Nemesis Games

The message came two days later, and without warning. Naomi was in an EVA suit, inspecting the work with Chief Engineer Sakai. He was in the process of explaining why they were looking at a different ceramic alloy for the connections between inner and outer hull when a priority message popped into her HUD. She felt a rush of fear, the aftermath of her talk with Holden. Something had happened to Alex. Or Amos.

“Hold on,” she said, and Sakai answered with a raised fist.

She started the message. A flat transmission screen popped on with the split circle of the OPA, and when it flickered away, Marco was there. The years had thickened his face a degree, softened the curve of his jaw. His skin had the same richness and depth she remembered, and his hands, folded on the table wherever he’d recorded this, were as delicate. He smiled with the mixture of sorrow and amusement that was like falling backward through time.

The message halted, cut off by the suit’s medical systems. Warnings for increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure. She chinned the override, and his voice stuttered softly into her ears, smoothing as the feed cohered.

“I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to hear from me. If it helps, I’d just point out that I haven’t done it before this. And I’m not doing it lightly now.”

Shut it off, she thought. Stop the feed. Erase it. It would all be lies anyway. Lies or only what parts of the truth served him. Forget it ever came. Marco looked away from the camera as if he’d read her mind, or known what she would be thinking.

“Naomi, I don’t agree with your decision to leave, but I’ve always respected it. Even when you showed up in the news so everyone knew where you were, I didn’t reach out. And I’m not coming to you now for myself.”

The words were all crisp and warm and careful: the flawless grammar of someone speaking a second language so well it sounded uncanny. He had none of his Belter patois. So there was another way the years had changed him.

“Cyn and Karal send their love and respect, but they’re the only ones who know I’m reaching out. And why. They’re on Ceres Station right now, but they can’t stay long. I need you to meet their team there and— No. I’m sorry. That’s wrong. I shouldn’t have put it that way. It’s just that I’m at loose ends. I don’t know what to do, and you’re the only one I can turn to. It’s Filip. He’s in trouble.”

Chapter Four: Amos

His throat ached.

Amos swallowed, trying to force the lump away with a mouthful of saliva, but all that got him was a thick new pain like swallowing sand. The Roci’s med bay had shot him full of all the booster vaccines and bacterial prophylactics three months ago, right on schedule. He didn’t figure he could be sick. But there it was, a spot in the back of his throat that felt like he’d swallowed a golf ball and it got stuck halfway down.

All around him, the citizens and travelers of the Ceres Station Spaceport milled like ants on their hill, their voices making an undifferentiated roar that was just as good as silence. It amused Amos that this metaphor was one that no one on Ceres would actually understand. Himself, he hadn’t seen an ant in close on two decades, but the childhood memories of watching them take down a cockroach or clean the carcass of a rat were vivid and sharp. Like the roaches and the rats, ants had learned to live with their human neighbors without much trouble. When the concrete of human cities spread across the globe and half the animals on Earth were on endangered lists, no one had worried about the ants. They were doing fine, thanks, and spilled fast food was just as plentiful and delicious as dead forest animals had once been.

Adapt or die.

If Amos could be said to have a philosophy, it would be that. The concrete replaces the forest. You get in its way, you get paved over. If you can find a way to live in the cracks, you can thrive anywhere. There were always cracks.

The anthill of Ceres bustled around him. There were people at the top of the food chain buying snacks at the kiosks or tickets for the shuttles and long-flight ships leaving the station. The people in the cracks were there too. A girl no older than ten with long dirty hair and a pink jumpsuit two sizes too small eyed the travelers without staring at them. Waiting for someone to set their luggage or their hand terminal down long enough to be snatched away. She saw Amos looking at her and bolted for a maintenance hatch set low in the wall.

Living in the cracks, but living. Adapting, not dying.