But the man in the meetings, pacing the corridors of the Rocinante or the docks outside them, sitting hunched over his flickering hand terminal, wasn’t really James Holden at all. It was like Holden had become an actor and his role was James Holden. The surface was whatever it needed to be at the moment. That wasn’t the man he knew. Alex could feel the howling void of desperation and despair behind everything he said.
It showed in the others too. Naomi had become quieter, more focused. Like she was always in the middle of puzzling through an impossible problem. Even Amos seemed on edge, though what it was about was so subtle that Alex couldn’t have said for certain if that was even true. It might just have been his own fears projected against Amos’ blank slate. And if Bobbie and Clarissa seemed immune from it all, it was only because they were relatively new to the ship. They didn’t know the feel and rhythm of the Rocinante well enough yet to hear when she went slightly out of tune.
And every story of the Free Navy—another ship captured or killed, another Earth spy caught and executed on Pallas or Ganymede or Hall Station, another rock intercepted before it could hit Earth—turned the ratchet one more notch. The consolidated fleet was going to have to do something. And soon.
The little restaurant just off the main hall. Bright lights, a little redder spectrum than the sun. Syncopated harp-and-dulcimer music, which was apparently in fashion these days. Tall stools around a white ceramic bar. A plate of something not entirely unlike chicken in a vindaloo that was better than it had any right to be. Sandra had introduced the place to him the first night on Tycho, and he’d become a regular since.
His hand terminal chimed the connection request, and Alex accepted it with his thumb. Holden appeared on the screen. It might just have been the dim light on the command deck or the blue of the monitor the captain was sitting in front of, but his skin looked waxy, his eyes flat and exhausted. “Hey,” Holden said. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
“Thanks for askin’,” Alex said, maybe a little too heartily. He felt like he needed to haul the energy of the conversation up when he talked to Holden these days. As if he could inject health into the man by being so damned chipper at him. “I’m just finishing some breakfast. What’s up?”
“Um,” Holden said, and blinked. For a moment, he looked surprised. Like what he was about to say seemed a little implausible to him. “We’re looking to ship out in about thirty hours. Clarissa and Amos are in the middle of their sleep shifts, but I’m calling an all-hands meeting in four hours so we can make sure we’ve got everything in order.”
The way he said it sounded like an apology. Alex felt the words land like he was drinking something cold on an empty stomach. “I’ll be there,” he said.
“We’re good?”
“Cap,” Alex said, “this is the Roci. I made sure we were topped up and ready as soon as the docking clamps were in place. We could take off five minutes from now and be fine.”
Holden’s smile said he’d understood all Alex’s subtext. “Still, good to get everyone together and double-check.”
“No argument,” Alex agreed. “Four hours?”
“Four and change,” Holden said. “If Amos sleeps in, I’m going to let him.”
“See you on board then,” Alex said, and they dropped the connection. He took another bite of the vindaloo. It didn’t taste as good. He slid bowl and fork to the recycler, stood up, waited a few seconds just so he wouldn’t be going to find Sandra quite yet.
He went off to find Sandra.
Despite its name, the Jammy Rakshasa was an unexceptional-looking ship. Wide at the front, boxy, with a random studding of PDCs and thrusters scattered over her skin in a way that spoke of generations of use and modifications, the design growing and changing and leaving artifacts of its previous incarnations like a house altered by tenant after tenant until the original architecture was all but lost. A Belter ship. If it hadn’t been for the high security presence, both on the dock and floating around the ship itself, he’d have wondered if he was looking at the right one.
He waited outside the utility airlock, holding on to the wall with one hand as he floated. He saw Sandra before she saw him. A cluster of engineers and mechanical techs in environment suits floating together at a wall display, four different conversations going among the seven of them. Her hair was in a ponytail that waved like a flag when she shook her head, impatient with what the man beside her was saying. When she glanced in Alex’s direction, she did a quick double take. He saw the smile start on her lips, saw it wilt. She finished her discussions, pushed herself off, gliding through the air toward him. By the time she grabbed a handhold and pulled herself to a halt, the knowledge was already in her eyes.
“Well,” she said. “Orders came through?”
“Yeah.”
Her expression softened, her gaze tracing the curves of his face. He looked at her, memorizing the shape of her eyes, her mouth, the little scar at her temple, the mole tucked almost behind her ear. All the details of her body. A bad habit in the back of his head fed him all the wrong things to say: You should ship out with us and I can resign and stay here with you and I’ll come back if you wait for me. All the things that would make her feel better right then in the moment and break her trust in him later. All the things he’d said to women he loved before and not meant then either. She laughed gently, like she’d heard him thinking.
“I was never looking for a husband,” she said. “I’ve had husbands. They’re never what they’re cracked up to be.”
“My track record is I make a pretty shitty one anyway,” Alex said.
“I am glad you’re my friend,” she said. “You make a great friend.”
“You make a great lover,” Alex said.
“Yeah,” Sandra said. “You too. So how long?”
“Captain’s called a meeting in”—he checked the time—“a little over three hours. Says we’re heading out in a little less than thirty.”
“You know where?”
“I expect he’ll tell me when I get there,” Alex said. He took her gloved hand. She squeezed his fingers gently and then let them go.
“So I get a lunch break in about an hour and a half,” she said. They were casual words, spoken carefully. Like if she bit down too hard, she might break them. “I could take it a little early. You want to meet up at my place? Freshen up the luck one last time before you go?”
Alex put his hand to her cheek. She braced a leg against the wall so she could press into his palm. How many millions of times had people had this exact conversation before? How many wars had put two people together for a moment and then washed them apart? There had to be a tradition of it. A secret history of vulnerability and want and all the things that sex promised and only occasionally delivered. They were just one more couple among all the countless others. It only hurt this time because it was them.