Nemesis Games

Chapter Thirty-seven: Alex

They burned across the emptiness, and the enemy came hard behind them. Four Martian military ships with target locks on Alex’s drive burned toward him as they all dropped toward the sun. The other two had stayed behind to continue the attack on the main force. More than half the attackers had peeled off to come for him. Alex hoped it was enough to let Captain Choudhary get a toehold. Nothing he could do about that from here, though, but watch and hope.

For the first few hours, it had all been hard burn and dodging. Once he’d opened up some distance between the Razorback and the attackers, the nature of the chase altered. It wasn’t about catching or being caught anymore. Alex had the lead, had seventy-two missiles left flying around him in a cloud, a path to Luna, and reinforcements burning out to join him. If nothing went wrong, he’d be safe in less than two days.

The enemy’s job now was to make something go wrong.

“You’ve got another couple PDC arcs coming in,” Bobbie said.

“That’s cute,” Alex said. “I’m moving to avoid. You want to let the missiles know?”

“Already done.”

The tungsten slugs of the enemy point defense cannons were meant to chew through missiles at close range. At the distances they were holding now, they were something between an invitation for the crew of the Razorback to blunder into them by mistake and an uplifted middle finger. Alex tracked the incoming fire and braced as the maneuvering thrusters pushed them down and to the left to avoid the gently curving arcs of enemy fire, then up and right to correct to the original course. Around him the cloud of missiles parted to let the slugs pass through their flock of exhaust cones and warheads.

“Any enemy missiles following that up?” he asked.

A moment later Bobbie said, “Nope.”

“Keep an eye out. Our friends there are gettin’ antsy.”

“Happens when you’re losing,” Bobbie said. Even without turning, Alex could hear the smile in her voice.

From the cabin in the back, Smith’s voice came in staccato gasps. Even the relatively modest one-g flight was three times what the man was used to. He’d been burning up the tightbeam for hours. Sometimes, Alex caught Chrisjen Avasarala’s recorded voice, other times a man’s warm drawl. Someone on Mars, he figured.

The Razorback had been a toy once, and while the screens were decades out of date, they still had some bells and whistles. He set the wall screens to match external cameras, and the wide starscape bloomed around them. The sun was bigger and brighter here than it would have been on Earth, but constrained by the limits of the screen to a burning whiteness. The curves of the Milky Way glowed all along the plane of the ecliptic, the billions of stars made soft by distance. Being surrounded by missiles was like floating in a cloud of fireflies, and behind them, bright as seven Venuses in an Earth twilight, the drive plumes of the attackers who wanted them dead.

And also Naomi.

Bobbie sighed. “You know, a thousand of those stars out there are ours now. That’s like, what? Three ten-thousandths of a percent of our galaxy? That’s what we’re fighting over.”

“You think?”

“You don’t?”

“Nah,” Alex said. “I figure we’re fighting over who gets the most meat from the hunt and first access to the water hole. Mating rights. Who believes in which gods. Who has the most money. The usual primate issues.”

“Kids,” Bobbie said.

“Kids?”

“Yeah. Everyone wanting to make sure their kids have a better shot than they did. Or than everyone else’s kids. Something like that.”

“Yeah, probably,” Alex said. He shifted his personal screen back to tactical, pulling up the latest data on the Pella. It still had the strange, cheap-looking civilian craft tethered to it. Alex couldn’t tell if they were taking something off it or putting something on. So far, it was the only craft in the little force that wasn’t clearly military design. There hadn’t been any more contacts from Naomi. He didn’t know whether that was a good thing or a problem, but he couldn’t help checking on the ship every five minutes like he was picking at a scab.

“You ever worry about your kid?” Bobbie asked.

“Don’t have one,” Alex said.

“You don’t? I thought you did.”

“Nope,” Alex said. “Never really had the situation for one, you know? Or I guess I did, and it didn’t fit. What about you?”

“Never had the urge,” Bobbie said. “The family I’ve got has been more than enough.”

“Yeah. Family.”

Bobbie was silent for a moment. Then, “You’re thinking about her.”

“Naomi, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

Alex turned in his couch. Bobbie’s armor reached against both walls, servomotors locked in place to brace her. She looked crucified. The wound in the deck where she’d pulled out the crash couch made it seem like she’d burst through the bottom of the ship. Her expression managed to be both sympathetic and hard.

“Of course, I’m thinking about her,” Alex said. “She’s right there. And probably she’s in trouble. And I can’t figure out how the hell she got there in the first place. It’s not going to be too long before the cavalry gets here to save us, and when they do, I don’t know if I should be helping to attack the Pella or protect her.”

“That’s hard,” Bobbie agreed. “But you know we’ve got our mission. Get Smith to Luna. We’ve got to stand our watch.”

