Persepolis Rising

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Alex

His back hurt. Of all the thousand things that were jacked up and wrong in his life right now, the one that chose to make him crazy was that. His back hurt, just below his rib cage where it clicked for a couple days after they’d been on the float for a while. Now it clicked and ached a little. Just time and age catching up with him, but it made him crazy. Probably anything that he couldn’t fix was going to make him crazy right now.

He walked down the tight hallway, his shoulder brushing the conduits and pipes, and told himself that things were getting better. Not losing Holden. That was still a long way from better. But the rest of it. The rest of them. Whatever else happened, he still had Bobbie.

And for him anyway, Bobbie counted double.

Taking care of their little family had been his job damn near since the day the Canterbury died, back in some other lifetime. And usually, he felt like he managed it pretty well. The only time things had really come apart, he’d been married to Giselle and preoccupied with trying to pump air into that leaking sack of a relationship. But all the times he hadn’t lost focus, Alex felt like he’d kept the crew of the Roci working together, mostly. It wasn’t big things. The powerful stuff was always small. A kind word when Clarissa was feeling unappreciated, a little elbow in the ribs when Holden’s outrage on someone else’s behalf threatened to eclipse the person in question, a cordon around Amos when the big man was in the bad part of his head. Every crew that lasted more than three runs together had someone who kept a weather eye on the balance. For decades now, he’d been that man on the Roci.

Only they weren’t on the Roci now. And that, so far as he could see it, was more than half of the problem. Not the whole problem. But more than half.

“Hoy, hoy, hoy,” one of Katria’s people said, trotting up behind him. Alex recognized him from the galley. Young guy with a nose that had gotten bent sometime back and never put straight. “Passé alles gut?”

“Sure,” Alex said. “Everything’s fine.” It wasn’t true, but he wasn’t looking to talk about family business outside the family.

“Bist bien,” the crook-nosed guy said. “Just. We’re alles busted about Holden, yeah? Whatever Voltaire can do, help out, yeah?”

Alex clapped the crook-nose on the shoulder, and looked deeply into his eyes. “Thank you. Seriously. That means a lot.”

The kid was just another someone who wanted to get close to the action. There had been a million like him over the years. Holden had always been the one who soaked up the fame and celebrity, because for the most part he didn’t notice it. He just kept on being himself, and got vaguely surprised when anyone recognized him. The rest of them had to build up their routines and diversions, ways of being polite to the people who wanted to insert themselves into anything that the Rocinante did so they could tell their friends and feeds that they knew James Holden. Shaking Crook-nose’s hand and sending him away didn’t cost Alex much, but it didn’t cost him nothing. Part of him wanted to ignore the guy or yell at him. But this was easier in the long run. He had enough experience to know that, and he was pretty good with patience when he needed to be.

After a well-calculated moment, he turned away and resumed walking toward the makeshift bunkroom. And Naomi.

It had been hard when Holden and Naomi pulled the ripcord, but it hadn’t been unexpected. Part of him had been braced for it since his own second divorce. He’d been ready for the blow when those two packed up their things and retired. When Duarte’s forces blew through the gate and changed everything, part of him had thought that getting Holden and Naomi back was going to be the silver lining.

He’d called it wrong, though.

They treated it like Laconia was the only problem because it was the one most likely to get them all killed, but there was more than that. Now that Holden was out of the picture, the only one in a position to fix it was Naomi.

Fix it. That was optimism. The only one who could fix as much of it as was fixable. He hoped she was able to rise to the occasion. He hoped he was too. But no matter how bad it was, things had gone pretty well with Bobbie. He still had Bobbie.

The smuggler’s cabin was dim. Golden light spilled from the toolkit light they used for illumination when the built-in fixtures were too harsh. The air was warmer here, and it had the vague smell of bodies and old laundry. They hadn’t changed out the sheets since they’d gotten here. Some things slipped when you were hiding from authoritarian police squads and trying to topple a conquering army. Linens appeared to be one of those things.

