Текст книги "Caliban;s war"

Автор книги: James S.A. Corey

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 36 страниц)

Chapter Thirty-Two: Holden

H olden sat in a pull-down chair in the Rocinante’s engineering bay reviewing the damage and making notes for Tycho’s repair crew. Everyone else was gone. Some more than others, he thought.

REPLACE STARBOARD ENGINEERING BULKHEAD. SIGNIFICANT DAMAGE TO PORT-SIDE POWER CABLE JUNCTION, POSSIBLY REPLACE ENTIRE JUNCTION BOX.

Two lines of text representing hundreds of work hours, hundreds of thousands of dollars in parts. It also represented the aftermath of coming within a hand’s breadth of fiery annihilation for the ship and crew. Describing it in two quick sentences felt almost sacrilegious. He made a footnote of the types of civilian parts that Tycho was likely to have available that would work with his Martian warship.

Behind him, a wall monitor streamed a Ceres-based news show. Holden had turned it on to keep his mind occupied while he tinkered with the ship and made notes.

Which was all bullshit, of course. Sam, the Tycho engineer who usually took the lead on their repair jobs, didn’t need his help. She didn’t need him making lists of parts for her. She was, in every sense, better qualified to be doing what he was doing right now. But as soon as he turned the job over to her, he wouldn’t have any reason to stay on the ship. He would have to confront Fred about the protomolecule on Ganymede.

And maybe lose Naomi in the process.

If his early suspicion was correct and Fred actually had bartered using the protomolecule as currency or, worse, as a weapon, Holden would kill him. He knew that like he knew his own name, and he feared it. That it would be a capital offense and would almost certainly get him burned down on the spot was actually less important than the fact that it would be the final proof that Naomi was right to leave. That he’d turned into the man she feared he was becoming. Just another Detective Miller, dispensing frontier justice from the barrel of his gun. But whenever he pictured the scene, Fred’s admission of guilt and heartfelt appeal for mercy, Holden couldn’t picture not killing him for what he’d done. He remembered being the sort of man who would make a different choice, but he couldn’t actually remember what being that man was like.

If he was wrong, and Fred had nothing to do with the tragedy on Ganymede, then she’d have been right all along, and he had just been too stubborn to see it. He might be able to apologize for that with sufficient humility to win her back. Stupidity was usually a lesser crime than vigilantism.

But if Fred wasn’t the one playing God with the alien supervirus, that was much, much worse for humanity in general. It was an unpleasant thought that the truth that would be worst for humanity was the one that would be best for him. Intellectually, he knew he wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice himself or his happiness to save everyone else. But that didn’t stop the tiny voice at the back of his head that said, Fuck everyone else, I want my girlfriend back.

Something half remembered pushed up from his subconscious and he wrote MORE COFFEE FILTERS on his list of needed supplies.

The wall panel behind him chimed an alert half a second before his hand terminal buzzed to let him know someone was at the airlock, requesting permission to board. He tapped the screen to switch to the airlock’s outer door camera and saw Alex and Sam waiting in the corridor. Sam was still the adorable red-haired pixie in the oversized gray coveralls he remembered. She was carrying a large toolbox and laughing. Alex said something else and she laughed harder, almost dropping her tools. With the intercom off, it was a silent movie.

Holden tapped the intercom button and said, “Come on in, guys.” Another tap cycled the outer airlock doors open. Sam waved at the camera and stepped inside.

A few minutes later, the pressure hatch to engineering banged open, and the ladder-lift whined its way down. Sam and Alex stepped off, Sam dropping her tools onto the metal deck with a loud crash.

“What’s up?” she said, giving Holden a quick hug. “You getting my girl all shot up again?”

“Your girl?” Alex said.

“Not this time,” Holden replied, pointing out the damaged bulkheads in the engineering bay to her. “Bomb went off in the cargo bay, burned a hole there and threw some shrapnel into the power junction there.”

Sam whistled. “Either that shrapnel took the long way around, or your reactor knows how to duck.”

“How long, you think?”

“Bulkhead’s simple,” she said, punching something into her terminal, then tapping her front teeth with its corner. “We can bring a patch in through the cargo bay in a single piece. Makes the job a lot easier. Power junction takes longer, but not a lot. Say four days if I get my crew on it right now.”

“Well,” Holden said, wincing like a man who had to keep admitting to new wrongdoings. “We also have a damaged cargo bay door that will either have to be fixed or replaced. And our cargo bay airlock is kind of messed up.”

