Nemesis Games

Chapter Thirty-four: Alex

“… Do not start the reactor without reloading the hardware drivers from a known good source. If you hear this message, please retr—”

The message cut off.

“We have to get this out,” Alex said. “We have to get that to Holden.”

“I’ll take care of it,” the captain said. “You and the prime minister need to evacuate. Right now.”

Alex looked at her, confused. Naomi was on the attack ships. The Roci had been sabotaged. He felt like the moment of stillness between being hit in the head and the bloom of pain. His first semi-coherent, irrational thought was If Naomi’s with them, maybe they’re not so bad.

“Mister Kamal?”

“No, I’m fine. It’s just—”

Prime Minister Smith looked at him, the man’s gentle, innocuous eyes seeming utterly out of place. “Does this change anything for us?”

“No,” Alex said. “I just… No. No, we should go. Wait. Bobbie…”

“Gunny Draper knows where you’re going,” Captain Choudhary said. “I’ll see she doesn’t get lost.”

They moved to the lift, the two marines before and behind them. The lift car gave Alex a moment of orientation as it pushed them down into the heart of the ship. It only took a few seconds to match velocity and go back to floating, but it was enough of a cue that his mind made one direction into down, the other into up. The lift car was wide enough for three times the load. The marines took stations at the door, ready to face danger if there was any. The prime minister took a place at the side near the front, where there was a little cover. No one commented on it. It was just a thing that happened. The dynamics of political power as positions in an elevator.

Naomi was here. Right here. Maybe less than ten thousand kilometers away. It was like he’d turned a corner and she was there. Except, of course, that she wasn’t. Even close-quarters battle meant distances that were vast in any other context. If the ship had been transparent, the enemy vessels would only have been visible by their drive plumes—dots of light in a sky filled with them. The Pella could be as far from him right now as Boston was from Sri Lanka, and it would still be almost intimate in the vast scale of the solar system.

“You’re thinking of your friend,” Smith said.

“Yes, sir,” Alex said.

“Do you know why she would be on the Pella?”

“I don’t know why she wouldn’t be on the Rocinante. And no offense, but I’m wondering why I ever got off my ship too. Longer I’m away, the worse an idea leaving it turns out to have been.”

“I was thinking the same about my house,” Smith said.

One of the Marines—taller, and with a slushy accent that Alex couldn’t place—nodded. “You should take cover, sir. We’re going to have to pass through some territory we might not control.”

He meant that the enemy had already cut off the path between them and the hangar. Alex pressed himself against the wall that the prime minister hadn’t claimed and braced. The lift slowed, what had been down became up, then even that gentle gravity went away again. The marines stepped back, raised their weapons, and the doors opened. An eternal half second later, they moved out into the corridor, Alex and the prime minister following.

The corridors of the ship were empty, the crew strapped in their couches for the battle or else on the move elsewhere, keeping these halls safe while the four of them moved down them. The marines took turns moving forward from doorway to intersection to doorway. The distance behind them grew greater with every little jump, and Alex was deeply aware of the doors they’d passed that could open without any guards between him and whoever came out. The marines didn’t seem worried, so he tried to take comfort in that.

The halls had the same anti-spalling covering that the bridge and the mess had had, but marked with location codes and colored strips that would help navigate the ship. One line was deep red with HANGAR BAY written in yellow Hindi, English, Bengali, Farsi, and Chinese. Where the red line went, they followed.

They went quickly and quietly and Alex was almost thinking they’d make it to the bay without trouble when the enemy found them.

The ambush was professional. The slushy-voiced marine had just launched forward when the firing started. Alex couldn’t see where it was coming from at first, but he braced automatically and risked looking forward. At the intersection ahead of them, he caught the flare of muzzle flashes and the small circle of helmets. The attackers were standing on a bulkhead looking up the corridor, like they were shooting into a well. Even if he’d had a gun, there was a very small area to target.

“We’re taking fire,” the other marine said, and it took Alex a quarter second to understand he wasn’t talking to them. “Tollivsen’s shot.”

“Still in the fight,” the slushy accent shouted.

Across the corridor from Alex, Prime Minister Smith was huddled behind the lip of a doorway. Most civilians tried to press against the wall and ended up launching themselves into the middle of the firing lines. Smith hadn’t done that. So score one for training.

Another burst of fire sang past, tearing long black strips from the walls and deck and filling the air with the smell of cordite.

“Oyé,” one of the attackers called. “Hand up Smith y we let you go, sa sa?”

The first marine fired three rounds in fast succession, and the attackers’ laughter followed it. Alex couldn’t be sure, but he thought the people firing at him were wearing Martian military uniforms and light armor.

“Hey!” Alex called. “We’re not going to be any good to you dead, right?”

There was a lull, like a moment of surprise. “Hoy, bist tu Kamal?”

“Um,” Alex said. “My name’s Kamal.”

“Knuckles’ pilot, yeah?”

“Who’s Knuckles?”

“Pinché traitor’s who,” the voice said. “You get to hell, tell her Salo sent you.”

“Grenade incoming,” the slushy-voiced marine said, his voice weirdly calm. “Employing countermeasures.”

