Persepolis Rising полностью

And now he was moving on. And Naomi with him. Losing her was a strange thought too, but different. Naomi had fought against being a persona in the greater world, always letting her lover take the stage so that she wouldn’t have to. When she stepped away, it wouldn’t change the story that other people told about the Rocinante the same way, but Bobbie was going to feel her loss more. As much as Holden was the public face of the ship, Naomi was the person Bobbie had come to trust in their practical, day-to-day lives. Whatever Naomi said was true. And if that wasn’t strictly accurate, it was close enough that Bobbie and the others relied on it with confidence.

When they were gone, nothing would be the same. Bobbie felt the sorrow in that. But, to her surprise, the joy too. She found herself going through her rounds, moving through the ship to check everything that had already been checked, marking anything that looked off—a gas pressure level that was dropping a fraction too quickly, a doorway that showed wear, a power link that was past its replacement date—and the ship itself had changed too. It was hers now. When she put her palm on the bulkhead and felt the thrum of the recyclers, it was her ship. When she woke strapped into her crash couch, even the darkness felt different.

She’d been a Marine—she would always be a Marine, even after that role didn’t fit her anymore. Becoming the captain of the Rocinante felt right for her in a way she hadn’t expected. The prospect of taking the captain’s chair had the same sense of threat and anticipation that pulling on her power armor had back in the day. It was as if her old suit had changed with time—changed as much as she had—and become a ship. A worn one, yes. Out of date, but dangerous. Scarred, but solid. Not just a metaphor of who Bobbie was but also who she wanted to become.

She believed the others—Alex, Amos, Clarissa—were as comfortable with the shift as they claimed. And before, she’d have left it at that. Before it was her ship.

Now that she was going to be captain, it was her job to check.

Amos was in the machine shop, as he usually was, paging through feeds on the strategies for keeping an old gunship like theirs flying and safe. A stubble of white along the back of his skull caught the light where he hadn’t shaved it in a couple of days. They were on the float, conserving reaction mass, but he was braced against the deck like he was anticipating a sudden change. Maybe he was, even if only out of habit. His thick, scarred hands tapped at the monitor, moving from subject to subject in the feed’s tree—lace-plating structural repair, overgrowth in microflora-based air recyclers, auto-adapting power grids. All the thousand improvements that study of the alien technologies had spun off. He understood them all. It was easy to forget sometimes the depth of focus and intelligence behind Amos’ cheerful violence.

“Hey, big man,” Bobbie said, pulling herself to a stop with one of the handholds.

“Hey, Cap’n Babs,” he said.

“How’s it going?”

He looked over at her. “Well, I’m a little nervous about the plating we put down by the drive at that depot back on Stoddard. Lot of folks are seeing flaking with that batch under radiation bombardment. Figure when we hit Medina, I should hop outside and take a peek. Hate to have that turn into baklava on us when we were counting on it.”

“That would suck,” Bobbie agreed.

“Lace plating’s great when it’s great,” Amos said, turning back to his screen.

“How’s the rest of it?” Bobbie asked.

Amos shrugged, flicked through the feed. “Is what it is, I figure.”

The silence settled between them. Bobbie scratched her neck, the soft sound of nails against skin louder than anything else in the room. She didn’t know how to ask if he was going to be okay with Holden and Naomi leaving him behind.

“Are you going to be okay with Holden and Naomi leaving?”

“Yup,” Amos said. “Why? You worried about it?”

“A little,” Bobbie said, surprised to discover that it was true. “I mean, I know you saw it coming before Holden did. I think all of us did. But you’ve shipped with them for a lot of years.”

“Yeah, but my favorite thing about Holden was knowing he’d take a bullet for any one of the crew. Pretty sure you actually have taken a few for us, so that ain’t changing,” Amos said, then paused for a moment. “You might should check in with Peaches, though.”

“You think?”

“Yup,” Amos said. And that was that. Bobbie pulled herself back out.