Persepolis Rising

Chapter Seventeen: Holden

“Stay still,” the Laconian said. “Look at the red dot.”

Holden blinked and did as he was told. The sack of rations tapped against his leg like it was trying to get his attention, but he didn’t shift his weight. The dot on the hand terminal seemed to look back at him, and something flashed filling one eye with yellow. The guard’s hand terminal chimed, and he shifted to Naomi. His other hand was on the butt of his gun. “Stay still. Look at the red dot. You can move along, sir.”

“I’m with her.”

“You can move over there, sir,” the guard said, gesturing down the corridor with his chin. His voice didn’t make it a request. Holden walked a few steps, then paused while he was still close enough to go back if something happened. Not that he knew what he’d do.

The hand terminal chimed again and the guard nodded Naomi forward, waiting until she was back with Holden and the two of them were moving down the gently curving hall of the crew decks before he turned back to the line and the next identity to check and record. An older man with a close-cropped beard who was smiling at the guard like a dog hoping it wouldn’t get kicked. “Stay still,” the guard said. “Look at the red dot.” And then Holden and Naomi turned the corner and left the checkpoint behind.

He felt his gut release a little, the tension backed off a notch just by not being in a direct line of fire.

“Well, this sucks,” he said.

The security announcement had changed Medina like dye dropped into water. The rolling curfew meant no one in public spaces off-shift, and three one-hour periods each cycle when no one could be out of their quarters. A congregation ban—no more than three people in a group. Anyone with a weapon would be arrested. Anyone making unauthorized use of the comm system would be arrested. Anyone that the security forces deemed a threat would be arrested. With every new edict, the nature of the station itself shifted, and the fragile thought that maybe everything would work itself out, that maybe it would be all right, receded.

He knew the station architecture hadn’t really changed. The walls were still at the same angles as before, the hallways curved around the drum the same as they ever had. The air smelled the way air smelled anywhere. It was only the faces of the people that made everything seem smaller, closer, more like a prison. The faces and the checkpoints.

They reached their rented quarters, and Naomi tapped in the manual override code, since their hand terminals were still locked out. The door slid open. When it slid closed behind them, Naomi sagged against it like she was on the edge of collapse. Holden sat at the little built-in table and unpacked the bag in silence. Pad thai and red curry, both with tofu and both spiced enough to make his eyes water a little bit just at the smell of them. On another day, it would have felt like a luxury.

Naomi went to the bath, washed her face in the little sink, and came back out with droplets of water still clinging to her hair and eyelashes. She dropped down across from him and scooped up a fork.

“Any thoughts?” she asked.

“About?”

She waved the fork in a small circle, indicating the room, the station, the universe. Then she speared a cube of tofu and popped it in her mouth.

“Not yet,” he said. “I’ve got to say, I wish that those assholes hadn’t tried to kill this Singh fella.”

“Or that they’d done a better job,” Naomi said, and Holden felt a twitch of anxiety in his gut. Was station security monitoring their cabin? Was that kind of offhanded joke going to get them sent to the brig? Naomi saw it in his face.

“Sorry,” she said, half for him and half for the microphone that might or might not have been there. “Bad joke.”

“I’m thinking this takes the Luna consulting gigs off the table, though.”

“Seems like it. And Titan.”

“That’s a shame. I would have liked Titan.”

“If only we’d gotten out a week earlier,” Naomi said. “Things were different then.”

“Yeah,” Holden said. The pad thai was rich and hot, and it tasted almost like they’d used real limes and peanuts to make it. Almost, but not quite. He put his fork down. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Eat,” Naomi said. “And when you’re done with that, come take a shower with me.”

“Seriously?” he said. She hoisted an eyebrow and smiled.

They ate in silence after that. He thought about putting on some background music, and even reached for his hand terminal before he remembered that it was dead. After, Naomi put the plates and forks into the recycler and led him into the bathroom by the wrist. She pulled off her clothes slowly, and he felt himself responding to her body despite the stress and fear. Or maybe because of it. Lust and anxiety mixed into something that was more than one kind of desperation. She got the water to a decent temperature while he stripped, and then they were there together, arms around each other as the warm cascade filled the curves where their bodies made cups and reservoirs. She leaned her head against his, her lips beside his ear.

“We can talk now,” she murmured. “We’ve got about fifteen minutes before the rationing kicks in.”

“Oh,” he said. “And here I thought this was just my masculine charm.”

She grabbed him gently someplace sensitive. “That too,” she said, and the laughter in her voice was better than anything that had happened in days. “We need to make a real plan. I don’t know what’s going to happen with our money. We only had this room to the end of the week, and I’m not sure whether we’ll keep it past that or if they’ll throw us out early. Or anything else, really. Not at this point.”

“We’ve got to get back to the Roci,” he said.

“Maybe,” Naomi said. “Unless that calls more attention to the kids. It might not be a kindness to have James Holden of the Rocinante ride again. Unless that’s a fight you want to be part of.”

