Work Text:
I heard the stranger & my brain, without looking, vowed
a love-him vow.
Naomi leaned against the roughly excavated wall of Vesta Station, waiting for Jim and Amos. She watched the crowd flow through the network of corridors cut through the asteroid, glancing off one other, creating eddies in the stream of people. Usually it was a bulky Earther’s slower pace damming the current while leaner Belters navigated around them, but not always.
A flicker of curls sent her head snapping to the side, her attention trapped by the line of a nose that looked heart-breakingly familiar. Naomi’s chest tightened until it hurt. She made herself keep looking at the face, cataloguing each difference meticulously until her breath slowed. This strange boy was taller than Filip, gawkier, with clumsily inked tatuyingi on his left temple and cheekbone.
Filip had been dead six months and Naomi still saw him whenever her mind was elsewhere, not focused in tight on the fact he was gone. How long would this last? Years from now, would she still be searching for Filip, catching glimpses of him frozen at the age he’d never grow past?
The Belter laughed at something his kopeng said, throwing his head back with a loud guffaw. Filip had been a happy, chortling baby, round cheeks always cheerfully dimpled, but she’d never seen him smile as a grown man. On the Pella he’d worn nothing but serious looks or scowls. Of course, there was no reason for him to smile at her, the traitor who’d abandoned him. Still, he’d never smiled for Marco either…
She blinked away the false sighting. When she opened her eyes again, two familiar heads had almost reached her through the crowd: Jim and Amos, their steps falling in sync from habit even though the two of them could hardly be more different.
“You okay, Naomi?” Amos didn’t look worried—he never did—but he sounded mildly concerned. For Amos, that was almost distraught.
“Yeah.” She pulled the corners of her mouth up into a vague semblance of a smile. “Just keeping an eye out.”
Jim curled his hand around hers and squeezed, once. “We got a job offer from Avasarala. Might be worth checking it out.”
“Oh?” Naomi was grateful for the distraction.
“Chrissie wants us to go rescue some more colonists,” Amos said. “Holden’s all for it, of course, but I want someone with brains to look over the plan first, before we commit.”
Naomi's faint smile brightened, coming to life. “Then we’ll all take a look at it. Bobbie and Clarissa get to have their say too.”
“What happened to the days when the captain ran the ship?” Holden grumbled.
“You didn’t want the position,” she pointed out.
These days, the Roci was run more like a small freighter company than a warship. All the crew had a vote on which paying jobs or unpaid humanitarian missions to take on, partly because Holden insisted he wasn’t interested in being the boss anymore.
He still took command when they got into a fight, of course, but that was rare these days. The last time they’d fired their rail guns in anger was two months ago when a pirate chasing a gas freighter hadn’t taken their warning seriously. Amos and Bobbie had to spar with each other to stay in fighting shape.
They passed a stall selling bowls of white kibble and Naomi slowed down, sniffing. It smelled like the real thing, made from Ganymede mushrooms and plenty of hot piris. Clouds of steam rose from the electric wok as the cook threw in another handful of dried peppers, and her mouth watered.
“Let’s bring dinner back to the ship.” Holden stepped aside and tapped his data card against the counter. He smiled at her with a hopeful, nearly plaintive look in his eyes that hurt her heart.
“Let’s,” she agreed, and stepped up to order when he waved her ahead with an expansive gesture.
She didn’t know why Jim still felt he had something to make up to her—if anyone was to blame for destroying the Pella, it was her. But he seemed worried that she’d change her mind and decide to hate him for it one day.
Naomi didn’t have the energy to hate anyone right now, not even herself. It was all she could do to keep a hold on her grief and try to press the edges of the gaping wound in her spirit together until it healed over. If it ever did. She’d walked away from Filip by choice before and built a life without him—a good life, a happy one, even with the guilt of abandoning him weighing her down. That proved she could do it again, didn’t it? And surely, she had less reason to feel guilty now. She’d reached out to him and Marco, tried to give them both a chance to choose something different. She couldn’t make them do anything; that was the whole point. She’d given them a choice and they’d chosen war. They could have died in thousands of ways. It was only Naomi’s mal fata that had made her the instrument of their deaths.
“Hey.” Amos bumped her gently with his elbow, and she came back to herself with a blink. “You gonna help carry all this?”
At the sight of all the foam-paper boxes stacked high in their arms, Bobbie raised her eyebrows. “Shit, must be bad news if you’re bribing us with that much food.”
“I can be bought.” Clarissa rushed forward to rescue a container from the top of the stack wobbling in Amos’ grasp. “Is there any lumpia in there?”
“You know it.” He winked at her. “I wouldn’t forget your favourite, Peaches.”
Naomi set her burden down on the galley table and began sorting the various dishes based on who would eat what. The kibble was too spicy for Jim or Bobbie, but she and Clarissa would share most of it and Amos could have the leftovers.
The others moved smoothly through the confined space, each performing their usual task of gathering plates or utensils or drinks, their paths as predictable as a satellite’s orbit. It had taken a while for the crew to reach this comfortable, easy state. Bobbie had settled in easily, but Clarissa had kept to herself for weeks, staying mostly in her bunk and silent around everyone but Amos. Holden had blustered about how Amos shouldn’t have taken his agreement for granted, but Naomi knew he wouldn't take long to come around. The worst he’d ever done to Clarissa was lock her out of certain systems on the Roci. Of course, by now anything she needed access to for maintenance was open to her.
