“You don’t know me,” Melba said, struggling to keep her voice calm. “You don’t know anything.”
At one of the tables nearest the door, a young officer stood up and took two steps toward them, ready to interfere. If this woman got her thrown in the brig, they’d look into Melba’s identity. They’d find Ren’s body. They’d find out who she was. She had to keep it together.
“You’re right. I apologize,” the woman said.
Hatred surged up in Melba’s mind, pure and black where it wasn’t red. A swamp of obscenities rose in her throat, ready to pour out on the idiot priest who was putting everything—everything—in jeopardy. Melba swallowed it all and walked quickly away.
The corridors of the Thomas Prince were a vague presence in the unquiet of her mind. She’d let the thing with Ren throw her. It stole her focus and led her into risks she didn’t need to take. She hadn’t been thinking straight, but now she was. She got into the elevator and selected the level where Stanni and Soledad were checking the electrical system, chasing down the failing component. Then she deselected it and picked the hangar.
“Stanni? Solé?” she said into her hand terminal. “Hold it together for me here. I’ve got a thing I need to do.”
She waited for the inevitable questioning, the prying and suspicion.
“Okay,” Soledad said. And that was all.
At the hangar, Melba authorized the flight of her shuttle, waited ten minutes for clearance, and launched out the side of the Thomas Prince and into the black. The shuttle monitors were cheap and small, the vastness of space compressed into fifty centimeters by fifty centimeters. She had the computer figure the fastest burn for the Cerisier. It was less than an hour. She leaned into the thrust like she was riding a roller coaster and let the torch engines burn. The Cerisier appeared in the dusting of stars as a small gray dot that hurtled toward her. The ship, like all the others in the flotilla, was in the last of the deceleration burn to put them at the Ring. Somewhere out past all the glowing drive plumes, it waited. Melba pushed the thought from her mind. It made her think of Stanni and Soledad and their quiet fears. She couldn’t think of them now.
Impatience to arrive made it hard to start the flip and the deceleration burn. She wanted to get there, to be there already. She wanted to speed into the Cerisier like a witch on a broom, screaming in at speeds that wouldn’t have been possible in atmosphere. She waited too long, and did the last half of the jump at almost two g. When she docked, she had a headache and her jaw felt like someone had punched her.
No one asked why she was back early and alone. She listed personal reasons in the log. Walking through the cramped corridors, squeezing past the other crewmen, felt oppressive, familiar, and comforting. It took coming back to recognize how much the wider spaces of the Thomas Prince had bothered her. It felt too much like freedom, and she was all about necessity.
Her cell was a mess. All of her things—clothes, terminal jack, tampons, communications deck, toothbrush—were scattered on the floor. She’d have to find a way to secure them all before the burn stopped, or they’d be floating out into the corridor. People would wonder why they weren’t packed away. She let herself glance at the metal door under her crash couch. A tiny golden curl of sealant foam stuck out from one corner. She’d get some kind of mesh bag and some magnets. That would do. It didn’t matter. That was later. Nothing later mattered.
She picked up the comm deck, turned it on. Ping times to the Rocinante were under thirty seconds. Melba loaded the sequence she’d been waiting to load for months. Years. It was a short script. It didn’t take a second to prompt her to confirm.
The fear was gone. The hatred was too. For a moment, the tiny room was filled with a sense of having just woken from a dream, and her body felt relaxed. Almost light. She’d come so far and worked so hard, and despite all of the mistakes and screwups and last-minute improvisations, she’d done it. Everything in her life had been aiming toward this moment, and now that she was here, it was almost hard to let it all go. She felt like she was graduating from university or getting married. This moment, this action that fulfilled all the things she’d fought for, and then her world would never be the same.
Carefully, savoring each keystroke, she put in the confirmation code—jules-pierre mao—and thumbed the send button. The comm deck LED glowed amber. At the speed of light, a tiny packet of information was pulsing out, hardly more than a bit of background static. But the software on the Rocinante would recognize it. The communications array on Holden’s ship would be slaved to the virtual machine already installed and impossible to stop without scraping the whole system clean. The Rocinante would send a clearly recognizable trigger code to the Seung Un, wait fifty-three seconds, and announce Holden’s responsibility and his demands. And then the virtual machine would power up the weapons and targeting systems. And nothing, no power in the universe, could stop it from happening.
The comm deck got the confirmation response, and the amber LED shifted to red.
Chapter Fifteen: Bull
Bull’s hand terminal sat on the cart’s thin plastic dashboard, jiggling with every bump in the corridor floor. The siren blatted its standard two-tone, scattering people from his path and calling them out behind him. If they didn’t know yet, they all would in minutes. The death of the Seung Un wasn’t the sort of thing you could overlook.
