“It’s getting too thin,” Teresa said. “We’re not going to fit.”
“Stay close.”
The passage kept widening and flattening until Jim felt like they were making their way through a crack in a cave system. The sense of mass on either side started to become claustrophobic, but Tanaka kept pressing ahead.
His timer went off.
“I’m running a fever, but otherwise fine,” he said.
“What?”
“You wanted me to check in. I’m checking in. Little fever. Feeling fine. Maybe we should all be keeping each other up to date. I show you mine, you show me yours. Reciprocity.”
Tanaka turned back, pushing herself past Teresa and toward him like an eel in a coral reef. Her jaw shifted as she moved to a private channel. He matched her.
“Captain Holden,” she said. “I appreciate what you’ve done to get me into this station, but I’m here now. It’s seeming like your present utility to me is considerably less. So I would very much recommend you stop giving me your fucking attitude before I start thinking about how much I owe you a bullet in the face. Reciprocity, and all.”
She nodded once, sharply, like she was agreeing with herself on his behalf, and moved back to the open channel.
“This is a dead end. We’re heading back and trying again.”
She pushed past Jim, moving toward the chamber they’d left behind. Teresa followed her. Jim floated for a moment, his hand on one wall, his back on the other. A breath of fireflies swirled up from the depths where the passage was too thin for human beings and rose up past Teresa and Tanaka.
“You shot her in the face, huh?” Miller asked.
“She was trying to kill us at the time,” Jim replied. “But honestly, I think it was more because she reminded me of every Laconian interrogator who’d ever beat the shit out of me.”
“As revenge for a beating goes, a face shot is pretty good.”
“It didn’t make me feel better.”
“You know,” Miller said, “there was this guy when I was just starting with Star Helix. Jason. Pissed off the boss, I don’t remember how. Got stuck working data forensics. That doesn’t sound bad, but what it meant was going through people’s logs. The security footage. The creepy shit perps kept hidden from the main partitions. Day after day after day of watching horrific things play out and not being able to do a goddamn thing about it. It started getting into his head. The union shrink called it ‘continuous ongoing trauma.’ We all kind of knew what was coming. That one reminds me of him.”
Jim killed his mic and launched himself up after them, following the bottoms of their feet. “How long did he last?”
“Year and a half. Almost nineteen months. We all thought that was pretty damn good. Most people on that job find a way to get out after six months.”
“I don’t think we have six months.”
“I’m just saying Colonel Friendly had an edge to her before all this started. She’s not doing well now. You should be ready for the possibility that you’ll have to shoot her again before this is over.”
“Last time I shot her she wasn’t in Laconian power armor, and I still didn’t successfully kill her.”
“Well, old fella,” Miller said, “that’s gonna be a problem.”
Chapter Forty-Two: Alex
I’m still seeing lag on the aft PDCs,” Alex said. “It’s only fifteen milliseconds, though. It’s not bad.”
“I hear you,” Amos said. “But I don’t have anything else I’m doing, and lag’s still lag. Give me a minute to isolate the line.”
“You got it,” Alex said. The flight deck was dim, the way he liked to keep it, but the dark wasn’t calming. Even the sounds of the Rocinante, familiar as the face in his mirror, seemed ominous. His back and shoulders were tight enough that he’d had a low-level headache for what felt like days, and he couldn’t guess the last time he’d slept through the night. And that was before Jim and Teresa had headed into the alien station with a stone-cold killer. Before Jim had infected himself with the protomolecule. Before Duarte had started reforging humanity into a single, enormous organism that seemed like it wanted to kill him and Amos and Naomi personally.
Put that way, a little lost sleep was probably appropriate.
“Okay,” Amos said. “Try now.”
Alex tapped the test routine. “Still seeing it.”
“Good. Now the aft PDC junction.”
“Same lag.”
“Aft general?”
“That looks good.”
Amos’ sigh had a facial expression that went with it, even though the big man wasn’t on camera. Raised eyebrows, lips pulling to one side, like a father watching his kid fail at something important. Equal parts affection and disappointment. “Well, that means it’s the vacuum channel between ’em. I’ll try flushing it.”
Naomi’s voice came from the flight deck below him and the system comms at the same time. “You need a hand with that?”
“I wouldn’t say no,” Amos replied. “It ain’t exactly a one-person job.”
“On my way, then.” And then, only through the air, “Alex, keep an eye on the gates. If anything transits in—”
“I’ll sing out. Don’t worry about that.”
“Thank you.”
“Hey, Naomi? I just want you to know, whatever happens, it’s been a real honor shipping with you all this time.”
“I don’t think I can take another farewell speech, Alex.”
“No. But I wanted you to know.”
There was a pause, and then she said, “It’s been an honor for me too.” And then she was gone, heading down toward the space between the hulls with Amos to fine-tune their ship one last time.
It felt weird, not having Teresa there to help Amos out. The kid hadn’t been on the Roci for all that long, but he’d gotten so used to her presence that the change threw him a little. Jim not being there was worse. He kept wanting to check in with him, see if he was sleeping or on the scopes or down getting some coffee. There was a part of Alex’s head that just couldn’t wrap itself around the idea that Jim wasn’t on the Roci. And that Clarissa wasn’t. And that Bobbie wasn’t.
Now that it looked like their last go-round, he saw that he’d always kind of expected everyone to show up again somehow. It was silly when he thought about it, but it didn’t feel ridiculous at all. Years had passed since Clarissa died, but Alex’s heart was still patiently waiting to see her name on the duty roster. Bobbie was gone—he’d watched her go—and he still expected to hear her voice in the galley, laughing and giving Amos their peculiar kind of rough sibling grief.
The dead were still around him, because he couldn’t bring himself to believe that they weren’t. He could know it. He could understand. But like a kid who’d lost something precious, he’d never been able to shake that sense that maybe, just maybe, if he looked again, it would be there. Maybe the people he loved weren’t gone forever. Maybe the past—his past, his losses, his mistakes—were close enough for him to reach back and fix them if he stretched just right. Maybe, despite everything, it could still be okay.
“Check it now,” Amos said, and Alex ran the test.
“Well, holy shit,” he said. “That did it.”
“No lag?”
“One millisecond.”
“Yeah, well, we’re not getting better than that,” Amos agreed. “I’m packing up the toolkit and moving on to the rail gun.”