Naomi had been more willing to take Clarissa on as crew, though still wary—after all, she understood what a burning fanatical mission could drive someone to do. But Clarissa Mao had learned the same harsh lessons about the dark side of revenge as Naomi, and willingly abandoned it to live a (somewhat) more peaceful life with the Roci crew.
She was still reserved and shy, but she did laugh. Right now she was chuckling at Holden’s mournful complaint that there hadn’t been any decent coffee available on the station. “Quit whining, you’ll find plenty on Ceres.”
“About that…” Jim sat down next to Naomi and reached across her for a bowl. “There might be a change in our itinerary.”
Bobbie groaned. “What now?”
“New job offer.” He poked noodles into his mouth, talking with his mouth full. “Avasarala wants us to escort an emergency relief fleet headed to a colony dealing with seismic issues.”
“Why would they pick a planet with high seismic activity in the first place?” Naomi frowned. “Plenty of others out there to choose from.”
Holden shrugged. “There’s a long, complicated explanation in the backgrounder she sent. Some kind of periodic cycle that wouldn’t have shown up during the initial survey.”
Clarissa passed the box of lumpia to Naomi, who snagged a couple for herself and put two in Holden’s bowl as he went on talking. “There’s another habitable planet in the system, but the colonists don’t have enough ships to evacuate everyone quickly and salvage their equipment at the same time. So the Transport Union is sending a fleet of freighters to help.”
“Why the Roci?” Clarissa asked. “It’s not a hauler.”
“Chrissie and Drummer want us to come along and keep an eye on the flock,” Amos said. “Lotta valuable stuff being packed up and moved in a hurry, there’s a good chance someone might try to steal some of it.”
And that didn’t cover all of the potential dangers by a long shot. Most of Marco’s OPA navy had fragmented, dispersed like asteroid dust, but some had returned to piracy and were preying on smaller ships. The Martians who’d been working with Marco remained in hiding somewhere out there, too, and no one knew what they’d wanted. And of course, from time to time, the Ring Entities stirred, and a ship in transit simply… disintegrated. Naomi shivered.
Holden leaned into her side and pressed his arm against hers, warmth radiating through the fabric of his sleeve. “So what’s the verdict, guys? Are we in or not?”
“I’m good with taking the job,” Bobbie said. “Didn’t have any big plans for Ceres anyway.”
Amos nodded. “Same.”
Clarissa said quietly, “I’ll go with the majority.”
“You get a vote, too, Peaches,” Amos said, prodding her with his elbow. “You fine with it? Really?”
She shrugged. “Really. I don’t have a strong feeling either way.”
Jim got up to refill his coffee mug. He leaned against the counter, took a long sip with a sigh of satisfaction, and looked at Naomi, waiting for her vote.
“Let’s do it,” she said, raising her fist in a nod. “Sounds like a simple, easy job.”
“No such thing,” Bobbie and Amos said in unison.
Clarissa laughed, and even Naomi felt her mouth pull into a grin. She’d never expected to work side by side with Earthers and Martians, especially such a strange assortment of folks brought together mostly by chance, but now they were her crew—her family.
A voice echoed strangely off the cliff face before dissipating in the open air. Someone else on the work crew calling out? Filip turned his head in both directions, but couldn’t see anyone gesturing in his direction, and nothing came over his mic.
The way sound carried (or didn’t, sometimes) in the open atmosphere was one of the weirdest things about being on a planet—he still wasn’t used to it. Not being able to see stars at all times was another one. They’d been out here working since pre-dawn and with the orange sun of Nimrata rising at his back, the comfortingly familiar star field overhead was fading, washed out by the pink sky. He tapped his goggles a shade darker against the low angle of the sun’s rays and resettled his wrench, pulling at the next bolt holding this pipe fitting in place and wincing at the screech of metal.
Four months down the well for Filip, and he was still learning what things were like on the dirt. He’d drifted aimlessly across a couple of stations after leaving his father, ditching the shuttle he’d stolen for no more than the price of salvage and living on that for a while. But it had made sense to get out of the Belt, where plenty of people might recognize him. And with all these gates open to new systems, hundreds of them, he’d wanted to find out what it was like to live with his feet stuck to a rock. He’d got his wish, but still didn’t know if he liked it. The gravity, the air, the water: everything was just there, without any need to think about how to make it or when it would run out. Maybe that was why Inners were so careless all the time.
The distant noise returned, and resolved into the voice of Bai, the Martian crew chief. “Nagata! Wake up, dumbass, I’ve been calling you!”
Filip sighed. He still wasn’t used to his new name, and didn’t always respond to it on first hail. This had earned him a reputation as a dreamy, absentminded type, which was annoying but hard to argue with. He stuck his wrench in his belt and turned, shoving the goggles up his forehead into his hair. “Yeah, bossmang?”
Bai strode over to him, leaving a faint trail of shining footprints where her boots disturbed the phosphorescent yellow-green fungi the colonists called grass. She jerked a thumb at the shuttle that had brought the crew out here. “Go help Maksin at the mine. I’ll finish this up.”
“You sure? Almost done here.” And the closer he was to one of the main worksites, the worse his chances of running into the Rocinante people. That would definitely fuck up his new life. Pashang Inners, sticking their noses in where they weren’t needed—why couldn’t she have found some other people to help, instead of showing up on Nimrata? Even if Holden wasn’t still trying to kill him, the last time he’d seen his mother she'd thrown herself out an airlock to escape. He didn’t think she’d be thrilled to be reunited with him.
