Part 45 (1/2)
”Bobbie?” Naomi said.
”Hey,” the Martian ex-marine shouted, grinning. The sound carried from suit to suit by the conduction, and it made her sound terribly distant for someone who was holding Naomi in her arms. ”Imagine meeting you here, right?”
”I'd say it's really good to see you,” Naomi shouted back, ”but that seems weirdly understated. The s.h.i.+p! It's rigged to lose bottle containment if another s.h.i.+p sets off its proximity alert.”
Bobbie scowled and nodded. Naomi saw the woman's mouth moving as she relayed the information to someone. To Alex. She watched Bobbie listen to something she couldn't hear. She looked older than the last time Naomi had seen her. She looked beautiful. Bobbie said something else into her mic, then pressed their faceplates together again.
”I'm going to start moving us around,” Bobbie shouted. ”We need to point our feet toward the sun. Low profile. Suck up less heat, okay?”
Naomi buzzed with questions that didn't need answers. ”Okay,” she shouted back.
”Are you in immediate medical distress?”
”Probably. It's been a really hard day.”
”That's funny,” Bobbie shouted in a voice that meant it wasn't funny. ”Are you in immediate medical distress?”
”No. I don't think so.”
”All right. Put your arms over my shoulders and lock your forearms.” Bobbie pulled back a few centimeters and demonstrated the forearm lock. Naomi made the Belter sign that meant roughly Acknowledged and understood. A few seconds later, Bobbie's armor fired thrusters, and Naomi's weight came back. She was being lifted up, carried into the stars. The sun-bright drive plume of the Chetzemoka pa.s.sed them, dwarfing the small, dark box of the s.h.i.+p itself. It fell away toward the sun and slowly, over the course of long, eternal minutes, vanished below them.
They didn't fit in the pinnace. Not really. It was made for one, maybe two, and it had four with one of them in powered armor. The air was hot and thick, and the recyclers were starting to throw alerts and errors. Alex had shut down the reactor and switched to batteries so they wouldn't be generating as much heat.
”I mean, we could make a burn for it,” Alex said, ”but we got people coming from both directions and half as many crash couches as we've got folks.”
He was in the one actual couch at the front of the pinnace. Bobbie sat curled near the mutilated deck where another couch had once been. The door to the cabin was open, and the prime minister of Mars floated there in a sweat-stained unders.h.i.+rt. He made the place seem dreamlike. For herself, Naomi floated near the ceiling. Alex had set the wall screens to show the outside, but it was all so much less vivid than the real thing. It didn't fool her.
The Chetzemoka was below them, a spinning black dot against the overwhelming white sun. She caught glimpses of it at the edges of the floor where the screen stopped. Alex had also had the Razorback's system highlight the incoming UN escort s.h.i.+ps and, in blue, the Rocinante.
”So,” Alex said. ”XO. You're... ah. Out here. That was kind of unexpected.”
”Wasn't thinking to see you either, Alex,” Naomi said. Her blood felt strange in her veins. Sluggish and bright at the same time. And she was having trouble focusing her eyes. Her hands had lost the worst of the swelling, though. The hours of work between the hulls had probably worked all the extra fluid back in where it belonged. Something like that. Her entire body hurt, and she was still discovering how profound her nausea had been as layers of it she hadn't recognized resolved. Her twenty-second sunburn from the jump off the Pella was swollen and tender to the touch, but not blistered. It would peel once it had healed enough. When she'd gotten into the Razorback, and the s.h.i.+p had been sealed, she'd drunk a liter of water from a bulb and she hadn't had to pee yet. The dehydration headache was starting to lose its hold. Bobbie had offered her painkillers, but something in Naomi resisted the idea of doing anything else to her body until she'd seen the inside of a medical bay.
She realized that her consciousness had flickered out when it came back. Bobbie and the prime minister were talking about good noodle restaurants in the major neighborhoods of Londres Nova. The air was thick and close and stank of bodies. She was sweating in her c.r.a.ppy EVA suit. The blue dot that was the Rocinante had grown a halo, the drive pointing toward them as it slowed to match their course.
In the corner of her eye a blackness flickered and was gone.
”Alex,” she said, and then coughed so long and hard Bobbie had to brace her. When her lungs were clearer, she tried again. ”Alex. Can you spare a couple of those missiles?”
”Depends, XO,” Alex said. ”What did you want me to do with them?”
