Текст книги "Caliban;s war"

Автор книги: James S.A. Corey

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Текущая страница: 29 (всего у книги 36 страниц)

Chapter Forty-Three: Bobbie

They were all missing something. It was like someone knocking at the back of her mind, demanding to be let in. Bobbie went over it in her head. Sure, that prick Nguyen showed every sign he was willing to kill the Rocinante, ranking UN politician on board or not. Avasarala had made a gamble that her presence would back the UN ships off. It seemed she was about to lose that bet. There were still six UN destroyers bearing down on them.

But there were six more ships tailing them.

Including, as she’d just pointed out to Holden, two Raptor-class fast-attack cruisers. Top-of-the-line Martian military hardware, and more than a match for any UN destroyer. Along with the two cruisers were four Martian destroyers. They might or might not be better than their UN counterparts, but with the two cruisers in their wing, they had a significant tonnage and firepower advantage. And they were following the UN ships to see that they weren’t about to do something to escalate the shooting war.

Like killing the one UN politician who wasn’t straining at the leash for a war with Mars.

“Hey, you know?” Bobbie said before she realized she was going to say anything. “I just had an idea…”

The galley fell silent.

Bobbie had a sudden and uncomfortable memory of speaking up in the UN conference room and wrecking her military career in the process. Captain Holden, the cute one who was a little too full of himself, was staring at her, a not particularly flattering gape on his face. He looked like a very angry person who’d lost his train of thought mid-rant. And Avasarala was staring at her too. Though, having learned to read the old lady’s expression better, she didn’t see anger there. Just curiosity.

“Well,” Bobbie said, clearing her throat. “There are six Martian ships following those UN ships. And the Martian ships outclass them. Both navies are at high alert.”

No one moved or spoke. Avasarala’s curiosity had turned to a frown. “So,” Bobbie continued, “they might be willing to back us up.”

Avasarala’s frown had only gotten deeper. “Why,” she said, “would the Martians give a fuck about protecting me from being killed by my own damn Navy?”

“Would it hurt to ask?”

“No,” Holden said. “I’m thinking no. Is everyone else here thinking it wouldn’t hurt?”

“Who’d make the call?” Avasarala asked. “You? The traitor?”

The words were like a gut punch. But Bobbie realized what the old lady was doing. She was hitting Bobbie with the worst possible Martian response. Gauging her reaction to it.

“Yeah, I’d open the door,” Bobbie said. “But you’re the one that will have to convince them.”

Avasarala stared at her for one very long minute, then said, “Okay.”

“Repeat that, Rocinante,” the Martian commander said. The connection was as clear as if they were standing in the room with the man. It wasn’t the sound quality that was throwing him. Avasarala spoke slowly, enunciating carefully, all the same.

“This is Assistant Undersecretary Chrisjen Avasarala of the United Nations of Earth,” Avasarala said again. “I am about to be attacked by a rogue element of the UN Navy while on my way to a peacekeeping mission in the Jupiter system. Fucking save me! I will reward you by talking my government out of glassing your planet.”

“I’m going to have to send this up the chain,” the commander said. They weren’t using a video link, but the grin was audible in his voice.

“Call whoever you need to call,” Avasarala said. “Just make a decision before these cunts start raining missiles down on me. All right?”

“I’ll do my best, ma’am.”

The skinny one-her name was Naomi-killed the connection and swiveled to look at Bobbie. “Why would they help us, again?”

“Mars doesn’t want a war,” Bobbie replied, hoping she wasn’t talking completely out her ass. “If they find out that the UN’s voice of reason is on a ship that’s about to be killed by rogue UN war hawks, it only makes sense for them to step in.”

“Kind of sounds like you’re talking out your ass there,” Naomi said.

“Also,” Avasarala said, “I just gave them permission to shoot at the UN Navy without political repercussions.”

“Even if they help,” Holden said, “there’s no way they can completely stop the UN ships from taking some shots at us. We’ll need an engagement plan.”

“We just got this damn thing put back together,” Amos said.

“I still say we stick Prax and Naomi on the Razorback,” Holden said.

“I’m starting to think that’s a bad idea,” Avasarala said. She took a sip of coffee and grimaced. The old lady was definitely missing her five cups of tea a day.

“Explain,” Holden said.

“Well, if the Martians decide they’re on our side, that changes the whole landscape for those UN ships. They can’t beat all seven of us, if I understand the math right.”

“Okay,” Holden said.

