Nemesis Games

She knew it was coming before it came. Before she even knew what it would be. The feeling of the ship changed without any of the details shifting, at least not at first. The crew still watched the newsfeeds and cheered. She was still under constant guard and treated like a mascot: James Holden’s tame girlfriend brought back to the cage where she belonged. Marco was polite to her, and Filip was caught between approaching and avoiding her. But there was a difference. A tension had come into the ship, and she didn’t know yet if they were all anticipating news of another atrocity or something more personal and concrete. All she was sure of at first was that it made it harder for her to sleep or eat. The dread in her gut was too heavy.

No one told her anything, and there was no single moment when she drew her conclusions. Instead, she looked back, and details filtered through from her days in captivity. A few remained, trapped by a nearly occult sense of importance. Wings showing off in his Martian uniform, a broad-shouldered girl hardly older than Filip exercising with the steady focus of someone preparing for something she knew she wasn’t prepared for, Karal steering her own inventory busywork toward the armory and its store of powered armor, the seriousness with which Cyn tried the weight of each of the guns in his hands. Like the sediments of dust that built up in a badly maintained duct, the small things came together over time into a shape that was almost the same as knowledge. They were going into battle. And more than that, they were ambushing a Martian force.

When she found Miral and Aaman sitting knee-to-knee in the corridor outside the medical bay, she knew the moment was almost on her, and the hope she’d been hiding even from herself bloomed up in her throat, as wild as anger.

“This is the Pella,” Miral said, concentrating on each syllable. “Confermé course match.”

“Confirming,” Aaman said gently.

Miral balled his hands into fists and tapped the deck with them. “Fuck. What did I say?”

“Confermé. You want confirming.”

“Again,” Miral said, then cleared his throat. “This is the Pella. Confirming course match.”

Aaman grinned. “Course match confirmed, Pella.”

Miral looked up, noticed Naomi and Cyn approaching, and grimaced. Naomi shook her head. “You sound great,” she said. “Very Martian.”

Miral hesitated, caught, she guessed, in the uncertainty of what she knew and was supposed to know. When he smiled, it was almost sheepish. Naomi smiled back and kept walking, pretending that she was one of them. That she belonged. Cyn, beside her, made no comment but watched her from the corners of his eyes.

The mid-shift meal was refried noodles and beer. The newsfeed was set to a system-wide report, and she watched it avidly for the first time, not for what it said, but what it didn’t. Food and water reserves were running out in North America and Asia, with Europe only a few days better. Relief efforts from the southern hemisphere were hampered by a growing need for supplies locally. She didn’t care. It wasn’t Jim. Medina Station had gone dark; the basic carrier signal remained, but all queries were being ignored, and she didn’t care. The Martian minority speaker of parliament back in Londres Nova was calling for the prime minister to return immediately to Mars, and she only cared a little. Every story that wasn’t about a ship blowing up at Tycho Station was a victory. She ate fast, sucking down the sweet, pale noodles and slamming back the beer, as if by hurrying her meal, she could rush the ship, the attack.

Her opportunity.

She and Cyn spent the next half shift going through engineering and the machine shop, making sure everything was locked down. In a ship full of Belters, she had no doubt it all would be, and it was. The ritual of it was reassuring, though. The sense of order and control over a ship’s environment was a synonym for safety. Belters who didn’t triple-check everything had been weeded out of the gene pool fast, and seeing the regularity of the shop gave her an almost atavistic sense of comfort. And also, without being obvious, she checked the location of the flawed toolbox with its misshapen hasp and then carefully didn’t look at it again. She felt obvious, sure that by so clearly cutting the box out of her awareness, she was actually calling Cyn’s attention to it.

The relationship between the dark thoughts and the nearly unbearable swelling of excitement in her heart didn’t occur to her until Cyn’s hand terminal chimed and he called the work to a halt.

“Wrócic´ do tu crash couch, yeah,” he said, touching her shoulder. His hand was gentle but strong. She didn’t pretend ignorance, didn’t try to disguise her anxiety. It would just read as being scared of the battle anyway.