Naomi sat against the back wall, her stool tipped back so that she could rest against the bulkhead. She smiled when he came in and put a finger to her lips. Alex paused, and Naomi nodded toward the bunk to his left. The lump under the blanket was the curve of Clarissa’s back. It rose and fell slowly. She was asleep. Alex turned back to Naomi, gestured to the door behind him in invitation, but Naomi shifted her stool to one side, making room for Alex to sit on the lower bunk beside her. Come sit with me. I will not go outside.

With a sinking sensation in his gut, Alex sat. His back popped like a bolt shearing off, and the ache went away. In the shadows, Naomi seemed like someone just waking up from sleep or just falling into it. On a borderline, regardless, between one state and another.

“Hey,” Alex said softly.

Naomi made a little wave with a smile behind it. “I’ve been sitting with her for the last couple hours. Amos is trying to get something to take the edge off in the short run, but we need to get her to the med bay. That sludge in her blood is building up. It’s making her jittery.”

“Soon as we’re out of here,” Alex said. “First thing. How’re you holding together?”

She shrugged with her hands.

“Yeah,” he said.

“You coming to tell me that I need to put my big-girl boots on? Stop sulking in my tent and rejoin the battle, quick before Patroclus does something rash?” There was a warmth and a humor in her voice he hadn’t expected. It almost undercut the sorrow that he had expected.

“Yeah, I don’t actually know who Patroclus is,” Alex said.

“Greek kid, got in over his head,” Naomi said, waving it away. “I’ll be fine, Alex. I’ll be out there. Just I needed to be away for a little while. It’s just the down cycle.”

He went through all of the things he’d planned to say, all the arguments he’d prepared to make. None of them seemed to quite fit the situation.

“Yeah, okay,” he said instead. And then, a moment later, “Down cycle?”

“The part where I don’t know if he’s dead or alive. The part where I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again. The part where I think how much I want him to be here and safe and not hurting. And telling me not to hurt either.”

“I know it’s … that’s got to be—”

“Alex, I live here,” Naomi said. “I can’t tell you how many times he’s put me here. How many times he’s seen the right thing to do and rushed off to do it without thinking about the price. Without letting me or you or the Roci scare him into being less than his conscience demands. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it. It’s natural to him. Who he is. It’s the only thing about him I’m really angry about.” The buzz in her voice wasn’t sorrow.

Alex took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I may not have really understood the whole situation.”

“You remember Io? When he went off to a ship with active protomolecule all over it because maybe he’d be able to save Mars? Or Ilus, when he vanished with whatever that weird version of Miller was because maybe he’d be able to keep you and me from falling out of orbit? Or on Marais, when he went into the cliffs so we wouldn’t run out of water? So this time he went to keep Amos and Katria playing nice, and instead, he saved the whole operation and maybe opened the way for all of us to get away safely. All it cost was him. And he paid that price without hesitating. Same as fucking always.”

A tear tracked down her cheek, and he felt his own eyes stinging.

“We’ll get him,” Alex said. “We’ll always get him back.”

“Sure we will. Until the time we don’t,” she said. “It’s like this for everyone. There’s always going to be a last time, eventually. I just wish with Jim there could only be one last time, and not all of them, over and over and over.”

He took her hand. Her fingers were warm, but thinner than he remembered them being. He could feel the little bones beneath the skin, and her skin was dry.

“He’s exhausting,” she said.

“But we love him.”

She sighed. “We do.”

They sat in silence for a moment before she drew her hand back from his and wiped her cheeks dry. She leaned forward, setting the legs of her stool down against the deck. Her sigh came from a thousand klicks away. “Let me get cleaned up, and I’ll get to work,” she said.

Alex stood when she did, but waited behind as she walked out. He’d been traveling with Naomi for a lot of years. It was amazing how easy it was to forget how much she knew herself. He didn’t know if that said more about her or him.

Probably him.