“Don’t you want a chance to meet the celebrities?”
“No,” he grunted.
The crew had been ribbing him about his name ever since they heard the famous Naomi Nagata was on the way. Filip had tried to convince them it was a common name in the Belt, and they seemed to believe it. He wasn’t sure why he’d chosen to use his mother’s name in the first place anyway, or keep using it—it wasn’t like he had a right to it, after rejecting her. But he couldn’t be Filip Inarro anymore.
“Too bad. The miners need help. Control is calling for more crew to take the heavy drill apart, that’s priority number one.”
Filip didn’t want to help with that job. Working down the mine had none of the fascination of breathing an atmosphere with its own variable scent or feeling wind that wasn’t generated by a fan. But it was definitely more urgent; the colony had to salvage the mining equipment for their new home. He’d just try to keep his goggles on and stay away from wherever the Roci crew was.
He sighed and raised a fist to acknowledge.
“None of that Belter shit, you know I don’t know what it means,” Bai said curtly. “Just do your job and don’t argue.”
“Okay, bossmang,” Filip muttered.
“We’ll be back soon.” Jim leaned down, resting his forehead against Naomi’s for a moment. “Have fun.”
They didn’t make a big deal of goodbyes, but they always said them. Any time they separated could be the last time they saw each other. So Naomi gave him a quick peck on the cheek and squeezed his gloved wrist.
“You three will have all the fun. Me and Clarissa are just holding down the fort.” She tried to keep her frustration out of her voice. She knew she was useful up here, but that didn’t change the fact she wished she could go down into the well and see Nimrata for herself. Gravity was always going to be her nemesis, apparently.
Jim smiled. “I’m sure Ufana will have more for you to do than that.” Pulling away from her, he put on his helmet and joined Bobbie and Amos in the airlock where the shuttle they’d take down was attached. Naomi gave them all a Belter salute through the porthole; Clarissa waved.
The seismic sensors on the planet below them were spiking in a rising pattern, sending out constant alerts. No alien structures had been discovered on Nimrata, and it shouldn’t be protomolecule related, not if Holden and Doctor Okoye had been successful in turning off the whole system on Ilus. But shoulds were never sure things. Holden wanted to go down and investigate, of course, even as the window of time to get all the colonists out of the reactive zone was shrinking rapidly. Naomi couldn't go with them, so she was staying with the Roci as the guard dog in orbit; Clarissa was staying with her for company (in other words, because Amos and Jim were worried about either one of them being alone).
Still, there was enough to keep both of them busy up here.
“Amos asked me to check the air scrubbers,” Clarissa said. “They’re due for maintenance and if we have to take on any passengers for evacuation, they’ll need to be working at peak capacity.”
Naomi nodded. “Go ahead. I’ve got a call coming in from the surface in a minute.” She was scheduled to talk through ways to boost the speed of the transport schedule with the head engineer for the colony, a woman Naomi kept thinking of as an Earther even though Ufana said she was born on Luna and had never set foot on Earth.
Either way, Ufana had worked out in the Belt long enough to know the hand signals. When the screen resolved, she gave Naomi a crossed fist greeting and smiled. “Good to see you again, Naomi. I’ve been meaning to ask—we had a young one come through the gate a few months back, name of Nagata. Some kind of relation, maybe?”
Naomi shrugged. “It’s not that rare a name in the Belt,” she said. Which was true—still, she hadn’t met another Nagata since her aunt died. A cousin, maybe? She didn’t know whether Keela had had any kids, but it was possible.
Any other time she might have felt some interest in meeting this potential cousin, but right now all she could picture was some young person who wouldn’t be Filip. They might want to talk to her, trace their possible family connections. They might even resemble Filip, and that would be unbearable.
Ufana politely dropped the subject. She briefed Naomi on the issues the colonists were having with fuel usage and the shrinking timetable, and the two of them tossed out possible ways to move things faster.
“You can squeeze twelve, maybe fifteen percent more power out of the drive by taking some of the environmental systems offline,” Naomi said. “But then everyone onboard would have to be suited up for the whole trip—” An alarm blared on the other end of the call, drowning out the end of her sentence.
Ufana’s head jerked around at a shout from someone who had burst into the room behind her. “Shit,” she said. “There’s been a cave-in at the mine.”
Naomi glanced at her own readouts. Looked like another seismic event—still minor, although the results weren’t. She grimaced. “Casualties?”
Her voice flat, Ufana said, “They’re still trying to figure that out. But it looks like we might’ve lost everyone in that tunnel.”
“Anything we can do to help?” Naomi asked.
Ufana shook her head. “The rest of your crew is on the other side of the planet from the mine. And unless they have a spare rock-eater with them, they couldn’t do much anyway.”
Another red light glowed on the screen behind Ufana and a dead person spoke. “—anyone hear me? Control, this is Nagata from crew six, can you hear me?”
Naomi felt her throat seize around air. “Filip?” she gasped. “Is that you? Filip!” But Ufana was shouting at the same time, ordering him to report, and she shut up to listen.
“Me and Maksin are in south-east tunnel twenty-seven with the heavy drill. Part of the roof came down a minute ago, after a tremor. Think the rest of the crew got out but I don’t know for sure. And we’re stuck here good.” Her son coughed, an awful tearing sound that sounded like dust and blood.
