Persepolis Rising

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Amos

“I was thinking about the recyclers,” Peaches said. She sounded tired. She always sounded a little tired, but this was more.

“Yeah?” he said.

They were alone in the bunk. She was sitting up, paring her toenails with a little knife he’d found for her. Something about her meds made them thicker and yellow. He knew it was important to her to keep them short, even though she never said anything.

His hands imagined what it would feel like to snap her neck. The tension first, then the grinding feeling of cartilage ripping as it gave way. He saw the look of betrayal in her eyes as the life went out of them. It was as clear as if he’d actually done it.

“The returns aren’t as good as they ought to be,” she said. “We’ve been able to get eighty-eight, ninety percent recovery, but I don’t think we broke eighty-five on the Freehold run.”

“Worth looking at,” Amos said. “You got any suspects?”

“I want to take a look at the water filters. I know they’re supposed to be the best there is without retrofitting to a straight gel system, but I don’t think they’re doing what’s on the label.”

He closed his eyes and the Rocinante’s recycling system appeared in his mind. If the filters were underperforming … yeah, could throw off the pressure going into the recyclers. Might be enough to drop the reclamation percentages. He pictured what else it would do.

“We should take a peek at the feed lines,” he said.

“Look for distention?” she said.

He grunted. Peaches scowled and nodded once, the way she did when they’d come to an agreement. There were still a few things about the Roci that he knew better than she did, but those were few and far between. And mostly about the weapons systems. She didn’t like those, and it had an effect on how much she thought about them. There were conversations he had with her that he couldn’t have with anybody else.

That didn’t keep the thoughts from coming. It didn’t do anything about the thing in his throat. “You think Holden’s okay?” she asked.

“Is or he isn’t,” Amos said. The thing in his throat got a little bigger. A little tighter. He wasn’t sure why.

“I wish there was something more I could do,” she said.

“Naomi’ll come up with something. Whatever needs doing, we’ll do it.”

She finished the last nail and tossed him the knife. He caught it in the air, folded it closed, and put it under his pillow, where it would stay. Peaches got another couple of her pills and swallowed them dry, then lay back on her bunk. There wasn’t room enough between her bunk and the one above her to get a decent punch going, but he knew what it would feel like to do a straight-kick to her ribs. Or her head. Push her back against the bulkhead, then the next kicks, she wouldn’t be able to avoid. He wasn’t going to do it, but the thoughts came anyway.

“You need some sleep?” he asked.

“Little.”

“You should try to eat some afterward.”

“I’m not keeping much down right now.”

“That’s why they call it ‘try,’” he said. “Worst case, just smear it around your face like a little kid. Absorb some nutrients through your skin.”

She chuckled. “You talked me into it, big guy. After I rest.”

“I’m going to get a jump on it,” he said. “You need anything, you just say it.”

“Thank you,” Peaches said.

He made his way down toward the galley, his shoulders brushing against the conduit and pipes on both sides. In the galley, one of Saba’s people was drinking a cup of coffee. Nice-looking guy, always been pleasant. The thing in his throat moved a little, and Amos felt the coffee cup slamming into the other guy’s face. The edge of the cup folding against the guy’s upper lip. The coffee burning them both. He felt what it would be like, bending him back, trapping his legs under the table so he couldn’t writhe away, pulling until his back snapped. There’d be others by then. The guy’s friends. He thought about how to kill them too.

Amos smiled amiably and nodded. The guy nodded back. Amos got a bowl of oatmeal and honey flavoring. He sat by himself to eat. Saba’s guy finished his drink and walked away. There was a moment when his back was turned, Amos felt his own foot driving into the back of the man’s knee, knocking him forward and down where he’d be in the right place for a choke hold. Amos only sighed and took another spoonful of grain mush. The stuff on the Roci was better, but this was warm anyway. It soothed his throat.

“Hey there, big guy,” Babs said from the doorway.

She stepped over, sat across from him. Her jaw was set and her gaze was firm and straight-ahead. Looking right at him like she was playing at being Holden.

“Got a minute?”

Amos took his half-empty bowl, dropped the spoon in it, and threw them all away as he walked out the door.

There was an environmental-control station about seven doors down. Saba’d been using it to store food, but they’d all been eating at a pretty fair clip, and it was mostly empty space now. Only one entrance, so no one spent much time there. Thick walls filled with insulation foam. The kind that just ate up sound like it was nothing. If the Laconians came, it was a death trap. He shouldered the door open. Babs’ footsteps came from behind him, hard and fast and authoritative. Like a schoolteacher about to chew out her students.