Clarissa made a soft sound, somewhere between a grunt and cough. She turned toward him. Her skin was pale, sheened with sweat, but her smile was strong and unforced. “Hey,” she said. “What did I miss? Did we hear about Holden? What’s news?”

“No, it wasn’t that. I was just getting a little pep talk,” Alex said. “How’re you doing?”

Clarissa’s eyes drifted closed and then open again, like a blinking in slow motion. “Living the dream,” she said, and chuckled. “Have you seen Amos? He was going to get me … something.”

“I think he’s still out doing that. He’ll be back, though. Don’t worry.”

“I never do,” Clarissa said, and shuddered like she was cold. The room wasn’t cold. “You think they could fix me?”

“Who?”

“The Laconians,” Clarissa said. “I keep thinking about how their tech is all levels and levels above ours. And I wonder if maybe their medicine is too. Maybe they could get these fucking implants out of me. Plaster over the worst of the damage.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Kind of ironic that I’m working to fuck them all the way up, isn’t it?” She made a single, low sound. If she’d strung a few like it together, it would have been chuckling.

“I guess it is,” he said. And then a moment later, “If you want to go to one of their clinics? I mean it would probably mean getting out of this underground business, but if you want to, we can work something out.”

Her smile was love and pity. “You really think that’s true? That we could work something out?”

“Hell yes,” Alex said.

“Well, I’ll keep that option in mind,” she said. “You’re a good man, Alex Kamal.”

“You’re not too bad yourself,” he said.

“I am not presently at my best,” Clarissa said. “But I appreciate the thought. I really do.”

Her eyes fluttered closed again. Her face relaxed. She looked like a wax model of herself. She’ll be better when we get the Roci back, he thought. Not better-better. Just improved, but better than this. And once he was back in the pilot’s seat, he wasn’t ever going dockside again if he could help it. Being on the Rocinante was being home.

Everywhere else was where the trouble came.

Bobbie came with the news about Holden, and something else besides. It felt almost like something foreordained. As soon as he had told Naomi that they’d save Holden, Holden appeared in the station brig and the document outlining how to free him fell into their hands. It was perfect enough to make him very nervous.

“This is astounding,” Naomi said, paging through the file.

Alex leaned over her, trying to see the screen of her terminal and not interrupt her at the same time, and doing a middling job of both. If there was any sure sign of Naomi’s relief, it was that she was back on the job.

The room was small, the door firmly closed, and Saba had set the monitor to the local newsfeed with the volume high. A young man he didn’t recognize was interviewing Carrie Fisk about the war in Sol system and the traffic between the colony worlds that was just about to begin. The colonies don’t care who’s running Medina, so long as we’re running it well. The Transport Union was fine, and Laconian oversight will be fine too. Better, even, because the Laconian model respects self-rule. The Laconian Congress of Worlds is a real voice for its members. That’s never been the case before. Alex tried watching her, just so he’d have something to do besides hover. It didn’t work very well.

Bobbie paced along the wall behind her, three strides one way, then turned, then three back. Saba was more subdued, his body held still and only his eyes flickering. The two of them had the same sense of barely restrained action. Like a boulder on a mountaintop that’s just starting to shift toward the slope.

Naomi made a small, satisfied sound at the back of her throat and followed a linked passage to a schematic of a ship that looked from the outside like the Gathering Storm.

“Who knows about this?” Alex asked. “I mean, who’s seen it?”

“One of mine broke the encryption,” Saba said. “She brought it to me straight. Didn’t read it, even. Maha, she solid like stone. Not everyone of mine is, but her? I tell her she didn’t see it, and it never got seen.”

“This has the operational plans for the Gathering Storm,” Naomi said. “Whatever else you want to say about these Laconians, they are thorough.”

“Most of it’s MRCN and MMC protocols and practices,” Bobbie said. “Five-sixths of it are the operating procedures Alex and I trained on, word for word.”