Naomi had trouble breathing, her lungs compressed as though the Roci were in a hard-g burn instead of floating in orbit. It was impossible for Filip to be alive. She’d watched the Pella vanish into a red haze. How could there be any survivors of a force that had disassembled an entire ship down to the molecular level?
Ufana’s face reappeared in the screen. “Sorry, Naomi, I have to go—”
Naomi interrupted. “Tell me how you’re going to get Filip out of there,” she demanded. “What do you need? How can I help? ”
Ufana blinked. “You know this boy, after all?”
“He’s my son,” Naomi said. “And he was already dead—I’m not letting him die again.”
She could call the rest of her crew and ask for their help. But it would take them at least a couple of hours to get there, time Filip might not have. And without the right kind of equipment, as Ufana had said, all they’d be was a few extra hands. She jabbed at Clarissa’s call button to hail her in engineering and get her back up here. Maybe she’d have some idea what they could do.
“We’re digging through the blockage as fast as we can,” Ufana said. “But the drill is trapped on the other side of the cave-in and we don’t have a lot of heavy equipment available. Most of it’s already been dismantled and shipped offplanet. So we’re digging by hand and it’ll take time. More time than I’d like, considering the people trapped in there are injured.” She looked grim. “Filip isn’t responding to comms any longer.”
Fuck. Naomi couldn’t get down to the surface without making herself sick, and even if she could, she wasn’t strong enough to dig through rock for hours. Maybe she should call the others after all; Amos and Bobbi had the serious muscle—
Wait. Bobbi had plenty of muscle, but she also had a military suit. And though she’d turned it in when she resigned from the Navy, the Roci in its previous life as the Tachi had carried enough for a squad of five Marines. And they’d kept them—Amos had worn one in the assault on the Ring Station.
“Could a military exosuit get through it quickly?” Naomi asked. “Something like a Marine combat suit?”
Ufana blinked again and her eyebrows drew together in confusion. “Yeah, sure. One of those things could probably rip through the rockfall, if you didn’t care about draining all its power.”
Naomi drew in a sharp breath. “Keep digging and give me an hour,” she said. “I’ll be down with a way to get through.”
She hit the disconnect button.
Behind her, Clarissa protested. “You can’t! You haven’t taken any meds—”
Naomi shook her head. “I can’t use gravity drugs anyway. Bad reaction.” She pushed past the other woman to drop down the gangway to the armory. “But if I wear a suit, I won’t need it. They’re like mini-environments and they pack enough power to move half a mountain.”
She’d never worn one before, but how hard could it be? Naomi knew the basics of working with an exosuit; she’d used smaller manipulator versions to boost her strength when moving freight. She’d watched Bobbie use hers. Still, she stared at the suits hanging in their transparent pods with an anxious clenching in her stomach.
“You sure about this?” Clarissa asked dubiously. “The basic tutorial on these things is over two hours long. Amos only showed me how to get someone into one of them. If anything goes wrong, we’ll have to wait for Bobbie to peel you out of it.”
“There’s an emergency release. And the in-suit first aid will get me through just about anything,” Naomi said. She hoped that was true, anyway; she’d seen Bobbie absorb some truly astounding firepower and still come out in one piece. “Just help me get in.”
Clarissa hit the release button on the nearest pod. It opened and the suit inside moved smoothly forward, dangling from its shoulder harness. By the time its boots lowered to touch the deck, the center seam was already unzipping like a cocoon when the grub inside was about to emerge.
The new generation were supposed to be simple compared to the first models. Maybe they were, but it still took both of them several minutes of fumbling to seal it around Naomi and adjust it to her very non-Martian size. The seconds ticked up in her head as Clarissa tried to get the torso to contract smaller, until she barked, “That’s good enough. Leave it.”
“Could be better,” Clarissa muttered, but she stepped away so that Naomi could stomp toward the airlock.
“I’ll drop straight down to the mine.” Naomi’s voice buzzed loud and flat through the helmet speaker. “Call the others and tell them to meet me there.”
She wasn’t going to let Jim know what she was up to in advance. There was too little time, and she could rely on him to back her up when needed, even if he’d curse her out later.
“Should I bring the Roci down after you?” Clarissa asked. “I’m not the best pilot, but I can handle a simple landing.”
Naomi started to raise her arm to signal no, but her fist shot up too quickly, nearly punching Clarissa in the chin. She pulled in her elbow and froze her arm in place. “Just stay here and monitor comms. You might need to relay messages.” Or emergency signals, if anything went wrong.
Clarissa bit her lip and nodded. She reached out and gently tapped Naomi’s suit in the middle of the heavy breastplate, just over her heart. “Good luck.”
Forty-two minutes after she’d ended her call with Ufana, Naomi crashed down on the surface of Nimrata with a bone-rattling, teeth-clacking impact. The MCRN suits were designed to keep you alive and in one piece, not provide a comfortable ride.
But she stood up with no effort. The suit’s hard shell and powered limbs compensated effortlessly for the heavier gravity she was swimming in. And she’d landed as close as safely possible: the mining compound was a scattering of container buildings just a kilometre away to her left. If things could only keep going this smoothly once she got underground—then Filip might actually have a chance.
She ran the last thousand metres instead of using her boosters to jump or fly; there was no sense in drawing any more of the suit’s power than she had to. Someone met her at the mine entrance. Their suit and face were powdered a uniform rust-orange from the fine dust coating them, except where streaks of sweat or tears had left clean trails, and their eyes seemed startlingly white next to the ferrous powder. This must be Axel, the mine crew boss Ufana had said would be waiting for her.
