The sick bay, now that he could see it, looked like a ward on a high-production entertainment feed. It wasn’t a hospital; it was the matte-black-and-silver idea of what a hospital was supposed to be. The monitors hung suspended in the air on complex armatures, reporting his blood pressure, nucleic acid concentrations, oxygenation, fluid balance. There were two separate countdowns running, one to the next round of autophagics, the other for pain medication. And across the aisle, at another station, Holden’s statistics looked more or less the same.
Holden looked like a ghost. His skin was pale and his sclera were red with a hundred little hemorrhages. His face was puffy from steroids.
“Hey,” Miller said.
Holden lifted a hand, waving gently.
“We made it,” Miller said. His voice sounded like it had been dragged down an alley by its ankles.
“Yeah,” Holden said.
“That was ugly.”
“Yeah.”
Miller nodded. That had taken all the energy he had. He lay back down and fell, if not asleep, at least unconscious. Just before his mind flickered back into forgetfulness, he smiled. He’d made it. He was on Holden’s ship. And they were going to find whatever Julie had left behind for them.
Voices woke him.
“Maybe you shouldn’t, then.”
It was the woman. Naomi. Part of Miller cursed her for disturbing him, but there was a buzz in her voice—not fear or anger, but close enough to be interesting. He didn’t move, didn’t even swim all the way back to awareness. But he listened.
“I need to,” Holden said. He sounded phlegmy, like someone who needed to cough. “What happened on Eros… it’s put a lot of things in perspective. I’ve been a holding something back.”
“Captain—”
“No, hear me out. When I was in there thinking that all I was going to have left was half an hour of rigged pachinko games and then death… when that happened, I knew what my regrets were. You know? I felt all the things that I wished I’d done and never had the courage for. Now that I know, I can’t just ignore it. I can’t pretend it isn’t there.”
“Captain,” Naomi said again, and the buzz in her voice was stronger.
Don’t say it, you poor bastard, Miller thought.
“I’m in love with you, Naomi,” Holden said.
The pause lasted no longer than a heartbeat.
“No, sir,” she said. “You aren’t.”
“I am. I know what you’re thinking. I’ve been through this big traumatic experience and I’m doing the whole thing where I want to affirm life and make connections, and maybe some of that’s part of it. But you have to believe that I know what I feel. And when I was down there, I knew that the thing that I wanted the most was to get back to you.”
“Captain. How long have we served together?”
“What? I don’t know exactly… ”
“Ballpark estimate.”
“Eight and a half runs makes it almost five years,” Holden said. Miller could hear the confusion in his voice.
“All right. And in that time, how many of the crew did you share bunks with?”
“Does it matter?”
“Only a little.”
“A few.”
“More than a dozen?”
“No,” he said, but he didn’t sound sure.
“Let’s call it ten,” Naomi said.
“Okay. But this is different. I’m not talking about having a little shipboard romance to pass the time. Ever since—”
Miller imagined the woman holding up her hand or taking Holden’s or maybe just glaring at him. Something to stop the flow of words.
“And do you know when I fell for you, sir?”
Sorrow. That was what the strain in her voice was. Sorrow. Disappointment. Regret.
“When… when you… ”
“I can tell you the day,” Naomi said. “You were about seven weeks into that first run. I was still smarting that some Earther had come in from out of the ecliptic and taken my XO job. I didn’t like you much right at the start. You were too charming, too pretty, and too damn comfortable in my chair. But there was a poker game in the engine room. You and me and those two Luna boys out of engineering and Kamala Trask. You remember Trask?”
“She was the comm tech. The one who was… ”
“Built like a refrigerator? Face like a bulldog puppy?”
“I remember her.”
“She had the biggest crush on you. Used to cry herself to sleep at night all through that run. She wasn’t in that game because she cared about poker. She just wanted to breathe some of your air, and everyone knew it. Even you. And all that night, I watched you and her, and you never once led her along. You never gave her any reason to think she had a chance with you. And you still treated her with respect. That was the first time I thought you might be a decent XO, and it was the first time I wished that I could be the girl in your bunk at shift’s end.”
“Because of Trask?”
“That and you’ve got a great ass, sir. My point is we flew together for four years and more. And I would have come along with you any day of that if you’d asked me.”
“I didn’t know,” Holden said. He sounded a little strangled.
“You didn’t ask. You always had your sights set someplace else. And, honestly, I think Belter women just put you off. Until the Cant… Until it was just the five of us. I’ve seen you looking at me. I know exactly what those looks mean, because I spent four years on the other side of them. But I only got your attention when I was the only female on board, and that’s not good enough for me.”
“I don’t know—”
“No, sir, you don’t. That’s my point. I’ve watched you seduce a lot of women, and I know how you do it. You get fixed on her, you get excited by her. Then you convince yourself that the two of you have some kind of special connection, and by the time you believe it, she usually thinks it’s true too. And then you sleep together for a while, and the connection gets a little faded. One or the other of you says something like professional or appropriate boundaries or starts worrying what the crew will think, and the whole thing slides away. Afterwards they still like you. All of them. You do it all so well they don’t even feel like they get to hate you for it.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is. And until you figure out that you don’t have to love everyone you bed down with, I’m never going to know whether you love me or just want to bed down. And I won’t sleep with you until you know which it is. The smart money isn’t on love.”