Alex turned his face to the wall and pressed his hands to his ears. The shock of the explosion was like being slapped all across his side. He fought to breathe. Flecks of something like snow swirled through the air, and the stink of plastic and spent explosive was thick enough to choke. The stutter of gunfire seemed to come from far away.

“Grenade mitigated,” the marine shouted. “But we could use some backup here.”

The prime minister had a bright line of red across the backs of his hands, blood soaking into the white of his cuffs and floating in tiny dots through the air of the hallway. Alex felt the wall shudder under his hand as something on the ship detonated too far away to hear. Someone at the head of the corridor was laughing and whooping something in Belter chatter too fast to follow. Alex ducked his head out and back again, trying to get a glimpse of the corridor ahead. A crackle of gunfire drove him back into his shallow cover.

The laughter ahead of them turned to screams, the sharp, flat reports of gunfire into something deeper and more threatening. The marines opened fire, and the corridor rose to pandemonium. A body cartwheeled by, limp and dead, its uniform sopping up blood from a dozen wounds. Alex couldn’t tell which side the fighter had belonged to.

The gunfire stopped. Alex waited a long moment, ducked his head out and back again. Then leaned out for a longer look. The intersection where the enemy had been was misty with smoke and blood and the anti-grenade countermeasure. Two bodies floated in the middle space, one dead in light combat armor, the other in full marine recon gear. The power-armored figure lifted its hand in the sign for all clear.

“We cleaned that up for you,” Bobbie called, her voice seeming to come from miles away and with all the treble stripped out. “You can come on up. Might want to hold your breath through here, though. There’s some particulates.”

Alex pulled himself forward, the prime minister following close behind. They passed Bobbie and four new marines that swelled their escort to six. He hadn’t seen Bobbie in armor since the fight on Io. With the other marines around her, the massive armor adding to her normal bulk, she seemed at home. And more than that, she seemed wistful, knowing that it was an illusion.

“Looks good on you, Draper,” Alex called as he passed. Half-deafened by the firefight, he only felt the words in his throat. Bobbie’s smile told him that she’d heard them.

In the hangar, the Razorback hung in clamps built to accommodate ships much larger than she was. It was like seeing an industrial lathe with a toothpick in it. The flight crew hung on to handholds around it, gesturing Alex and Bobbie and the prime minister on. By the time Alex got to the ship, the massive hangar doors were already starting their opening cycle. The flight chief was pushing a vacuum suit at him and shouting so he could hear her.

“We’re coordinating with fire control. The PDCs’ll try to get you a clear run, but be careful. You run into our own rounds, and that’d just be sad.”

“Understood,” Alex said.

She gestured toward the hangar doors with her chin. “We’re not taking the time to evacuate the bay completely, but we’ll get you down to maybe half an atmosphere. Little bit of a pop, but you shouldn’t spring a leak.”

“And if I do?”

She held out the environment suit again. “You’ll have some bottled air to suck on while you figure something out.”

“Well, not a great plan, but it’s a plan.”

“Imperfect circumstances,” the flight chief agreed.

Alex shrugged the suit on as the prime minister, already wearing his, slipped into the pinnace and toward the back bunk. The Razorback was a yacht. A hot rod, made for zipping around outside an atmosphere, the philosophical descendant of ships that didn’t lose sight of the shore. And more than that, she was old. The girl who’d first flown her had been dead or something stranger for years, and the ship had been old before she went. Now they were going to fly it through an active battle zone.

He checked the last of the seals on his suit, and started for the Razorback. Bobbie was in the entry, looking in. When she spoke, it was through the suit radio.

“We’ve got a little problem, Alex.”

He squeezed in beside her. Even before she’d been in combat armor, Bobbie had made the interior of the ship seem a little undersized. Looking from her to the second couch now, she made it look ridiculous. There was no way she was going to fit.

“I’ll have them stop the launch sequence,” Alex said. “We can get you in a normal EVA suit.”

“There are boarders on the ship. Looking for us. For him,” Bobbie said. “There isn’t time.” She turned to look at him. On the other side of the helmet, her expression was rueful. “I’m only seeing one option here.”

“No,” Alex said. “You’re not staying. I don’t give a shit. I’m not leaving you behind.”

Bobbie shifted, her eyes wide. “What? No, I meant take out the couch and use the suit motors to brace me. Did you think I was—”

“That. Do that. Now,” Alex said.

Bobbie leaned forward, the magnetic boots locking onto the deck of the Razorback, and one hand clamped against the frame. With the other, she gripped the base of the crash couch and lifted. The bolts sheared off like she was tearing paper, and she tossed the couch out into the hangar. The gimbals shifted and turned under the spin. Bobbie scuttled in, pressing hands and feet against the walls and deck and pushing until the suit was wedged in as solidly as if it had been part of the superstructure.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m good.”

Alex turned back to the flight chief. The woman saluted him, and with his heart in his throat he returned it. The marines who’d escorted them—who’d risked their lives to get them this far—had already gone. Alex wished he’d thought to thank them.