“You think there’s going to be a fight?”

She shifted against him, their skin slipping distractingly under the flow of water. “What would Avasarala say?” Naomi asked.

Holden moved his arms around the small of her back, pulled her gently against him. Kissed her gently. “That Governor Singh fucked up,” he said softly. “That cracking down on the enemy this hard shows that you’re afraid of them.”

“Yup,” Naomi said. “The people who went after him? They were assholes and amateurs. There’s a real underground going to start now, and it’s going have the professionals. If you and I keep our noses very, very clean, we might be able to stay out of that. If we start reaching out to the crew, security may think we’re putting the band back together.”

“So leave them out of it. Commit fully to our new lives as war refugees?”

“Or suck it up, get the band back together, and die as dissidents.”

“I’m really wishing Titan were still on that list of options.”

“That’s waiting for yesterday, sweetheart.”

He rested his head against her shoulder. The water ration warning cleared its throat. Just the first one, though. They still had time.

“Why do I get the feeling I’m more freaked-out about this than you are?” he asked, and felt her smile against his cheek.

“You’re new here,” she said. “I’m a Belter. Security coming down on you just because they can? Checkpoints and identity tracking? Knowing that you could wind up in the recycler for any reason or no reason? I grew up like this. Amos did too, in his way. I never wanted to come back here, but I know how this all goes. Childhood memories, sa sa que?”

“Well, shit.”

She ran her hand down his spine and pushed him back. The wall was cold against him. Her kiss was rough and strong, and he found himself pushing into it in a way he hadn’t in years. When they came up for air, Naomi’s eyes were hard. Almost angry.

“If we do this,” she said, “it’s going to be ugly. We’re outgunned and outplanned, and I don’t see how we win.”

“I don’t either,” he said. “And I don’t see how we stay out of it.”

“Getting the band back together?”

“Yeah. And we were so close to out.”

“We were,” she said.

The water ration chimed again, a little more urgently. Holden felt some vast emotion move in his chest, but he didn’t know what it was. Grief or anger or something else. He turned off the water. The rush of white noise stopped. The gentle chill of evaporation brought goose bumps up his arms and legs. Naomi’s eyes were soft, dark, unflinching.

“Come to bed,” he said.

“Yes,” she answered.

In the darkness, the control pad on the door glowed amber. Green would have meant unlocked. Red, locked. Amber meant override. It meant that they weren’t in control of it. That, in a fundamental way, it wasn’t their door anymore. It belonged to station security. Naomi was still asleep, her breath deep and regular, so Holden sat in the darkness, not moving to keep from waking her, and watched the amber light.

It was the dead hour of curfew between each shift. Right now, all the hallways in Medina were empty. The curved fields and parks of the drum. The lifts in lockdown. Only the Laconian security forces could travel freely while everyone else huddled in place. Including him. Measured in work-hours, it was a massive tax. If it had just been the Roci, it was the same as losing someone for eighteen hours a day. Medina put a coefficient on that with at least three zeros at the end. Someone in the Laconian chain of command thought it was worth the sacrifice. That alone told him something.

Naomi murmured, shifted her pillow, and fell back into it without ever quite breaching up to consciousness. She would be awake soon, though. They’d been sleeping in the same couch long enough that he knew the signs her body gave out without even being certain what he was reacting to. He felt it when she was heading back up. He hoped she could stay down until it was their door again. Maybe she wouldn’t feel the same kind of trapped that he did.

Over the years, the Roci had done its fair share of prisoner transport duty. Houston had been the most recent, but they’d taken on half a dozen like him one time and another since the Tachi had become the Rocinante. Now that he thought about it, the first had been Clarissa Mao. All of his prisoners had spent months in a cabin smaller than this, staring at a door they couldn’t control. He’d always known in a distant, intellectual way that had probably been uncomfortable for them, but it wouldn’t have been that different from being in a brig, and he’d been in brigs.

It wasn’t the same, though. A brig had rules. It had expectations. You were in a brig until your lawyer or union rep came to talk to you. There would be hearings. If it went badly, there was prison. One thing followed another, and everyone called it justice, even when they all knew it was an approximation at best. But this was a cabin. A living space. Turning it into a prison cell felt like a rupture in a way that an actual prison cell wouldn’t. A brig had an inside and an outside. You were in it, and then you passed through a door or a security lock, and you were out of it. All of Medina was a prison now, and would be for another twelve minutes. It left him feeling claustrophobic and oppressed in a way he was still trying to wrap his head around. He felt like the station had just become small as a coffin.

Naomi shifted again, pulling the pillow over her head. She sighed. Her eyes stayed closed, but she was with him again. Awake, but not ready to admit it.

“Hey,” he said, softly enough that she could pretend not to have heard him.

“Hey,” she said.