“I know. Can’t help thinking about it, though. I keep putting together schemes where we use the missiles we’ve got left to make them turn her over to us.”

“Any of them even remotely plausible?”

“Not a one,” Alex said.

“There’s nothing worse than keeping to your duty when it means leaving one of your own in danger.”

“No shit.” Alex looked at the readouts from the Pella. “You know, maybe—”

“Stand your watch, sailor. And heads up. We’ve got more PDCs coming in.”

Alex had already seen them and started laying in the course corrections. “Optimistic little shits. Got to give them that.”

“Maybe they think you’ll get sleepy.”

The overloading of the pinnace was awkward and strange. Moving from the pilot’s seat to the head meant both Alex and the prime minister of Mars squeezing past Bobbie’s power armor. Or, for Bobbie, exiling Smith to the empty space where her couch had been while she used the tiny cabin to break down her armor or climb back into it. No one even suggested that they sleep by hot-bunking in the cabin.

Smith himself seemed like a personable man, polite and thoughtful. Inoffensive was a word that came to mind. Alex had stopped following Martian politics sometime around the slow zone, so he didn’t come in with any preconceptions about the man or his policies. When they did talk, it was usually about small things—the popular culture of Mars when they were both growing up, Smith’s gratitude for the efforts he and Bobbie were putting into keeping him alive, some questions about what Ilus had been like. Alex had the sense that Smith was, if anything, a little starstruck by him. Which was pretty thoroughly odd, when he thought about it.

Still, when Smith popped his head out of the cabin to tell Bobbie that there was a message specifically for her from Avasarala, it had the sense of a secretary who was vaguely uneasy interrupting his boss. Alex felt a weird impulse to reassure the man it was all right, but wasn’t sure how to say it without being even more awkward.

Bobbie thanked him, and for a while she was silent. Alex kept his eyes on the enemy and the sun and the data from the incoming UN escort ships that were still hidden by the sun’s corona.

“Alex?” Bobbie sounded frustrated.

“Yup.”

“I can’t make this thing’s incoming feed talk to my suit. Can you put this up on a screen for me? I’d do it myself, but—”

He switched over to the comm system, opened a panel on the wall screen, and sent the message to it. Chrisjen Avasarala appeared. She looked older than Alex remembered her. There were dark circles under her eyes and a grayness to her skin that didn’t belong there. Her sari only made her look paler. When she spoke, though, her voice was just as sure as ever.

“Bobbie, I need any data you have about the missing Martian ships. I know, you’re going to tell me how you’ve already given me everything, and of course I trust and believe all that you say, blah blah fucking blah. But I need it. Now. I’ve got confirmation of two dozen Martian military vessels that are burning hard for the Ring. Everything from the Barkeith to a couple resupply barges. It’s like a little fucking fleet all its own. Smith says he’s looking into it, which could mean anything from he knows exactly what’s going on and doesn’t want to tell me to Mars is in the middle of a coup and he doesn’t want to tell me. One way or the other, he’s locked up tight as a rat’s asshole.”

“Sorry about this,” Bobbie said over her shoulder.

“It’s nothing she hasn’t said to my face,” Smith replied.

“You want me to stop the playback?” Alex asked, but Avasarala was already talking again.

“If these are more ships that got sold to whoever’s chasing you, I need to know. If they’re all MCRN vessels with actual Martian Navy crews, that’s something very different. And since they’re not answering, I’m stuck trying to peep in the windows. If you’ve held something back—something sensitive, something that made you uncomfortable to share with me—I absolutely understand. Your patriotism and loyalty to Mars has been a thorn in my fucking side since the day I met you, but I respect it. It speaks well of you as a soldier and as a person, and now it’s time to get the fuck over it.

“Also, Nathan, if you’re listening, and I assume you are, I’m the best and only friend you’ve got. Give her permission to share what she has, or I swear to God I’ll have you turning tricks out of a prefab shed on the side of the highway. I’m trying to save humanity here. It would be just fantastic if someone would help.”

Her voice broke on the last word, and tears appeared in her eyes. Alex felt a tightness in his chest and a sense of sorrow he’d managed to ignore until it now welled up in him. Avasarala took a deep breath, sneered, and turned her gaze back to the camera. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand angrily. Like they’d betrayed her.

“So. No more fucking around. I love and adore you, and I can’t wait for you—all of you—to be where I can keep you safe. Be careful. And send me the fucking data. Now.”

The message ended. Bobbie let out a long, shuddering breath. Alex was pretty sure if he looked back, she’d be weeping too. Smith’s voice came from the door to the cabin.

“I’ve told her all I know about them,” Smith said. “The ships were not listed as missing. The crews aboard them all check out as Martian citizens. But so did the false escort ships. Until I have a complete audit of the military’s personnel and supply databases, I don’t know what I’m looking at.”

