Abaddon's Gate

“And she has combat implants,” Ashford was saying as he pointed his fist back toward her. One of the guards looked back toward her. The one with off-colored eyes and the scar on his chin. Jojo.

“You sure she’s one of us, Captain?”

“The enemy of my enemy, Jojo,” Ashford said.

“I will vouch for her,” Cortez said.

You shouldn’t, Clarissa thought, but didn’t say.

“Claro,” Jojo said with a Belter gesture equivalent to a shrug. “She’s on command deck with tu alles tu.”

“That’ll be fine,” Ashford said.

The hall opened into a larger corridor. White LEDs left the walls looking pale and antiseptic. A dozen people armed with slug throwers, men and women both, sat in electric carts or stood beside them. Clarissa wanted the air itself to smell different, but it didn’t. It was all just plastic and heat. Captain Ashford and three armed men jostled in the cart just ahead.

“It will take some time before the ship is fully secured,” Cortez said. “We’ll have to gather what allies we can. Suppress the resistance. Once we assemble everything we need and get off the drum, they won’t be able to stop us.” He sounded like he was trying to talk himself into believing something. “Don’t be afraid. This has all happened for a reason. If we have faith, there is nothing to fear.”

“I’m not afraid,” Clarissa said. Cortez looked over at her, a smile in his eyes. When he met her gaze the smile faltered a little. He looked away.

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Bull

Bull tried not to cough. The doctor listened to his breath, moved the stethoscope a few inches, listened some more. He couldn’t tell if the little silver disk was cold. He couldn’t feel it. He coughed up a hard knob of mucus and accepted a bit of tissue from the doctor to spit it into. She tapped a few notes into her hand terminal. The light from its screen showed how tired she looked.

“Well, you’re clearing a little,” the doctor said. “Your white count is still through the roof, though.”

“And the spine?”

“Your spine is a mess, and it’s getting worse. By which I mean it’s getting harder to make it better.”

“That’s a sacrifice.”

“When’s it going to be enough?” she asked.

“Depends on what you mean by ‘it,’” Bull said.

“You wanted to get everyone together. They’re together.”

“Still got crews on half the ships.”

“Skeleton crews,” the doctor said. “I know how many people you have on this ship. I treat them. You wanted to bring everyone together. They’re together. Is that enough?”

“Be nice to make sure everyone doesn’t just start shooting at each other,” Bull said.

The doctor lifted her hands, exasperated. “So as soon as humans aren’t humans anymore, then you’ll let me do my job.”

Bull laughed, which was a mistake. His cough was deeper now, rattling in the caverns of his chest, but it wasn’t violent. Before he could really work up a good gut-wrencher, he’d need abdominal muscles that fired. The doctor handed him another tissue. He used it.

“We get everything under control,” he said, “you can knock me out, all right?”

“Is that going to happen?” she asked. It was the thing everyone wanted to know, whether they came right out and said it or not. The truth was, he didn’t like the plan. Part of that was because it came from Jim Holden, part was that it came from the protomolecule, and part was that he badly wanted it to be true. The fallback was that he’d start evacuating who he could with the shuttles he had, except that shuttles weren’t built for long-haul work. It wasn’t viable.

They had to start making food. Generating soil to fill the interior of the drum. Growing crops under the false strip of sun that ran along the Behemoth’s axis. And getting the goddamned heat under control. He had to see to it that they made it, whatever that meant. Medical comas could last a pretty long time when ships slower than a decent fastball made a voyage across emptiness wider than Earth’s oceans.

All of the reasons they’d come out—Earth, Mars, the OPA; all of them—seemed almost impossibly distant. Worrying about the OPA’s place in the political calculus of the system was like trying to remember whether he’d paid back a guy who bought him a beer when he was twenty. After a certain point, the past becomes irrelevant. Nothing that happened outside the slow zone mattered. All that counted now was keeping things civilized until they found out if Holden’s mad plan was more than a pipe dream.

And in order to do that, he had to keep breathing.

“Might pull it off. Captain Pa’s got a plan she’s looking at might get us burning again. Maybe,” he said. “While we’re waiting, though, you think you could hook me up?”

She scowled, but she got an inhaler from the pack beside the bed and tossed it to him. His arms still worked. He shook the thing twice, then put the formed ceramics to his lips and breathed. The steroids smelled like the ocean, and they burned a little. He tried not to cough.

“That’s not going to fix anything,” she said. “All we’re doing is masking the symptoms.”

“It’s just got to get me through,” Bull said, trying out a smile. The truth was he felt like crap. He didn’t hurt, he just felt tired. And sick. And desperate.

With the inhaler stowed, he angled the walker back out toward the corridor. The medical bays were still full. The growing heat gave everything the sick, close feeling of a tropical summer. The smell of bodies and illness, blood and corruption and fake floral antiseptics made the rooms feel smaller than they were. Practice had made him more graceful with the mechanism. He used the two joysticks to shift out of the way of the nurses and therapists, making himself as unobtrusive as the rig allowed as he made his way back toward the security office.

His hand terminal chimed. He drove to a turn in the corridor, snugging himself into the corner to stay out of the way, then dropped the joysticks and took up the terminal. Corin requesting a co

“Corin,” he said. “What you got?”

“Boss?” she said. The tension in her voice brought his head up a degree. “You ru

“What’s going on?”

“Jojo and Gutmansdottir just came by and said they were taking over the security office. When I told them they could have it when my shift was up, they drew down on me.”

Bull felt a black dread descending upon him. He gripped the terminal and kept his voice low.

“They what?”

He pulled up his security interface, but the red border refused him. He was locked out of the command systems. They’d been moving fast.

“Was hoping it was some kind of test. Way they were talking, I got the feeling they were looking to find you there. I’m heading over to Serge’s. He’s trying to figure out what the hell’s going on,” she said. “If it was the wrong call—”

“It wasn’t. You walked away, you did the right thing. Where were they supposed to be?”

“Sir?”

“They were on shift. Where were they supposed to be?”

For a moment, Corin’s wide face was a mask of confusion. He watched her understand, a calm and deadly focus coming into her eyes. She didn’t need to say it. Jojo and Gutmansdottir had been guarding the prisoners. Meaning Ashford.

Pa should have let him kill the bastard.

“Okay. Find Serge and anyone you trust. We’ve got to get this shit contained.”

“Bien.”

They’d be going for the armory. If they had security, the guns and gear were already theirs. Bull let a thin trickle of conversational obscenities fall from his lips while he tried to think. If he knew how many of his people had turned back to Ashford, he’d know what he had to work with.

“We can’t let him get to Monica and the broadcast center,” Bull said. “It gets out that we’ve got fighting in the drum, we’ll get a dozen half-assed rescue missions trying to get their people out.”