“Of course.”
“How long have you known her?”
“Two and a half years.”
“In what capacity?”
“She was a researcher in my labs. Hmm. I’ll have to make sure her datasets get collected. Can I make a note of that? Or do I need to wait until the interrogation’s done?”
“This isn’t an interrogation, sir. You go right ahead.”
“Thank you.” Prax pulled up his hand terminal and put an entry on his list for the morning. He thought at first there was something wrong with the display, but it was only his hand trembling. He shoved the terminal back in his pocket. “Thank you,” he said again.
“Do you have any idea who might have done this to her? Or why?”
The Free Navy did this to her, Prax thought. They did it because she was trying to stand against them. She was doing that because people are suffering and starving and dying that might not have to, and she had it in her power to make a difference. They found out, and they killed her. The way they’d kill me if I made things uncomfortable for them.
He looked into the security man’s inquiring eyes. The way they’d kill you too, he thought.
“Anything you can offer on the question, sir? Even something small might help.”
“No,” Prax said. “I don’t have any idea.”
Chapter Fourteen: Filip
The docks of Ceres Station ran, roughly speaking, along its equator in a wide belt of titanium and ceramic and steel. The dwarf planet’s movement made docking difficult, but once the clamps took hold, ships had the advantage of the 0.3g of spin gravity even with the drive off and cold. And with the radius of spin as big as it was, the Coriolis should have been negligible. The Pella should have felt like it was under a moderate burn and nothing more, but something kept bothering Filip. A sense that the ship was wrong, or that he was.
Twice, he snuck into the medical bay and had diagnostics run, then deleted the results after he read them. They didn’t show anything anyway. But maybe he was just so used to life under thrust that the trace of sideways impulse was enough to unsettle him. Or maybe it was only that the ship was empty except for him. A small, gnawing part of his mind kept suggesting it had something to do with the man he’d shot, but that didn’t make any sense. Along with his father, he’d killed billions. Shooting one man—one that didn’t even die—was nothing to him. It had to be the Coriolis.
His father had made it very clear that Filip’s universe stopped at the airlock. The Pella and everything in it was his the same as it always was, but Ceres Station was worse than vacuum. Fair or unfair, Filip was banned from the station for life. It was the deal Marco had struck with the OPA governor, Dawes. The others would be an active part of the evacuation, but Filip could only watch. And so he walked the corridors, went up and down the lift, slept, ate, exercised, and waited while just on the other side of the airlock, all the people he knew best stripped Ceres Station to the studs. He’d have been part of the effort if he could. Maybe that was all it was. Maybe it was just the fact that he’d been left behind and relaxing while the others did the work didn’t sit well with him. That seemed more likely than Coriolis. Or the man he’d shot.
The truth was, he didn’t remember much of the event. He’d been out with maybe a dozen Free Navy and some local fringe and hangers-on. According to the old laws he was still too young to be in the bars and brothels, but he was Filip Inaros and no one had suggested he leave. There had been music. He’d danced with a local girl, admired her tattoos, bought her drinks. And he’d kept up with her too, drink for drink. She’d liked him, he could tell. And if the music had been too loud for them to talk, that didn’t matter. He could tell.
Her interest hadn’t been about him so much as about the story of who he was. The son of Marco Inaros. Karal had warned him. Marco had warned him. Some people would be attracted to what they thought he was. He had to be careful always to remember who his family was. Not let himself be baited or seduced. The Free Navy had the power now, but there were still people on Ceres who were more than half loyal to the old ways.
Our enemies, at least you know where they stand, his father had said when they arrived at Ceres. There’s nothing you can trust less than half-Belters. Marco hadn’t said it straight out, but he’d meant Filip’s mother and all the people like her. Belters who’d let themselves be turned away from the Belt and the condescending Fred Johnson Earthers who pretended to care about them. Moderate OPA was just another way to say traitor. So Filip had known not to trust the girl, even while he was drinking with her. Drinking too much with her. When she’d left without telling him, he’d felt humiliated and angry. And then something had happened, he couldn’t quite put together, and he’d been carted off by Ceres security and his father called. Which had been humiliating again.
They hadn’t talked, not really. Marco had ordered him to stay on ship, so on ship he’d stayed. Maybe they’d
never speak of it again. Maybe that conversation was still coming. Maybe not knowing which was what left him feeling wrong. He didn’t know. He hated that he didn’t know.
He sat in the gunner’s station, the screen slaved to his terminal, and sampled the feeds. A man posting under an old-style OPA banner shouting about how the Free Navy was the last, best hope for Belter liberty. A thin-faced coyo sitting too close to his camera talking in halting Farsi about the implications of the biologicals supplied by Earth being cut off. Some high-end pornography in what looked like a water treatment plant and a hotel lobby. An old Sabbu Re movie series, pairing him against Sanjit Sangre back when Sangre had still looked like a badass. Noise. It was all just noise and images, and Filip let them wash over him without noticing what he was taking in. An impressionistic sense of violence and victory, with him and his father at the head of it all. Arousal and anger paired with all the complexity of an old way of life passing into darkness.
When he killed the speakers, the Pella was quiet in the never-quite silent way a ship had. The drive was off, so there were none of the low hums or occasional harmonics that made the background of his normal life. But the decking joints still ticked and murmured as the plates warmed or cooled. The air recyclers hissed and huffed and hissed again. So maybe that was part of what felt wrong. The sounds of a ship under thrust were so unlike a ship in dock that the subtle background music of his life had changed and set him on edge. The tightness in his belly, the impatience like an itch in his soul that kept him uncomfortable no matter what position he sat in or stood. The ache in his jaw and across his shoulders. Maybe they were just the natural expression of a man used to being in motion being forced into passivity. That was all. Nothing more than that.
Before you kill yourself, his mother had said, come find me.
He stood up, shut down the feeds with a gesture, and stalked down toward the gym. The good thing about being alone was that no one was using any of the equipment. He didn’t bother warming up, just brought down the resistance bands, strapped in, and pulled. He relished the way the handles bit into his palms, the sense of his muscles protesting and tearing, each little injury making them grow back again stronger. Between sets, he turned on some music—loud, aggressive dai-bhangra—only to stop in the middle of the next set and turn it off again.
Everything he wanted annoyed him as soon as he had it. He wondered if he’d have felt the same about the girl. If she’d stayed, and they’d fucked, if afterward he’d have wanted her gone. Turned off like the music. He didn’t know what it would take to make him feel right. Getting the fuck off Ceres wouldn’t hurt, though.
The voices came first, loud and laughing and familiar as Tía Michelle’s bread soup. Karal and Sárta, Wings, and Kennet and Josie. The crew, coming back on board. He wondered if his father was there yet, and what he hoped the answer would be.
“Bist bien,” Wings said. “Jeszcze seconds more.”
The older man staggered a little as he stepped into the gym. His hair was swept up at the sides as it always was, but with a little less crispness than usual. His real name was Alex, but someone had started calling him Wings because of that hairstyle, and his eyes were bloodshot pink, and his gait was a little too relaxed and unsteady. He had a crumpled purple bag under his arm.
“Filipito!” he said, lumbering over. “Bila a ti, I was.”