Nemesis Games

“Zhang Guo, this is Luna Base. We do not have an approved flight plan for you. Be advised this space is under military restriction. Identify yourselves immediately, or be fired upon.”

Amos opened the channel. “Hey there, Luna Base. Name’s Amos Burton. Didn’t mean to step on anybody’s toes. If you’ve got someone up there named Chrissie Avasarala, pretty sure she’ll vouch for me.”

Chapter Forty-six: Alex

“Hey there, Chetzemoka. This is Alex Kamal presently of the Razorback. Naomi? If you’re there, I’d appreciate you giving me a sign. I’d sort of like to make sure it’s you before we come over. Your ship’s been acting a mite odd, and we’re a little on the jumpy side. And, just in case it’s not Naomi Nagata? I’ve got fifteen missiles locked on you right now, so whoever you are, you might want to talk with me.”

Alex shut off the mic, and rubbed his cheek. They were on the float now, course matched with the mysterious ship only about fifty kilometers above them on the relative z-axis. The sun, larger by far than he’d ever seen it from Mars, glowed below them, heating the little pinnace almost to the limit of its ability to shed the energy. Behind him, Bobbie was watching the same feed he was.

“That doesn’t look good,” she said.

“Nope.”

As a boy, back on Mars, there had been a little improvised firework that his friends would sometimes make for fun. All it took was a length of light-duty pipe, a mining spike, and a single-use rocket motor. The way it worked, they’d spike one end of the pipe to a flat section of wall, fix the motor to the other end with industrial tape or epoxy with the thrust pointing off to one side. Fire the motor, and the whole thing turned into a ring of smoke and fire, the pipe spinning around its axis faster than the eye could follow, the flare of the motor exhaust blinding and flickering. Sometimes the motor came loose and bounced along the corridor, posing a threat to everyone watching. Sometimes the spike came loose. Most times, it just left a circle of scrapes and scorch marks on the stone of the wall that pissed off the maintenance crews. They called them fire weasels. He didn’t know why.

Above them, the Chetzemoka was spinning like a fire weasel. She wasn’t quite tumbling, but the circle she was burning in was tight. All the acceleration she’d been using to burn hard out toward the Belt and Holden was getting eaten now, each point on her pathway canceling out the point a hundred and eighty degrees off from it. Her exhaust plume was a jet of flame and plasma that would glass anything that tried to approach her unless it came from above or below. And if they did that…

“What do you think happened?” Bobbie asked.

“Maneuvering thruster fired off, never got balanced.”

“Can you match course with that? I mean even if we decided we wanted to?”

Alex pressed the tip of his tongue to the back of his teeth and willed Naomi to call him. To give him a sign that she was still alive. That he wasn’t about to risk his ship and his life and the lives of the people with him to rescue a corpse. “Might have to come up with something clever.”

He pulled up the tactical display. The Razorback and her cloud of missiles with no one left to shoot at. The Chetzemoka chasing its tail like a terrier that had gulped down its own body weight in uppers. Then, far distant, the UN escort decelerating in from the sun toward a matching course, and the Roci doing the same from the Belt. Everything was coming together right here – the head of the OPA, the prime minister of Mars, Avasarala’s best cavalry – because it was where Naomi Nagata was, and as long as Alex and Holden were drawing breath, they’d be looking out for their own.

The screen lit up with an incoming message, but not from the Chetzemoka. Alex accepted it, and Holden appeared on the screen. For about four seconds, the captain didn’t do anything but look into the camera and scratch his nose. He looked tired and thin. Alex felt the same way himself. Then a smile bloomed on Holden’s face, and he seemed more like himself again. “Alex! Good. Tell me what we’re looking at.”