Nemesis Games

She could tell when Jim arrived without turning around. The players across the table from her all looked past her as one. Their eyes went wide, and an air of excitement washed over them. No one said it, but they might as well have – Hey! Look! It’s James Holden!

It was easy to forget that Jim was who he was. He’d started two wars, and played some role in ending them both. He’d captained the first human ship through the Ring, or the first one that survived anyway. He’d been on the alien base in the center of the slow zone and come back. He’d survived Eros Station and the death of the Agatha King. He’d been to New Terra, the first human colony on a nonhuman planet, and forged a weird, awkward peace there. It was almost embarrassing, seeing everyone react to that Holden: the one on the screens and in the newsfeeds. She knew Jim was nothing like that James Holden, but there was no point saying it. Some things stayed secrets even when you told them.

“Hello my love,” Jim said, putting his arm around her. In his other hand, he had a grapefruit martini.

“For me?” she said, taking the cocktail.

“Hope so. I wouldn’t drink it on a dare.”

“Hoy, coyo!” Paar-or-Pere said, holding up the steel ball. “Want a throw?”

The laughter around the table was buoyant. Some of it was delight – James Holden playing Golgo with us! – and some was cruel – Watch the big shot suck. None of it had anything to do with the actual man. She wondered if he knew how much he changed the nature of a room just by walking into it. At a guess, he probably didn’t.

“No,” Jim said with a grin. “I’m terrible at this. Wouldn’t know where to start.”

Naomi leaned in toward Malikah. “I should go. Thank you so much for having me.” It meant I am grateful to you for letting me be here with other Belters like I belong.

“You are todamas welcome, coya-mis,” Malikah said. It meant, Sam’s death wasn’t your fault, and if it was I forgive you.

Naomi took Jim’s elbow and let him steer her out to the main bar. The music rose as they passed through the doorway, light and sound joining in a sensory assault. On the dance floor, people moved together in pairs or in groups. There had been a time, long before she’d met Jim, when the idea of getting very, very drunk and throwing herself into the press of bodies would have been an attractive one. She could remember the girl she used to be with fondness, but it wasn’t a youth she cared to recapture. She stood at the bar and finished her martini. It was too loud to talk, so she amused herself watching people notice Jim, the game of is-it-or-isn’t-it in their expressions. Jim, for his part, was amiably bored. The idea that he was the center of attention was foreign to him. It was part of what she loved about him.

When her glass was empty, she put her hand on his, and they pressed out to the public corridor outside the club. Men and women waiting to get in – Belters, almost to a person – watched them leave. It was night on Tycho Station, which didn’t mean much. The station was built on three rotating eight-hour shifts: leisure, work, sleep. Who you knew depended on what shift you worked, like three different cities that all occupied the same space. A world that would always be two-thirds strangers. She put her arm around Jim’s waist and pulled him in against her until she could feel his thigh moving against hers.

“We need to talk,” she said.

He tensed a little, but kept his voice light and airy. “Like man-and-woman talk?”

“Worse,” she said. “XO and captain.”

“What’s up?”

They stepped into a lift, and she pushed the button for their deck. The lift chimed, the doors moving gently closed, as she gathered her thoughts. It wasn’t really that she didn’t know what needed to be said. He wasn’t going to like this any more than she did.

“We need to look at hiring on more crew.”

She knew enough about Jim’s silences to recognize this one. She looked up into his blank expression, his eyes blinking a fraction more quickly than usual.

“Really?” he said. “Seems to me that we’re doing just fine.”

“We are. We have been. The Roci’s a military design. Smart. A lot of automation, a lot of redundancy. That’s why we’ve been able to run her at a third of her standard crew for this long.”

“That and we’re the best damned crew in the sky.”

“That doesn’t hurt. Looking at skills and service, we’ve got a strong group. But we’re brittle.”

The lift shifted, the complex forces of station spin and car acceleration making the space feel unsteady. She was sure it was just the movement.

“I’m not sure what you mean by brittle,” Jim said.