Abaddon's Gate

The security force had come first, three soldiers in a shuttle with guns and restraints for Melba. Or Clarissa. Whoever she was. Then, much later, a medical evacuation had come, taking the Rocinante’s crew.

A

When she arrived on the Behemoth, she had expected to see someone from that ship’s security team. Or, if they were well enough, maybe Naomi and the other two crewmen from the Rocinante.

Hector Cortez stood in the shuttle bay. He smiled when he saw her and raised his hand in a little wave of greeting. The motion reminded her of her grandfather in his failing days: careful and a little awkward. She thought Cortez had aged a decade in a few days, then realized he must have been injured in the catastrophe.

“A

The Behemoth’s massive drum section was spi

“It’s good to see you too,” she said. “I didn’t know you were on the Behemoth.”

“We’ve all come,” he said. “They’ve left the smallest of crews on the Thomas Prince, and we’ve all come here. All of us that are left. We’ve lost so many. I attended services yesterday for the fallen. Father Michel. Rabbi Black. Paolo Sedon.”

A

“Alonzo Guzman?”

Cortez shook his head.

“Neither alive nor dead,” he said. “They have him in a medical coma, but he’s not expected to survive.”

A

“I’m sorry to have missed that service,” she said.

“I know,” Cortez said. “It’s why I wanted to meet you. May I walk with you?”

“Of course,” A

“Then I will give you the basic orientation,” the old man said, turning a degree and sweeping his hand toward the shuttle bay. “Come with me, and I will bring you to the glory of the lift system.”

A

“I thought it was important that those of us who were part of the petition speak at the service,” he said. “I wanted our regret to have a voice.”

“Our regret?”

He nodded.

“Yours. Mine. All of us who advised that we come to this darkness. It was hubris, and the i

His voice still had the richness of a lifetime’s practice, but there was a new note in it. A high, childlike whine underneath the grandeur. Sympathy for his distress and an uncharitable a

“I don’t know that I see it that way,” she said. “We didn’t come here to glorify ourselves. We did it to keep people from fighting. To remind ourselves and each other that we’re all together in this. I can’t think that’s an evil impulse. And I can’t see what happened to us as punishment. Time and chance—”

“Befall all men,” Hector said. “Yes.”

Behind them, a shuttle’s attitude rocket roared for a moment, then cut off. A pair of Belters in gray jumpsuits sauntered toward it, toolboxes in their hands. Cortez was scowling.

“But even given what grew from that seed? You still don’t think we were punished? The decision was not made out of arrogance?”

“History is made up of people recovering from the last disaster,” A

“I do,” Cortez said. “I believe we have fallen into a realm of evil. And more, Doctor Volovodov, I fear we have been tainted by it.”

“I don’t see—”

“The devil is here,” Cortez said. He shook his head at A

A

Standing in the belly of the Behemoth, A

A

As she walked across a wide empty plain of steel that should have been covered in topsoil and crops, she thought that this audaciousness was exactly what humanity had lost somewhere in the last couple of centuries. When ancient maritime explorers had climbed into their creaking wooden ships and tried to find ways to cross the great oceans of Earth, had their voyage been any less dangerous than the one the Mormons had been pla

A few people liked to paint this drive as a weakness. A failing of the species. Humanity as the virus. The creature that never stops filling up its available living space. Hector seemed to be moving over to that view, based on their last conversation. But A

Looking at the tiny world spi

The refugee camp was a network of tents and prefabricated temporary structures set on the i