“Couple more days, then,” Sam said, then knelt down and began pulling things out of her toolbox. “Mind if I start taking some measurements?”

Holden waved at the wall. “Be my guest.”

“Been watching the news a lot?” Sam said, pointing at the talking heads on the wall monitor. “Ganymede is fucked, right?”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “Pretty much.”

“But it’s only Ganymede so far,” Holden said. “So that means something I haven’t quite figured out yet.”

“Naomi’s staying with me right now,” Sam said as if they’d been talking about that all along. Holden felt his face go still and tried to fight against it, forcing himself to smile.

“Oh. Cool.”

“She won’t talk about it, but if I find out you did something shitty to her, I’m using this on your dick,” she said, holding up a torque wrench. Alex laughed nervously for a second, then trailed off and just looked uncomfortable.

“I consider myself fairly warned,” Holden said. “How is she?”

“Quiet,” Sam said. “Okay, got what I need. Gonna scoot now and get fabrication to work on cutting this bulkhead patch. See you boys around.”

“Bye, Sam,” Alex said, watching her ride the ladder-lift until the pressure door closed behind her. “I’m twenty years too old, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got the wrong plumbin’, but I like that gal.”

“You and Amos just trade this crush back and forth?” Holden said. “Or should I be worried about you two doing pistols at dawn over her?”

“My love is a pure love,” Alex said with a grin. “I wouldn’t sully it by actually, you know, doin’ anything about it.”

“The kind poets write about, then.”

“So,” Alex said, leaning against a wall and looking at his nails. “Let’s talk about the XO situation.”

“Let’s not.”

“Oh, let’s do,” Alex said, then took a step forward and crossed his arms like a man who was not going to give any ground. “I’ve been flyin’ this boat solo for over a year now. That only works because Naomi is a brilliant ops officer and takes up a whole lotta slack. If we lose her, we don’t fly. And that’s a fact.”

Holden dropped the hand terminal he’d been using into his pocket and slumped back against the reactor shielding.

“I know. I know. I never thought she’d actually do this.”

“Leave,” Alex said.

“Yeah.”

“We’ve never talked about pay,” Alex said. “We don’t get salaries.”

“Pay?” Holden frowned at Alex and banged out a quick drumbeat on the reactor behind him. It echoed like a metal tomb. “Every dime that Fred’s given us that hasn’t gone to pay for operating the ship is in the account I set up. If you need some of it, twenty-five percent of that money belongs to you.”

Alex shook his head and waved his hands. “No, don’t get me wrong. I don’t need money, and I don’t think you’re stealin’ from us. Just pointing out that we never talked about pay.”

“So?”

“So that means we aren’t a normal crew. We aren’t workin’ the ship for money, or because a government drafted us. We’re here because we want to be. That’s all you’ve got over us. We believe in the cause, and we want to be part of what you’re doing. The minute we lose that, we might as well take a real payin’ job.”

“But Naomi-” Holden started.

“Was your girlfriend,” Alex said with a laugh. “Damn, Jim, have you seen her? She can get another boyfriend. In fact, you mind if I-”

“I take your point. I hear you. I fucked it up, it’s my fault. I know that. All of it. I need to go see Fred and start thinking about how to put it all back together again.”

“Unless Fred actually did do it.”

“Yeah. Unless that.”

“I’ve been wondering when you’d finally drop by,” Fred Johnson said as Holden walked through his office door. Fred was looking both better and worse than when Holden had first met him a year earlier. Better because the Outer Planets Alliance, the quasi government that Fred was the titular head of, was no longer a terrorist organization, but a de facto government that could sit at the diplomatic table with the inner planets. And Fred had taken to the role of administrator with a relish he must not have felt for being a freedom fighter. It was visible in the relaxed set of his shoulders, and the half smile that had become his default expression.

And worse because the last year and all the pressures of governance had aged him. His hair was both thinner and whiter, his neck a confusion of loose flesh and old, ropy muscle. His eyes had permanent bags under them now. His coffee-colored skin didn’t show many wrinkles, but it had a tinge of gray to it.

But the smile he gave Holden was genuine, and he came around the desk to shake his hand and guide him to a chair.

“I read your report on Ganymede,” Fred said. “Talk to me about it. Impressions on the ground.”

“Fred,” Holden said. “There’s something else.”

Fred nodded to him as he moved back around his desk and sat down. “Go on.”

Holden started to speak, then stopped. Fred was staring at him. His expression hadn’t changed, but his eyes were sharper, more focused. Holden felt a sudden and irrational fear that Fred already knew everything he was about to say.

