Nemesis Games

At first, she thought it was because there wasn’t anyone there with her, guarding her, judging her. And that, she decided, was part of it. But more than that, she was simply doing what needed to be done without having to concern herself about what anyone else thought. Even Jim. And wasn’t that odd? She wanted nothing in the world more than for Jim to be there – followed by Amos and Alex and a good meal and a bed at a humane gravity – but there was a part of her that was also expanding into the silence of simply being herself and utterly alone. There were no dark thoughts, no guilt, no self-doubt tapping at the back of her mind. Either she was too tired for that, or something else had happened to her while she’d been paying attention to other things.

This was the difference, she thought, between solitude and isolation. And now she knew something about herself she hadn’t known before. It was an unexpected victory, and all the better for that.

She started getting ready for the thirty-first sortie.

She had almost a minute, because she’d figured out that coming up the comm array power supply took a lot longer than it did going back down. It was the sort of thing she’d have realized much more quickly if her mind hadn’t been a little on the compromised side.

The comm system was held in place by more than epoxy. Long strips of metal tape lashed the transmitter in place, the welds still bright as if they’d been made yesterday. Three sorties ago – number forty-four – she’d thought there might be a diagnostic handset. Not that she could speak into it, but she might have been able to tap out a message. But despite the fact that handsets like that were standard and required, there wasn’t one.

It had taken her some time to put together a backup plan.

For hours, the looped message had played in her ear, whispering on the back of residual charge. “This is Naomi Nagata of the Rocinante. If you get this message, please retransmit. Tell James Holden I am in distress. Comm is not responding. I have no nav control. Please retransmit…”

Thirteen seconds long, and barely louder than the sound of her breath, even with her head less than a meter from the transmitter. With the leads to the transmitter exposed, she was ready. She’d have four times through. It had to be enough that it wouldn’t be mistaken for random interference. She pressed her head to the hull to distract from the whirling of her inner ear.

“This is Naomi Nagata,” she said, matching the timing and cadence of her false self. “If you get this message, please retransmit. Tell James Holden I am in —” She slammed the wire onto the exposed leads. A shiver of electricity bit her fingertips even through the suit’s gloves. The radio was silent, but she kept mouthing the words, replaying them like a song stuck in her head until the right moment, then yanked the wire free “— control. Please retransmit. This is Naomi Nagata of the Rocinante. If you get this message, please retransmit. Tell James Holden I am in —” Cut, pause. “— control. Please retransmit.”

After the fourth time, she took the length of steel spring she’d been using as a knife and cut the transmitter. Her false voice went dead. She scrambled down, moving from strut to strut, watching her hands and feet with every movement so she wouldn’t misjudge. The acceleration gravity made her ankles and wrists feel unstable. The air in her suit didn’t feel stale or close; the carbon dioxide scrubbers worked well enough on passive that she wouldn’t feel the panic of asphyxiation. She’d just gently pass out and die.

She ducked into the engineering deck, closed the access panel. On the way to the hatch, her knee buckled. She popped the hatch open, ripped off her helmet, and sank down, gasping. Her vision narrowed, bright sparkles filling in her peripheral vision. She dry heaved once, paused, did it again, and let her body’s weight sink deep into the deck below her.

Tell James Holden I’m in control for some really broad definition of control, she thought and laughed. Then coughed until her ribs hurt even worse. Then laughed again.

At her seventy-first sortie, she hit the wall. It wasn’t subtle. She had closed the hatch to the main body of the ship, closed the seals, and put her helmet onto the environment suit. Before she fixed it into place and started the next five-minute count, her hands dropped to her sides. She hadn’t consciously intended to do that; it had just happened. Alarmed in a vague, distant kind of way, she sat on the deck with her back against the wall and tried moving them. If she’d just become paralyzed or something, that would change the situation. Give her permission to stop. But her hands still flexed; her shoulders still moved. She was just exhausted. Even the effort to swallow seemed heroic. She closed her eyes, wondering if she’d instantly fall asleep, but she was too weary for that. So she sat.