“Your father? He’s a good man. Belter to his bones, yeah? It’s just this Holden bastard’s a sore for him. Getting knocked back, happens a alles one time and another, y alles talk a little bigger afterward. Not a good thing, not a bad thing. Just the way men get made. Don’t take it too close.”
Filip paused. Turned back.
“Don’t take it too close?” he repeated, making it a question. A demand that Miral say what he meant.
“That,” Miral said. “Your dad doesn’t mean what he says.”
Filip turned his light on Miral, shining it through the older man’s faceplate. Miral squinted, put a hand up to shade his eyes.
“What does he say?” Filip asked.
Marco’s quarters were past clean to spotless. The walls shone in the light, freshly polished. The dark smudges that always built up beside handholds nearest the door—evidence of the passage of hundreds of hands—had been scraped away. The monitor didn’t carry so much as a fleck of lint. Fake sandalwood from the air recycler didn’t quite bury the ghost of disinfectant and antifungal wash. Even the gimbals on the crash couch sparkled in the gentle light.
His father, watching the monitor, was also groomed to an eerie perfection. His hair clean and perfectly in place. His beard soft and brown and trimmed so well it seemed almost false. His uniform looked like it had never been worn before. Crisp lines and clean folds. The seams set perfectly, as if by his own precision and the force of his will, he could haul all the rest of the ship up to his standards. Like all the control Marco had spread across the system had been concentrated in one place. Not an atom in the air was out of place.
Rosenfeld was on the monitor. Filip caught the words other eventualities before Marco stopped the playback and turned to him.
“Yes?” Marco said. Filip couldn’t tell what was in his voice. Calm, yeah. But Marco had a thousand varieties of calm, and not all of them meant things were okay. Filip was too aware that they hadn’t really spoken since the battle.
“Was talking to Miral?” Filip said, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorframe. Marco didn’t move. Not a nod, not a glance away. His dark eyes left Filip feeling exposed and uncertain, but there wasn’t a way to step back from this. Not without asking. “Said you were telling how what happened was my fault?”
“Because it was.”
The words were simple. Matter-of-fact. There was no heat to them, no sneer or accusation. Filip felt them like a blow to the chest.
“Okay,” he said. “Bien.”
“You were the gunner, and they got away.” Marco spread his arms in a quick, surgical shrug. “Was it a question? Or maybe you’re saying it was my fault for thinking you could do it?”
It took Filip an extra try to talk past his throat. “Didn’t drive us into those rounds, me,” he said. “Gunner, me. Not the pilot. And didn’t have a rail gun, yeah? Pinché Holden had a rail gun.”
His father tilted his head to one side. “I just told you that you failed. Now you’re giving me reasons why it’s okay that you failed? Is that how it works?” Filip knew the kind of calm now.
“No,” he said. Then, “No, sir.”
“Good. Bad enough that you fucked it up. Don’t start bawling over it too.”
“Not,” Filip said, but there were tears in his eyes. Shame ran through his blood like bad drugs and left him shaking. “Not bawling, me.”
“Then own it. Say it like a man. Say ‘I fucked it up.’”
I didn’t, Filip thought. It wasn’t my fault. “I fucked it up.”
“All right, then,” Marco said. “I’m busy. Close the door when you go.”
“Yeah, okay.”
As Filip turned, Marco shifted back to the monitor. His voice was soft as a sigh. “Crying and excuses are for girls, Filip.”
“Sorry,” Filip said, and pulled the door to behind him.
He walked down the narrow corridor. Voices from the lift. Voices from the galley. Two crews in the space of one, and he couldn’t stand to be near any of them. Not even Miral. Especially not Miral.
He put me up, Filip thought. It was like Miral said. They hadn’t kept hold of Ceres, and then Pa had insulted him by breaking away. This was supposed to be the thing to show the Free Navy couldn’t be fucked with, and all three of their wolves together hadn’t been able to stop the fucking Rocinante.
Marco had been humiliated. And shit floated against the spin, that was all it was. Still, the space below Filip’s ribs ached like he’d been punched. It wasn’t his fault. It was his fault. He wasn’t bawling out excuses. Except that was absolutely what he’d done.
He turned on the light in his cabin. One of the engineering techs was hot-bunking there, blinking up into the light like a baby mouse.