The truth was Holden had always been afraid of Fred. There was a duality to the man that left him on edge. Fred had reached out to the crew of the Rocinante at the exact moment they’d needed help the most. He’d become their patron, their safe harbor against the myriad enemies they’d gathered over the last year. And yet Holden couldn’t forget that this was still Colonel Frederick Lucius Johnson, the Butcher of Anderson Station. A man who had spent the last decade helping to organize and run the Outer Planets Alliance, an organization that was capable of murder and terrorism to further its goals. Fred had almost certainly ordered some of those murders personally. It was entirely possible that the OPA leader version of Fred had killed more people than even the United Nations Marine colonel version of Fred had.

Would he really balk at using the protomolecule to further his agenda?

Maybe. Maybe that would be going too far. And he’d been a friend, and he deserved the chance to defend himself.

“Fred, I-” Holden started, then stopped.

Fred nodded again, the smile slipping off his face and being replaced by a slight frown. “I’m not going to like this.” It was a statement of fact.

Holden grabbed the arms of the office chair and pushed himself to his feet. He shoved more violently than he wanted to and, in the low. 3 g of station spin, flew off his feet for a second. Fred chuckled and the frown shifted back into a grin.

And that was it. The grin and the laugh broke the fear and turned it into anger. When Holden settled back to his feet, he leaned forward and slammed both palms onto Fred’s desk.

“You,” he said, “don’t get to laugh. Not until I know for sure it wasn’t all your fault. If you can do what I think you might have done and still laugh, I will shoot you right here and now.”

Fred’s smile didn’t change, but something in his eyes did. He wasn’t used to being threatened, but it wasn’t new territory either.

“What I might have done,” Fred said, not turning it into a question, just repeating it back.

“It’s the protomolecule, Fred. That’s what’s happening on Ganymede. A lab with kids as experiments and that black webbing shit and a monster that almost killed my ship. That’s my fucking impression on the ground. Someone has been playing with the bug, and it might be loose, and the inner planets are shooting each other to shit in orbit around it.”

“You think I did this,” Fred said. Again, just a flat statement of fact.

“We threw this shit into Venus,” Holden yelled. “I gave you the only sample. And suddenly Ganymede, breadbasket of your future empire, the one place the inner navies won’t cede control of, gets a fucking outbreak?”

Fred let the silence answer for a beat.

“Are you asking me if I’m using the protomolecule to drive the inner planets troops off Ganymede, and strengthen my control of the outer planets?”

Fred’s quiet tone made Holden realize how loud he’d gotten, and he took a moment to take several deep breaths. When his pulse had slowed a bit, he said, “Yes. Pretty much exactly that.”

“You,” Fred said with a broad smile that did not extend to his eyes, “do not get to ask me that.”

“What?”

“In case you’ve forgotten, you are an employee of this organization.” Fred stood up, stretching to his full height, a dozen centimeters taller than Holden. His smile didn’t change, but his body shifted and sort of spread out. Suddenly he looked very large. Holden took a step back before he could stop himself.

“I,” Fred continued, “owe you nothing but the terms of our latest contract. Have you completely lost your mind, boy? Charging in here? Shouting at me? Demanding answers?”

“No one else could have-” Holden started, but Fred ignored him.

“You gave me the only sample we knew of. But you assume that if you don’t know about it, it doesn’t exist. I’ve been putting up with your bullshit for over a year now,” Fred said. “This idea you have that the universe owes you answers. This righteous indignation you wield like a club at everyone around you. But I don’t have to put up with your shit.

“Do you know why that is?”

Holden shook his head, afraid if he spoke, it might come out as a squeak.

“It’s because,” Fred said, “I’m the fucking boss. I run this outfit. You’ve been pretty useful, and you might be again in the future. But I have enough shit to deal with right now without you starting another one of your crusades at my expense.”

“So,” Holden said, letting the word drag to two syllables.

“So you’re fired. This was your last contract with me. I’ll finish fixing the Roci and I’ll pay you, because I don’t break a deal. But I think we’ve finally built enough ships to start policing our own sky without your help, and even if we haven’t, I’m just about done with you.”

“Fired,” Holden said.

“Now get the hell out of my office before I decide to take the Roci too. She’s got more Tycho parts on her now than originals. I think I might be able to make a good argument I own that ship.”

Holden backed up toward the door, wondering how serious that threat might actually be. Fred watched him go but didn’t move. When he reached the door, Fred said, “It wasn’t me.”

Their gazes met for a long, breathless moment.

