Nemesis Games

“I understand that,” Bobbie said. “I do. I had to train a lot to understand that isn’t what we do. You had that training too. Whether we’re on active duty or not doesn’t matter. We serve Mars because we swore an oath. If doing the right thing was the same as doing the easy thing, we wouldn’t have had to swear. We have the prime minister of Mars in this ship. We have a military escort coming to get him safely to Luna.”

“And we have the enemy out there,” Alex said, hating the words as he said them. “It’s a trap, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Bobbie said. “It could be. Disable someone and shoot the responders is a dirty trick, but I wouldn’t put it past these bastards.”

“I don’t see how going after her would put us in more danger than holding course,” Alex said. “If they’ve got a rail gun pointing at us, they can hole us right here just as well as over there.”

“Trojan horse,” Bobbie said. “Pack that thing full of soldiers. If we dock with her, all these missiles aren’t going to help a damned bit. Or if the Rocinante gets to it, they take Fred Johnson.”

“The odds of —”

“Don’t think about the odds,” Bobbie said. “Think about the stakes. Think how much we lose if we take the risk and it goes wrong.”

Alex’s head felt thick, like the first stages of illness. He looked back at his nav panel. The distance between the Razorback and Chetzemoka increased with every second. He took a deep breath, blew out. Naomi’s voice came softly from the feed. “Tell James Holden I am in distress. Comm is not responding. I have no nav control…”

The voice that came from the cabin space was soft, gentle, conversational. “An interesting analysis, but incomplete.”

Nathan Smith stood in the doorway. His hair was greasy and disarrayed. His clothes looked like they’d been slept in. His eyes were bloodshot, the rims red and angry. Alex thought he looked a decade older than when they’d taken off. The prime minister smiled at Alex, then Bobbie, then Alex again.

“Sir,” Bobbie said.

“You’ve neglected a term, Sergeant. Consider what we stand to lose if we don’t make the attempt.”

“The reason for doing this,” Alex said. “The reason for doing any of this. If there’s a chance – and I think there’s a pretty damned good one – that Naomi managed her own escape, and she’s out there and in distress, and she’s called for help, you know what the rules are? That we stop and help. Even if she’s not someone we know. Even if it was someone else’s voice. That’s the rule, because out here, we help each other. And if we stopped doing that because we’re more important or because the rules don’t apply to us anymore, I can make a decent case that we’ve stopped being the good guys.”

Smith beamed. “That was beautiful, Mister Kamal. I had been thinking of explaining to Chrisjen Avasarala that we’d left our only solid witness to the Pella behind, but I think I like your version better. Set course and alert the UN escort to our change of plans.”

“Yes, sir,” Alex said. When the door closed, he turned to Bobbie. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Bobbie said. “It’s not like I didn’t want to go after her.”

“And if it turns out the ship’s full of soldiers?”

“I can take this suit out for a drive,” Bobbie said. “Won’t hurt my feelings.”

It only took a few minutes to set the optimal intercept course and fire off a flight plan to the UN escort ships. Afterward, he recorded a tightbeam message for Holden. “Hey there, Cap’n. We’re on our way, but we’ll be careful. Get in, take a good look, and if anything’s getting our hackles up, we won’t board. Meantime, you tell that pilot you’ve got that whoever makes rendezvous first owes the other fella a beer.”

Chapter Forty-four: Naomi

Even a steady one g could be unpleasant for her. The constant press of two was a slow torture. It began as a deep ache in her knees and the base of her spine, then progressed quickly to sharp pain, like a needle stuck into the joints. Naomi surveyed the Chetzemoka in stages, moving through a deck, then lying down until the pain lessened, then the next deck. Her hands and feet hurt even as the swelling subsided. Her cough didn’t get better, but it didn’t get worse.

The first disappointment was that the controls were in lockdown. She tried a few passwords – FreeNavy and Marcoisgreat and Filip – but even if she got it right, there was no reason to expect that they’d left the biometrics profiles turned off.