“That makes it in their interest not to be called a rogue element in the history books. If Nguyen’s cabal fails, everyone on his team gets at minimum a court-martial. The best way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to make sure I don’t survive this fight, no matter who wins.”

“Which means they’ll be shooting at the Roci,” Naomi said. “Not the pinnace.”

“Of course not,” Avasarala said with a laugh. “Because of course I’ll be on the pinnace. You think for a second they’ll believe that you’re desperately trying to protect an escape craft that I’m not on? And I bet the Razorback doesn’t have those PDCs you were talking about. Does it?”

To Bobbie’s surprise, Holden was nodding as Avasarala spoke. She’d sort of pegged him as a know-it-all who fell in love only with his own ideas.

“Yeah,” Holden said. “You’re absolutely right. They’ll fling everything they’ve got at the Razorback as she tries to get away, and she’ll have no defense.”

“Which means we all live or we all die, right here on this ship,” Naomi said with a sigh. “As usual.”

“So, again,” Holden said. “We need an engagement plan.”

“This is a pretty thin crew,” Bobbie said now that the conversation had moved back to her area of expertise. “Where’s everyone usually sit?”

“Operations officer,” Holden said, pointing at Naomi. “She also does electronic warfare and countermeasures. And she’s a savant, considering she’d never worked it before we got this ship.”

“Mechanic-” Holden started, pointing at Amos.

“Grease monkey,” Amos said, cutting him off. “I do my best to keep the ship from falling apart when there’s holes in it.”

“I usually man the combat ops board,” Holden said.

“Who’s the gunner?” Bobbie asked.

“Yo,” said Alex, pointing at himself.

“You fly and do target acquisition?” Bobbie said. “I’m impressed.”

Alex’s already dark skin grew a shade darker. His aw shucks Mariner Valley drawl had started to go from annoying to charming. And the blush was sweet. “Aw, no. The cap’n does acquisition from combat ops, generally. But I have to manage fire control.”

“Well, there you go,” Bobbie said, turning to Holden. “Give me weps.”

“No offense, Sergeant…” Holden said.

“Gunny,” Bobbie replied.

“Gunny,” Holden agreed with a nod. “But are you qualified to operate fire control on a naval vessel?”

Bobbie decided not to be offended and grinned at him instead. “I saw your armor and the weapons you were carrying in the airlock. You found a MAP in the cargo bay, right?”

“Map?” Avasarala asked.

“Mobile assault package. Marine assault gear. Not as good as my Force Recon armor, but full kit for half a dozen ground pounders.”

“Yeah,” Holden said. “That’s where we got it.”

“That’s because this is a multi-role fast-attack ship. Torpedo bomber is just one of them. Boarding party insertion is another. And gunnery sergeant is a rank with a very specific meaning.”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “Equipment specialist.”

“I’m required to be proficient in all of the weapons systems my platoon or company might need to operate during a typical deployment. Including the weapons systems on an assault boat like this.”

“I see-” Holden started, but Bobbie cut him off with a nod.

“I’m your gunner.”

Like most things in Bobbie’s life, the weapons officer’s chair had been made for someone smaller than her. The five-point harness was digging into her hips and her shoulders. Even at its farthest setting, the fire control console was just a bit too close for her to comfortably rest her arms on the crash couch while using it. All of which would be a problem if they had to do any really high-g maneuvering. Which, of course, they would once the fight started.

She tucked her elbows in as close as she could to keep her arms from wrenching out of their sockets at high g, and fidgeted with the harness. It would have to be good enough.

From his seat behind and above her, Alex said, “This’ll be over quick one way or the other. You probably won’t have time to get too uncomfortable.”

“That’s reassuring.”

Over the 1MC Holden said, “We’re inside the maximum-effective weapon range now. They could fire immediately or twenty hours from now. So stay belted in. Only leave your station in life-threatening emergency and at my direct order. I hope everyone got their catheter on right.”

“Mine’s too tight,” Amos said.

Alex spoke behind her, and it was echoed a split second later over the comm channel. “It’s a condom catheter, partner. It goes on the outside.”

Bobbie couldn’t help laughing and held one hand up behind her until Alex slapped it.

Holden said, “We have greens across the board down here in ops. Everyone check in with go/no-go status.”

“All green at flight control,” Alex said.

“Green at electronic warfare,” Naomi said.

“We’re go down here,” Amos said.