“You should both read the thing, then,” Saba said. “Alles la. Mark down where it’s changed. There’s reasons to change things. Might point us the right way. Know what’s behind it, maybe even better than this on its own.”

“I don’t know,” Naomi said. “This on its own is pretty damned good.”

The excitement in Alex’s chest felt like champagne bubbles. Bright and dancing. He’d forgotten what a good break felt like after all the dread. It was astounding to think how close he’d come to scrubbing the mission, leaving the waldoes abandoned in the air duct, and calling it impossible. And if this was the key that let them get themselves and everyone else in the underground off Medina before the Typhoon appeared, his balking would have pissed their best chances away.

Holden’s gambit had worked. He’d thrown himself to the wolves so that they’d have this, and it was everything they’d hoped for. Everything but having him back, and maybe that too.

“Is there anything in there about where the prisoners are held?” he asked.

“There is,” Naomi said, her inflection landing on the words in a way that meant it was the first thing she’d looked for. All the rest of it was important, but that part—where Holden was, how to get him out—was a settled issue in her mind. That was enough for Alex. He could hear the details later, so long as there were details to hear.

“Problemas son,” Saba said, shifting his weight. “Maybe is too good, yeah? Maybe is designed to look like something it’s not.”

“You think it’s fake?” Naomi asked.

Saba made a ticking sound with his tongue and teeth. “No. But can’t make the assumption without risking everybody’s ass, yeah? Hoping more than not. If it is what it is, it won’t stay secret for long. Too proud a victory, yeah? Someone finds out, gets a little drunk, then everyone knows.”

“You don’t trust your people’s discipline?” Bobbie asked.

Saba pointed at the closed door. “My people are the crew on the Malaclypse. These others weren’t mine until they stopped being Drummer’s. And she’s had five or six layers of bureaucrats between. It’s not I don’t trust, it’s that I don’t trust blind. People are people. Fucked up like we all are, it amazes me when we can even make a sandwich.”

“A man of infinite cynicism,” Naomi said, but Alex could hear the calm behind the words. Whatever she was seeing there, it soothed her more than he’d been able to. And then, “Bobbie, when you were active Martian Marine Corps, did your Goliath suits have a command override?”

“A what?” Bobbie said.

“Command override. Something that let your commanding officer shut the suit down?”

“Sure, we called it a radio. CO said stand down, and we did. What are you seeing?”

Naomi leaned back so that Bobbie—and since he was right there, Alex—could see better. Back when he’d been in the service, there had always been a clear chain of command, and procedures in place for when someone bucked it. Most of the time it involved MPs dragging someone off for a little summary roadside attitude adjustment followed by a court-martial. Maybe it was different in the Marines, but he was pretty sure he hadn’t seen anything like what was outlined on the screen.

“They can … they can turn them off?” Bobbie said, her voice caught between outrage and laughter. “Because that right there looks like it’s saying the governor can push a button and turn all those pretty suits of power armor into a couple thousand sarcophagi.”

“Life-support functions stay in place,” Naomi said. “But disables the weapons and comm systems, and freezes all the joints.”

Alex whistled appreciatively. “These folks must really be scared of mutineers.”

“Well,” Bobbie said. “Think about how they got here. Duarte managed to build a schismatic faction inside the MCRN big enough to start his own navy. Going on with the assumption that no one would ever try the same thing on him would seem stupid. He’s not stupid. This solve in particular, though …”

“Seems a mite overaggressive,” Alex said.

“And it’s always the aggressor who exposes their weakness,” Bobbie said. She put her hand on Naomi’s. “What are the chances we could spoof that lockdown signal?”

“Get me one of their powered suits,” Naomi said, “and I’m pretty sure we could manage it.”

“The Storm, Medina’s scopes, and the Marines,” Bobbie said. “This looks like we can build a plan that’s three for three.”

“And the prisoners,” Naomi said. “Freeing the prisoners.”

She meant Holden, Alex knew. Bobbie did too.

“Goes without saying,” Bobbie said.