“What’ve you got?” Bobbie asked.
“The Pella and her little friend there cut their drives again,” Alex said. “And… Hey! I think… Some of the ships are peeling off. I think they’re giving up!”
Bobbie whooped and Smith stopped his conversation in the back long enough to come see what was going on. By the time Alex had explained it all, the Pella had its drive on too, and was turning with the others. Not a full flip-and-burn, but a kind of fishtail slide that kept a good fraction of their momentum while still setting them on a course for the Belt and, give or take a few million kilometers, the Jovian system. The Chetzemoka peeled off in the opposite direction. Whatever mission the Pella was on, it was leaving the Razorback behind.
A tension Alex hadn’t been consciously aware of started to evaporate along with Bobbie’s occasional whoops and laughter. The UN escort force checked in. The solar flares weren’t even coming close to intersecting with their path. The Razorback’s heat sinks were coping with the radiant heat well enough. Alex let himself relax.
It lasted almost half an hour.
“This is Naomi Nagata of the Rocinante. If you get this message, please retransmit. Tell James Holden I am in distress. Comm is not responding. I have no nav control. Please retransmit…”
And then forty minutes after that:
“Alex, since you’re in the neighborhood and it went so well the last time I asked you to check out a mystery ship, I was wondering if you’d be interested in making a little detour. I’m having my temporary pilot figure out a fast burn that will get me to Naomi, but you’re closer and you’re going in nearly the same direction. There’s a chance this is the bad guys trying to trick us, so keep your eyes open. If it is Naomi, though, make sure she’s still breathing when I get there. Let me know what you think.”
Alex’s jaw was clenched hard enough his teeth ached. He already knew what Bobbie was going to say, so instead of starting the conversation, he started quietly feeding data into the nav system and seeing what options were open depending on how hard he wanted to burn and how much fuel he had left, and what telemetry said about the little ship and the convoy it broke off from. The wall screens were set to mimic the exterior view, so when he looked up from the navigation data, he could pick out the dot of light that was her drive plume. He also pulled up an audio feed matched to the broadcast from it. “This is Naomi Nagata of the Rocinante. If you get this message, ple
ase retransmit…”
He could feel the disapproval radiating up from behind him. Bobbie didn’t say anything at first, didn’t even make a grunt or a noise. It didn’t matter. Alex knew. When she finally did speak, it was almost a relief to have it out in the open.
“What are you doing there, sailor?” Bobbie asked.
“Figuring the best way to go after Naomi.”
“Any reason you’re doing it?”
“Because we’re going after Naomi.”
“We’re almost at the flip part of the flip-and-burn. Any course changes we make are going to eat up a lot of fuel.”
Alex didn’t look back. Just gestured at the screen. “The way I figure, that’s a distress call. We logged it. We’re obligated to stop.”
“Don’t,” Bobbie said.
“That’s the rules.”
“Don’t throw the rule book at me. We’ve got a mission here. I don’t like it any more than you do, but we need to stand our post. We’ve got orders.”
Alex’s jaw hurt worse. He tried yawning to stretch the ache away. It didn’t work. He turned his crash couch to face her. With her helmet off and her hair pulled back in a tight, functional ponytail, her head seemed small. The power armor was still locked in place, hands in fists against each side of the ship. If she decided to disable him and take command of the pinnace, she was just going to win. Also, he needed to keep in mind that she was jerry-rigged in place, and probably couldn’t actually take a really high-g burn without coming loose.
“We do,” he said. “We’ve got orders. But you’ve got orders from Nate and Avasarala, and I absolutely respect how you look out for both of those. But I got orders from my captain, and the watch I need to stand is over that way and getting farther from us.”
“You’re not thinking with your head,” Bobbie said. “Look at the risk profile, Alex, because if we go, we’re taking a risk. If we win, we get Naomi Nagata out of trouble. If we lose, the leader of one of the most important political organizations in the human race dies at a time when unity and leadership is critically important. No, stop. I know what you’re thinking. I’ve thought it too, just about some other people. Naomi’s yours. She’s one of the people in your circle, and fuck if you’re going to risk her, much less sacrifice her for some kind of vague greater good, right?”
Alex closed his mouth, paused. “Right.”
“I understand that,” Bobbie said. “I do. I had to train a lot to understand that isn’t what we do. You had that training too. Whether we’re on active duty or not doesn’t matter. We serve Mars because we swore an oath. If doing the right thing was the same as doing the easy thing, we wouldn’t have had to swear. We have the prime minister of Mars in this ship. We have a military escort coming to get him safely to Luna.”
“And we have the enemy out there,” Alex said, hating the words as he said them. “It’s a trap, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Bobbie said. “It could be. Disable someone and shoot the responders is a dirty trick, but I wouldn’t put it past these bastards.”
“I don’t see how going after her would put us in more danger than holding course,” Alex said. “If they’ve got a rail gun pointing at us, they can hole us right here just as well as over there.”
“Trojan horse,” Bobbie said. “Pack that thing full of soldiers. If we dock with her, all these missiles aren’t going to help a damned bit. Or if the Rocinante gets to it, they take Fred Johnson.”
“The odds of —”