“Weapons are green and hot,” Bobbie said last. Even strapped into a chair two sizes too small for her, on a stolen Martian warship captained by one of the most wanted men in the inner planets, it felt really goddamned good to be there. Bobbie restrained a whoop of joy and instead pulled Holden’s threat display up. He’d already marked the six pursuing UN destroyers. Bobbie tagged the lead ship and let the Rocinante try to come up with a target solution on it. The Roci calculated the odds of a hit at less than. 1 percent. She jumped from target to target, getting a feel for the response times and controls. She tapped a button to pull up target info and looked over the UN destroyer specs.

When reading ship specs bored her, she pulled out to the tactical view. One tiny green dot pursued by six slightly larger red dots, which were in turn pursued by six blue dots. That was wrong. The Earth ships should be blue, and the Martians’ red. She told the Roci to swap the color scheme. The Rocinante was oriented toward the pursuing ships. On the map, it looked like they were flying directly at each other. But in reality, the Rocinante was in the middle of a deceleration burn, slowing down to let the UN ships catch up faster. All thirteen of the ships in this particular engagement were hurtling sunward. The Roci was just doing it ass first.

Bobbie glanced at the time and saw that her noodling with the controls had burned less than fifteen minutes. “I hate waiting for a fight.”

“You and me both, sister,” Alex said.

“Got any games on this thing?” Bobbie asked, tapping on her console.

“I spy with my little eye,” Alex replied, “something that begins with D.”

“Destroyer,” Bobbie said. “Six tubes, eight PDCs, and a keel-mounted rapid-fire rail gun.”

“Good guess. Your turn.”

“I fucking hate waiting for a fight.”

When the battle began, it began all at once. Bobbie had expected some early probing shots. A few torpedoes fired from extreme range, just to see if the crew of the Rocinante had full control of all the weapon systems and everything was in working order. Instead, the UN ships had closed the distance, the Roci slamming on the brakes to meet them.

Bobbie watched the six UN ships creep closer and closer to the red line on her threat display. The red line that represented the point at which a full salvo from all six ships would overwhelm the Roci’s point defense network.

Meanwhile, the six Martian ships moved closer to the green line on her display that represented their optimal firing range to engage the UN ships. It was a big game of chicken, and everyone was waiting to see who would flinch first.

Alex was juggling their deceleration thrust to try to make sure the Martians got in range before the Earthers did. When the shooting started, he would put the throttle down and try to move through the active combat zone as quickly as possible. It was why they were going to meet the UN ships in the first place. Running away would just have kept them in range a lot longer.

Then one of the red dots-a Martian fast-attack cruiser-crossed the green line, and alarms started going off all over the ship.

“Fast movers,” Naomi said. “The Martian cruiser has fired eight torpedoes!”

Bobbie could see them. Tiny yellow dots shifting to orange as they took off at high g. The UN ships immediately responded. Half of them spun around to face the pursuing Martian ships and opened up with their rail guns and point defense cannons. The space on the tactical display between the two groups was suddenly filled with yellow-orange dots.

“Incoming!” Naomi yelled. “Six torpedoes on a collision course!”

Half a second later, the torpedoes’ vector and speed information popped up on Bobbie’s PDC control display. Holden had been right. The skinny Belter was good at this. Her reaction times were astonishing. Bobbie flagged all six torpedoes for the PDCs, and the ship began to vibrate as they fired in a rapid staccato.

“Juice coming,” Alex said, and Bobbie felt her couch prick her in half a dozen places. Cold pumped into her veins, quickly becoming white-hot. She shook her head to clear the threatening tunnel vision while Alex said, “Three… two…”

He never said one. The Rocinante smashed into Bobbie from behind, crushing her into her crash couch. She remembered at the last second to keep her elbows lined up, and avoided having her arms broken as every part of her tried to fly backward at ten gravities.

On her threat display, the initial wave of six torpedoes fired at them winked out one by one as the Roci tracked and shot them down. More torpedoes were in the air, but now the entire Martian wing had opened up on the Earthers, and the space around the ships had become a confusion of drive tails and detonations. Bobbie told the Roci to target anything on an approach vector and shoot at it with the point defenses, leaving it up to Martian engineering and the universe’s good graces.

She switched one of the big displays to the forward cameras, turning it into a window on the battle. Ahead of her the sky was filled with bright white flashes of light and expanding clouds of gas as torpedoes detonated. The UN ships had decided that the Martians were the real threat, and all six of them had spun to face the enemy ships head-on. Bobbie tapped a control to throw a threat overlay onto the video image, and suddenly the sky was full of impossibly fast blobs of light as the threat computer put a glowing outline on every torpedo and projectile.

The Rocinante was coming up fast on the UN destroyers, and the thrust dropped to two g. “Here we go,” Alex said.

