Abaddon's Gate

A few questions of helpful refugees later, and she found his tent. There was no way to knock or buzz, so she just scratched at the tent flap and said, “Chris? You in there?”

“That you, Pastor? Come on in.”

The liaison hadn’t been specific in her descriptions of Chris’ injuries, so A

“Oh, Chris, I’m—”

“If your next word is ‘sorry,’” he said, “I’m going to hop over there and kick your ass.”

A

“With a few obvious exceptions”—he waved his shortened left arm around—“I came through the disaster better than most. I didn’t even have a bad bruise.”

“I don’t know how the navy health plan works,” A

“Full regrowth therapy. We ever get out of here and back to civilization, and a few painful and itchy months later I’ll have bright pink replacements.”

“Well, that’s good,” A

“Yeah,” Chris said with a chuckle, “I heard. You’ve been doing commando raids while I’ve been laid up. If I’d known they trained you guys to take down souped-up terrorists, I’d have paid more attention in church as a kid.”

“I ran away from her until she had a seizure, and then I taped her to a chair. Not very heroic.”

“I’m getting a medal for falling into a pressure hatch, sacrificing an arm and a leg to keep seven sailors from being trapped in a compromised part of the ship. I was unconscious at the time, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Heroism is a label most people get for doing shit they’d never do if they were really thinking about it.”

A

“Labels, I mean. People are calling the aliens evil, because they hurt us. And without context, how do we know?”

“Yeah,” Chris said. “I lose a couple limbs getting drunk and falling into a harvesting combine, I’m an idiot. I lose the same limbs because I happened to be standing next to the right door when the ship was damaged, I’m a hero.”

“Maybe it’s as simple as that. I don’t know. I feel like something really important is about to happen, and we’re all making up our minds ahead of time what it will be.”

Chris absentmindedly scratched at the stump of his left leg, then grimaced. “Like?”

“We came through the Ring to stop James Holden from talking to the aliens first. But this is the same man that helped send Eros to Venus instead of letting it destroy the Earth. Why did we assume he’d do a bad job of being the first human the aliens met? And now something has slapped us down, taken all our guns away, but not killed us. That should mean something. Certainly anything this powerful could kill us as easily as it declawed us. But it didn’t. Instead of trying to figure out what it means, we’re hurting so we call it evil. I feel like we’re children who’ve been punished and we think it’s because our parents are mean.”

“They stopped our ships toc what? Pacify us?” Chris asked.

“Who knows?” A

“Tara died,” Chris said.

A

“Oh no,” A

But maybe not on purpose, and intent mattered. The universe made no sense to her otherwise.

She managed to finish off her visit without, she hoped, seeming too distracted. Afterward, she went to find her own assigned tent and try to rest. She had no reason to think that sleep would come. After she found her place, Tilly Fagan appeared. A

“I was furious with myself for letting you leave,” Tilly said, squeezing even tighter and leaning her weight against A

When Tilly finally let up the pressure a bit, A

“That was my fault, too,” Tilly said, followed by more squeezing. A

After a few moments, Tilly released A

“Well, that’sc important.”

Tilly laughed. She pulled a cigarette out and lit it as they walked. At A

A

“So,” Tilly said, pretending not to notice. “I demanded they let me go on the first shuttle over. Did you manage to retrieve Holden?”

“I didn’t find him,” A

At first, she thought Tilly’s expression had cooled, but that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t coldness. It was pain. A

“I have someone I need you to talk to,” Tilly said. “And you probably aren’t going to like it, but you’re going to do it for me. I’ll never ask you for anything again, and you’re buying a lifetime of expensive markers to trade in with this.”

“Whatever I can do.”

“You’re going to help Claire.”

A

“Yes,” she said. “Of course I am.”

Chapter Thirty-Three: Bull

“You need to get up,” Doctor Sterling said. Spin changed the shape of her face, pulling down her cheeks and hair. She looked older and more familiar.

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to move around,” Bull said, and coughed.

“That was when I was worried about your spinal cord. Now I’m worried about your lungs. You’re having enough trouble clearing secretions, I’m about ready to call it mild pneumonia.”

“I’ll be fine.”