“Hey, Holden,” Bobbie said as Naomi left the room. “Can I hang on to you for a second?”
Holden shrugged and sat on a crate. Bobbie sat flexing her hands and staring at the floor so long that Holden started to wonder if he’d misheard her. He braced himself. He didn’t know where this conversation was going to go, but he had a suspicion it was about her and him and the captaincy of the
“Amos is going to be a problem,” she finally said. “I had the Voltaire people talked off the ledge when he started that fight. He wanted to crack some heads, and he made it happen. That’s fine for shore leave when he wants to blow off some steam, but it won’t fly when we’re under the radar like this.”
“Huh. Okay. I’d wondered about that.”
“It’s a problem I don’t know how to fix,” Bobbie said.
“Me neither,” Holden said. “But give it a couple days.”
“Not sure we have them,” Bobbie said.
“Why not?”
Bobbie pointed behind her back, meaning not what was physically behind her but backward in time. “You just gave us all a goal,” she said. “Something to bring us all together.”
“I did,” Holden said. “And I’m thinking from the way you’re looking at me right now that there’s some aspect of that I’ve maybe overlooked?”
“Some of us are Katria Mendez and her mad bombers.”
Holden felt a coolness down his spine. “Yeah. That could be interesting,” he said.
“Right?”
He found Amos in a narrow side hall, a welding torch in his hand. The big man’s arms showed little pocks of red where sparks had landed, but Amos hadn’t done so much as find a long-sleeved work shirt.
“Hey,” Holden said. “How’s it going?”
“Doing all right,” Amos said, gesturing at the conduits that textured the wall. “Saba’s folks said we should reroute the power. Makes it a little harder for the cops to track down where they’re losing it from if it keeps moving.”
“Yeah?”
“Decent plan in theory,” Amos said. “In practice, kind of an ass-pain, but whatever.”
“I can see that,” Holden said, then paused.
The truth was, in spite of decades flying the same ship, Holden still had very little idea what made Amos tick. He liked food, booze, meaningless sex, jokes. He seemed to like palling around with Alex, but when their pilot had decided to try being married again, Bobbie had been his best man. Amos treated every word out of Naomi’s mouth as if it were gospel, but the truth was all of them did these days.
Amos found the conduit he was looking for, lit up the torch, and opened a six-centimeter length of it, exposing the plastic-sheathed wire inside it without so much as melting the insulation. It was a good trick. Amos killed the torch.
“So,” Holden said again. “How’s it going?”
Amos paused. Turned to look at Holden.
“Ah,” the big mechanic said. “Sorry there, Cap. Were we having a conversation and I didn’t notice?”
“Kind of, yes,” Holden said.
“Babs ratted me out.” Amos’ voice was as calm as the surface of still water. Holden was pretty certain something big was swimming underneath it.
“Look,” he said, “we didn’t get where we are by me prying into things you didn’t want pried into. I don’t want to change that now. But yes, Bobbie’s worried about you. I am too. We’re going into some pretty dangerous times here, and if there’s anything that you need to get off your chest, now is a better time than later.”
Amos shrugged. “Nah, I get it. I got a little happy when we went on that last run. Opened up sooner than Babs would have liked. I’ll rein in some if it makes her feel better.”
“I don’t want to make an issue of it,” Holden said.
“It ain’t an issue, then,” Amos said, turning back to the conduit. He took a thick pair of pliers from his pocket, clamped them over the power cable, and started wrestling it out like he was getting crab meat out of a shell. It looked really dangerous. “I’ll play nice. Cross my heart.”
“Okay, then,” Holden said. “Great. Glad we had this talk.”
“Anytime,” Amos said.
Holden hesitated, turned, and walked away. Bobbie was right. He didn’t know what was going on in Amos’ mind, but something definitely was. He was hard-pressed to think what the good version of that looked like. And if Amos was finally coming off the rails, he had no idea what would cause it or how to fix it.
