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“Yeah, because we can stuff so o hold,” Amos said with a snort “Plus, broke-as-hell-and-desperate is ”
“Let’s face it,” Holden said, “if things keep going the way they are, finding work for a private warship h”
Aet a preemptive I-told-you-so in here Since when that turns out not to be true, like it always does, I ht not be there to say it”
Chapter Two: Alex
The thing Alex Kaed the experience of time The weeks – so out of history into so narrowed down to the ship and the people in it For long stretches, there would be nothing but the basic ency Everything orking according to the plan, and the plan was for nothing critical to happen Traveling through the vacuuave hi It hy he could do the job
He’d known other people, usually young men and women, whose experience was different Back when he’d been in the Navy there had been a pilot who’d done a lot of work in the inner planets, running between Earth, Luna, and Mars He’d transferred in for a trip out to the Jovian moons under Alex Just about the ti hts, eating too h the ship froer pacing its cage By the tireed to start putting sedatives in the guy’s food just to keep things fro out of hand At the end of the ned a long run again Some kinds of pilots couldn’t be trained as much as tested for
Not that there weren’t stresses and worries that he carried with him Ever since the death of the Canterbury, Alex had carried a certain amount of baseline anxiety With just the four of them, the Rocinante was structurally undercrewed A masculine personalities that, if they ever locked horns, could blow the crew dynamic apart The captain and the XO were lovers, and if they ever broke up, it would mean the end ofhe’d alorried about, whatever creith With the Roci, it had been the sa hoent off the rails, and that in itself was a kind of stability As it was, Alex always felt relieved to get to the end of a run and he always felt relieved to start the next one Or if not always, at least usually
The arrival at Tycho Station should have been a relief The Roci was as compromised as Alex had ever seen her, and the shipyards at Tycho were some of the best in the system, not to mention the friendliest The final disposition of their prisoner from New Terra was now soundly someone else’s problem, and he was off the ship The Edward Israel, the other half of the New Terran convoy, was burning its way safely sunward The next sixbut repair work and relaxation By any rational standard, there should have been less to worry about
“So what’s bugging you?” Amos asked
Alex shrugged, opened the little food refrigeration unit that the suite provided, closed it, shrugged again
“So you”
“I know”
The lights had the yellow-blue clearness that , but Alex hadn’t slept Or not much Amos sat at the counter and poured his where you need et cos, are we?”
Alex laughed “That never works”
“So let’s not do it”