“Tell me what happened,” Naomi ordered. Without waiting for the answer, she shouldered her way past them and started striding down the dark tunnel, her helmet’s headlamps illuminating a wide angle of the corridor.
“There was a tremor, the roof started to collapse, we all ran down the tunnel. Filip went back for Maksin,” Axel said tersely. “Now both of them are trapped behind the rockfall.”
“How big is it? Do you have any sensor data?”
“Looks about two metres wide and fairly unstable. If we had days to dig, we could get through by hand, but…” They shrugged. “The end of the tunnel is reinforced better, or maybe the drill is holding it up. That’s where the two of them are. Neither are responding to comms so there’s a good chance they’re both incapacitated or at least unconscious.”
“Alright.” Naomi squared her shoulders and the spine of the suit locked in place, bracing her up. She bent her elbows and rotated her wrists, engaging the power in her gauntlets and gloves. “Show me where to start digging.”
Filip didn’t know why he’d given his last ounce of water to Maksin just before she passed out. Both of them were going to die and it wasn’t like that small sip would save either of them. Maksin would probably go first, though, and it might make her dying more comfortable. He was okay with that.
He didn’t know Maksin, but he didn’t want to watch her die. He’d seen too many people die already. Filip had kept to himself as much as possible on Nimrata—being a loner on a construction crew was hard, but he didn’t want friends. He’d wanted to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. Least he wouldn’t have to worry about that now…
Ufana had told them someone was coming to help, but he hadn’t believed her. The colony didn’t have enough people to spare for a rescue effort, not in the middle of an evacuation. And when the comm on his suit had gone out, buzzing with random static, Filip decided that was okay too. At least he wouldn’t be tempted to spend his last moments on useless attempts to call for help, sobbing into his comm.
A noise he could feel in the bones of his skull rumbled through the rock around them. He instinctively hunched over Maksin’s inert body, uselessly shielding her head. If the tremors kept coming this fast, another collapse would crush them before he had to worry about losing his cool.
The rumble didn’t get louder so much as it felt nearer. It deepened in pitch, booming like the thunder Filip had heard during Nimrata’s atmospheric storms. He squeezed his eyes shut and bent lower, clasping his hands over the back of his head.
A torrent of rocks slid and tumbled from the heap blocking the tunnel with a crash. Filip raised his head; were they actually getting through the slide? Through the thick dust he could barely make out the silhouette of a massive figure shouldering through the rock wall, kicking boulders aside like pebbles. It looked like someone in a heavy-duty exosuit, construction or military grade. Where had the colonists dug one of those up? He gasped in a lungful of dust and coughed.
A harsh digitally amplified voice rang out. “Filip?”
Filip squinted into the light. Past the glare of the suit’s headlamp, the person inside was invisible—Filip couldn’t see anything but a vague dark shadow. How did they know his name? “Yeah, Filip Nagata.”
The beam of light wobbled and flew wildly about the cavern for a second before it refocused on him. “How many of you are there?” the suit asked.
Filip held up two fingers. “Maksin’s passed out. Hit in the head with a rock.” He coughed again, turning his head to spit blood out on the stone.
“I can’t carry both of you. Can you walk?”
He nodded instead of trying to talk. His leg was broken, he was pretty sure. But no bones were sticking out of it, and he’d hop on one foot if it meant getting out of here.
Their rescuer knelt with a creak and hiss of powered joints and scooped Maksin up in its arms like she was a baby. Then it stood still, its helmet aimed down at him. “Grab my arm and hang on.”
Filip wrapped his arm around the suit’s elbow and struggled to his feet, clenching his jaw until it ached. A cold wave swept over his body and sweat broke out in beads on his forehead. Galaxies spun in front of his eyes.
The suit shuffled forward, inching over the rough ground. Filip clung to it on his injured side, letting it take some of the weight off his left leg with each step. Maksin's head lolled beside him and he watched a shining trickle of blood seep through her dusty hair.
“Come on, Filip. Nearly there.” The suit’s voice was oddly gentle.
Through the gap in the rock wall, Filip could see lights blazing and hear the rest of his crew shouting encouragement. That gave him the strength to push through until he was on the other side. He had to let go of the suit so it could gently lower Maksin onto a waiting stretcher and wondered how he was still upright. Then he realized he wasn’t. He was folding over slowly, and darkness slid over his vision like a helmet opaquing.
Filip dreamed about his mother standing by the side of the medical chair he was strapped into. By now, she was a familiar sight, he’d had this dream so often: Naomi Nagata walking up to him, inexplicably turning up wherever he was, on ship or station or planetside. And she’d look at him just like she was now, with love and tears shining in her dark eyes, even though he’d hit her and hurt her and done nothing but stand by and watch as his father threatened to kill her.
She’d never looked so healthy before, though. His dreams usually showed her as she was the last time he saw her just before she jumped into space from the Pella, worn thin with fear, dark circles of frail skin around her eyes. Now she was smiling and the skin of her cheeks was smooth and plumped out.
The light behind her quivered and she faded into it, her edges growing fuzzy. “Mama?” he whispered hoarsely, straining to move his fingers and reach out toward her.
