Chapter 22: THE HUNT
Amos hit the deck hard enough to rattle the cargo bay walls.
He was up again before I could press the advantage—rolling, rising, coming at me with a combination that would have broken ribs if it connected. I slipped left, redirected his momentum, and put him down again with a hip throw that used his own force against him.
"You're getting better at that," he said from the floor. Not angry. Amos didn't get angry about violence—he appreciated it too much.
"You're telegraphing your right hook."
"Am I?" He stood, rotated his shoulder experimentally. "Show me."
We'd been at this for two hours. The Rocinante's cargo bay made a decent training space when we moved the equipment to the walls—enough room to move, enough hard surfaces to make mistakes hurt. Amos believed in training that left bruises. I agreed with him.
He came at me again—faster this time, the right hook masked by a feint that would have fooled most opponents. But I'd seen the tension in his left shoulder, the slight shift in his balance. My block was already in position when the punch arrived.
Three exchanges later, he was on the deck again.
"That's four-nothing," I said.
"I'm aware." Amos stood, grabbed a water bottle from the equipment stack. "You fight like someone who's been doing this a long time. Professional training. Military, maybe."
"Maybe."
"Belter dock workers don't move like that. Don't think like that. Don't see openings before they exist." He took a long drink, watching me over the bottle's rim. "You're not what you say you are."
I waited.
"That's okay," he continued. "None of us are. I'm not asking for explanations. Just making observations."
"Appreciated."
"But whatever you're hiding—" He set down the bottle. "It's useful. So keep hiding it, I guess. Just don't hide it from the people who need to know when it matters."
He came at me again. This time I let him land a shot—not enough to hurt, just enough to keep the sparring interesting. We trained for another hour, neither of us speaking much, communicating instead through the language of controlled violence that we both understood.
By the time we finished, I had bruises forming along my ribs and forearms. They'd heal fast—faster than they should, another gift from whatever had happened during transmigration. But they'd serve as reminders of what Amos had shown me about his fighting style, his instincts, his tells.
Knowledge was survival. Even knowledge gained through pain.
Naomi found me in the galley three hours later, nursing a cup of coffee that Alex had insisted I try.
"Kwame." She said the name carefully, like she was testing its weight. "Got a minute?"
"Sure."
She settled across from me, her tall Belter frame folding into the booth with practiced ease. Her expression was neutral—the particular blankness that meant she was working through something complicated.
"I've been running background checks on the crew," she said. "Standard security protocols for the Roci's registry. Nothing invasive—just verifying employment records, identification, the usual."
"Makes sense."
"Most of it checks out. Holden's Navy service, Alex's MCRN career, Amos's—" She paused. "Amos's history is its own kind of interesting. But it's consistent."
"And mine?"
"Yours has gaps." She pulled up a display on her hand terminal, angled it so I could see. "Kwame's work history on Ceres—some of the records don't match. Employment dates that overlap. References from companies that don't exist anymore. Small things, but they add up."
I studied the display. She was right—whoever had created Kwame's background hadn't been thorough enough. The inconsistencies were minor, the kind most people wouldn't notice, but Naomi wasn't most people.
"What are you asking?"
"I'm not asking anything." She put the terminal away. "I'm telling you what I found. What you do with that information is up to you."
"And if I said the inconsistencies are just bad record-keeping?"
"Then I'd know you were lying, and we'd both pretend I believed you." Her eyes held mine. "I don't need to know what you're hiding. I just need to know you're not a threat to this crew."
"I'm not."
"The Donnager proved that." She stood. "Whatever you are, wherever you came from—you've bled for us. That counts for something. But secrets have a way of coming out at the worst possible times. Keep that in mind."
She left. I stared at my coffee, thinking about walls and trust and the particular weight of lies carried too long.
The gaps in Kwame's background were a problem. Not an immediate one—Naomi wasn't going to expose me to the others—but a vulnerability that could be exploited if the wrong person started digging. I needed to decide what to do about it.