“I’ll get to my station, and then we’ll get you out,” the flight chief said. “You be careful out there.”

“Thank you,” Alex said. He pulled himself into the ship, closed the hatch, and started running through the checklist. The reactor was hot, the Epstein drive showing green across the board. Air and water were at capacity, and the recyclers ready. “You in place back there, sir?”

“Ready as I’m likely to get,” the man replied.

“You hang on tight,” Alex said to Bobbie. “This might get rough, and you’re not in a crash couch.”

“Yeah I am,” she said, and he could hear the mischievous grin in her voice. “I’m wearing mine.”

“Well,” Alex said softly. “Okay, then.”

The clamp lights went from engaged to warning to open, and the Razorback was on the float. Emergency Klaxons sounded, the noise softened by the thinned atmosphere, and the massive hangar door began to open. The change in exterior pressure rang the pinnace like a hammer blow. Alex aimed for the widening gap full of darkness and stars, and hit it. The Razorback leaped out into the vacuum, eager and hungry. The display marked a dozen ships too small for his naked eye to see, and the long, curving shapes of PDC fire like tentacles waving through the void.

“Taking control of the comm laser,” Bobbie said.

“Roger that,” he said. “This is going to get bumpy.”

He threw the Razorback out the hangar doors at full speed and into the narrow lane between the battleship’s PDCs firing on full auto. He spun the pinnace between the lines of high-velocity tungsten, hoping they were enough to stop any missiles the ambushing ships fired at them from point-blank range. And then, from behind them, fast-moving bogies in wave after wave. The Razorback’s display turned into a solid mass, the density of the missile swarm too much for the screen to differentiate between them. The entire arsenal of the battleship launched all at once, and keyed to target on the pinnace’s comm laser frequency.

“We’ve got our escort,” Alex said. “Let’s get out of here. How many gs can you take back there, Draper?”

“If I break a rib, I’ll let you know.”

Alex grinned, spun the pinnace toward the sun, and accelerated—two g, three, four, four and a half—until the system started complaining that it couldn’t inject him with anything through the EVA suit. He hit the suit’s crude helmet controls with his chin and injected himself with all the amphetamine it had in its tiny emergency pack. The enemy ships seemed unsure what had just happened, but then they began to turn, thin red triangles on the display. Exhaust plumes competed with the stars behind him as he fell toward the sun, toward Earth and Luna and the rattled remnants of the UN fleet. Alex felt a bloom of joy welling up in his chest, like shrugging off a weight.

“You can’t take the Razorback,” he said to the tiny red triangles. “We are gone and gone and gone.” He switched the radio to general. “How’s everyone doing back there?”

“Fine,” the prime minister gasped. “But will we be accelerating like this for much longer?”

“Bit longer, yes, sir,” Alex said. “Once we get some breathing room, I’ll cut us back to just a g.”

“Breathing room,” the prime minister said, the words labored. “That’s funny.”

“Five by five here, Alex,” Bobbie said. “Is it safe to pop my helmet? I’d rather not run through all my bottled air when there’s fresh in the ship.”

“Yeah, that’s fine. Same back there, Mister Prime Minister.”

“Please. Call me Nathan.”

“You got it, Nate,” Alex said. The sun was a sphere of white. He pulled up the nav computer and started plotting in paths to Luna. The fastest would take them inside the orbit of Mercury, but the pinnace wasn’t rated for more than half an AU from the coronal surface. So that was going to be a little tricky. And Venus wasn’t anyplace that he could gracefully use to slingshot. But if Avasarala was sending out an escort to meet them, she might be able to get a boost off the planet. So heading that direction might make sense.

“Alex?” Bobbie said.

“I’m here.”

“That thing about not leaving me behind? You really meant that, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did.”

“Thank you.”

He felt a blush rising even against the pressure of the burn. “Welcome,” he said. “I figure you’re crew now, right? We look out for each other.”

“No soldier left behind,” she said. It might have been the gs, but something about her tone made it sound like she meant something deeper by the words. Like she’d made a promise. She grunted. “Alex, we’ve got fast-movers coming in. I think the bad guys are throwing missiles at us.”

“You ready to disappoint them, Gunny?”

“Oh hell yes,” Bobbie said. “How many bullets have we got in this magazine?”

Alex switched the display. The cloud of escort missiles resolved into a numbered list, all in white with identifying serial numbers beside each of them. Even the list filled the screen. He switched to a field summary. “A little shy of ninety.”

“That should get us where we’re going. Looks like pretty near all their ships are burning hard for us too. How would you feel about taking a few potshots at them by way of discouragement?”

“It’ll keep them at a distance, anyway. I figure their PDCs’ll probably take them down before they can do any real damage, but apart from that I’m not opposed,” Alex said. “Except… hold on.” On his list, he switched to the enemy flotilla. It took him a few seconds to find what he was looking for. He marked the Pella. “Not that one. We don’t shoot that one.”

“Understood,” Bobbie said.

No soldier left behind, Alex thought. That goes for you too, Naomi. I don’t know what the hell’s going on out there, and I don’t see how this plays out yet. But I’ll be damned if I’m just leaving you behind.