Nemesis Games

Chapter Thirty-three: Holden

Most of human history had static maps. Even in times of change and chaos, when civilizations had fallen in the course of a single night, the places remained more or less the same. The distance between Africa and South America was going to stay what it had always been, at least over the span of human evolution. And whether you called it France or the Common European Interest Zone, Paris was closer to Orléans than Nice. It was only when they moved out to Mars and then the Belt and the worlds beyond it that the distance between the great centers of human life became a function of time. From Tycho Station, Earth and Luna were almost on the far side of the sun. Mars was closer, but retreating with every hour. Saturn was closer than either and the Jovian moons farther away. That everything came closer and then farther apart was a given in Holden’s life; uncommented and unremarkable. It was only times like this that facts of orbital periodicity started to seem like a metaphor for something deeper.

As soon as Fred made the decision to go to Luna, Holden had moved his things back to the Rocinante. And then the rest of the crew’s possessions too. He’d found Amos’ clothes neatly folded and regimented in a rough canvas bag. Alex’s had been thrown haphazardly in a case, half in a mesh bag and half not, though which set was clean and which bound for the laundry, Holden couldn’t tell. Naomi’s things had been in his suite. A spare pair of boots, an unpaired sock, underwear. She’d left a model of a Martian combat mech—bright red and flat black and no bigger than his thumb—on the bathroom counter. He didn’t know if it held some special meaning to her or if she would even remember where she’d gotten it from. He was careful to take it with him, though. Careful to wrap it and put it in a cushioned box. It was the closest thing he had to taking care of the woman it belonged to, so that was what he did.

Being back in the Rocinante was like coming home, except that it was too empty. The narrow corridors of the crew deck seemed too wide. The occasional ticking and popping of the expansion joints adjusting to shifts in temperature were like the knocking of ghosts. When the repair team were somewhere he could hear them, Holden resented the voices and footsteps that weren’t his crew’s. When they were gone, the silence oppressed him.

He told himself it was temporary. That before long, he’d have Alex back in the cockpit and Amos down in engineering. Naomi beside him, telling him gently what he was screwing up and how to do it better. He’d go to Luna, and they’d be there. All of them. Somehow.

Except he still hadn’t heard from Naomi. He’d gotten a short text-only message from Mother Tamara that his parents were all right for now, but that ash was falling on the ranch like snow in winter. And nothing from Amos.

Sometimes people knew when they were saying their last goodbyes, but not always. Not often. Most people’s last parting of ways were so small, the people involved didn’t even notice them. Now, in the darkness of the command deck with a half-liter bulb of bourbon floating beside him and the audio system playing twelve-bar blues, Holden was pretty sure he’d said a couple of his own final goodbyes and not known it. He replayed everything in his head, his memories becoming less authentic and more painful every time he did.

“We’re all that’s left,” he said to the ship. “You’re all I’ve got.”

The Rocinante didn’t answer for a long moment, and then, weirdly, it did. A bright yellow incoming request alert appeared on his console. Holden wiped his teary eyes with a sleeve and accepted it. Fred Johnson appeared in a window, his brows furrowed.

“Holden?”

“Fred?”

“Are you all right?”

“Ah. Yes?”

Fred leaned forward, his head growing massive on the screen. “I’ve been trying to reach your hand terminal for the past fifteen minutes.”

Holden looked around the command deck, then nodded. “I may have left it in my pants. In my quarters. I think I did.”

“Are you drunk?”

“I think I am.” He had to concentrate not to slur.

“And you’re not wearing pants?”

“I’m not ready to take our relationship there yet.”

“Well, have the med bay give you something to sober you up and get your ass covered. I’m sending the flight crew over.”

Holden turned up the lights and killed the music feed. “What’s going on?”

“We’re getting reports. The Martian prime minister’s under attack. The ships your man Alex found were decoys to draw off the escort.”

“But,” Holden said, “the new escort ships—”

“Are the ones shooting at him.”

Holden cursed under his breath. “Alex is on that ship. Did we hear from Alex?”

“We haven’t heard from anybody. I was keeping some radio telescopes pointed that direction, and this is what they’re getting. I checked with Drummer and the engineering staff. They said the Roci’s got a clean bill of health, and I’m less and less interested in sitting around here waiting for whoever’s behind all this to take another swing at me.”

Holden undid the straps on his couch, floating forward. His head was a little swimmy. He looked around at the command deck. It was like some part of his brain was still expecting to see Alex and Naomi and Amos there with him. He hadn’t realized it was a habit, to look for his people before the Roci got under way. This, he realized, was the first time ever that they wouldn’t be there. It felt like a bad omen.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll clean up for company. When are you looking to go?”

“How soon is as soon as possible?”

“The reactor’s cold, and we’d want to top up the air and water,” Holden said. The alcohol fumes seemed to be burning away already, but he wasn’t entirely sure if that was true or if it just felt that way. “Plus I’m reliably informed that I need to get something from the med bay to sober me up and get my ass covered.”