On the small, jittering screen, the destroyer exploded again. At first it was only a flicker of orange light amidships, something that could have been electrical discharge or a gauss gun finishing its maintenance regimen. Half a second later, sparkles of yellow radiated out from the site. Two seconds after, the major detonation. Between one frame and the next, the destroyer’s side bloomed open. Then nothing for ten full seconds before the fusion reactor core emerged slowly from the back, brighter than the sun. Bull watched the intense white gases begin to diffuse out and fade into a massive golden aurora, a drop of gold losing cohesion in the oceanic black.
He looked up to make the turn onto the ramp that would take him back to the office. A young man ambled slowly out of his path, and Bull leaned on the cart’s horn.
“There’s a siren,” Bull yelled as he passed the young man, and got an insolent nod in reply.
“Okay,” Serge said from the terminal. “We’re getting the first security analysis. Best guess, something blew out in one of the power conduits, fused the safety systems so they couldn’t shut it down. Would have taken about that long to turn the whole starboard main circuit to molten slag.”
“What blew?” Bull demanded.
“Probably a maneuvering thruster. About the right place for one. Get it hot enough, water skips steam and just goes straight to plasma. Cuts right through the bulkheads around it.”
Bull turned the cart around a tight corner and slowed to let a half dozen pedestrians get out of his way.
“Why’d they dump core?”
“Don’t know, but probably they thought they’d lose containment. They got six ships diverting now to keep from plowing into that mierda.”
“If they’d lost containment it’d be worse. They’d be diverting to avoid bodies and shrapnel. Are there survivors?”
“Yeah. They’re putting out the distress request. Medical and evacuation. Sounds pretty fucked up, que no?”
“What about trace data. Can we tell who shot ’em?”
“No one shot ’em. Either it was a straight accident, or…”
“Or?”
“Or it wasn’t.”
Bull bit his lip. An accident would be bad enough. People on all sides of the system’s power structure were on edge, and a reminder that Earth’s fleet was aging and poorly maintained wouldn’t make anything easier. Sabotage would be worse. The closest thing to good news was that everyone had seen it and there wouldn’t be any accusations of enemy action. If there’d been a gauss round or a lucky missile that had slipped through the Seung Un’s defenses undetected, the scientific mission could turn into a shooting war faster th
an Bull wanted to think about.
“Are we offering assistance?” Bull asked.
“Give us a breath, boss,” Serge said. “Ashford ain’t hearing any of this faster than us.”
Bull leaned forward, his hands wrapping the steering controls until his knuckles went white. Serge was right. What happened outside the ship was Ashford’s problem. And Pa’s. He was security chief, and he needed to think about what needed doing inside the Behemoth. People would be scared, and it was his job to make sure that fear didn’t turn into hysteria. Watching a ship blow out—even an enemy ship—reminded everyone how tenuous life was with only a thin skin of steel and ceramic to keep the vacuum at bay. It reminded him. The cart hit a larger bump than usual, and his hand terminal slipped onto its side.
“Okay,” Bull said. “Look, we’re going to need to get relief supplies ready in case the captain decides to offer assistance. How many survivors can we take on?”
Serge’s laughter rasped.
“All of them. We’re the pinche Behemoth. We got enough room for a city, us.”
“Okay,” Bull said, smiling a little despite himself. “It was a stupid question.”
“The only thing we got to worry about is—”
The line went dead.
“Serge? Not funny,” Bull said. And then, “Talk to me, mister.”
“We got something. Broadcast coming from a private corvette called the Rocinante.”
“Why do I know that name?” Bull asked.
“Yeah,” Serge said. “I’m putting it to you.”
The handset screen blacked out, jumped, and then a familiar face appeared. Bull let the cart slow as James Holden, the man whose announcement about the death of the ice hauler Canterbury started the first war between Earth and Mars, once again made things worse.
“. . . ship that approaches the Ring without my personal permission will be destroyed without warning. Do not test my resolve.”
“Oh no,” Bull said. “Oh shit no.”
“It has always been a personal mission of mine to assure that information and resources remain free to all people. The efforts of individuals and corporate entities may have helped us to colonize the planets of our solar system and make life possible where it was inconceivable before, but the danger of someone unscrupulous taking control of the Ring is too great. I have proven myself worthy of the trust of the people of the Belt. It is a moral imperative that this shining artifact be protected, and I will spill as much blood as I have to in order to do so.”
Bull scooped up the hand terminal and tried to connect to Ashford. The red trefoil of command block blinked on the screen and shunted him to a menu that let him record a message for later. He tried Pa and got the same thing. Holden’s message was looping now, the replayed words just as idiotic and toxic the second time through. Bull said something obscene through clenched teeth. He pulled on the cart, turning the wheels as far as they would go, and stamped on the accelerator. The central lifts were only a minute or two away. He could get there. Just please God let Ashford not do anything stupid before he got to the bridge.
“That true, boss?” Serge said. “Did Holden just claim us all the Ring?”
