They ate in silence after that. He thought about putting on some background music, and even reached for his hand terminal before he remembered that it was dead. After, Naomi put the plates and forks into the recycler and led him into the bathroom by the wrist. She pulled off her clothes slowly, and he felt himself responding to her body despite the stress and fear. Or maybe because of it. Lust and anxiety mixed into something that was more than one kind of desperation. She got the water to a decent temperature while he stripped, and then they were there together, arms around each other as the warm cascade filled the curves where their bodies made cups and reservoirs. She leaned her head against his, her lips beside his ear.
“We can talk now,” she murmured. “We’ve got about fifteen minutes before the rationing kicks in.”
“Oh,” he said. “And here I thought this was just my masculine charm.”
She grabbed him gently someplace sensitive. “That too,” she said, and the laughter in her voice was better than anything that had happened in days. “We need to make a real plan. I don’t know what’s going to happen with our money. We only had this room to the end of the week, and I’m not sure whether we’ll keep it past that or if they’ll throw us out early. Or anything else, really. Not at this point.”
“We’ve got to get back to the
“Maybe,” Naomi said. “Unless that calls more attention to the kids. It might not be a kindness to have James Holden of the
“You think there’s going to be a fight?”
She shifted against him, their skin slipping distractingly under the flow of water. “What would Avasarala say?” Naomi asked.
Holden moved his arms around the small of her back, pulled her gently against him. Kissed her gently. “That Governor Singh fucked up,” he said softly. “That cracking down on the enemy this hard shows that you’re afraid of them.”
“Yup,” Naomi said. “The people who went after him? They were assholes and amateurs. There’s a real underground going to start now, and it’s going have the professionals. If you and I keep our noses very, very clean, we might be able to stay out of that. If we start reaching out to the crew, security may think we’re putting the band back together.”
“So leave them out of it. Commit fully to our new lives as war refugees?”
“Or suck it up, get the band back together, and die as dissidents.”
“I’m really wishing Titan were still on that list of options.”
“That’s waiting for yesterday, sweetheart.”
He rested his head against her shoulder. The water ration warning cleared its throat. Just the first one, though. They still had time.
“Why do I get the feeling I’m more freaked-out about this than you are?” he asked, and felt her smile against his cheek.
“You’re new here,” she said. “I’m a Belter. Security coming down on you just because they can? Checkpoints and identity tracking? Knowing that you could wind up in the recycler for any reason or no reason? I grew up like this. Amos did too, in his way. I never wanted to come back here, but I know how this all goes. Childhood memories, sa sa que?”
“Well, shit.”
She ran her hand down his spine and pushed him back. The wall was cold against him. Her kiss was rough and strong, and he found himself pushing into it in a way he hadn’t in years. When they came up for air, Naomi’s eyes were hard. Almost angry.
“If we do this,” she said, “it’s going to be ugly. We’re outgunned and outplanned, and I don’t see how we win.”
“I don’t either,” he said. “And I don’t see how we stay out of it.”
“Getting the band back together?”
“Yeah. And we were so close to out.”
“We were,” she said.
The water ration chimed again, a little more urgently. Holden felt some vast emotion move in his chest, but he didn’t know what it was. Grief or anger or something else. He turned off the water. The rush of white noise stopped. The gentle chill of evaporation brought goose bumps up his arms and legs. Naomi’s eyes were soft, dark, unflinching.
“Come to bed,” he said.
“Yes,” she answered.
In the darkness, the control pad on the door glowed amber. Green would have meant unlocked. Red, locked. Amber meant override. It meant that they weren’t in control of it. That, in a fundamental way, it wasn’t their door anymore. It belonged to station security. Naomi was still asleep, her breath deep and regular, so Holden sat in the darkness, not moving to keep from waking her, and watched the amber light.