“Glad you were paying attention,” Fred said. “So two hours?”

“I think we can manage that.”

“Let’s do.”

Holden pulled himself down the lift shaft hand over hand. A new crew coming onto his Rocinante. It was the obvious thing, of course. It had always been the plan, but now the prospect filled him with dread. Unfamiliar faces at the controls and in the crew quarters. Voices in the ship that weren’t the ones he’d gotten used to in the years since the Donnager. Even when they’d been carrying passengers, his crew had been at the heart of the ship. This was something else, and he didn’t like it.

He stopped at the med bay on the way to his quarters. Sober, the symbolic implications of a new temporary crew for the trip to Luna didn’t seem quite as ominous, but the thought stayed at the back of his mind: without Naomi—without all his crew—the Rocinante wasn’t going to be what she had been. When he checked his hand terminal, the only messages were from Fred. Alex’s silence didn’t help.

The transport tube’s connection to the airlock was a gentle thump, like Tycho Station clearing its throat. Holden was at the airlock to let them in. Eight people—six Belters, and two who looked like they’d come from Earth, all wearing Tycho Station flight suits and hauling small personal kits—floated into the space among the lockers. Drummer was with them, wearing her security uniform.

“Captain Holden?” Drummer said. “I’d like to introduce Captain Foster Sales and his crew.”

The man who floated up, arms braced, looked too young to be a captain. Close-cropped black hair transitioned into a glossy beard that tried and failed to lend the boyish features some gravitas. He was introduced to the others—pilots Arnold Mfume and Chava Lombaugh, engineers Sandra Ip and Zach Kazantzakis, weapons technicians Gor Droga and Sun-yi Steinberg, communications specialist Maura Patel. By the end of the little ceremony, Holden was pretty sure he’d already forgotten all of their names.

Drummer seemed to read his unease, because when the crew broke to their stations, she lingered and drew him aside. “They’re good people, Captain. I vetted all of them myself. None of them are the bad guys.”

“Yeah,” Holden said. “That’s good.”

Her smile was weirdly gentle. “It’s weird for me too.”

“Yeah?” he said.

“On my watch, they broke into the station, stole the fucking protomolecule. They tried to kill the boss. I’m spending all day projecting an attitude of calm and control, and come sleep shift, I’m grinding my teeth and staring at the wall. Now the old man’s leaving? Honest to God, I’m shitting bricks here.”

Holden blew out a long breath. “Thanks for that.”

“Anytime, sir. Everyone you meet’s fighting a hard battle.”

“Should I know anything about…” He nodded toward the door. Drummer briefed him in quick, simple sentences. Ip’s roommate had been one of the turncoats, and she still felt betrayed. Steinberg and Mfume both had a hard time losing face, and while it wasn’t usually a problem, if they got into a spat, someone would have to step in and deescalate. Droga had family on Earth, and he was worried and angry and grieving. Holden made a note to speak to the man if he had a chance. With every small detail, every fault and vulnerability, every strength and peculiar virtue, Holden felt something in his chest grow calmer.

Okay, these men and women weren’t his family, but they were his crew. They wouldn’t ever mean what Alex and Amos and Naomi meant, but for the next weeks, he was their captain. And that was enough.

For now, that was enough.

When Fred came through the airlock, Drummer was just finishing her rundown of Maura Patel’s insomnia problem. Fred landed feetfirst on the wall, ankles hooked into the handholds like he’d been born in the Belt. He stood at ninety degrees to them, a rough smile on his face and a small personal kit strapped to his back.

“Well, what are you two doing?”

“Drummer is very gently telling me how to put on my big-boy pants,” Holden said.

“Really?” Fred asked.

“It’s possible I was getting a little maudlin.”

Fred nodded. “Happens to the best of us from time to time. Where do we stand?”

Drummer answered. “The crew’s initiating the warm-up. We haven’t had anyone reporting trouble, so you should be good to go on schedule.”

“Excellent,” Fred said. “Of course, they’ve probably taken all the good bunks by now.”

“All the bunks are the same,” Holden said. “Except mine. You can’t have mine.”

“Wouldn’t think of it, Captain,” Fred said. “The Martian convoy’s put out a distress call. The original escort’s trying to burn back toward them, but the mystery ships are engaging in force now. As ambushes go, this one’s looking pretty effective.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Holden said. “Still nothing from Alex.”

“Well. We can hope for the best,” Fred said. “Latest intel shows the attackers have stopped firing. So that makes it look like a boarding action.”

Holden’s blood went cold. “Protocol is they blow the ship if boarders get close to taking engineering or the CIC.”

“That’s so that the enemy doesn’t compromise your codes,” Drummer said. “They rode in on Martian naval ships. That damage is already done.”