Bobbie pulled up the torpedo targeting system and targeted the drive cones of two of the ships. “Two away,” she said, releasing her first two fish into the water. Bright drive trails lit the sky as they streaked off. The ready-to-fire indicator went red as the ship reloaded the tubes. Bobbie was already selecting the drive cones of the next two UN ships. The instant the ready indicator went green, she fired them both. She targeted the last two destroyers, then checked on the progress of her first two torpedoes. They were both gone, shot down by the destroyers’ aft PDCs. A wave of fast-moving blobs of light hurtled toward them, and Alex threw the ship sideways, dancing out of the line of fire.

It wasn’t enough. A yellow atmosphere warning light began rotating in the cockpit, and a ditone Klaxon sounded.

“We’re hit,” Holden said, his voice calm. “Dumping the atmosphere. Hope everyone has their hat on tight.”

As Holden shut down the air system, the sounds of the ship faded until Bobbie could hear only her own breathing and the faint hiss of the 1MC channel on her headset.

“Wow,” Amos said over the comm. “Three hits. Small projectiles, probably PDC rounds. Managed to go right through us without hitting anything that mattered.”

“It went through my room,” the scientist, Prax, said.

“Bet that woke you up,” Amos said, his voice a grin.

“I soiled myself,” Prax replied without a hint of humor.

“Quiet,” Holden said, but there was no malice in it. “Stay off the channel, please.”

Bobbie let the rational, thinking part of her mind listen to the back-and-forth. She had no use for that part of her brain right now. The part of her mind that had been trained to acquire targets and fire torpedoes at them worked without her interference. The lizard was driving now.

She didn’t know how many torpedoes she’d fired when there was an enormous flash of light and the camera display blacked out for a second. When it came back, one of the UN destroyers was torn in two, the rapidly separating pieces of hull spinning away from each other, trailing a faint gas cloud and small bits of jetsam. Some of those things flying out of the shattered ship would be UN sailors. Bobbie ignored that. The lizard rejoiced.

The destruction of the first UN ship tipped the scales, and within minutes the other five were heavily damaged or destroyed. A UN captain sent out a distress call and immediately signaled surrender.

Bobbie looked at her display. Three UN ships destroyed. Three heavily damaged. The Martians had lost two destroyers, and one of their cruisers was badly damaged. The Rocinante had three bullet wounds that had let all her air out, but no other damage.

They’d won.

“Holy shit,” Alex said. “Captain, we have got to get one of these.”

It took Bobbie a minute to realize he was talking about her.

“You have the gratitude of the UN government,” Avasarala was saying to the Martian commander. “Or at least the part of the UN government I run. We’re going to Io to blow up some more ships and maybe stop the apocalypse. Want to come with?”

Bobbie opened a private channel to Avasarala.

“We’re all traitors now.”

“Ha!” the old lady said. “Only if we lose.”

Chapter Forty-Four: Holden

From the outside, the damage to the Rocinante was barely noticeable. The three point defense cannon rounds fired by one of the UN destroyers had hit her just forward of the sick bay and, after a short diagonal trip through the ship, exited through the machine shop, two decks below. Along the way, one of them had passed through three cabins in the crew deck.

Holden had expected the little botanist to be a wreck, especially after his crack about soiling himself. But when Holden had checked on him after the battle, he’d been surprised by the nonchalant shrug the scientist had given.

“It was very startling,” was all he’d said.

It would be easy to write it off as shell shock. The kidnapping of his daughter, followed by months of living on Ganymede as the social structure collapsed. Easy to see Prax’s calm as the precursor to a complete mental and emotional breakdown. God knew the man had lost control of himself half a dozen times, and most of them inconvenient. But Holden suspected there was a lot more to Prax than that. There was a relentless forward motion to the man. The universe might knock him down over and over again, but unless he was dead, he’d just keep getting up and shuffling ahead toward his goal. Holden thought he had probably been a very good scientist. Thrilled by small victories, undeterred by setbacks. Plodding along until he got to where he needed to be.

Even now, just hours after nearly being cut in two by a highspeed projectile, Prax was belowdecks with Naomi and Avasarala, patching holes inside the ship. He hadn’t even been asked. He’d just climbed out of his bunk and pitched in.

Holden stood above one of the bullet entry points on the ship’s outer hull. The small projectile had left a perfectly round hole and almost no dimpling. It had passed through five centimeters of high-tensile alloy armor so quickly it hadn’t even dented it.

