Abaddon's Gate

No mixed group, then. Just a group. A new thing, perfect and unique. She couldn’t imagine God would see it any other way. A

A

Bull was in the middle of speaking to a subordinate and didn’t even notice her. “I don’t care how they feel about it, Serge. The agreement was no armed military perso

“Si, jefe,” the other man with him replied. “Take it how, sa sa? Can opener?”

“Charm the bastards. If we can’t make them do anything now, while we’re all friends, what do we do when they decide we aren’t friends? Four marines in recon armor decide they own this ship, they fucking own it. So we take the armor away before they do. I don’t even want that stuff in the drum. Lock it in the bridge armory.”

Serge looked deeply unhappy at this task. “Some help, maybe?”

“Take as many as you want, but if you don’t need them it’s only go

Serge paused, mouth open, then closed it with a snap and left. Bull noticed A

“A

“If you’re not her lawyer or her union representative—”

“I’m her priest. What happens to her now?”

Bull sighed again. “She confessed to blowing up a ship. Nothing much good comes after that.”

“People say you spaced a man for selling drugs. They say you’re hard. Cold.”

“Do they?” Bull said. A

“Please don’t kill her,” she said, leaning closer and looking him in the eye. “Don’t you let anyone else kill her either.”

“Why not?” The way he said it wasn’t a challenge or a threat. It was as if he just didn’t know that answer, and sort of wondered. A

“I can’t help her if she’s dead.”

“No offense, but that’s not really my concern.”

“I thought you were the law and order here.”

“I’m aiming for order, mostly.”

“She deserves a trial, and if everyone knows what you know about her, she won’t get one. They’ll riot. They’ll kill her. At least help me get her a trial.”

The large man sighed. “So are you looking for a trial, or just a way to stall for time?”

“Stall for time,” A

Bull nodded, weighing something in his mind, then gestured for her to precede him into his office. After she sat down next to his battered desk, he clumped around the small space making a pot of coffee. It seemed an extravagance considering the newly implemented water rationing, but then A

She didn’t want coffee, but accepted the offered cup to allow Bull a moment of generosity. Generosity now might lead to more later, when she was asking for something she really wanted.

“When Holden starts telling people who actually sabotaged the Seung Un—and he’s Jim Holden, so he will—the UN people are going to ask for Clarissa. And if they give me enough that I can get everyone here, together, and safe until we can get out of this trap, I’m going to give her to them. Not off the ship, but in here.”

“What will they do?” A

“Probably, they’ll put together a tribunal of flag officers, have a short trial, and throw her in a recycler. I’d say space her, normally, but that seems wasteful considering our predicament. Supplies sent from home will take as long to fly through the slow zone to us as they’ll take to get to the Ring.”

His voice was flat, emotionless. He was discussing logistics, not a young woman’s life. A

To his credit, he tried not to roll his eyes. He almost succeeded.

“I believe in whatever gets you through the night.”

“Don’t be flip,” A

“Look,” Bull said, trying to reclaim the initiative. A

“Forget God for a moment,” she said. “Do you believe in the concept of forgiveness? In the possibility of redemption? In the value of every human life, no matter how tainted or corrupted?”

“Fuck no,” Bull said. “I think it is entirely possible to go so far into the red you can’t ever balance the books.”

“Sounds like the voice of experience. How far have you been?”

“Far enough to know there’s a too damn far.”

“And you’re comfortable being the judge of where that line is?”

Bull pulled on the frame of his walker, shifting his weight in the straps that held him. He looked wistfully at the office chair he could no longer use. A

“I don’t want to kill that girl,” he said, taking another sip of the terrible coffee. “In fact, I don’t give a shit about her one way or the other, as long as she’s locked up and isn’t a danger to my ship. The one you should talk to is Holden. He’s the one who’s go

“But the Martiansc”

“Surrendered twenty hours ago.”

A

“They’ve been wanting to for days,” Bull said. “We just had to find a way to let ’em save face.”

“Save face?”

“They got a story they can tell where they don’t look weak. That’s all they needed. But if we didn’t find something, they’d have stuck to their posts until they all died. Nothing ever killed more people than being afraid to look like a sissy.”

“Holden’s coming here, then?”

“Already be on a shuttle escorted by four recon marines, which is another fucking headache for me. But how about this? I won’t talk about the girl until I have reason to. What Holden does, though, he just does.”

“Fine, then I’ll talk to him when he arrives,” A

“Good luck with that,” Bull said.

Chapter Thirty-Six: Holden

When the Martians came for him—two men and two women, all in uniform and all armed—Holden’s isolation-drunk mind had spun out in a dozen directions at once. The captain had found room for him in the medical clinic and she wanted to grill him again about what happened on the station and they were going to throw him out an airlock and they’d had news that Naomi was dead and they’d had news that she wasn’t. It felt like every neuron he had from his brain down to his toes was on the edge of firing. It was all he could do not to launch himself off the cell’s wall and into the narrow corridor.

“The prisoner will please identify himself,” one of the men said.