”Kill that s.h.i.+p,” Naomi said.
”It's all right,” Alex said. ”We warned everyone about how it's b.o.o.by-trapped. No one's going to -”
”Not because of that. Just because it's time for it to go.”
Because I tried to give it to my son instead of a childhood. Because I spent my own money to get it, and it turned into a trap for me and the people I love. Because everything about that s.h.i.+p was a mistake.
”Ah. Looks like it's registered to an Edward Slight Risk Abatement Cooperative. They going to be okay with us knocking their bird into the sun?”
”It'll be fine,” Naomi said.
The prime minister lifted his finger. ”It seems to me that -”
”Missiles away,” Alex said, then smiled an apology. ”You're the head of my government, Nate, but she's my XO.”
”Nate?” Naomi said. ”You're on a first-name basis now?”
”Don't be jealous,” Alex said and pulled up a panel. Against the sun, the s.h.i.+p was nothing. A tiny darkness spinning below them like a fly. And then it was gone.
I'm sorry, Filip, she thought.
She turned her head toward the approaching Rocinante. It was closer.
Chapter Forty-eight: Holden.
If the medical bay could have raised its eyebrows and made judgmental little tsk-tsk sounds, it would have. Instead, the readout threw a list of amber-colored alerts so long that the first few scrolled off the screen before Holden could read them. Naomi grunted when the needle poked into her vein and the medical expert system's custom c.o.c.ktail started flowing into her. Holden sat beside her, holding her other hand.
The transfer from the Razorback had been easy enough. Once they'd matched course, Alex snugged the pinnace up against the airlock, and all four of them had come over together. Holden had been waiting on the other side of the lock, not quite willing to believe that they were really back. Fred Johnson was there too in his greeting-a-political-grandee outfit. It was strange to see Fred visibly change roles, holding his body differently, his expression changing so subtly and profoundly it seemed like the shape of his skull had s.h.i.+fted. It left Holden a little curious about how much the old man presented to him was also tailored to the situation. Chances were, he'd never know.
When the inner door cycled open, he'd forgotten about Fred and the prime minister of Mars and the destruction of Earth and pretty much everything that wasn't Naomi. Her skin was ashen where it didn't look slick and swollen from radiation burns. Her eyes were bloodshot and bleary with a profound exhaustion. Moving into the room, she was careful, like any unexpected b.u.mp would hurt. She was the most beautiful thing he'd seen in years. He felt like he was the one returning home now that she was here. When she saw him, she smiled, and he grinned back. Somewhere a few feet away or a few miles, Fred Johnson and Nathan Smith were making some kind of formal greeting. It didn't matter at all.
”Hey,” he'd said.
”Hey. You take care of the place while I was out?”
”Had some trouble with the contractor, but I think we got it straightened out,” Holden said. Then Bobbie had put a wide, strong hand on his shoulder, shaken him slightly, and said, ”Med bay.” And then Naomi headed for the lift, leaning against Alex for support. She looked wounded, exhausted, halfway to dead. But she'd seen him, and she'd smiled, and it had dropped the bottom out of his heart.
The alert sounded, counted down, and gravity came back. Naomi coughed. It was a wet, painful sound, but the medical bay didn't seem concerned. The machine had a s.h.i.+tty bedside manner.
”Do you think we should get a medic?” Holden said. ”Maybe we should get a medic.”
”Right now?” Naomi asked.
”Or later. For your birthday. Whenever.” The words tumbled out of his mouth without stopping by his brain once, and he didn't care enough to rein them in. Naomi was back. She was here. A vast fear he'd been carefully not noticing washed over him and started to dissipate.
This was how she felt, he thought. With the Agatha King and when he'd headed off to the station in the slow zone. When he'd gone down to the surface of Ilus. All the times he'd thought he was protecting her from his risks, this was what he'd been doing to her. ”Wow,” he said. ”I'm kind of an a.s.shole.”
She opened her eyes in two bright slits and made a small smile. ”Did I miss something?”
”Sort of. I just went someplace for a minute, and I'm back now. And so are you, which is really, really good.”
”Nice to be home.”
”But while you were... I mean while we were... Look, when I was back on Tycho, I was talking with Monica. And Fred. I mean I was talking to Fred about you and us and what I was ent.i.tled to know and why I thought all that. And Monica was talking about why I lied and whether what she did had any power and how it was ethical and responsible to use it. And I was thinking -”