“It wasn’t me,” Fred repeated.

Holden said, “Okay,” and backed out the door.

When the door slid shut and blocked Fred from view, Holden let out a long sigh and collapsed against the corridor wall. Fred was right about one thing: He’d been excusing himself with his fear for far too long. This righteous indignation you wield like a club at everyone around you. He’d seen humanity almost end due to its own stupidity. It had left him shaken to the core. He’d been running on fear and adrenaline ever since Eros.

But it wasn’t an excuse. Not anymore.

He started to pull out his terminal to call Naomi when it hit him like a light turning on. I’m fired.

He’d been on an exclusive contract with Fred for over a year. Tycho Station was their home base. Sam had spent almost as much time tuning and patching the Roci as Amos had. That was all gone. They’d have to find their own jobs, find their own ports, buy their own repairs. No more patron to hold his hand. For the first time in a very long time, Holden was a real independent captain. He’d need to earn his way by keeping the ship in the air and the crew fed. He paused for a moment, letting that sink in.

It felt great.

Chapter Thirty-Three: Prax

Amos sat forward in his chair. The sheer physical mass of the man made the room seem smaller, and the smell of alcohol and old smoke came off him like heat from a fire. His expression couldn’t have been more gentle.

“I don’t know what to do,” Prax said. “I just don’t know what to do. This is all my fault. Nicola was just… she was so lost and so angry. Every day, I woke up and I looked over at her, and all I saw was how trapped she was. And I knew Mei was going to grow up with that. With trying to get her mommy to love her when all Nici wanted to do was be somewhere else. And I thought it would be better. When she started talking about going, I was ready for her to do it, you know? And when Mei… when I had to tell Mei that…”

Prax dropped his head into his hands, rocking slowly back and forth.

“You gonna sick up again, Doc?”

“No. I’m fine. If I’d been a better father to her, she’d still be here.”

“We talking about the ex-wife or the kid?”

“I don’t care about Nicola. If I’d been there for Mei. If I’d gone to her as soon as we got the warning. If I hadn’t waited there in the dome. And for what? Plants? They’re dead now anyway. I had one, but I lost it, too. I couldn’t even save one. But I could have gotten there. Found her. If I’d-”

“You know she was gone before the shit hit the fan, right?”

Prax shook his head. He wasn’t about to let reality forgive him.

“And this. I had a chance. I got out. I got some money. And I was stupid. It was her last chance, and I was stupid about it.”

“Yeah, well. You’re new at this, Doc.”

“She should have had a better dad. She deserved a better dad. Was such a good… she was such a good girl.”

For the first time, Amos touched him. The wide hand took his shoulder, gripping him from collarbone to scapula and bending Prax’s spine until it was straight. Amos’ eyes were more than bloodshot, white sclera marbled with red. His breath was hot and astringent, the platonic ideal of a sailor on a shore leave bender. But his voice was sober and steady.

“She’s got a fine daddy, Doc. You give a shit, and that’s more than a lot of people ever do.”

Prax swallowed. He was tired. He was tired of being strong, of being hopeful and determined and preparing for the worst. He didn’t want to be himself anymore. He didn’t want to be anyone at all. Amos’ hand felt like a ship clamp, keeping Prax from spinning away into darkness. All he wanted was to be let go.

“She’s gone,” Prax said. It felt like a good excuse. An explanation. “They took her away from me, and I don’t know who they are, and I can’t get her back, and I don’t understand.”

“It ain’t over yet.”

Prax nodded, not because he was actually comforted, but because this was the moment when he knew he should act like he was.

“I’m never going to find her.”

“You’re wrong.”

The door chimed and slid open. Holden stepped in. Prax couldn’t see at first what was different about him, but that something had happened… had changed… was unmistakable. The face was the same; the clothes hadn’t changed. Prax had the uncanny memory of sitting through a lecture on metamorphosis.

“Hey,” Holden said. “Everything all right?”

“Little bumpy,” Amos said. Prax saw his own confusion mirrored in Amos’ face. They were both aware of the transformation, and neither of them knew what it was. “You get laid or something, Cap?”

“No,” Holden said.

“I mean, good on you if you did,” Amos said. “It just wasn’t how I pictured-”

“I didn’t get laid,” Holden said hesitantly. The smile that came after was almost radiant. “I got fired.”

“Just you got fired, or all of us?”

“All of us.”

“Huh,” Amos said. He went still for a moment, then shrugged. “All right.”

“I need to talk to Naomi, but she’s not accepting connections from me. Do you think you could track her down?”