Another minute passed, and Naomi pulled the pillow back under her head, yawned, and stretched like a cat. Her hand landed on his, and he laced his fingers between hers.

“Been brooding the whole time?” she asked.

“Some of it, yeah.”

“Did it help?”

“Nope.”

“Right. Spring into action, then?”

He nodded at the amber door alarm. “Not yet.”

She glanced down. The override light flickered in her eyes like a candle flame. “Huh. All right. Brush teeth, pee, and spring into action?”

“That’ll work,” he agreed, and hauled himself up out of the bed. The way it worked out, he was brushing his teeth when the door clicked over to red—locked, but under his control. The relief and resentment at the relief came packaged together.

The hallways in the residential deck were no busier than usual. The checkpoint they’d passed through earlier was gone, relocated to some other intersection of hallways. Keeping the surveillance unpredictable and visible, he assumed. If the security systems were in Laconian control, the guards and checkpoints were all theater anyway. A show of force to keep the locals scared and in line. The transport was down—no lifts, no carts. If anyone wanted to go anywhere, the only option was to walk.

In the drum, the false sunlight was as warm as ever. The fields and parkland, streets and structures, curved up and around the same way they always had. Holden could almost forget that it was an occupied station until they interacted with anyone.

The man they paused to get bowls of noodles and sauce from gave them extra packets of peanuts and a twist of cinnamon sugar candy, on the house. An older woman they walked past as they headed aft toward engineering and the docks smiled at them, then stopped and stroked Naomi’s shoulder until little tears appeared in the older woman’s eyes. A group of young men heading the other way made room for them to pass long before they needed to and nodded their respect. It wasn’t, Holden decided, that people recognized him and deferred to his celebrity. All the citizens of Medina were treating each other like everyone was made from spun sugar. Likely to shatter if you breathed on them too hard. He recognized it from being on Luna after the rocks had fallen on Earth. The deep human instinct to come together in crisis. To take care of each other. In its best light, it was what made humanity human. But he also had the dark suspicion that it was a kind of bargaining. Look, universe, see how kind and gentle and nice I am? Don’t let the hammer fall on me.

Even if it was only grief and fear, he’d take it. Anything that helped them all treat each other well.

Beside a little café that served tea and rice-flour cakes, a dozen people in Laconian uniforms were building something—a wall made from cubes two and a half meters to a side, eight wide, and three high, with steel walls and backs and wide mesh doors facing the pathway. Like kennels. Half a dozen locals stood watching, and Naomi went to stand beside them. A young woman with mud-brown hair and a scattering of freckles across her cheeks made a little space for them. Another small kindness, like a coin in a wishing well.

“Are they expecting prisoners, then?” Naomi asked the woman as if they were friends. As if everyone who wasn’t Laconian was part of the same group now.

“That’s the thought,” Freckles said, then nodded a greeting to Holden. “Making a show of it. Supposed to keep us all in line, isn’t it?”

“That’s how it works,” Holden said, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Show everyone what the punishment is. Enough fear, and we’ll all be obedient. They’ll train us like dogs.”

“That’s not how you train dogs,” Freckles said. She made a little, deferential bow when he looked at her, but she didn’t back down. “You train dogs by rewarding them. Punishment doesn’t actually work.” Tears glistened in her eyes, and Holden felt a lump in his own throat. They’d been invaded. They’d been taken over. They could kill everyone on the station, and no one would be able to stop it. This couldn’t be happening, and it was happening.

“I didn’t know that,” he said. Banal words, the closest he could offer to comfort.

“Punishment never works,” Naomi said, her voice hard. Her face was unreadable. She shifted her weight like she was looking at sculpture in a museum. The spectacle of power considered as art. “Not ever.”

“Are you from here?” Freckles asked. She hadn’t recognized them.

“No,” Holden said. “Our ship’s in the dock. Or our old ship anyway. The one we came in on. And the crew we flew with.”

“Mine’s in lockdown too,” Freckles said. “The Old Buncome out of New Roma. We were slated to go home next week. I don’t know where we’re going to stay now.”

“Not on your ship?”

She shook her head. “The docks are off-limits. No one’s allowed on their ships without escort. I’m hoping we can find rooms, but I’ve heard we may have to camp out here in the drum.”

Naomi turned, and he saw everything that he was thinking mirrored in her face. If the docks were off-limits and the crews turned out, the others wouldn’t be on the Roci. And with the network down, they couldn’t put through a connection request. They didn’t have any way of contacting Bobbie or Alex or Amos. Or Clarissa. Counting each deck and the inner surface of the drum, it was something over fifty square kilometers of hallways, cabins, access tubes, and warehouses. Recycling plants. Hydroponic farms. Air storage. Medical bays. A maze the size of a small city, and somewhere in it, four people he needed to find.

Holden coughed out a small, harsh laugh. Naomi tilted her head.

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just not very long ago I was thinking how small Medina felt.”