Part 35 (1/2)

”Okay,” she said. ”I'm good.”

Alex turned back to the flight chief. The woman saluted him, and with his heart in his throat he returned it. The marines who'd escorted them who'd risked their lives to get them this far had already gone. Alex wished he'd thought to thank them.

”I'll get to my station, and then we'll get you out,” the flight chief said. ”You be careful out there.”

”Thank you,” Alex said. He pulled himself into the s.h.i.+p, closed the hatch, and started running through the checklist. The reactor was hot, the Epstein drive showing green across the board. Air and water were at capacity, and the recyclers ready. ”You in place back there, sir?”

”Ready as I'm likely to get,” the man replied.

”You hang on tight,” Alex said to Bobbie. ”This might get rough, and you're not in a crash couch.”

”Yeah I am,” she said, and he could hear the mischievous grin in her voice. ”I'm wearing mine.”

”Well,” Alex said softly. ”Okay, then.”

The clamp lights went from engaged to warning to open, and the Razorback was on the float. Emergency Klaxons sounded, the noise softened by the thinned atmosphere, and the ma.s.sive hangar door began to open. The change in exterior pressure rang the pinnace like a hammer blow. Alex aimed for the widening gap full of darkness and stars, and hit it. The Razorback leaped out into the vacuum, eager and hungry. The display marked a dozen s.h.i.+ps too small for his naked eye to see, and the long, curving shapes of PDC fire like tentacles waving through the void.

”Taking control of the comm laser,” Bobbie said.

”Roger that,” he said. ”This is going to get b.u.mpy.”

He threw the Razorback out the hangar doors at full speed and into the narrow lane between the battles.h.i.+p's PDCs firing on full auto. He spun the pinnace between the lines of high-velocity tungsten, hoping they were enough to stop any missiles the ambus.h.i.+ng s.h.i.+ps fired at them from point-blank range. And then, from behind them, fast-moving bogies in wave after wave. The Razorback's display turned into a solid ma.s.s, the density of the missile swarm too much for the screen to differentiate between them. The entire a.r.s.enal of the battles.h.i.+p launched all at once, and keyed to target on the pinnace's comm laser frequency.

”We've got our escort,” Alex said. ”Let's get out of here. How many gs can you take back there, Draper?”

”If I break a rib, I'll let you know.”

Alex grinned, spun the pinnace toward the sun, and accelerated two g, three, four, four and a half until the system started complaining that it couldn't inject him with anything through the EVA suit. He hit the suit's crude helmet controls with his chin and injected himself with all the amphetamine it had in its tiny emergency pack. The enemy s.h.i.+ps seemed unsure what had just happened, but then they began to turn, thin red triangles on the display. Exhaust plumes competed with the stars behind him as he fell toward the sun, toward Earth and Luna and the rattled remnants of the UN fleet. Alex felt a bloom of joy welling up in his chest, like shrugging off a weight.

”You can't take the Razorback,” he said to the tiny red triangles. ”We are gone and gone and gone.” He switched the radio to general. ”How's everyone doing back there?”

”Fine,” the prime minister gasped. ”But will we be accelerating like this for much longer?”

”Bit longer, yes, sir,” Alex said. ”Once we get some breathing room, I'll cut us back to just a g.”

”Breathing room,” the prime minister said, the words labored. ”That's funny.”

”Five by five here, Alex,” Bobbie said. ”Is it safe to pop my helmet? I'd rather not run through all my bottled air when there's fresh in the s.h.i.+p.”

”Yeah, that's fine. Same back there, Mister Prime Minister.”

”Please. Call me Nathan.”

”You got it, Nate,” Alex said. The sun was a sphere of white. He pulled up the nav computer and started plotting in paths to Luna. The fastest would take them inside the orbit of Mercury, but the pinnace wasn't rated for more than half an AU from the coronal surface. So that was going to be a little tricky. And Venus wasn't anyplace that he could gracefully use to slingshot. But if Avasarala was sending out an escort to meet them, she might be able to get a boost off the planet. So heading that direction might make sense.

”Alex?” Bobbie said.

”I'm here.”

”That thing about not leaving me behind? You really meant that, didn't you?”

”Of course I did.”

”Thank you.”