Discomfort pursed Amos’ lips like he’d sucked on an old lemon.

“I’m not going to pick a fight,” Holden said. “We just didn’t leave it in the right place. And it’s my fault, so I need to fix it.”

“I know she was hanging out down in that one bar Sam told us about last time. The Blauwe Blome. But you make a dick of yourself and I’m not the one that told you.”

“Not a problem,” Holden said. “Thanks.”

The captain turned to leave and then stopped in the doorway. He looked like someone still half in a dream.

“What’s bumpy?” he asked. “You said it was bumpy.”

“The doc was looking to hire on some Luna private security squad to track the kid down. Didn’t work out and he kind of took it bad.”

Holden frowned. Prax felt the heat of a blush pushing up his neck.

“I thought we were finding the kid,” Holden said. He sounded genuinely confused.

“Doc wasn’t clear on that.”

“Oh,” Holden said. He turned to Prax. “We’re finding your kid. You don’t need to get someone else.”

“I can’t pay you,” Prax said. “All my accounts were on the Ganymede system, and even if they’re still there, I can’t access them. I just have what people are giving me. I can probably get something like a thousand dollars UN. Is that enough?”

“No,” Holden said. “That won’t buy a week’s air, much less water. We’ll have to take care of that.”

Holden tilted his head like he was listening to something only he could hear.

“I’ve already talked to my ex-wife,” Prax said. “And my parents. I can’t think of anyone else.”

“How about everyone?” Holden said.

“I’m James Holden,” the captain said from the huge screen of the Rocinante’s pilot capsule, “and I’m here to ask for your help. Four months ago, hours before the first attack on Ganymede, a little girl with a life-threatening genetic illness was abducted from her day care. In the chaos that-”

Alex stopped the playback. Prax tried to sit up, but the gimbaled copilot’s chair only shifted under him, and he lay back.

“I don’t know,” Alex said from the pilot’s couch. “The green background kinda makes him look pasty, don’t you think?”

Prax narrowed his eyes a degree, considered, then nodded.

“It’s not really his color,” Prax said. “Maybe if it was darker.”

“I’ll try that,” the pilot said, tapping at his screen. “Normally it’s Naomi who does this stuff. Communications packages ain’t exactly my first love. But we’ll get it done. How about this?”

“Better,” Prax said.

“I’m James Holden, and I’m here to ask for your help. Four months ago…”

Holden’s part of the little presentation was less than a minute, speaking into the camera from Amos’ hand terminal. After that, Amos and Prax had spent an hour trying to create the rest. Alex had been the one to suggest using the better equipment on the Rocinante. Once they’d done that, putting together the information had been easy. He’d taken the start he’d made for Nicola and his parents as the template. Alex helped him record the rest-an explanation of Mei’s condition; the security footage of Strickland and the mysterious woman taking her from the day care; the data from the secret lab, complete with images of the protomolecule filament; pictures of Mei playing in the parks; and a short video from her second birthday party, when she smeared cake frosting on her forehead.

Prax felt odd watching himself speak. He had seen plenty of recordings of himself, but the man on the screen was thinner than he’d expected. Older. His voice was higher than the one he heard in his own ears, and less hesitant. The Praxidike Meng who was about to be broadcast out to the whole of humanity was a different man than he was, but it was close enough. And if it helped to find Mei, it would do. If it brought her back, he’d be anyone.

Alex slid his fingers across his controls, rearranging the presentation, connecting the images of Mei to the timeline to Holden. They had set up an account with a Belt-based credit union that had a suite of options for short-term unincorporated nonprofit concerns so that any contributions could be accepted automatically. Prax watched, wanting badly to offer comment or take control. But there was nothing more to do.

“All right,” Alex said. “That’s about as pretty as I can make it.”

“Okay, then,” Prax said. “What do we do with it now?”

Alex looked over. He seemed tired, but there was also an excitement.

“Hit send.”

“But the review process…”

“There is no review process, Doc. This isn’t a government thing. Hell, it’s not even a business. It’s just us monkeys flying fast and tryin’ to keep our butts out of the engine plume.”

“Oh,” Prax said. “Really?”

“You hang around the captain long enough, you get used to it. You might want to take a day, though. Think it through.”

Prax lifted himself on one elbow.

“Think what through?”

“Sending this out. If it works the way we’re thinking, you’re about to get a lot of attention. Maybe it’ll be what we’re hoping for; maybe it’ll be something else. All I’m saying is you can’t unscramble that egg.”

