Nemesis Games

“I’ve got Medina Station, a self-sustaining craft that everyone going through the rings has to go past, handing out seed packs and emergency shelters to any ship that needs them. We’re selling potting soil and water filters at cost. Any colony that survives is going to do so in part because we helped them. So when it comes time to organize some sort of galactic governing body, who are they going to turn to? The people who want to enforce hegemony at the barrel of a gun? Or the folks who were and are there to help out in a crisis?”

“They turn to you,” Holden said. “And that’s why you’re building ships. You need to look helpful at the beginning when everyone needs help, but when they start looking for a government, you want to look strong.”

“Yes,” Fred said, leaning back in his chair. “The Outer Planets Alliance has always meant everything past the Belt. That’s still true. It’s just… expanded a bit.”

“It can’t be that simple. No way Earth and Mars just sit back and let you run the galaxy because you handed out tents and bag lunches.”

“Nothing ever is,” Fred admitted. “But that’s where we’ll start. And as long as I own Medina Station, I control the center of the board.”

“Did you actually read my report?” Holden asked, not able to keep all the disbelief out of his voice.

“I’m not underestimating the dangers left on those worlds —”

“Forget what got left behind,” Holden said. He put down his half-empty coffee cup and stalked across the room to lean across Fred’s desk. The old man sat back with a frown. “Forget the robots and railroad systems that still work after being powered down for a billion years or so. The exploding reactors. Forget lethal slugs and microbes that crawl into your eyes and blind you.”

“How long is this list?”

Holden ignored him. “The thing you should be remembering is the magic bullet that stopped it all.”

“The artifact was a lucky find for you, given what was —”

“No, it wasn’t. It was the scariest fucking answer to Fermi’s paradox I can think of. Do you know why there aren’t any Indians in your Old West analogy? Because they’re already dead. The whatever-they-were that built all that got a head start and used their protomolecule gate builder to kill all the rest. And that’s not even the scary part. The really frightening part is that something else came along, shot the first guys in the back of the head, and left their corpses scattered across the galaxy. The thing we should be asking is, who fired the magic bullet? And are they going to be okay with us taking all of the victims’ stuff?”

Fred had given the crew two suites in the management housing level of Tycho Station’s habitation ring. Holden and Naomi shared one, while Alex and Amos lived in the other, though in practice that usually just meant they slept there. When the boys weren’t partaking of Tycho’s many entertainment options, they seemed to spend all their time in Holden and Naomi’s apartment.

When Holden came in, Naomi was sitting in the dining area scrolling through something complex on her hand terminal. She smiled at him without looking up. Alex was sitting on the couch in their living room. The wall screen was on, the graphics and talking heads of a newsfeed playing, but the sound was muted and the pilot’s head lay back and his eyes were closed. He snored quietly.

“Now they’re sleeping here too?” Holden asked, sitting down across the table from Naomi.

“Amos is picking up dinner. How did your thing go?”

“You want the bad news or the worse news?”

Naomi finally looked up from her work. She cocked her head to one side and narrowed her eyes at him. “Did you get us fired again?”

“Not this time. The Roci’s pretty beat up. Sakai says —”

“Twenty-eight weeks,” Naomi said.

“Yeah. Have you bugged my terminal?”

“I’m looking at the spreadsheets,” she said, pointing at her screen. “Got them an hour ago. He’s— Sakai’s pretty good.”

Not as good as Sam hung in the air between them, unspoken. Naomi looked back down at the table, hiding behind her hair.

“So, yeah, that’s the bad news,” Holden said. “Half a year of downtime, and I’m still waiting for Fred to come out and say that he’s paying for it. Or some of it. Any of it, really.”

“We’re still pretty flush. The UN’s payment came through yesterday.”

Holden nodded the comment away. “But forgetting money for a minute, I still can’t get anyone to listen to me when it comes to the artifact.”

Naomi gave him a Belter shrug of her hands. “Because this time it would be different? They’ve never listened before.”

“Just once I’d like to be rewarded for my optimistic view of humanity.”

“I made coffee,” she said, pointing at the kitchen with a tilt of her head.

“Fred gave me some of his, which was good enough that I am ruined for lesser coffees from now on. Yet another way in which my meeting with him was unsatisfying.”

The door to the apartment slid open, and Amos stomped in carrying a pair of large sacks. A curry and onion scent filled the air around him.