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The forced intimacy, combined with the bitter taste still in her mouth from having seen a man murdered, brought up an anger she hadn’t expected. She pulled her hands away from him with more violence than she intended, then couldn’t help but feel a twinge of satisfaction at the hurt and surprise on his face.
“How nice for you,” she said, carefully keeping her tone neutral.
“Doctor Volovodovc A
“What are you talking about?” A
“We are going to close the gate,” he said. “We have a weapon in our possession that we believe will work.”
“No,” A
“Yes. Even now engineers work to refit this vessel’s communications laser to make it powerful enough to destroy the Ring.”
“I don’t mean that,” A
“We are lost, but we can protect those we’ve left behind. We can end the greatest threat the human race has ever known. All it requires is that we sacrifice any hope of return. A small price to pay for—”
“No,” A
“In times of great danger and sacrifice such as this, some will step forward to make the difficult decisions. Ashford has done that, and I support him. Now it is our role to make sure the people understand and cooperate. They need to know that their sacrifice will protect the billions of people we’ve left behind.”
“We don’t know that,” A
“This station has already claimed hundreds of lives, maybe thousands.”
“Because we keep making decisions without knowing what the consequences are. We chased Holden’s ship through the Ring, we sent soldiers to the station to hunt him, we keep acting without information and then being angry when it hurts us.”
“It didn’t hurt us. It killed us. A lot of us.”
“We’re like children,” A
“Eros,” Cortez started.
“ Wedid that! And Ganymede, and Phoebe, all the rest! We did it. We keep acting without thinking and you think the solution is to do it one more time. You have allied yourself with stupid, violent men, and you are trying to convince yourself that being stupid and violent will work. That makes you stupid too. I will never help you. I’ll fight you now.”
Cortez stood up and called to the people waiting outside. A Belter with protective chest armor and a rifle came into the tent.
“Will you shoot me too?” A
Cortez turned his back on her and left with the gunman.
A
“Did he hurt you?” Tilly said from behind her. Her friend put a gentle hand on the back of her neck as she rocked.
“No,” A
“Oh, A
Before she knew she was going to do it, A
She reached the elevator just as Cortez and his small band of gun-toting thugs climbed inside. Clarissa was standing at the back of the group, looking small and frail surrounded by soldiers in armor. As the doors slid closed, she smiled at A
Then she was gone.
Chapter Forty: Holden
“Hey, Cap?” Amos said from his bed. “That was the third armed patrol that’s gone past this room in about three hours. Some shit is going down.”
“I know,” Holden said quietly. It was obvious that the situation on the Behemothhad changed. People with guns were moving through the corridors with hard expressions. Some of them had pulled a doctor aside, had a short but loud argument with her, then taken a patient away in restraints. It felt like a coup in progress, but according to Naomi the security chief Bull had already mutinied and taken the ship from the original Belter captain. And nothing had happened that would explain why he’d suddenly need to put a lot more boots on the ground or begin making arrests.
It felt like a civil war was brewing, or being squashed.
“Should we do something?” Amos asked.
Yes, Holden thought. We should do something. We should get back to theRocinante and hide until Miller gets done doing whatever he was doing and releases the ships in the slow zone. Then they should burn like hell out of this place and never look back. Unfortunately, his crew was still laid up and he didn’t exactly have a ride waiting to take him to his ship.
“No,” he said instead. “Not until we understand what’s happening. I just got outof jail. Not in a hurry to go back.”
Alex sat up in bed, and then moaned at the effort. The top of his head was swathed in bloodstained bandages, and the left side of his face had a mushy, pulpy look to it. The speed limit change had thrown him face first into one of the cockpit’s viewscreens. If he hadn’t been at least partially belted into his chair, he’d probably be dead.
“Maybe we should find a quieter place than this to hole up,” he said. “They don’t seem opposed to arresting patients so far.”
Holden nodded with his fist. He was starting to pick up Naomi’s Belter-style gestures, but whenever he caught himself using one he felt awkward, like a kid pretending to be an adult. “My time on this ship has been limited to the docking bay and this room. I don’t have any idea where a quieter place would be.”
“Well,” Naomi said. “That puts you one up on us. None of us were conscious when they brought us here.”
Holden hopped off the edge of her bed and moved to the door, closing it as quietly as possible. He looked around for something to jam it shut with, but quickly decided it was hopeless. The habitation spaces in the Behemoth’s drum were built for low weight, not durability. The walls and door of the hospital room were paper-thin layers of epoxy and woven carbon fiber. A good kick would probably bring the entire structure down. Barricading the door would only signal patrols that something was wrong, and then delay them half a second while they broke it.
“Maybe that preacher can help us,” Alex said.
“Yeah.” Amos nodded. “Red seems like good people.”
“No hitting on the preacher,” Holden said, pointing at Amos with an accusing finger.