But that was a problem for later. Right now, we had a mission to plan.
Alex's chess variant was called "Kamal Rules," and it made no sense whatsoever.
"So the bishops can move like knights on alternating turns?"
"Only if they're on dark squares." Alex moved his piece in a pattern that might have been legal under his rules or might have been pure improvisation. "And rooks can castle with each other once per game."
"That's not castling. That's just moving two pieces."
"It's Martian castling. Different gravity, different rules."
I studied the board, trying to find any pattern in the chaos. Three games in, and I was pretty sure Alex was making up rules as he went—but he was consistent enough about it that I couldn't prove anything.
My hand hovered over a pawn. "If I move this—"
"Then I can use my queen's secret power."
"Queens don't have secret powers."
"In Kamal Rules they do." He grinned. "You're thinking too much. That's your problem. Sometimes you just have to move and see what happens."
I moved the pawn. Alex immediately captured it with a bishop moving in a direction bishops shouldn't move.
"Checkmate," he announced.
"That's not checkmate. My king can move to—"
"Not if the bishop is in attack mode."
"There's no such thing as attack mode!"
"There is now." He started resetting the board. "Best three out of five?"
"You just want to keep inventing rules until I can't win."
"That's the spirit."
We played two more games. I lost the first when Alex unveiled something called the "Mariner Valley Gambit" that involved moving the same piece three times in a row. I won the fourth by ignoring every rule he'd invented and just capturing his king directly.
"That's cheating," Alex protested.
"In Kwame Rules, direct capture is allowed."
He laughed—the genuine, warm sound that made the rest of us remember why we bothered surviving. "Fair enough. Want to go again?"
I did. For a few minutes, at least, I could pretend that strategy was just a game.
The planning session started at 2000 hours, all five of us crowded around the Rocinante's tactical display.
Fred Johnson's intelligence had given us Dresden's location—a Protogen-affiliated research facility on Ceres, operating under a corporate front that had managed to avoid OPA attention. The facility was small, well-defended, and officially didn't exist.
"Security's corporate private," Naomi said, highlighting the relevant sections. "Professional but not military. Twelve to fifteen guards on rotation, electronic surveillance on all access points, biometric locks on sensitive areas."
"Weak points?" Holden asked.
"Maintenance access. They've got standard infrastructure connections to the station's recycling systems. Someone with the right credentials could access the building through the secondary environmental corridor."
Everyone looked at me.
"I've still got maintenance certifications from my Ceres days," I said. "They're probably still in the system. Even if they're not, I can talk my way past routine inspections."
"And if it's not routine?"
"Then I improvise."
Holden frowned. "I don't like you going in alone."
"I won't be alone." I nodded toward Amos. "He'll be positioned two levels up, monitoring comms and providing backup if things go wrong. Alex keeps the Roci on standby for emergency extraction. Naomi handles remote systems access from here."
"And me?"
"You stay visible. Go to one of the public areas, make sure people know the Rocinante is docked at Ceres. If I get caught, we need someone who can negotiate my release—or make noise loud enough to complicate their situation."
"You've thought about this a lot."
"It's what I do."
Holden studied the tactical display for a long moment. I could see him working through it—the risks, the alternatives, the particular discomfort of sending someone into danger while he stayed safe.
"Okay," he said finally. "We do it your way. But if anything feels wrong, you abort. No heroics."
"Copy that."
We spent another hour refining details—timing, communication protocols, extraction routes. By the time we finished, I had a mental map of the facility that was probably more accurate than their own security files.
Ceres filled the forward viewport now, growing larger with each passing hour. I'd come here as a stranger in a borrowed body, desperate and confused and barely surviving. Now I was returning as something else entirely—crew of the Rocinante, trusted ally of dangerous people, a soldier in a war that most of the system didn't know was being fought.
The station hadn't changed.
I had.
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