“Found it,” Holden said. “No light coming out, so it looks like they’ve already patched it on the inside.”

“Coming,” Amos said, then clumped across the hull on magnetic boots, a portable welding torch in his hand. Bobbie followed in her fancy powered armor, carrying big sheets of patch material.

While Bobbie and Amos worked on sealing up the outer hull breach, Holden wandered off to find the next hole. Around him, the three remaining Martian warships drifted along with the Rocinante like an honor guard. With their drives off, they were visible only as small black spots that moved across the star field. Even with the Roci telling his armor where to look, and with the HUD pointing the ships out, they were almost impossible to see.

Holden tracked the Martian cruiser on his HUD until it passed across the bright splash of the Milky Way’s ecliptic. For a moment, the entire ship was a black silhouette framed in the ancient white of a few billion stars. A faint cone of translucent white sprayed out from one side of the ship, and it drifted back into the star-speckled black. Holden felt a desire to have Naomi standing next to him, looking up at the same sights, that bordered on a physical ache.

“I forget how beautiful it is out here,” he said to her over their private channel instead.

“You daydreaming and letting someone else do all the work?” she replied.

“Yeah. More of these stars have planets around them than don’t. Billions of worlds. Five hundred million planets in the habitable zone was the last estimate. Think our great-grandkids will get to see any of them?”

“Our grandkids?”

“When this is over.”

“Also,” Naomi said, “at least one of those planets has the protomolecule masters on it. Maybe we should avoid that one.”

“Honestly? That’s one I’d like to see. Who made this thing? What’s it all for? I’d love to be able to ask. And at the very least, they share the human drive to find every habitable corner and move in. We might have more in common than we think.”

“They also kill whoever lived there first.”

Holden snorted. “We’ve been doing that since the invention of the spear. They’re just scary good at it.”

“You found that next hole yet?” Amos said over the main channel, his voice an unwelcome intrusion. Holden pulled his gaze away from the sky and back to the metal beneath his feet. Using the damage map the Roci was feeding to his HUD, it took only a moment to find the next entry wound.

“Yeah, yeah, right here,” he said, and Amos and Bobbie began moving his direction.

“Cap,” Alex said, chiming in from the cockpit. “The captain of that MCRN cruiser is lookin’ to talk to you.”

“Patch him through to my suit.”

“Roger,” Alex said, and then the static on the radio shifted in tone.

“Captain Holden?”

“I read you. Go ahead.”

“This is Captain Richard Tseng of the MCRN Cydonia. Sorry we weren’t able to speak sooner. I’ve been dealing with damage control and arranging for rescue and repair ships.”

“I understand, Captain,” Holden said, trying to spot the Cydonia again but failing. “I’m out on my hull patching a few holes myself. I saw you guys drive by a minute ago.”

“My XO says you’d asked to speak to me.”

“Yes, and thank her on my behalf for all the help so far,” Holden said. “Listen, we burned through an awful lot of our stores in that skirmish. We fired fourteen torpedoes and nearly half of our point defense ammunition. Since this used to be a Martian ship, I thought maybe you’d have reloads that would fit our racks.”

“Sure,” Captain Tseng said without a moment’s hesitation. “I’ll have the destroyer Sally Ride pull alongside for munitions transfer.”

“Uh,” Holden said, shocked by the instant agreement. He’d been prepared to negotiate. “Thanks.”

“I’ll pass along my intel officer’s breakdown of the fight. You’ll find it interesting viewing. But the short version is that first kill, the one that broke open the UN defense screen and ended the fight? That was yours. Guess they shouldn’t have turned their backs on you.”

“You guys can take credit for it,” Holden said with a laugh. “I had a Martian Marine gunnery sergeant doing the shooting.”

There was a pause; then Tseng said, “When this is over, I’d like to buy you a drink and talk about how a dishonorably discharged UN naval officer winds up flying a stolen MCRN torpedo bomber crewed by Martian military personnel and a senior UN politician.”

“It’s a damn good story,” Holden replied. “Say, speaking of Martians, I’d like to get one of mine a present. Do you carry a Marine detachment on the Cydonia?”

“Yes, why?”

“Got any Force Recon Marines in that group?”

“Yes. Again, why?”

“There’s some equipment we’ll need that you’ve probably got in storage.”

He told Captain Tseng what he was looking for, and Tseng said, “I’ll have the Ride give you one when we do the transfer.”

