“You’re actually coming here to lecture us on how to run an occupied insurgency,” she said. Her voice was gentle and warm. The voice of a favorite teacher, or beloved aunt. A voice that asked if you wanted some lemonade with your cookies. It also had the precise diction and studied lack of accent that Bobbie associated with advanced education. Her Belter accent could have been measured in parts per billion.
“Not at all,” Bobbie started.
“Because,” Katria continued, “the Collective has been a militant branch of the OPA, resisting inner-planets control, for nearly a century.”
“I understand,” Bobbie said.
“Do you? Because it seems like you just showed up here and told us that we’re not allowed to run any resistance operations without your consent. Or did I misunderstand what you were telling me?”
Bobbie heard shuffling feet behind her, and turned around to see five members of Katria’s cell had taken up a loose semicircle at her back. None of them held weapons in their hands, but they all wore the loose-fitting jumpsuits of the Medina Station maintenance workers. Lots of big pockets that could be hiding anything from a hammer to a compact machine pistol. Amos, standing to her left, caught her eye without losing his smile. He took a half step back, managing to make it look casual.
“Look,” Bobbie said to Katria, stepping up and looking down at her from their half-meter height difference. “We didn’t come here to start a fight. As far as I’m concerned, we’re all on the same team. But if you force it to go the other way, we’re prepared for that, too. And I promise you it will not go the way you want.”
“Honestly, I’m just not sure why Saba didn’t come himself,” Katria said, not backing down at all. “Or why he thought sending a Martian and an Earther to tell Belters how to fight was the right message.”
Bobbie didn’t know any answer to that other than
“Because maybe that
Katria nodded and smiled. “That’s actually not a terrible answer.”
“Then let’s ease down,” Bobbie said, taking a half step back again to give Katria her space. “Let’s find a place to sit and have a drink and chat about how all of us can work together to fuck these Laconian assholes up. Yeah?”
“You keep giving me that eye, boy, and I’m gonna pull it out of your head and hand it back to you,” Amos said, his tone so mellow and conversational that it took Bobbie a moment to recognize the threat was real. He was looking back at the semicircle of OPA toughs at their back, directing his empty gaze at them. But Bobbie saw a vein at his temple throbbing like he was at risk of a stroke. The muscles moved under his skin like taut cable dragging over his jawbone.
“Amos,” she said, and then she wasn’t talking anymore because she was in a fight.
Amos threw himself at someone behind her, and she heard grunts and the meaty thud of fists hitting flesh, but she couldn’t turn around to see what was happening because a long knife had appeared in Katria’s hand and the woman was dancing toward her.
Bobbie didn’t have time to dance with Katria, nor did she want to get herself stitched up from a knife fight, so she straight-kicked the woman in the diaphragm and dropped her to the deck with an explosive
Through the explosion of stars in her vision, she saw Amos grappling with two men at the same time, choking one with his left arm while he slammed the second man into one of the water tanks over and over again with his right. A third man had climbed onto his back and was attempting a sleeper hold, but couldn’t get his forearm under Amos’ chin to lock it up. The other two OPA goons were flanking Bobbie, and one of them was holding the crowbar he’d just cracked her cheekbone with. In the sort of slow-motion clarity Bobbie always experienced during a fight, she saw skin and blood on the crowbar’s edge.
