum suit, and joined the crew working on the Rocinante. For eight hours he'd climb through the skeletal ribs of the s.h.i.+p, attaching conduit, installing replacement maneuvering thrusters, patching holes. He didn't know how to do everything that needed to be done, but he wanted to, so he shadowed the technicians doing the really complicated work.

It all felt very normal, very routine, almost like still having his old life.

But then he'd return to his apartment eight hours later and no one would be there. He was truly alone for the first time in years. Amos wouldn't come by asking him to hit a bar. Alex wouldn't watch the video streams sitting on his couch and making sarcastic comments to the screen. Naomi wouldn't be there to ask about his day and compare notes on how the repairs were coming. The rooms even smelled empty.

It wasn't something about himself he'd ever had to face before, but Holden was coming to realize how much he needed family. He'd grown up with eight parents, and a seemingly endless supply of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. When he'd left Earth for the Navy, he'd spent four years at the academy with roommates and cla.s.smates and girlfriends. Even after his dishonorable discharge, he'd gone straight to work for Pur'N'Kleen on the Canterbury and a whole new loose-knit family of coworkers and friends. Or if not family, at least people.

The only two people he'd been close with on Tycho were Fred, so busy with his political machinations he barely had time to breathe, and Sam, who'd died in the slow zone years ago. The new Sam Sakai was a competent engineer and seemed to take fixing his s.h.i.+p seriously, but had expressed no interest in any a.s.sociation outside of that.

So Holden spent a lot of time in bars.

The Blauwe Blome was too noisy and too filled with people who knew Naomi but not him. The places close to the docks were full of boisterous workers coming off s.h.i.+ft and picking a fight with a famous guy seemed like a great way to blow off steam. Anyplace else with more than four people in it at a time turned into line up to have your picture taken with James Holden then ask him personal questions for an hour. So, he found a small restaurant nestled in a side corridor between a residential section and a strip of commercial shopping outlets. It specialized in what the Belters were calling Italian food and had a small bar in a back room that everyone seemed to ignore.

Holden could sit at a tiny table skimming the latest news on his hand terminal, reading messages, and finally check out all the books he'd downloaded over the last six years. The bar served the same food as the restaurant out front, and while it was not something anyone from Earth would have mistaken for Italian, it was edible. The c.o.c.ktails were mediocre and cheap.

It might almost have been tolerable if Naomi hadn't seemingly fallen out of the universe. Alex sent regular updates about where he was and what he was up to. Amos had his terminal automatically send a message letting Holden know his flight had landed on Luna, and then New York. From Naomi, nothing. She still existed, or at least her hand terminal did. The messages he sent arrived somewhere. He never got a failed connection from the network. But the successfully received message was his only reply.

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