The room was dark, but he found the switch. Too-bright utility lights. They were down to half a pallet of textured protein and some tubs of grain and yeast. The walls were all steel plate except for a patch in one corner where they’d used carbon-silicate lace. A pipe ran along the corner where the ceiling met the left wall. The actual environmental controls were all in locked cabinets and behind security doors that would take a crowbar, a welding torch, and a couple hours to get through. The whole place was maybe three meters by four, and a couple high. It wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty good. He didn’t have anyplace better.

Babs stepped in behind him and closed the door. Her nose had the two little half-moons beside the nostrils that she got when she was pissed. The thing in his throat throbbed like a tumor. For a second, he thought it was maybe going to rupture.

Babs crossed her arms, blocking the door.

“Look, Amos. I understand you’re pissed off at me. And honest to God, I’m more than a little pissed off at you right now too. But we’re a crew. We’re friends, and we can work this out, whatever it is. I’m here, okay? So whatever it is—”

“When did you turn into such a fucking pussy, Babs?” he said. His hands were tingling like they had too much energy in them. Like he was about to ground out. “Did you really come in here to talk about your feelings?”

Her face went blank, her eyes flat. She uncrossed her arms. Her weight sunk into her hips. Her knees bent a little. He figured she was good for maybe one or two more rounds of insults, but he’d gauged wrong.

She shifted her shoulders, swung at the hips, her right arm unfurling. A few years earlier, he might have been able to slip it and get inside. But a few years earlier, she might have been faster. Either way, all he managed was to turn his head away and pull back a couple centimeters before her knuckles slapped into his cheekbone. If he’d been slower, it would have splashed his nose across his face. Her next punch was already coming, and he turned so that it got his shoulder at an angle. The pain was sudden and wide and familiar as an old song. He felt this thing in his throat blowing up like a balloon, expanding out bigger than he was.

He kicked straight, hitting just above her hip with his knee still bent. It wasn’t to break her but to push her back, then with the room he’d opened between them, he rushed her. Right fist to her face, left swinging up into her ribs. She lifted her arms into a boxer’s stance, but a fraction of a second too late. He finally got inside her guard, his right elbow across her throat, and he had her back against the door. Pushing against her windpipe. She shifted under him, looking for a way to get a breath. His legs and back ached with the effort of closing her throat for her. He gritted his teeth until they creaked.

The pain in his balls started with a thump like hearing someone drop a brick, then a second later the brightness came, spreading out through his whole body. He felt himself stumble back. Bobbie turned out from under his arm, hitting him once with each fist on exactly the same rib. He felt it give.

She wasn’t pulling her punches. She meant it. He let go of the last shred of restraint, and surged forward, roaring. Ready to kill or get killed. The tiny part of him that was still watching him, still thinking and aware, expected her to flinch back. Instead, she jumped in toward him. They hit like a wreck, her hand on his neck, her hip against his, and he was in the air. He hit the bulkhead hard enough that sound faded away for a second. He pushed off just as she swung a knee into his gut, grabbed her around the thigh, and lifted, swinging her up over his head, and then both of them down to the deck as hard as the spin gravity would take them.

Someone was shouting, and it might have been him. It was all ground game now, and her hands were on his head, fingertips digging into his skin, looking for a grip. If she got his ear, she was keeping it. He reared back, grabbing for her arm, trying to get her elbow where he could bend it back. Snap it. For a second, he was almost there, but she twisted, got a foot against his waist, pushed him back. He caught her ankle and tried the same move on her knee, but the muscles there were too strong, the joint too solid to break. And while he was trying it, he couldn’t move as well.

Her other heel came down on his left eyebrow, popping it open. He pushed in toward her, driving her back. The blood stung his eye, but he moved fast and with a lifetime of practice. He had his hands around her throat, squeezing as hard as he could. Her windpipe was between his thumbs where he could crack it like a walnut—

Except she was already bringing her arms up inside his, rolling her shoulders and shrugging off his grip. She’d planned it. She wasn’t lost in rage haze. She was still thinking.

She locked her legs with his, and rolled so she was on top. The heel of her left hand pushed his chin up and away so her right fist could land on his throat. Amos coughed, tried to roll away. His breath was a thick wheeze. The air that made it into his lungs felt pressed thin. He struggled to get to his feet, but she was already up, kicking his knee out from under him. He hit the deck hard. She was over him, kicking down. Curb-stomping him. He tried to curl away from her. Her heel hit his shoulder, his back. She was going for his kidneys, and he tried to shift away, but he couldn’t. The pain was exquisite and vast. He was helpless. He was fucked. She kicked him again, the whole weight of her body behind it, and he felt another rib go.

He wasn’t going to make it up. The violence was going to go on until she decided it was over, and there was nothing he could do to make it stop. He curled against blow after blow after blow, felt the damage in his body getting deeper. There was nothing he could do to defend himself. If Bobbie wanted him dead, he’d die.

He endured, helpless. The pain smeared into itself until it wasn’t any part of him that hurt. Until it was bigger than his body.

