Melba wondered why the woman didn’t call for help. On little ships like this, opening a communications channel was often as simple as saying it out loud. Either the computer was down, the rest of the crew dead or incapacitated, or it simply hadn’t occurred to her. It didn’t matter. It didn’t change what Melba had to do. She shifted to her right, sliding through the air, moving handhold to handhold, never giving the other woman the chance to catch her unmoored and spin her into the open air at the center of the room. The Belter perched on the wall, her dark eyes darting one way, then other, searching for advantage. There was no fear in them, no sentimentality. Melba had no doubt that if the opportunity came, Naomi would kill her.
She reached the hatch, setting the mech’s claw to grip a handhold, and then slipping one arm free to reach for the door’s controls. It was a provocation, and it worked. The Belter jumped, not straight at Melba, but to the deck above her, then turned, kicked, off, and drove down, her heels aiming for Melba’s head.
Melba drove her arm back into the mech and snapped the free arm up, catching the Belter in mid-flight. Her handhold broke free of the wall, and the pair of them floated together into the open air of the room. The Belter’s injured arm was caught in the mech’s clamp, and she kicked savagely with her heels. One blow connected, and Melba’s vision narrowed for a moment. She pulled the Belter through the air, worrying at her like a terrier with a rat, and then managed to swing the free arm up and catch the woman by the neck.
The Belter’s hand flew up to the clamp, panic in her expression. Her eyes went wide and bright. It would take a twitch of Melba’s fingers to crush the woman’s throat, and they both knew it. A sense of triumph and overwhelming joy washed through her. Holden might not be here, but she had his lover. She would take someone he loved from him just the way he’d taken her own father from her. This wasn’t even fighting anymore. This was justice.
The Belter’s face was flushing red, her breath constricted and rough. Melba grinned, enjoying the moment.
“This is his fault,” she said. “All of this is what he had coming.”
The Belter scratched at the mech’s claw. The blood that came away might have been from the old wound, or the mech’s grip might already have broken the skin. Melba closed her fingers a fraction, the pressure feather light. The mech’s servos buzzed as it closed a millimeter more. The Belter tried to say something, pushing the word out past her failing windpipe, and Melba knew she couldn’t let her speak. She couldn’t let her beg or weep and cry mercy. If she did, Melba suddenly wasn’t sure she could go through with it, and it had to be done. Sympathy is for the weak, her father’s voice whispered in her ear.
“You’re Naomi Nagata,” Melba said. “My name is Clarissa Melpomene Mao. You and your people attacked my family. Everything that’s happened here? Everything that’s going to happen. It’s your fault.”
The light was fading from the Belter’s eyes. Her breath came in ragged gasps. All it would take was a squeeze. All she had to do was make a fist and snap the woman’s neck.
With the last of her strength, the Belter woman lifted her free hand in a gesture of obscenity and defiance.
Melba’s body buzzed like she’d stepped into the blast from a firehose. Her head bent back, her spine arching against itself. Her hands flexed open, her toes curled back until it seemed like they had to break. She heard herself scream. The mech spread its arms to the side and froze, leaving her crucified in the metal form. The buzzing stopped, but she couldn’t move. No matter how much she willed it, her muscles would not respond.
Naomi came to rest against the opposite wall, a knot of panting and blood.
“Who are you?” the Belter croaked.
I am vengeance, Melba thought. I am your death made flesh. But the voice that answered came from behind her.
“Anna. My name’s Anna. Are you all right?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Anna
T
he woman—Naomi Nagata—replied by coughing up a red glob of blood.
“I’m an idiot, of course you’re not all right,” Anna said, then floated over to her, pausing to push the still-twitching Melba to the other side of the compartment. Girl and mech drifted across the room, bounced off a bulkhead, and came to a stop several meters away.
“Emergency locker,” Naomi croaked, and pointed at a red panel on one wall. Anna opened it to find flashlights, tools, and a red-and-white bag not too different from the one Tilly had been carrying on the Prince. She grabbed it. While Anna extracted a package of gauze and a can of coagulant spray for the nasty wound on Naomi’s shoulder, the Belter pulled out several hypo ampules and began injecting herself with them one at a time, her movements efficient and businesslike. Anna felt like something was tearing in her shoulders every time she wrapped the gauze around Naomi’s upper torso, and she almost asked for another shot for herself.
Years before, Anna had taken a seminar on ministering to people with drug addictions. The instructor, a mental health nurse named Andrew Smoot, had made the point over and over that the drugs didn’t only give pleasure and pain. They changed cognition, stripped away the inhibitions, and more often than not, someone’s worst habits or tendencies—what he called their “pathological move”—got exaggerated. An introvert would often withdraw, an aggressive person would grow violent. Someone impulsive would become even more so.
Anna had understood the idea intellectually. Almost three hours into her spacewalk, the amphetamines Tilly had given her began to fade and a clarity she hadn’t known she lacked began to return to her. She felt she had a deeper, more personal insight into what her own pathological move might be.
Anna had spent only a few years living among Belters and outer planets inhabitants. But that was long enough to know that their philosophy boiled down to “what you don’t know kills you.” No one growing up on Earth ever really understood that, no matter how much time they later spent in space. No Belter would have thrown on a space suit and EVA pack and rushed out the airlock without first knowing exactly what the environment on the other side was like. It wouldn’t even occur to them to do so.
Worse, she’d run out that airlock without stopping to send a message to Nono. You don’t ask for permission, you ask for forgiveness echoed in her head. If she died doing this, Nono would have it carved as her epitaph. She’d never get that last chance to say she was sorry.