The tears collecting in her eyes shone brighter. “I’m here,” she said. “Filip, I’m here.” Both of her strong, calloused hands wrapped around his and he drew in a shocked breath. She’d never touched him before in a dream. Was this real? He tried to turn his head and see where he was, but that set off some kind of irritating alarm beeping in his ear.
“Don’t move,” she said, her voice thick. “You got hurt in that rockfall. Need to heal your broken leg.”
The rockfall. Filip remembered that, barely. Maybe this was real; or maybe he was dead, or on some serious painkillers in a medical bay and imagining it all.
“Maksin okay?” he asked. Talking set off a coughing fit that scraped his throat raw.
His mother reached over for a water bulb and held the spout to his lips so that he could drink. The lukewarm water hard with minerals was the best thing he’d ever tasted. He sucked at the spout avidly until it was half empty and Naomi pulled it away.
“She’s right over there on the other side of you. Still out from a bad head wound, but she’ll be okay. And the rest of the work crew are fine.” She smiled luminously at him again. “Ufana said you stayed behind to try and help her.”
He’d only wanted to save someone instead of killing them, as though that would change anything. He tried to shrug, but his shoulders could barely move and all it did was make his neck hurt.
She took his hand again, wrapping her warm fingers around his cold ones. “I thought you were dead,” she whispered.
“I thought you were dead first!” he said. “I saw you throw yourself out an airlock.” He kept staring at her, still trying to figure out what was different about her. She’d gained mass, muscle, was more settled in her bones. And there was a light in her eyes like she was not just surprised to see him, but happy.
“I nearly did die.” She sob-laughed, the sound catching in her throat. “Would have, if my friends hadn’t come looking for me.”
Filip looked away, down at his aching leg—it was enclosed in a bulky regrowth canister to help the bone set. Now she was going to recall what he’d done, how he’d helped his father kill, and remember that she ought to hate him, the way he’d hated her for so long. No matter how much she claimed to love him, why would she give him another chance? He’d rejected every one she’d offered.
She lifted a hand slowly to brush a sweaty coil of hair out of his eyes. Filip flinched at the undeserved gentleness, jerking his face away, and his mother let her hand drop. But she didn’t leave.
“Will you tell me what happened?” she asked. “How did you get off the Pella? Where have you been all this time?”
“I just left.” He stared at the canister full of blue bio-gel as it sloshed back and forth, revealing random patches of his healing leg. His father had shrugged off Rosenfeld’s death, had told Filip he should be grateful for the chance to die for his cause. “The last thing I said to him… doesn’t matter what it was. He wouldn’t listen, didn’t care. And I finally understood what you tried to tell me—that he never would. So I ran away from him. Like you.” He glanced quickly sideways at her, but her expression hadn’t changed.
“I didn’t want to leave you, Filip, please believe me. But I had to get away from your father before one of us ended up killing the other.” A brief spasm of pain contorted her face, and she looked almost guilty. Why would she feel that way?
Filip remembered that he’d suspected something more than the Ring was responsible for the destruction of the Pella in his wake. The sensors on his little skiff hadn’t picked up anything that looked like a missile, and Filip had never seen a weapon that could turn an entire ship into a red blur. It could have been some kind of freak accident, but he didn’t believe that—the timing was too convenient for the Inners. Had the Rocinante been involved somehow?
“You killed him anyway, didn’t you?” he realized in horror. “The ship just dissolved. Did you have something to do with that?”
She closed her eyes for a second and let out a slow breath. Then she met his gaze directly. “Yes, I set it up to happen. I’m sorry it came to that. It was a choice I never wanted to make.”
“But you did.” He made himself say it. “And if I’d still been on the Pella, you would have killed me.”
She nodded. “I thought I had.” Shining tears coated her eyes in a magnifying lens, but didn’t escape.
“Fuck,” Filip breathed. “You made the Ring eat him. And everyone on the Pella.” Horror at the thought of what his father’s last moments might have been like—did he know he was disintegrating?—rose in his throat until he could barely breathe.
“Get out,” he croaked.
“Filip…” She raised a hand imploringly, but didn’t touch him.
“Get out!”
She turned on her heel and left.
Naomi stumbled out of the medbay, almost choking on swallowed tears, and straight into Jim. She should have known he’d be lurking in the corridor.
“He hates me,” Naomi sobbed, letting herself collapse into Holden’s gravity. He wrapped his arms around her and they drifted, spinning slowly with the momentum of her grief. “I killed his father, and he knows it. He hates me.”
“He’s alive to hate you,” Jim said, his voice soft but firm. “Better that than dead.” He cupped her face in his hands and looked her in the eyes. “If it ever comes to that between us, you know I’d rather you were alive somewhere out there and cursing my name.”
She gave a half-laugh, half-sob and lifted an arm, swiping the tears from her eyes with a corner of her sleeve.
“Give him a little time,” Holden said. “He just found out. And he’s a captive audience—he can’t leave the Roci until his treatment’s finished. You have a couple more days to try again.”
Naomi didn’t think it would help to harass Filip while he wasn’t able to get away from her. But a little time on both sides seemed like a wise idea. She still had trouble believing that it was true: Filip, her boy, was alive. Jim was right. That was a gift worth paying the price of his hatred for. She sniffled and blotted her eyes again before heading into the galley for dinner.
Jim must have filled in the rest of the crew; no one jumped in with questions, but they all took care of her in their own ways. Clarissa had made her own family version of lumpia and served Naomi first. Bobbie sat down beside her and thumped her on the shoulder awkwardly. “Nice job wrecking that suit,” she said. “I haven’t seen that much damage since a kid in Basic jumped off a cliff in one without power assist to see what would happen. He was fine,” she added, “the lower half of the suit was toast.”
