Nemesis Games

“Someone came out of the ship. Let me figure this out, and I’ll be back with a report,” Alex said, then cut the connection. On Bobbie’s screen, the figure had shifted to a time signal. Five minutes.

“What have we got?” Alex said.

“She’s making the same signs,” Bobbie said. “Here we go. ‘Danger. Do not approach. Explosion hazard.’ But then here’s ‘Low air,’ and ‘five’… shit, ‘four minutes.’ ”

“Is it her?” Alex said, knowing there wasn’t an answer for that. Even if the figure turned its face to them, Alex wasn’t certain between glare and the suit’s helmet if he’d have been able to identify Naomi. It was just a person in an EVA suit, running out of air and warning them over and over again that it was a trap.

But Alex thought that whoever it was, they sure moved like Naomi. And they’d both been calling the figure “she.” They might not know, but they were both pretty certain. The body of the Razorback felt suddenly claustrophobic. Like the appearance of Naomi right there where he could see her required more room to move. Enough space to reach her. Alex set the pinnace’s system to the diamond-bright suit and started it calculating.

“Where’s she going to go?” Bobbie asked.

“Looks like she’s set to drift across into the path of the ship again,” Alex said. “If it don’t hit her, maybe she gets past and the drive plume gets her.”

“Or we watch her suffocate?” Bobbie said.

“I can take the ship in,” Alex said.

“And crisp her decelerating?”

“Well… yeah.”

“Get your helmets on,” Bobbie yelled loud enough to carry into the back cabin. “I’m going in.”

“That suit’s got enough thrust to do a fifty-klick flip-and-burn in under four minutes?” Alex asked, but he was already sealing his suit as he said it.

“Nope,” Bobbie said, reaching for her helmet with one hand and a spare bottle of air with the other. “But it’s got really good mag boots and gloves.”

Alex checked his seals and got ready to open the Razorback to the void. “Don’t see how that’s going to help.”

The prime minister’s cabin showed it was sealed. On the monitor, the figure – Naomi – signaled Danger. Do not approach. Explosion hazard. Bobbie yelped, took a deep shuddering breath. Her voice was coming through the EVA suit’s radio now. “God damn, it’s been a long time since I was on the juice. This is some powerfully unpleasant shit.”

“Bobbie, we’re running out of time here. How are mag boots going to get you to Naomi?”

Behind her helmet’s visor, Bobbie grinned. “How good’s your control on those missiles?” she asked.

Chapter Forty-seven: Naomi

Leaving the airlock this one last time was the most peaceful thing Naomi could imagine doing. As soon as she’d cleared the outer door, the sun and stars had stopped their gut-sickening whirl. She had taken her tangent from the whirling circle of life, and now her path was a line. Well, not a tangent, really. A secant, and doomed to cross paths with the ship again, only maybe not in her lifetime.

For a moment, she let herself enjoy drifting. The sun pressed against her back, the light radiating past her as she cast a shadow on whole stars, galaxies. The sense of whirling faded a little, and she wondered where Alex was, out among all these stars. She remembered to start counting. One thousand and… how long had she already been out? Seven? Eight? Well, she might as well think the worst. One thousand and thirty. Why not? She lifted her hands over her head. Danger. Then Do not approach. Then Explosion hazard. She felt like she was trying to warn the stars. The Milky Way. Don’t come here. Stay away. There are humans here, and you can’t trust them.

She stretched with every motion, letting it all go. She should have been scared, but she wasn’t. She was going to her death, and that sucked. She would have liked to live longer. To see Jim again. And Alex. And Amos. She would have liked to tell Jim all the things she’d been so careful for so long not to say. One thousand and sixty. Time to change her signs. Four minutes left. Four minutes and a lifetime.

Somewhere out there, Filip was with his father, the way he had been for years. Since he was a baby. And Cyn, poor Cyn, already as dead as she was going to be because he’d seen her in the airlock and thought stopping her would have been saving her. Thought the life she had with Marco was worth having. She wondered what would have happened if she’d stayed. If the Chetzemoka had flown without her. Would Jim have set off the bomb? She had to think he would have. He wasn’t a man who reined in his curiosity well. The stars shuddered, blurred. She was weeping. Danger. Do not approach. Explosion hazard.