Abaddon's Gate

“Thank God the Belters thought to bring this rattletrap with them,” Tilly said, ducking to enter her tent. She flopped down into a folding chair and started rummaging in a plastic cooler next to it. “Can you imagine trying to stuff everyone onto the Prince? We’d be twelve to a bunk there. Lovely culture, these Belters.”

A

“How did you manage ice?”

“Dry ice,” Tilly said around a lit cigarette, then paused to down her first shot. “Apparently it’s easy for the people in atmosphere processing to make. Lots of carbon dioxide just lying around.”

If Tilly was spending a thousand dollars a bottle for the antiseptic she was drinking, A

There were people walking through the crowded tent city carrying guns.

“This looks bad,” Tilly said. It did. These weren’t bored security officers with holstered sidearms. These were grim-faced Belter men and women with assault rifles and shotguns carried in white-knuckled grips. The group moving between the tents was at least a dozen strong, and they were looking for something. Or someone.

A

“A

A

“Oh,” Tilly said. “Here we go.”

Bull’s second-in-command—Serge was his name, A

“No guns in the drum, sa sa?” Serge said to the armed Belter group, though the volume of his voice made it clear he was speaking to the onlookers as well. “Drop ’em.”

“You have guns,” a Belter woman said with a sneer. She held a rifle at the ready.

“We’re the cops,” Serge said, placing one hand on the butt of his gun and gri

“Not anymore,” she replied and in one quick movement shifted her rifle and shot him in the head. A tiny hole appeared in his forehead, and a cloud of pink mist sprayed into the air behind him. He sank slowly to the floor, an expression of vague puzzlement on his face.

A

At that thought, A

At least they weren’t shooting anyone else.

Tilly pulled her to her feet, and they hurried back to her tent, all thought of food forgotten. “Something very bad is happening on this ship,” Tilly said. A

Yes, very bad.

Hector Cortez came to Tilly’s tent about an hour after the shooting. A

Mercifully, there hadn’t been any further sounds of gunfire.

The few times they peeked out of the tent, they saw smaller groups of no more than two or three armed Belters patrolling the civilian spaces. A

When Cortez arrived, he cleared his throat loudly outside the tent, then asked if he could enter. They were both afraid to answer, but he came in anyway. Several people waited for him outside, though A

He glanced once around the inside of the gloomy space, looking over their flimsy barricade, then pulled a chair away from it and sat down without commenting on it.

“The shooting is over. It’s safe to sit,” he said, gesturing at the other chairs. He looked better than he had in a while. His suit had been cleaned and somehow he’d found a way to wash his thick white hair. But that wasn’t all of it. Some of his self-assurance had returned. He seemed confident and in charge again. A

“I’m sorry you were frightened,” Cortez said with a smile that didn’t seem sorry at all.

“What’s going on, Hank?” Tilly asked, her eyes narrowing. She took out a cigarette and began playing with it without lighting it. “What are you up to?”

“I’m not up toanything, Matilda,” Cortez said. “What’s happening is that the rightful authority on this ship has been restored, and Captain Ashford is once more in command.”

“Okay, Hector,” Tilly replied, “but how are you involved? Seems like internal OPA politics to me. What’s your play?”

Cortez ignored her and said to A

“Tilly can hear anything—” A

“I think I’ll go outside for a smoke.”

When she’d left the tent, Cortez pulled his chair close enough that his knees were almost touching A

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