The MCRN Sally Ride looked like she’d come through the fight without a scratch. When she pulled up next to the Rocinante, her dark flank looked as smooth and unmarred as a pool of black water. After Alex and the Ride’s pilot had perfectly matched course, a large hatch in her side opened up, dim red emergency lighting spilling out. Two magnetic grapples were fired across, connecting the ships with ten meters of cable.

“This is Lieutenant Graves,” a girlish voice said. “Prepared to begin cargo transfer on your order.”

Lieutenant Graves sounded like she should still be in high school, but Holden said, “Go ahead. We’re ready on this end.”

Switching channels to Naomi, he said, “Pop the hatches, new fish coming aboard.”

A few meters from where he was standing, a large hatch that was normally flush with the hull opened up into a meter-wide and eight-meter-long gap in the skin of the ship. A complicated-looking system of rails and gears ran down the sides of the opening. At the bottom sat three of the Rocinante’s remaining ship-to-ship torpedoes.

“Seven in here,” Holden said, pointing at the open torpedo rack. “And seven on the other side.”

“Roger,” said Graves. The long, narrow white shape of a plasma torpedo appeared in the Ride’s open hatch, with sailors wearing EVA packs flanking it. With gentle puffs of compressed nitrogen, they flew the torpedo down along the two guidelines to the Roci; then, with the help of Bobbie’s suit-augmented strength, they maneuvered it into position at the top of the rack.

“First one in position,” Bobbie said.

“Got it,” Naomi replied, and a second later the motorized rails came to life and grabbed the torpedo, pulling it down into the magazine.

Holden glanced at the elapsed time on his HUD. Getting all fourteen torpedoes transferred and loaded would take hours.

“Amos,” he said. “Where are you?”

“Just finishing that last patch down by the machine shop,” the mechanic replied. “You need something?”

“When you’re done with that, grab a couple EVA packs. You and I will go get the other supplies. Should be three crates of PDC rounds and some sundries.”

“I’m done now. Naomi, pop the cargo door for me, wouldja?”

Holden watched Bobbie and the Ride’s sailors work, and they had two more torpedoes loaded by the time Amos arrived with two EVA packs.

“Lieutenant Graves, two crew from the Rocinante requesting permission to board and pick up the rest of the supplies.”

“Granted, Rocinante.”

The PDC rounds came in crates of twenty thousand and at full gravity would have weighed more than five hundred kilos. In the microgravity of the coasting ships, two people with EVA packs could move one if they were willing to take their time and recharge their compressed nitrogen after every trip. Without a salvage mech or a small work shuttle available, there wasn’t any other choice.

Each crate had to be pushed slowly toward the aft of the Rocinante through a twenty-second-long “burn” from Amos’ EVA pack. When it got to the aft of the ship next to the cargo bay door, Holden would do an equally long thrust from his pack to bring the crate to a stop. Then the two of them would maneuver it inside and lock it to a bulkhead. The process was long, and at least for Holden, each trip had one heart-racing moment when he was firing the brakes to stop the crate. Every time, he had a brief, panicky vision of his EVA pack failing and him and the crate of ammo drifting off into space while Amos watched. It was ridiculous, of course. Amos could easily grab a fresh EVA pack and come get him, or the ship could drop back, or the Ride could send a rescue shuttle, or any other of a huge number of ways he’d be quickly saved.

But humans hadn’t been living and working in space nearly long enough for the primitive part of the brain not to say, I’ll fall. I’ll fall forever.

The people from the Ride finished bringing over torpedoes about the time Holden and Amos had locked the last crate of PDC ammo into the cargo bay.

“Naomi,” Holden called on the open channel. “We all green?”

“Everything looks good from here. All of the new torpedoes are talking to the Roci and reporting operational.”

“Outstanding. Amos and I are coming in through the cargo bay airlock. Go ahead and seal the bay up. Alex, as soon as Naomi gives the all clear, let the Cydonia know we can do a fast burn to Io at the captain’s earliest pleasure.”

While the crew prepped the ship for the trip to Io, Holden and Amos stripped off their gear and stowed it in the machine shop. Six gray disks, three on each bulkhead across the compartment from each other, showed where the rounds had ripped through this part of the ship.

“What’s in that other box the Martians gave you?” Amos asked, pulling off one oversized magnetic boot.

“A present for Bobbie,” Holden said. “I’d like to keep it quiet until I give it to her, okay?”

“Sure, no problem, Cap’n. If it turns out to be a dozen long-stemmed roses, I don’t want to be there when Naomi finds out. Plus, you know, Alex…”

“No, it’s a lot more practical than roses-” Holden started, then rewound the conversation in his head. “Alex? What about Alex?”