His mind slipped, shifted. Images flickered through him like a memory too deep to bother being coherent. A perfume smell like lilacs and bergamot. A white blanket so used that the cotton fibers were shattering, but soft. The way the cheap ice pops they sold at the shitty little bodega at Carey and Lombard tasted. The sound of a feed in the next room, of rain. It had been a long time since he’d thought about how the rain sounded in Baltimore. Violence, helpless pain, but cheap ice pops too.

A deep peace welled up in his gut, flowing out through him, lifting him up and out of his body. He relaxed into it. The thing in his throat was gone. Or no. That was never going to happen. It was sated. Back in the deep place where it belonged. He felt like the moment after orgasm, only better. Deeper. More real.

Eventually, he noticed Bobbie wasn’t kicking him anymore. He rolled onto his back. Opened his eyes. There was blood on the bulkheads and the deck. His testicles felt like soccer balls made of agony. Drying blood glued his left eye closed. His throat ached and burned when he swallowed, but the thing was gone. Something was weird about his breathing, though. It took him a second to figure out what. It was that he wasn’t the only one wheezing.

Bobbie sat with her back against the door. Her legs were spread a little, taking up the space. Her hands were on her knees. The little bleeding divots where the skin over her knuckles had split looked like art. Her hair was plastered to her neck. Mostly by sweat.

He looked at her looking back at him. Neither one of them spoke for a while. The hum of the station was the only sound.

“So,” Bobbie said, then took another couple breaths before she went on. “The fuck was that?”

Amos swallowed. It hurt a little less this time. He tried to sit up, then thought better of it. There were even a few spatters of blood on the ceiling. One of them looked a little like a cartoon dog face.

“I don’t,” he said, then gulped in another breath. “I don’t want things. You know what I mean?”

“Nope.”

“People … people want things. They want kids. Or they want to get famous or rich or something. And then they get all screwed up trying to get it. So I just don’t want anything. Not like that.”

“All right,” Bobbie said.

“Only I fucked up. Didn’t even know I was doing it, but it got where I wanted a thing.” He waited for the lump to come back to his throat, and when it didn’t, he went on. “I want Peaches to get to die at home. With her family.”

“On the Roci,” Bobbie said. “With us.”

“Yeah, I want that. Only ever since we got back from Freehold, it’s all coming apart. It wasn’t so bad when it was just Holden and Naomi peeling off on their own, because they picked that.”

“And also they never actually went away,” Bobbie said.

“But then that big bastard came through the Laconia gate, and now we’re locked off the Roci, and it’s like the chance to do it right’s just slipping too far away to get a hold of it, you know? I see her acting like it’s not much one way or the other, only it is to me. And then … then everything gets harder. I get cranky. Start thinking about shit I don’t want to think about. You know.”

They were silent for a long moment. Amos tried sitting up again, and managed it this time.

“All right,” Bobbie said. “I get it.”

“You do?”

“Close enough,” she said. “I get it close enough.”

She levered herself up to standing, then held a hand out to him. He took it, his hand on her wrist, hers on his. They pulled together and got him to standing. Her face was almost unmarked, but there were some bruises starting to show around her neck. “You really beat the shit out of me,” he said.

“Would have been easier to kill you,” Babs said, and grinned with bloody teeth. “But I feel like we still need your dumb ass.”

He nodded. She was right about both things.

“We should get you some ice,” he said.

“Fuck you,” she said. “If I did half my job, you’ll be stuffing your jock with every cold thing we have.”

“Yeah. You can have it when I’m done, though.”

She managed another bloody smile and turned toward the door.

“Hey, Babs,” he said. “No hard feelings, right?”

“Just next time you need to beat someone up, how about you don’t insult me first.”

He chuckled. It hurt. “If I need to beat someone up, I’ve got a whole station full of possibilities. But if I’m looking to lose a fight, I’m pretty much down to just you.”

She took a second. “Fair point.”

It took him about five minutes to get to the head. He washed up the best he could, but he was going to need some fresh clothes, and washing his eye pulled the clot a little bit loose. It started bleeding again. He’d talk to Saba about getting someone to stitch it closed. But clothes first.

“Jesus Christ,” Peaches said when he stepped into the room. “What happened?”

“Huh? Oh, you mean this? Me and Babs were doing a little sparring. I put my face where it shouldn’t have been. It ain’t nothing.”

Her face balanced between not believing him and choosing to, despite the thinness of the lie. He looked at her collarbone, waiting for the thing to come up with some way to break it, but nothing came. So that was good.

“You need to be less rusty,” she said at last.

“That’s not wrong,” Amos said. “What’re you up to?”

“I was going to go smear some food on my mouth like a toddler,” she said.

“Sounds good,” he said. “I’ll go with you.”