Abaddon's Gate

“What can you tell me about what’s going on?” Monica said. “Are we in danger here? Is this dangerous?” Her usual smirk was gone. Open fear had replaced it.

“Strap in,” Holden said. “All of you. Do it now.”

Okju and Clip were already belted into crash couches, and Monica and Cohen quickly followed suit. The entire documentary crew had the good sense to stay quiet.

“Cap,” Alex said. His voice had taken on the almost sleepy tone he got when in a high-stress situation. “The Behemothjust lit us up with their targeting laser.”

Holden belted himself into the combat ops station and warmed it up. The Rocibegan counting ships within their threat radius. It turned out to be all of them. The ship asked him if any should be marked as hostiles.

“Your guess is as good as mine, honey.”

“Huh?” Naomi asked.

“Um,” Alex said. “Are you guys warming up the weapons?”

“No,” Holden said.

“Oh, I’m really sorry to hear that,” Alex said. “Weapons systems are coming online.”

“Are we shooting at anyone?”

“Not yet?”

Holden told the Rocito mark anything that hit them with a targeting system as hostile and was relieved when the system actually responded. The Behemothshifted to red on the display. Then, after a moment’s thought, he told the ship to lump all the Martians and Earth ships into two groups. If they wound up fighting with one ship in a group, they’d be fighting them all.

There were too many. The Rociwas caught between Fred Johnson’s two-kilometer-long OPA overcompensation and most of the remaining Martian navy. And beyond the Martians, the Ring.

“Okay,” he said, desperately trying to think of what to do now. They were as far from a hiding spot as it was possible to be in the solar system. It was a two-month trip just to the nearest rock bigger than their ship. He doubted he could outrun three fleets and all their torpedoes for two months. Or two minutes, really, if it came to that. “How’s that radio coming?”

“Down,” Amos said. “Easy enough to just pull the plug.”

“Do we have any way to tell everyone that the broadcast wasn’t us? I will happily signal full and complete surrender at this point,” Holden said.

“Not without turning it back on,” Amos replied.

“Everyone out there is probably trying to contact us,” Holden said. “The longer we don’t answer, the worse this will look. What about the weapons?”

“Warmed up, not shooting,” Amos said. “And not responding to us.”

“Can we pull power on those too?”

“We can,” Amos said, looking pained. “But damn, I sure don’t want to.”

“Fast mover!” Naomi yelled.

“Holy shit,” Alex said. “The OPA just fired a torpedo at us.”

On Holden’s panel, a yellow dot separated from the Behemothand shifted to orange as it took off at high g.

“Go evasive!” Holden said. “Naomi, can you blind it?”

“No. No laser,” she replied, her voice surprisingly calm now. “And no radio. Countermeasures aren’t responding.”

“Fuck me,” Amos said. “Why did someone drag us all the way out here just to kill us? Coulda done that at Ceres, saved us the trip.”

“Alex, here’s your course.” Holden sent the pilot a vector that would take them right through the heart of the Martian fleet. As far as he knew, the Martians only wanted to arrest him. That sounded okay. “Has the Behemothfired again?”

“No,” Naomi replied. “They’ve gone dark. No active sensors, no drives.”

“Kinda big and kinda close to be trying for sneaky,” Alex said without any real humor. “Here comes the juice.”

While the couches pumped them full of drugs to keep the high g from killing them, apropos of nothing Cohen said, “Fucking bitch.”

Before Holden could ask what he meant, Alex opened up the Roci’s throttle and the ship took off like a racehorse feeling the spurs. The sudden acceleration slammed Holden into his couch hard enough to daze him for a second. The ship buzzed him back to his senses when a missile proximity alarm warned him the Behemoth’s torpedo was getting closer. Helpless to do anything about it, Holden watched the orange dot that meant all their deaths creeping ever closer to the fleeing Rocinante. He looked up at Naomi, and she was looking back, as helpless as he was, all her best tricks taken away when the comm array was powered down.

The gravity dropped suddenly. “Got an idea,” Alex said over the comm, then the ship jerked through several sharp maneuvers, and the gravity went away again. The Rocinantehad added a new alarm to her song. A collision warning was sounding. Holden realized he’d never actually heard a collision alarm outside of drills. When do spaceships run intoeach other?

He turned on the exterior cameras to a field of uniform black. For a second, he thought they were broken, but then Alex took control of them, pa

“Put this Martian heavy between us and the missile,” Alex said, almost whispering it, as though the missile might hear if he spoke too loud.

“How close are we to them?” Holden asked, his voice matching Alex’s.

“’Bout ten meters,” Alex said, pride in his voice. “More or less.”

“This is really going to piss them off if the missile keeps coming,” Amos said. Then, almost meditatively, “I don’t even know what a point defense ca

As if in answer, the cruiser hit them with a targeting laser. Then all of the other Martian ships did as well, adding a few dozen more alarms to the cacophony.

“Shit,” Alex said, and the gravity came back like a boulder rolled onto Holden’s chest. None of the Martian ships fired, but the original missile shot back into view on the scope. The Martians were guiding it in, now that the Behemothseemed to be out of action. Holden marveled that he’d lived justlong enough to finally see real Martian-OPA cooperation. It wasn’t as gratifying as he’d hoped.

Martian ships whipped past on both sides as the Rocinanteaccelerated through the main cluster of their fleet. Holden could imagine the targeting arrays and point defense ca

The plan came to mind with the sick, sinking feeling of something horrible he’d always known and tried to forget. The missile was coming, and even if they avoided it, there would be others. He couldn’t dodge forever. He couldn’t surrender. For all he knew, his weapons might start firing at any second. For a moment, the ops deck seemed to go still, time slowing the way it did when something catastrophic was happening. He was intensely aware of Naomi, pressed back in her couch. Monica and Okju, their eyes wide with fear and thrust. Clip, his hand pressed awkwardly into the gel by his side. Cohen’s slack jaw and pale face.

“Huh,” Holden gurgled to himself, the g forces crushing his throat when he vocalized. He signaled Alex to cut thrust, and the gravity dropped away again.

“The Ring,” Holden said. “Aim for the Ring. Go.”

The gravity came back with a slap, and Holden rotated his chair to his workstation and brought up the navigational console. Watching the rapidly approaching orange dot out of the corner of his eye, he built a navigational package for Alex that would take them at high speed to the Ring, then spin them for a massive and almost suicidally dangerous deceleration burn just before they went in. He could slide them in under the velocity cap that had stopped the Y Queand all the fast-moving probes since. With any luck, the missile would be caught by whatever was on the other side, and the Roci, going slower, wouldn’t. The ship warned him that such high-g forces had a 3 percent chance to kill one of the crew members even during a short burn.