“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Really? I haven’t watched you try to kill yourself enough times? Now you make me watch you succeed in slow motion. But you’re sorry.”
“Yeah. That part is pretty shitty. But I couldn’t think of anything else, and this isn’t what—”
“Let’s take care of the problem,” she said. “The rest can come later.”
He hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll probably go to the station from here. Once they’re done with the scans.”
“I’ll be on the Roci.”
“All right then. I’ll let you know when I’m in position.”
Naomi nodded and pulled herself to the door and down the corridor as if they were only heading to their various mundane duties. As if it weren’t the last time. How strange to know in the moment that something precious was ending, and still have it change nothing. Either it was a sign of her devastation or a tribute to how good their life together was and had been.
She made the transfer back to the Rocinante. The air didn’t change scent this time. Either there had been enough traffic between the connected ships that the atmospheres had mingled, or she’d just gotten used to both of them. She hesitated for a moment, unsure whether to go back to her cabin or up to the ops deck. Her work could be done at either one, but the cabin had Jim’s things—his clothes, his scent, his absence—and so she made the turn to ops.
Alex was there, his eyes wide and his hands fluttering in powerless distress.
“You heard?” she said.
“It’s true?”
“It is,” she said, and picked a couch to strap into. “How did you find out?”
“Casey.”
“Casey?”
“The power supply technician on the Falcon? Dark hair, wide face? Little mole on his neck? He was over drinking beer with me and Amos back in Adro before we left.”
Naomi shook her head. She had probably seen him, but she didn’t make connections with the ease that Alex did.
“Are you all right?” Alex asked in a voice that meant he knew that she wasn’t.
Naomi pulled up her tactical display and split it. The ring space on the left, and on the right a more schematic view with the rings, the systems beyond them, and the ships falling in from all directions. The sheer scale of it was overwhelming. She had to figure out which of the ships were coming to her aid, which were the new enemy. She had to inventory the drugs and precursors that would keep the ships she did have from falling into Duarte’s nightmare hive mind. She had to keep control of the ring space long enough for Jim to have a chance at stopping the catastrophe that was rolling in toward them from all directions.
“I’m really, really angry,” she said. “When Jim came back from Laconia—when we got him back—I knew he was hurt. I knew there was less of him somehow. I thought we’d take care of him. That he was injured, not just in his body. In his soul, if that’s the word. With time and care and love, I thought maybe I would see him again the way he had been. The way I remembered him.”
“I get that,” Alex said.
“And then the thing that actually did bring him back wasn’t any of that. I saw him again. Just now. I saw him the way he used to be. At his best. And love isn’t what got him there. And it wasn’t care. And it wasn’t time. He saw something incredibly, stupidly dangerous that needed to be done and only he could do. And he just . . .”
She opened a closed fist like she was scattering dust.
Alex hung his head. “He just did it.”
“He rose to the occasion.” Tears were sheeting across her eyes now, making the deck a swirl of color and refraction. She wiped them away on the back of her sleeve.
“He is who he is,” Alex said. “He is who he’s always been. I understand that. I’ve got two marriages behind me because I thought I’d changed and grown into someone else. And I wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t right either. Jim changed, but he also stayed the same.”
“I wish we’d been the ones to bring him back, and not this.”
“So what can we do?”
Naomi looked at her screens. The tears were already drying, even if the darkness and emptiness and regret were all just as deep. “We give him as much time as we can. We try to make this latest idiotic, brave, stupid gesture count for as much as it can. And then we see what happens next. Someone needs to let Teresa know and get her ready. And tell Amos. There may be some fighting.”