Alex coughed to clear his throat before he spoke. “Avasarala’s not always the most trusting person, Nate. It ain’t just you.”

“She’s thorough,” Smith said. “And she’s in a hard position. Sergeant Draper?”

There was a long silence. When Alex looked back, Bobbie’s expression was closed. Her lips pressed to a single line. “On my own initiative and without direction from Avasarala I… When I found evidence that something had gone missing, I checked to see what commanding officers were in charge of that materiel. I didn’t see any pattern in it, but someone else might. If they saw it.”

Alex closed the panel Avasarala had been in. The air seemed fragile. Smith took a short breath, made a small, noncommittal sound in the back of his throat. “Please see that I get a copy too, Sergeant Draper.”

He closed the door to the cabin behind him. Alex sat up in his couch. “You know,” he said, “you have a really weird relationship with treason. On the one hand, I think you may be the most patriotic person I’ve ever met, and on the other hand—”

“I know. It’s been confusing for me too. For a long time now.”

“Your loyalty to the corps and your loyalty to that woman ever really come to blows, it’ll be a hard day.”

“It won’t happen,” Bobbie said. “She won’t let it.”

“No?”

“She’d lose,” Bobbie said. “She hates losing.”

The message from the Pella came three hours later. From the first instant, it was clear that it was a press release. The answer to the questions everyone had been asking: Who did all this, and why? The man was seated at a desk, two different banners showing the split circle of the OPA on the wall behind him. His uniform was crisp and unfamiliar, his eyes soulful and gentle to the point of being nearly apologetic, his voice low and rich as a viol.

“My name,” he said, “is Marco Inaros, commander of the Free Navy. We are the legitimate military voice of the outer planets, and we are now in a position to explain both to the oppressors on Earth and Mars and also to the liberated people of the Belt the terms on which this new chapter of human liberty, dignity, and freedom are founded. We recognize the right of Earth and Mars to exist, but their sovereignty ends at their respective atmospheres. The vacuum is ours. All travel between the planets of the solar system are the right and privilege of the OPA and will be enforced by the Free Navy. All taxes and tariffs imposed by Earth and Mars are illegal, and will not be respected. Reparations for the damage done by the inner planets to the free citizens of the system will be assayed, and failure to repay them for the benefit of the full human race will be considered a criminal act.”

A throbbing had come into the man’s voice without it ever seeming to make his words affected or musical. He leaned in toward the camera, and it felt both intimate and powerful.

“With the opening of the alien gates, we are at a crossroads in human history. We have already seen how easy it would be to carry our legacies of exploitation, injustice, prejudice, and oppression to these new worlds. But there is an alternative. The Free Navy and the society and culture of the Belt are representatives of that new pathway. We will begin again and remake humanity without the corruption, greed, and hatred that the inner planets could not transcend. We will take what is ours by right, yes, but more than that, we will lead the Belt to a new, better form. A more human form.

“As of now, the gates to the other worlds are closed. The inner planet colony ships will be redirected to existing stations in our system, and the goods they carry contributed to building the strong outer planets that we have always deserved. We no longer recognize or accept the yoke of the inner planets anywhere in the system. The moons of Saturn and Jupiter are ours by right. Pallas Station, Ceres Station, every pocket of air in the Belt with even one human in it, all are the natural and legal property of their inhabitants. We pledge our lives to protect those people, citizens of the greater humanity, against the historical and established crimes of economy and violence they have suffered at the gun barrels of Earth and Mars.

“I am Marco Inaros. I am commander of the Free Navy. And I call upon all free men and women of the Belt to rise up now in joy and glorious resolve. The Free Navy pledges you all the safety of our protection. This day is ours. Tomorrow is ours. The future of humanity is ours. Today, and forevermore, we are free.”

On the screen, Marco Inaros lifted his hand in the Belter idiom of greeting, militarizing the motion with his precision and focus. His face was an icon of resolve and strength and masculine beauty.

“We are your arm,” he said. “And we will strike your enemies wherever they are. We are the Free Navy. Citizens of the Belt and of the new humanity, we are yours.”

A rising chord picked up and broke into a traditional Belter protest song transformed into something martial and rousing. The new anthem of an invented nation. The image faded to a split circle and then to white. The crew of the Razorback were quiet.

“Well,” Bobbie said. “He’s pretty. And he’s really charismatic. But, wow, that speech.”

“It probably sounded good in his head,” Alex said. “And really, when your prelude is you kill a couple billion people, anything you say is going to sound a little megalomaniacal and creepy, right?”

Smith’s voice was calm, but the dread in it carried through. “He wasn’t talking to us.” He stood in the door to the cabin, his arms stretched to brace against the frame. His amiable smile hadn’t changed, but its meaning had. “That was meant for the Belters. And what they heard in him—what they saw in him—won’t be anything like what we did. For them, he just declared victory.”