“I can check in on the kid for you later,” Amos offered.
Naomi suspected that translated into ‘intimidating him into doing whatever Amos thought she wanted’ so she shook her head and refused with a smile. “Better if we give him some maneuvering room,” she said. “He’s still a bit overwhelmed.”
“Anger and guilt are a difficult combination,” Clarissa said.
Naomi nearly laughed. The only one of them who wasn’t intimately familiar with that might be Amos, and only because he didn’t know what guilt was. “Are you talking about me or Filip?” she asked.
Clarissa winced. “I meant Filip… but I guess it applies to both of you.”
“I don’t know if I have a right to be angry with him. I tried to kill him, after all.” Naomi sighed.
“And he stood by and let his dad almost kill you,” Amos pointed out in his flat, matter of fact tone. “Sounds to me like you’re about even.”
There wasn’t much point in trying to explain to Amos that as his mother, Naomi owed Filip more than that. That she’d abandoned him first and he’d always carry those scars. “He’s still my son,” was all she said.
“Leave it alone for now, everybody.” Jim handed her a mug of coffee made the way she liked it, with so much sweetener and powdered milk it was almost white. “Let Naomi and Filip have some time to get used to things the way they are now.”
“And what is the way things are now?” Bobbie asked. “Is he going to stay on the Roci?”
Naomi hadn’t even dared to consider that possibility. Longing overwhelmed her at the thought of having her son with her as part of her crew, her family again. She swallowed. “I don’t know what Filip wants. Except that right now he doesn’t want anything to do with me, so I doubt he’ll be staying.”
Amos leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. “As long as he doesn’t try to kill anyone onboard, he’s welcome to join us.”
“Not quite how I’d have put it,” Bobbie said dryly, “but I agree.”
Clarissa nodded. “He should get the same chance I did.”
Jim sat down on her other side and put his hand on her thigh under the table, squeezing it in reassurance. “Filip will come around. Wait and see.”
Naomi couldn’t manage to get out the words to thank them all. She just smiled, her eyes wet, and rested her head on Jim’s shoulder, taking comfort in the people surrounding her. They were still here; no matter what happened with Filip, they’d stay with her. She wouldn’t be alone again, the way she’d been when she was a scared young woman running from Marco.
Clarissa gave her the last two lumpia over Amos’ loud protests, and a tiny smile curved Naomi’s lips.
Naomi stayed away from the medbay for the next few days while the Roci caught up to the colony fleet now orbiting its new home, the third planet in the system—still unnamed, since according to Ufana the colonists were arguing over whether to call it Nimrata 2 or something completely different.
She was trying to gather the courage to ask Filip if she could see him once more before he left—just to say goodbye. In the end, she didn’t have to. On the day Filip was healed enough to go, Jim told her he’d asked to speak to her.
“Did he say why?” she asked. Not that it mattered—she’d do it, even if all he wanted was to tell her that he never wanted to see her again.
Jim shook his head, a worried frown eclipsing his usual cheerfully open face. “Are you sure you’re okay with it?”
“Yes.” She patted him on the chest. “You don’t need to protect me from my son. Not anymore.”
Jim looked skeptical, but came along with her to the medbay corridor. For a few fraught seconds Naomi stood outside the closed door and gathered her courage, trying to tell herself it was okay if Filip threw more hard words at her before leaving. He was alive; he knew where she was; he could still reach out and contact her if he ever needed or wanted to.
Jim squeezed her arm. “I’ll be waiting right here,” he said quietly.
Naomi took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway. She didn’t say anything, just looked at Filip. He was on his feet, zipping up a clean suit that he must have taken out of the open kitbag on the chair beside him. He still looked a little pale, with a shaved patch on the left side of his head where they’d had to close a gash from falling rock. But he was standing straight and tall on both legs. A fear she hadn’t acknowledged dropped away from her.
He met her gaze, direct and open. “I think I have to say sorry to you.”
She shook her head, automatically refuting his apology. “For what? You didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”
“Maybe not. But I wasn’t fair either.” His hands clenched at his sides. “Lying here waiting for my bone to heal, all I had to do was think. After a while, it was hard to stay angry with you. And then I kept thinking.”
She swallowed. “About what?” she asked.
“About Marco and you. For a long time, I thought you were just like him. I felt guilty any time either of you talked to me, always poking, pushing at me to be what you wanted.”
“That’s not—” Naomi protested. But Filip raised a hand and she subsided.
“You know what I finally notice? You call me Filip.”
“It’s your name,” Naomi said, confused.
Filip’s mouth curled in a bitter twist. “He always called me son. My son, he say, whether he was talking to me or about me. My son, I’m proud of you. Then he turn around and give me shit for something else. My son ought to know better. Do better. Even when he talked about how it would hurt if I died, he said it would be like losing a piece of him. I don’t think he ever saw me as my own person. You do.”
Naomi held her eyes open to keep the tears from spilling over. “I had to. Because you grew up without me. Whatever you’ve made of yourself, it’s not down to me.”