The three were silent for a moment. When Fred spoke, his voice was low and mordant. “Well, that’s cheerful. You coming to help this along, Captain?”

Holden looked at Drummer. She held herself professionally at attention, but he thought he saw a glimmer of unease in her eyes. Fred Johnson had run Tycho Station for almost two decades, and now he was leaving. He might not come back. And Holden might not either.

Everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

“Let’s give this part to Foster,” Holden said. “Let him get a feel for the ship. There’s something I need to take care of on the station before we go.”

Monica was in new rooms. To look at her, sitting on the couch, it was like she was meeting him for the first time. The months they’d spent—her crew and his—shipping out to the Ring, the desperate work she’d done on the Behemoth back before it became Medina Station, her abduction and his rescue of her. All of it was gone. Her expression was polite, and it was closed.

“So,” Holden said. “I’m about to take off. I’m not sure when or even if I’ll see you again. And I feel like we’re not good.”

“Why do you feel like that?”

“Off the record?”

The silence cooled the room, then Monica took her new hand terminal out of her pocket and tapped it twice. It chimed and she rested it on her thigh. “Fine. Off the record.”

“Because I lied to you, and you know it. And you’re angry about it. And because you tried to get me to talk about things I didn’t want to talk about by springing questions on me in the middle of an interview, and I’m angry with you about that.”

Monica sighed, but her face softened. She looked older now than when they’d first met. Still camera-ready and perfect at all times, but worn by the universe. “What happened to you, Holden? You used to be the man who didn’t hide anything. You were the one voice everyone could trust, because even if you didn’t know all of it, you’d at least tell the truth you did know. This reading the press release thing? It’s not you.”

“Fred asked me not to say that he’d been targeted.”

“Or that they got away with the protomolecule sample,” Monica said, then held up her hand terminal. “We’re off the record. Do me the courtesy of not lying to me now too.”

“And that they got away with the protomolecule,” Holden said.

Monica’s face softened. She scratched her arm, fingernails hissing against the cloth. “That’s critical. That’s the scariest thing that’s happened since this all started. Don’t you think that people have a right to know the danger they’re in?”

“Fred knows. He’s told Avasarala and Smith. Earth and Mars know. The OPA knows. Panicking people for no reason—”

“Panicking at this point isn’t unreasonable,” Monica said. “And deciding for people what they should get to know so they do what you think they should do? That isn’t how the good guys act, and you know it. It’s paternalistic, it’s condescending, and it’s beneath you. Maybe not them. The political movers and shakers. But it’s beneath you.”

Holden felt a warmth rising in his chest. Shame or anger or something more complicated, he couldn’t say. He remembered Mother Tamara saying It hurts most if there’s something true in it. He wanted to say something mean. To hit back. He laced his fingers together. “Does what you do matter?”

“What?”

“Reporting? Telling things to people. Does it have any power?”

“Of course it does.”

“Then how you use that power matters too. I’m not saying that we were right to put the protomolecule thing under the rug. I’m saying that telling everyone about it—especially right now while whatever the hell this is is still going on—is worse. When we were in the slow zone, you were the voice that pulled us all together. You gave a shape to that moment of chaos. And it made people safer and calmer and more rational. More civilized. We need that again. I need that again.”

“How can you say—” Monica began, and her hand terminal buzzed. She looked down at it in annoyance, then did a double take. She lifted a finger to him. Just a second.

“What is it?” Holden said, but she was reading her terminal, her eyes getting wider. “Monica? If this is some kind of object lesson about how shitty it is to withhold information, I admit it’s weirdly elegant. But if you could stop it now—”

“The attack ships. The ones going after the Martian prime minister. The command ship put out a message.” She looked up at him. “It’s for you.”

Naomi’s voice on the hand terminal was thin and tinny and like waking up from a nightmare into something worse. “If you receive this, please retransmit. This is Naomi Nagata of the Rocinante. Message is for James Holden. The software controlling the magnetic bottle has been sabotaged. Do not start the reactor—”

She kept talking, but Holden already had his hand terminal up. His knuckles ached, and he had to force himself to stop squeezing the device. He put out a connection request to Drummer. His heart beat against his ribs and he felt like he was falling, like he’d stepped off a tower and hadn’t quite caught the ledge on the way down. Monica was cursing quietly under her breath. It sounded like prayer.

If the reactor came up and the bottle failed, the Rocinante would die in a fraction of a second. Tycho Station might survive. Some of it, anyway.

“Drummer here,” his hand terminal said. “How can I help you, Captain?”

“Have you started the reactor?” Holden said.

Drummer went silent for maybe half a second. It felt like years. “Yes, sir. We’re at sixty percent, and looking great.”

“Shut it down,” Holden said. “Shut it down right now.”

There was a moment of silence. Don’t ask me why, Holden thought. Don’t argue or ask me to explain. Please don’t.

“Done. The core is down,” Drummer said. “So can I ask what this is about?”