He felt a blush rising even against the pressure of the burn. ”Welcome,” he said. ”I figure you're crew now, right? We look out for each other.”

”No soldier left behind,” she said. It might have been the gs, but something about her tone made it sound like she meant something deeper by the words. Like she'd made a promise. She grunted. ”Alex, we've got fast-movers coming in. I think the bad guys are throwing missiles at us.”

”You ready to disappoint them, Gunny?”

”Oh h.e.l.l yes,” Bobbie said. ”How many bullets have we got in this magazine?”

Alex switched the display. The cloud of escort missiles resolved into a numbered list, all in white with identifying serial numbers beside each of them. Even the list filled the screen. He switched to a field summary. ”A little shy of ninety.”

”That should get us where we're going. Looks like pretty near all their s.h.i.+ps are burning hard for us too. How would you feel about taking a few potshots at them by way of discouragement?”

”It'll keep them at a distance, anyway. I figure their PDCs'll probably take them down before they can do any real damage, but apart from that I'm not opposed,” Alex said. ”Except... hold on.” On his list, he switched to the enemy flotilla. It took him a few seconds to find what he was looking for. He marked the Pella. ”Not that one. We don't shoot that one.”

”Understood,” Bobbie said.

No soldier left behind, Alex thought. That goes for you too, Naomi. I don't know what the h.e.l.l's going on out there, and I don't see how this plays out yet. But I'll be d.a.m.ned if I'm just leaving you behind.

Chapter Thirty-five: Naomi.

Back before, when she had been a girl and not known any better, it had been hard for her to cast Marco as the bad guy in their pairing. Even after the Gamarra, it had been difficult. Even after he'd taken Filip away. She'd grown up around poverty. She knew what bad men looked like. They raped their wives. Or beat them. Or their children. That was how you knew them for what they were. Marco was never that. He never hit her, never forced himself on her, never threatened to shoot her or throw her out an airlock or pour acid in her eyes. He'd pretended kindness so well she would doubt herself, make herself wonder if she was the one being unreasonable, irrational, all the things he implied she was.

He never did anything that would have made it easy for her.

After she'd reached her quarters, the door had locked. She hadn't bothered trying to raise help or leave her little room since. She knew a cell when she was in it, and she'd known with a certainty like her own mortality that sooner or later, Marco would come.

He sat across from her now, still in his Martian military uniform. His eyes were soft, his lips pressed into a smile of amus.e.m.e.nt and regret. He looked like a poet. A man well bruised by the world, but still capable of pa.s.sion. She wondered if he practiced the expression in a mirror. Probably, he did.

The wound on her head had stopped bleeding. Her joints all ached, and a vast bruise was blooming on her left hip. Even her fingertips felt like she'd sc.r.a.ped the first layers of skin off them, leaving them weeping and raw, though actually they just looked a little pinker than usual. She drank the same version of chamomile tea that the Rocinante made, and it felt like having a secret ally. She recognized that wasn't a perfectly sane thought, but comfort was comfort.

The mess was empty, the screens turned off and the crew sent away. Even Cyn and Karal were absent. The implication was that whatever they said there was private, but it probably wasn't. She could imagine Filip on another deck, watching. It felt like a setup. Everything about Marco felt like a setup. Because everything was.

”I don't know why you do these things to me, Naomi,” Marco said. There was no anger in his voice. No, that wasn't true. The anger was there, but hidden behind the mask of disappointment. ”You used to be better than this.”

”I'm sorry. Did I upset your plans?”

”Well, yes,” Marco said. ”That's the thing. Used to be, you knew better. Used to be you at least tried to understand what was going on before you jumped in. Professional. This, though? Took a difficult thing and made it worse. Now what could have been gentle is going to be hard. I just want you to understand why I'm going to do what I'm going to do so you see I didn't have a choice.”

There was a smart thing to do. She knew it. A wiser woman would have cried, begged forgiveness. That it would be insincere was the point. It was a mistake to give Marco anything real. Better to be thought weak. Better to be underestimated and misunderstood. She knew that, but she couldn't do it. When she tried, something deep within her pushed back. Maybe if she pretended to be weak, it was too possible that it would become true. Maybe she was pretending to be strong.

Naomi spat on the deck. There was a little blood along with her saliva. ”Save the air.”