The Rocinante didn’t answer for a long moment, and then, weirdly, it did. A bright yellow incoming request alert appeared on his console. Holden wiped his teary eyes with a sleeve and accepted it. Fred Johnson appeared in a window, his brows furrowed.

“Holden?”

“Fred?”

“Are you all right?”

“Ah. Yes?”

Fred leaned forward, his head growing massive on the screen. “I’ve been trying to reach your hand terminal for the past fifteen minutes.”

Holden looked around the command deck, then nodded. “I may have left it in my pants. In my quarters. I think I did.”

“Are you drunk?”

“I think I am.” He had to concentrate not to slur.

“And you’re not wearing pants?”

“I’m not ready to take our relationship there yet.”

“Well, have the med bay give you something to sober you up and get your ass covered. I’m sending the flight crew over.”

Holden turned up the lights and killed the music feed. “What’s going on?”

“We’re getting reports. The Martian prime minister’s under attack. The ships your man Alex found were decoys to draw off the escort.”

“But,” Holden said, “the new escort ships —”

“Are the ones shooting at him.”

Holden cursed under his breath. “Alex is on that ship. Did we hear from Alex?”

“We haven’t heard from anybody. I was keeping some radio telescopes pointed that direction, and this is what they’re getting. I checked with Drummer and the engineering staff. They said the Roci’s got a clean bill of health, and I’m less and less interested in sitting around here waiting for whoever’s behind all this to take another swing at me.”

Holden undid the straps on his couch, floating forward. His head was a little swimmy. He looked around at the command deck. It was like some part of his brain was still expecting to see Alex and Naomi and Amos there with him. He hadn’t realized it was a habit, to look for his people before the Roci got under way. This, he realized, was the first time ever that they wouldn’t be there. It felt like a bad omen.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll clean up for company. When are you looking to go?”

“How soon is as soon as possible?”

“The reactor’s cold, and we’d want to top up the air and water,” Holden said. The alcohol fumes seemed to be burning away already, but he wasn’t entirely sure if that was true or if it just felt that way. “Plus I’m reliably informed that I need to get something from the med bay to sober me up and get my ass covered.”

“Glad you were paying attention,” Fred said. “So two hours?”

“I think we can manage that.”

“Let’s do.”