Abaddon's Gate

“More than mine.”

Sam held up her hands in a Belter shrug.

“Last time I just did whatever you told me to, I wound up under house arrest.”

Bull had to give her the point. He fumbled to extricate his arm from the mech, scooped up his hand terminal, and put in a priority co

“Mister Baca,” she said. “Where do we stand?”

“Captain Jakande isn’t going to bring her people over, even though they all know it would be better. And she won’t give up Holden.”

“All right,” Pa said. “Well, we tried.”

“But she might surrender to you,” Bull said. “And seems to me it’s going to be a lot easier being sheriff if we can get the only gun in the slow zone.”

Pa tilted her head.

“Go on,” she said.

Chapter Thirty-Four: Clarissa

The guards came, brought thinly rationed food-grade protein and measured bottles of water, led the prisoners to the head with pistols drawn, and then took them back. For the most part, Clarissa lay on the floor or stretched, hummed old songs to herself or drew on the skin of her arms—white fingernail scratches. The boredom would have been crushing if she’d felt it, but she seemed to have unco

The only times she cried were when she thought of killing Ren and when she remembered her father. The only things she anticipated at all were another visit from Tilly or her mysterious friend, and death.

The woman came first, and when she did, Clarissa recognized her. With her red hair pulled down by spin, her face looked softer, but the eyes were unforgettable. The woman from the galley on the Thomas Prince. And then, later, from the Rocinante. A

Just one more person Clarissa had tried to kill once.

“I have permission to speak with her,” A

“She’s here, si no? Talk away.”

“Absolutely not,” A

“You can’t have it anywhere else,” the guard said. “You know how many people this coya killed? She’s got implants. Dangerous.”

“She knows,” Clarissa said, and A

“It’s the risk I came here to take,” A

The guard’s stance settled deeper into his knees and hips, immovable.

“Can stay here until the sun burns out,” he said. “That door’s staying closed.”

“It’s all right,” Clarissa said.

“No it isn’t,” A

“Jojo,” the captain at the far end of the hall said. Ashford. That was his name. “It’s all right. You can put them in the meat freezer. It’s not in use and it locks from the outside.”

“Then I get a dead preacher, ano sa?”

“I believe that you won’t,” A

“Then you believe in vacuum fairies,” the guard said, but he unlocked the cell door. The bars swung open. Clarissa hesitated. Behind guard and priest, the disgraced Captain Ashford watched her, peering through his bars to get a look. He needed to shave and he looked like he’d been crying. For a moment, Clarissa gripped the cold steel bars of her door. The urge to pull them closed, to retreat, was almost overwhelming.

“It’s all right,” A

Clarissa let go of the door and stepped out. The guard drew his sidearm and pressed it against the back of her neck. A

“Is that necessary?” A

“Implants,” the guard said and prodded Clarissa to move forward. She walked.

The freezer was warm and larger than the galley back on the Cerisier. Strips of metal ran along floor and ceiling and both walls with notches every few centimeters to allow the Mormon colonists who never were to lock walls and partitions into place. It made sense that the veterinary stalls that had been pressed into service as her prison would be near the slaughterhouse. Harsh white light spilled from LEDs set into the walls, unsoftened and directional, casting hard shadows.

“I’m back in fifteen minutes,” the guard said as he pushed Clarissa through the doorway. “Anything looks fu

“Thank you for giving us privacy,” A

A

“We’ve met before,” she said, “but we haven’t really been introduced. My name’s A

A lifetime’s etiquette accepted the offered hand on Clarissa’s behalf. The woman’s fingers were very warm.

“My priest?” Clarissa said.

“Sorry about that,” A

“I know people who do worse. When they’re angry.”

Clarissa released the woman’s hand.

“I’m a friend of Tilly’s. She helped me after the ship crashed. I was hurt and not thinking very straight, and she helped me,” she said.

“She’s good that way.”

“She knew your sister too. Your father. The whole family,” A

A

“That’s better,” A

Clarissa tilted her head. From just the form, it seemed like the place where she would reply. She felt the urge to speak, and she couldn’t imagine what she would say. After a moment, A

“I’m worried about you too.”

“Why?”

A

“I didn’t help you before. I saw you just before the Seung Unblew up,” she said. “Just before you set off the bomb.”

“It was too late by then,” Clarissa said. Ren had already been dead. “You couldn’t have stopped it.”

“You’re right,” A

“Someone you cared about,” Clarissa said. “Someone you loved.”

“Someone I hardly knew, but it was a real loss. And also I was scared of you. I amscared of you. But Tilly told me a lot about you, and it’s helped me to get past some of my fear.”

“Not all of it?”

“No. Not all of it.”

Something deep in the structure of the ship thumped, the whole structure around them ringing for a moment like a gigantic bell tolling far, far away.

“I could kill you,” Clarissa said. “Before they got the door open.”

“I know. I saw.”

Clarissa put her hand out, her palm against the notched ru