“It’s okay,” she said. “I don’t think I did that very well.”
“No, it’s him,” the girl said, stepping closer. “You couldn’t have done right with him. My brother died, and now Dad’s not that kind of man anymore.”
“Oh,” Elvi said. And then, “I’m sorry.”
The girl nodded, shuffled with something, and a pale green light no brighter than a candle bloomed in her palm, casting shadows up over the girl’s face. She was pretty the way youth is always pretty, but when she got older, Elvi thought she might be beautiful the way her mother was.
“You’re Doctor Merton’s daughter,” Elvi said.
“Felcia,” the girl said.
“Good to meet you, Felcia,” Elvi said.
“I can walk you home. If you don’t have a light.”
“I don’t,” Elvi said. “I should have brought one.”
“Everyone forgets sometimes,” the girl said, setting off. Elvi trotted a little to catch up with her. For a dozen meters, they walked in silence. Elvi sensed that the girl was building up to something. A confession or a threat. Something dangerous. Elvi hoped that she was just being paranoid, and was certain that she wasn’t.
When the girl spoke at last, her voice was tight with anxiety and longing, and her words were the last thing Elvi would have guessed.
“What’s it like going to a real university?”
Chapter Seven: Holden
There should be fanfare, Holden thought.
Passing through a ring into another star system, halfway across the galaxy from Earth, should be a dramatic moment. Trumpets, or loud alarms, tense faces locked on viewscreens. Instead, there was nothing. No physical sign that the Rocinante had been yanked fifty thousand light-years across space. Just the eerie black of the hub replaced by the unfamiliar starfield of the new solar system. Somehow, the fact that it was so mundane made it stranger. A wormhole gate should be a massive swirling vortex of light and energy, not just a big ring of something sort of like metal with different stars on the other side.
He resisted the urge to hit the general quarters alarm just to add tension to the moment.
The new sun was a faint dot of yellow-white light, not all that different from Sol when viewed from the Ring sitting just outside Uranus’ orbit. It had five rocky inner planets, one massive gas giant, and a number of dwarf planets in orbits even farther out than the Ring. The fourth inner planet, sitting smack dab in the middle of the Goldilocks Zone, was Ilus. New Terra. Bering Survey Four. RCE charter 24771912-F23. Whatever you wanted to call it.
All those names were too simple for what it really was. Mankind’s first home around an alien star. Humans kept finding ways to turn the astonishing events of the last few years mundane. A few decades from now, when all the planets had been explored and colonized, the hub and its rings would just be a freeway system. No one would think twice about them.
“Wow,” Naomi said, staring at Ilus’ star on the display with wide-eyed awe. Holden felt a rush of affection for her.
“I was just thinking that,” he said. “Glad I’m not the only one.” He opened a channel up to the cockpit.
“Yo,” Alex said.
“How fast can you get us there?”
“Pretty damn fast, if you’re willin’ to be uncomfortable.”
“Put us on a fast burn schedule and get some dirt under my feet,” Holden said with a grin.
“High burn’ll get us on the ground in ’bout seventy-three days.”
“Seventy-three days,” Holden said.
“Well, seventy-two point eight.”
“Space,” Holden said, trading his grin for a sigh, “is too damn big.”
Five hours into their burn, the messages started to come in. Holden had Alex bring them down to one-third g for dinner, and played the first recording on the galley screen while he helped Amos make pasta.
An older man, brown-skinned and gray-haired, stared out of the screen at him. He had the thin features and large cranium of a Belter, and just a hint of a Ceres accent.
“Captain Holden,” he said once the recording started. “Fred Johnson notified us you were coming, and I wanted to thank you for your help. My name is Kasim Andrada, and I’m captain of the independent freighter Barbapiccola. Let me fill you in on the situation as it stands.”
“This should be good,” Amos grunted, dumping steaming spaghetti noodles into a colander to drain them. Holden handed him the pot of red sauce he’d been stirring, then leaned against the counter to watch the rest of the broadcast.
“The colony finally got a working mining operation running about four months ago. In that time, we’ve brought up several hundred tons of raw ore from our mine. At the purity levels we’re seeing, that should translate to almost a dozen tons of lithium after refining. It’s enough to buy equipment, medicine, soil and seeds, everything this colony needs to get a real toehold.”
Naomi came into the galley, tapping away furiously at her hand terminal. “Smells good, I—” She stopped when she saw the video playing and sat down to watch.
“The Edward Israel,” Captain Andrada continued, “has stated that they will not allow us to leave orbit until the arbitration is complete. Royal Charter’s position being that they own this lithium until someone says they don’t. One of your first priorities will be to get the Israel to lift the blockade and let us take this ore to the Pallas refineries, where we already have buyers lined up and waiting.”
“Oh,” Amos said, dumping the pasta and sauce into a large bowl and putting it on the table. “Is that our priority?”
Holden passed the playback. “Did come across as an order, didn’t it?”
“He’s OPA,” Naomi said. “He thinks you’re here as Fred’s mouthpiece.”
“This guy is going to give me indigestion,” Holden said, killing the recording. “I’ll watch the rest of this crap after we eat.”
Five more broadcasts were queued up for viewing by the next day. The captain of the Edward Israel, an older Earthman named Marwick with flaming red hair and a British accent, demanded that Holden enforce the RCE charter by disabling the engines of the Barbapiccola if it tried to leave the system. Fred sent along encouragement and a reminder that Avasarala was shotgunning threats about the consequences for screwing the mission up. Three different news organizations asked for interviews, including a personal request from Monica Stuart for a live interview when he returned.
Miller watched them over his shoulder until Naomi came into their room and the detective disappeared in a blue shower of sparks.
“I think Monica likes you,” Naomi said with a grin, then flopped down onto the double-sized crash couch they used as a bed. “Alex is taking us back up to high burn in twelve minutes, and I want to die.”
“Monica would flirt with a lizard if she thought it would get her a good interview, tell Alex to give us another half hour so I can send a few responses, and hold on I’ll get my gun.”
Naomi pushed herself up with a groan. “I’ll get some coffee while you find your bullets.”
“Don’t leave,” Holden said, reaching for her arm. “I don’t want to record these broadcasts with Miller standing behind me.”
“He’s only in your head,” she said, but she sat back down anyway. “He won’t show up on the recording.”
“Do you think that makes it less uncomfortable? Really?”
Naomi crawled across the bed and curled up next to him, putting her head on his chest. He tugged on a lock of her hair and she let out a long contented sigh.