Prax considered for a few seconds. The screens glowed.

“It’s Mei,” Prax said.

“All right, then,” Alex said, and shifted communication control to the copilot’s station. “You want to do the honors?”

“Where is it going? I mean, where are we sending it?”

“Simple broadcast,” Alex said. “Probably get picked up by some local feeds in the Belt. But it’s the captain, so folks will watch it, pass it around on the net. And…”

“And?”

“We didn’t put our hitchhiker in, but the filament out of that glass case? We’re kind of announcing that the protomolecule’s still out there. That’s gonna boost the signal.”

“And we think that’s going to help?”

“First time we did something like this, it started a war,” Alex said. “ ‘Help’ might be a strong word for it. Stir things up, though.”

Prax shrugged and hit send.

“Torpedoes away,” Alex said, chuckling.

Prax slept on the station, serenaded by the hum of the air recyclers. Amos was gone again, leaving only a note that Prax shouldn’t wait up. It was probably his imagination that made the spin gravity seem to feel different. With a diameter as wide as Tycho’s, the Coriolis effect shouldn’t have been uncomfortably noticeable, and certainly not when he lay there, motionless, in the darkness of his room. And still, he couldn’t get comfortable. He couldn’t forget that he was being turned, inertia pressing him against the thin mattress as his body tried to fly out into the void. Most of the time he’d been on the Rocinante, he’d been able to trick his mind into thinking that he had the reassuring mass of a moon under him. It wasn’t, he decided, an artifact of how the acceleration was generated so much as what it meant.

As his mind slowly spiraled down, bits of his self breaking apart like a meteor hitting atmosphere, he felt a massive welling-up of gratitude. Part of it was to Holden and part to Amos. The whole crew of the Rocinante. Half-dreaming, he was on Ganymede again. He was starving, walking down ice corridors with the certainty that somewhere nearby, one of his soybeans had been infected with the protomolecule and was tracking him, bent on revenge. With the broken logic of dreams, he was also on Tycho, looking for work, but all the people he gave his CV to shook their heads and told him he was missing some sort of degree or credential he didn’t recognize or understand. The only thing that made it bearable was a deeper knowledge-certain as bone-that none of it was true. That he was sleeping, and that when he woke, he would be somewhere safe.

What did wake him at last was the rich smell of beef. His eyes were crusted like he’d been crying in his sleep, the tears leaving salt residues where they’d evaporated. The shower was hissing and splashing. Prax pulled on his jumpsuit, wondering again why it had TACHI printed across the back.

Breakfast waited on the table: steak and eggs, flour tortillas, and black coffee. Real food that had cost someone a small fortune. There were two plates, so Prax chose one and started eating. It had probably cost a tenth of the money he had from Nicola, but it tasted wonderful. Amos ducked out of the shower, a towel wrapped around his hips. A massive white scar puckered the right side of his abdomen, pulling his navel off center, and a nearly photographic tattoo of a young woman with wavy hair and almond-shaped eyes covered his heart. Prax thought there was a word under the tattooed face, but he didn’t want to stare.

“Hey, Doc,” Amos said. “You’re looking better.”

“I got some rest,” Prax said as Amos walked into his own room and closed the door behind him. When Prax spoke again, he raised his voice. “I want to thank you. I was feeling low last night. And whether you and the others can actually help find Mei or not-”

“Why wouldn’t we be able to find her?” Amos asked, his voice muffled by the door. “You ain’t losing respect for me, are you, Doc?”

“No,” Prax said. “No, not at all. I only meant that what you and the captain are offering is… it’s a huge…”

Amos came back out grinning. His jumpsuit covered scars and tattoos as if they’d never been.

“I knew what you meant. I was just joshing you. You like that steak? Keep wondering where they put the cows on this thing, don’t you?”

“Oh no, this is vat-grown. You can tell from the way the muscle fibers grow. You see how these parts right here are layered? Actually makes it easier to get a good marbled cut than when you carve it out of a steer.”

“No shit?” Amos said, sitting across from him. “I didn’t know that.”

“Microgravity also makes fish more nutritious,” Prax said around a mouthful of egg. “Increases the oil production. No one knows why, but there are a couple very interesting studies about it. They think it may not be the low g itself so much as the constant flow you have to have so that the animals don’t stop swimming, make a bubble of oxygen-depleted water, and suffocate.”

Amos ripped a bit of tortilla and dipped it into the yolk.

“This is what dinner conversation’s like in your family, ain’t it?”

Prax blinked.

“Mostly, yes. Why? What do you talk about?”