“Before, you weren’t able to see him when other people were around,” Elvi said.
“That’s true,” Jim said. “This is a different relationship.” A moment later, he laughed. Naomi didn’t know what at, except that it was Miller. If the jealousy stung, there was nothing she could do with it.
“Can this version of Miller open the station the way the last one did?”
Jim seemed to listen for a moment, then he shrugged. “I don’t know. He doesn’t either. The situation’s different that way too. We won’t know until we’ve tried.”
“I want to do some scans,” Elvi said, more to herself than to them. “Brain activity at a minimum. Full metabolic if we have time.”
“Not sure I have a lot of time for that,” Jim said.
“Is this something you can undo?” Naomi asked. “Is there a way to pull this back out of him?”
“It’s going to be hard to unscramble that egg,” Elvi said. “But there are probably some things we can do to keep him stable. Or more nearly stable.”
Jim shrugged. “Getting us more time is good, but only if we get more out than it takes to get it, if you see what I mean. We have a lot of clocks counting down on us right now.”
“I’m talking about saving your life,” Elvi said.
“I know, and I appreciate it. That’s a later-on problem. If we don’t get the rest of this right, it’s not going to matter. If you still exist as an individual who wants to fix me? That’ll mean a lot of things have gone right.”
They were quiet. Naomi glanced at the empty space between her and Elvi as if there might be something there for her to see. There wasn’t, but Elvi turned as if the look had been meant for her. Naomi realized they were waiting for her to make the decision. Jim was smiling at her, and it made Naomi want to punch him in the face. How in fuck did I wind up here? she thought.
“Collect any data you can now, and stabilize him,” she said. “We’ll need to get Teresa ready.”
“And Tanaka?” Elvi asked.
Naomi hesitated. She didn’t like Tanaka, and she didn’t trust her, but their interests were aligned for the moment, and inviting yet another front in her personal wars felt petty. “And Tanaka.”
“Okay,” Elvi said. “I’ll get the medical team.”
She pulled herself out of the lab and closed the door behind her. It wasn’t until the latch clicked that Naomi realized Elvi was giving them a moment alone. Jim looked away from her almost shyly. He was older, thinner, more worn around the edges than the man she’d met decades before on the Canterbury, but the openness she remembered was there too. The vulnerability. The almost genetic inability to believe that things wouldn’t work out for the best if he just followed his heart.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Really? I haven’t watched you try to kill yourself enough times? Now you make me watch you succeed in slow motion. But you’re sorry.”
“Yeah. That part is pretty shitty. But I couldn’t think of anything else, and this isn’t what—”
“Let’s take care of the problem,” she said. “The rest can come later.”
He hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll probably go to the station from here. Once they’re done with the scans.”
“I’ll be on the Roci.”
“All right then. I’ll let you know when I’m in position.”
Naomi nodded and pulled herself to the door and down the corridor as if they were only heading to their various mundane duties. As if it weren’t the last time. How strange to know in the moment that something precious was ending, and still have it change nothing. Either it was a sign of her devastation or a tribute to how good their life together was and had been.
She made the transfer back to the Rocinante. The air didn’t change scent this time. Either there had been enough traffic between the connected ships that the atmospheres had mingled, or she’d just gotten used to both of them. She hesitated for a moment, unsure whether to go back to her cabin or up to the ops deck. Her work could be done at either one, but the cabin had Jim’s things—his clothes, his scent, his absence—and so she made the turn to ops.
Alex was there, his eyes wide and his hands fluttering in powerless distress.
“You heard?” she said.
“It’s true?”
“It is,” she said, and picked a couch to strap into. “How did you find out?”
“Casey.”
“Casey?”
“The power supply technician on the Falcon? Dark hair, wide face? Little mole on his neck? He was over drinking beer with me and Amos back in Adro before we left.”
Naomi shook her head. She had probably seen him, but she didn’t make connections with the ease that Alex did.
“Are you all right?” Alex asked in a voice that meant he knew that she wasn’t.
Naomi pulled up her tactical display and split it. The ring space on the left, and on the right a more schematic view with the rings, the systems beyond them, and the ships falling in from all directions. The sheer scale of it was overwhelming. She had to figure out which of the ships were coming to her aid, which were the new enemy. She had to inventory the drugs and precursors that would keep the ships she did have from falling into Duarte’s nightmare hive mind. She had to keep control of the ring space long enough for Jim to have a chance at stopping the catastrophe that was rolling in toward them from all directions.
“I’m really, really angry,” she said. “When Jim came back from Laconia—when we got him back—I knew he was hurt. I knew there was less of him somehow. I thought we’d take care of him. That he was injured, not just in his body. In his soul, if that’s the word. With time and care and love, I thought maybe I would see him again the way he had been. The way I remembered him.”
“I get that,” Alex said.
“And then the thing that actually did bring him back wasn’t any of that. I saw him again. Just now. I saw him the way he used to be. At his best. And love isn’t what got him there. And it wasn’t care. And it wasn’t time. He saw something incredibly, stupidly dangerous that needed to be done and only he could do. And he just…”
She opened a closed fist like she was scattering dust.
Alex hung his head. “He just did it.”
“He rose to the occasion.” Tears were sheeting across her eyes now, making the deck a swirl of color and refraction. She wiped them away on the back of her sleeve.
“He is who he is,” Alex said. “He is who he’s always been. I understand that. I’ve got two marriages behind me because I thought I’d changed and grown into someone else. And I wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t right either. Jim changed, but he also stayed the same.”
“I wish we’d been the ones to bring him back, and not this.”
“So what can we do?”
Naomi looked at her screens. The tears were already drying, even if the darkness and emptiness and regret were all just as deep. “We give him as much time as we can. We try to make this latest idiotic, brave, stupid gesture count for as much as it can. And then we see what happens next. Someone needs to let Teresa know and get her ready. And tell Amos. There may be some fighting.”
“I can take care of them. Don’t you worry about it.”
He turned and headed for the lift shaft.
“Alex?”
When he looked back, they only locked their gazes for a moment. She didn’t know what she’d meant to say, and whatever it was, he already knew it.
“I got this part,” he said. “You take care of yours.”
She started the work, and at first it felt impossibly large. She was overwhelmed by the scope and complexity, but she told herself that it didn’t matter whether it was possible, only that she do it. She started small and specific. The Tullus Aufidius—a mercenary gunship with roots in Freehold—was slated to pass through the St. Anthony gate in sixteen hours. It had been coming to her call as part of the underground, but hadn’t responded to connection requests from the repeater at the gate since Amos’ psychic dive into the ring station went so wrong. So that was the first problem. She found a solution. The Kerr, the Vukodlak, and the Dhupa—two Laconian fighters and one underground supply ship with some torpedo racks welded on the outside—would intercept it. Any of the three that survived the encounter could join the Armando Guelf at the Hakuseki gate and intercept the Brother Dog.