A computational run ended. The image updated. It was still rough. Rainbow-colored deformations crossed it and sections were simply missing; it looked like the beginning of a migraine.
But it was enough. Several empty meters, ending in a square metal door complicated by an industrial bolt mechanism. Walls, ceiling, and floor marked with scuffed yellow paint and stippled by guide holes where pallets and crates would stack.
“That’s a storage container,” Fred said. “She’s in a shipping container.”
“The way the image moves. Is that her? Is she moving?”
Fred shrugged.
“Because if she’s moving, then she’s probably alive, right?”
“Could be. If she’s alive, it’s because they want her alive. And off Tycho. Look at that.”
Holden followed Fred’s finger. “It’s the edge of the doorway?”
“The door’s sealed. You don’t do that until it’s ready to ship. There are probably a quarter million containers like that on the station, but I’d bet we don’t have more than a few thousand sealed and ready to go out. Whoever wants her, they want her someplace we can’t get her back from.”
Holden felt something in his gut relax. She was out there, and she was okay. Not safe, not yet. But not dead. He hadn’t realized how much the guilt and fear had settled down on his shoulders until the moment of hope lifted it.
“What?” Fred said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“But you made that noise.”
“Oh,” Holden said. “Yeah, I was just noticing how having everyone I care about gone makes it really important that I not screw up the things I can control.”
“Good insight. Well done.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Little bit. But I’m also running a targeted security scan of the shipping containers on the float. And guess what?” Fred gestured to the display on the desk before him. The great emptiness of the Tycho work sphere was drawn in thin, clean schematic lines. From habit, Holden’s gaze went to the Rocinante. Fred pointed beyond it to a floating cluster of metal containers. “One of them’s warm.”
Chapter Seventeen: Alex
Alex had spent a fair amount of his training time at Hecate Base, and going back now was strange in a couple ways. There were the sorts of changes that he’d become accustomed to on Mars – old bars gone, new restaurants in place, the crappy handball courts converted to an administrative center, things like that. But driving his cart through the wide corridors, the thing that struck him most was how young everyone was. Cadets strutted in front of the bar that had once been the Steel Cactus Mexican Grill and sold to-go cups of Thai food now, their chins up and their chests out looking like they were playing dress-up. The ads on the screens were all for weapons and churches, singles services designed for people on tours of duty, and life insurance tailored for the families they left behind. They were the sorts of things that promised control or comfort in an uncertain universe. Alex remembered ads like that from decades before. The styles had changed, but the needs and subterranean fears that fueled them were the same.
Alex had worn the uniform, told the jokes. Or at least the same kind. He’d wondered whether there would be violence when he got out with a mixture of hope and dread. He’d pretended to be tougher than he was in hope of becoming tougher. He remembered how serious it had all been. The time Preston had gotten drunk and started a fight with Gregory. Alex had been pulled into it, and they’d all ended up before the MPs, certain their careers were over. The time Andrea Howard got busted cheating and had been dishonorably discharged. It had felt like someone died.
Now, looking at these kids, of course there was brawling and stupid decisions. They were children. And so he’d been a child when he was there too, and his choices had been made by a guy who didn’t know any better. He’d married Talissa when he was about that old. They’d made their blueprints for how he’d serve his tours and then come home. All their plans had been made by kids this young. Looked at that way, it made sense how nothing had worked out.
The other thing that surprised him was that everyone seemed to know who he was.
He parked his cart outside a teahouse called Poush that had survived the years since he’d served. The blue-and-gold awning put a gentle shadow over the glassed doorway. Faux-aged paint on the window curved in art nouveau framing with phrases in French. Alex figured the intention was to evoke the idea of some Parisian café of centuries before for people who’d never so much as stepped on the same planet as France. It was strange that the quaint feeling translated so well.
Inside, a dozen small tables with real linen cloth crowded together. The air was thick with the scent of the local qahwa – almonds and cinnamon and sugar. Captain Holden had a thing for coffee, and Alex felt a moment’s regret that he was off on Tycho Station where he couldn’t smell this. Before he could finish the thought, Fermín boiled up out of his chair and wrapped his arms around him.
“Alex!” Fermín shouted. “Good God, man. You got fat.”
“No,” Alex said, returning the hug and then breaking it. “That was you.”
“Ah,” his old friend said, nodding. “Yes, that was me. I forgot. Sit down.”
The waiter, a young man of maybe eighteen, looked out from behind the kitchen door and his eyes widened. The smile pretended to be the customary politeness, but when he ducked back Alex could hear him talking to someone. He sounded excited. Alex tried not to feel awkward about that.
“Thanks for this,” Alex said. “I don’t like to be the guy who doesn’t keep in touch until he needs a favor.”
“And yet,” Fermín said. The years had turned his stubble gray and thickened his jowls. Alex felt like if he squinted, he could still see the sharp-faced man he’d served with hidden somewhere in him. It was easier to see him in his gestures when he waved Alex’s concern away. “It’s nothing. Happy to do a favor for a friend.”