“It is, a little bit. When you were on the Pella, you showed me the other angle. Took off the goggles I was wearing.” Filip sighed. “I couldn’t stay with him any more once I saw him clear and proper. Understood that no one mattered to him but himself and his cause.” He looked down at his feet and his face twisted into a scowl of self-hatred. “So I deserted, like a coward. Left him and all my crew behind and didn’t care what became of them. And I knew what I was doing when I left. That’s not on you. They could have died plenty ways—that it was the Roci just made it easier to get angry at you and pretend it had nothing to do with me.”
“It didn’t.” Naomi cleared her throat. “You made a choice. You decided that you didn’t want to be like Marco any more. If he wouldn’t listen… Sometimes, all you can do is walk away.”
Filip fiddled with the fastening of his bag. “I was too much of a coward to look for you, either, even once I knew you were alive. Saw you and the Roci crew on the net. I used your name but I didn’t think you’d want me anymore.”
Naomi swallowed hard. “I should have said something before I left. Tried to let you know that I’d always be there if you wanted to find me. But I worried it might give away what I was planning.”
“Why would you want me to find you?” he said, confused. “I went along with all his plans, locked you up, hit you. All I did was hurt you.”
“Because I’m your mother, and that will never change.”
Filip blinked. “Thank you,” he said. “For not giving up on me.”
Naomi lifted her hand and slowly laid it over Filip’s. He let it rest there. She felt her son’s warm skin, his living flesh wrapped over his strong bones, and the blood beating through his fingers. No matter what happened, she’d had this moment. Her eyes were hot and bruised, swollen with tears she had thought all run dry. She blinked again.
“Do you have to go back to Nimrata?” she asked. “You could come with us, if you wanted. Stay on the Roci for as little or as long as you want.” She rubbed the dark line of the tatuyingi around his wrist with her thumb.
He blinked, his chin jerking back in a startled movement. “I don’t think so. No place on the Rocinante for me. I’m no hero, me, and I don’t fit in with all these Inners.”
“They’re good people,” she said, trying to smile. “My family, just like you. They’d be happy to have you.”
“Even that Martian marine?” Filip scoffed. “I don’t think so.”
“That Martian ended up not just working for, but fighting alongside her old enemies,” Naomi said. “Trust me, Bobbie would be okay with it. But I understand. It’s your choice.” She squeezed his hand once more, and let go.
Filip hesitated, looking down at her doubtfully. “You mean that?” he asked. “Holden and all them would be okay with me on their ship?”
“It’s our ship,” she said. “And yes, they really would be.”
“Maybe, but they’re not going to wait.” His shoulders sagged. “The colony still needs workers, and I got to finish out my term. What kind of coyo break a contract? I signed on for eight months, still have four to go.”
Naomi smiled. Her son, the loyal Belter. “We’ll come back when you’re finished. Promise.” She squeezed his hand. “Just—just talk to me every once in a while? Send a message?”
“I will.” He nodded solemnly. “But now I got to go. Shuttle’s waiting and the landing window isn’t long.” He lifted his kitbag and slung it over his shoulder, straightening up.
She blinked away more tears and forced herself to let go of his hand. She rose up on her toes to kiss his cheek lightly, just a brush of her lips, and patted his dense, springy curls. “Take care of yourself, Filip Nagata. We’ll see each other again soon.”
“Oyedeng, mama.” He leaned down and gave her an awkwardly careful one-armed hug. “See you in a while.”
The Roci’s incoming message alert chimed. Naomi glanced up, tossing the signal to the virtual screen above her head with an automatic flick of her wrist.
Filip looked down at her, and her face broke into a wide smile. It had been six weeks since the Roci had left the colonists behind on the new planet, and they’d exchanged a handful of messages, enough to prove he wasn’t going to disappear on her. But she still felt a surge of astonished joy every time she saw his signal in the queue.
And this time it wasn’t the still image of a video thumbnail, but the slightly choppy flow of a live feed. “What you thinking, my boy?” she scolded him. “This nonsense cost too much.” Even if he was this side of Jupiter, the price of the bandwidth to send realtime video was—literally—astronomical.
He shrugged, still grinning at her. “Don’t cost any when I’m using your network.” She blinked, and realized that the scarred metal background visible behind his head was the familiar wall of the Roci’s airlock.
Naomi jerked out of her seat and pushed herself away from the console with a single shove, twisting and plunging down the ladder to the main hold with barely a brush of her fingers on the rails to slow her momentum.
She smacked the door release and as it hissed open stared at Filip floating in the airlock on the other side. His hair was longer, floating in a loose halo, and he had a new tatuyingi inked on his right forearm… but it was him. His smile was a little uncertain now, his eyes wary but holding hers steady. A hard shell case was slung over one shoulder. “I finished up early, Holden said you still wanted another pair of hands on the crew, so here I am, me.” He shrugged. “Maybe you be sick of me soon.”
Naomi launched herself forward, throwing her arms around him and sending them both drifting backward with the force of her embrace. Filip locked his magboots on the decking and caught her by her elbows before they both ended up against the far wall.
Holden floated up behind her, anchoring himself with one hand on the edge of the hatch. “Welcome aboard, Filip.” He stuck out his other hand. Filip took it tentatively and stared in a bemused fashion as the Earther pumped it up and down in a firm handshake.
“You’re officially on the roster now.” Holden passed over a Rocinante crest with his name in block letters: F. NAGATA. “Naomi will show you your berth so you can start settling in, get unpacked.”
“First things first.” Naomi kept one arm draped over Filip’s shoulders and pushed him gently before her into the main hold of the ship. “It’s dinner time. Come eat with us.”