“I want everyone on security mobilized right now,” Bull said. “Enemy action protocols. Corridors clear and bulkheads closed. Anyone on a weapons or damage control team, wake ’em up and get ’em dressed. You’re in charge of that.”
“You got it, boss,” Serge said. “Someone asks, where are you?”
“Trying to keep from needing them.”
“Bien.”
The familiar corridors seemed longer than usual, the awkwardness of floors built to be walls and walls intended as ceilings more surreal. If he’d been on a real battleship, there would have been a simple, direct path. If the Behemoth’s great belly had been spinning, it would have been better than this. He willed the cart faster, pushing the engine past what it could do. The alert Klaxon sounded: Serge calling everyone to brace for battle.
A crowd had formed at the lift: men and women trying to get back to their stations. Bull pushed through them, the shortest person there. An Earther, like Holden. At the lift, he activated the security override, called the first car, and stepped in. A tall, dark-skinned man tried to follow him. Bull put a hand on the man’s chest, stopping him.
“Take the next one,” Bull said. “I’m not going where you want to be.”
As the lift rose toward the bridge like it was ascending to heaven, Bull used his hand terminal to grasp for any information. He didn’t have access to the secure channels—only the captain and the XO had those—but there was more than enough public chatter. He ran through the open feeds, grasping for a sense of the situation, watching for a few seconds here, a few seconds there.
The Martian science team and their escort were raging at Holden on every feed, calling him a terrorist and a criminal. The Earth flotilla’s reaction was quieter. Most of the public conversation was coordinating the rescue efforts on the Seung Un. The high-energy gas from the core dump was confusing some of the relief crew’s comms, and someone fairly smart had started using the public feeds to coordinate them. It had the grim efficiency of a military operation, and it gave Bull hope for the Earth navy crew still alive on the Seung Un as much as it scared him about what was going to come after.
Holden’s message was repeating, spilling out over the public feeds. At first it just came from the Rocinante, but soon it was being relayed on other feeds along with commentary. Once the signal got back to the Belt and the inner planets, it was going to be the only thing anyone talked about. Bull could already imagine the negotiations between Earth and Mars, could practically hear them reaching the conclusion that the OPA had gotten too confident and needed to be taken down a notch.
Someone on the Behemoth put out a copy of Holden’s message with the split circle emblem over it and a commentary track saying that it was about time that the Belt take its place and demand the respect it deserved. Bull told Serge to find the feed and shut it down.
After what felt like hours and probably wasn’t more than four minutes, the lift reached the bridge, the doors opening silently before him, and let Bull out.
The bridge wasn’t designed for battle. Instead of a real war machine’s system of multiple stations and controlled lines of command, the Behemoth’s bridge was built like the largest tugboat ever made, only with angels blowing golden trumpets adorning the walls. The stations—single stations with a rotating backup scheme—were manned by Belters looking at each other and chatting. The security station was through a separate door and stood unmanned. The bridge crew were acting like children or civilians, their expressions were bright and excited. People who didn’t recognize danger when they saw it and assumed that whatever the crisis was, it would all work out in the end.
Ashford and Pa were at the command station. Ashford was speaking into a camera, talking with someone on one of the other ships. Pa, scowling, strode toward Bull. Her eyes were narrow and her lips bloodless.
“What the hell are you doing here, Mister Baca?”
“I’ve got to talk to the captain,” Bull said.
“Captain Ashford’s busy right now,” Pa said. “You might have noticed we have a situation on our hands. I would have expected you to be at your duty station.”
“Yes, XO, but—”
“Your station isn’t on the bridge. You should leave now.”
Bull clenched his jaw. He wanted to shout at her, but this wasn’t the time for it. He was here to make it work, and that wasn’t going to help.
“We’ve got to shoot him, ma’am,” Bull said. “We’ve got to fire on the Rocinante, and we’ve got to do it now.”
All heads had turned toward them. Ashford ended his transmission and stepped toward them. Uncertainty made him look haughty. The captain’s eyes flickered toward the crew members at their stations and back again. Bull could see how aware Ashford was that he was being watched. It deformed all his decisions, but there wasn’t time for pr
ivacy.
“I have this under control, Mister Baca,” Ashford said.
“All respect, Captain,” Bull said, “but we’ve got to shoot down Holden, and we have to do it before anyone else does.”
“We’re not going to do a damn thing until we know what’s going on, mister,” Ashford said, his voice taking a dangerous buzz. “I’ve sent back a request for clarification to Ceres to see whether the higher-ups authorized Holden’s action, and I am monitoring the activity of the Earther fleet.”
The slip was telling. Not UN. Earther. Bull felt the blood in his neck. Ashford’s casual racism and incompetence was about to get them all killed. He gritted his teeth, lowered his head, and raised his voice.
“Sir, there’s a calculation happening right now with Earth and Mars both—”
“This is a potentially volatile situation, Mister Baca—”
“—where they have to decide whether to take direct response or let Holden win—”
“—and I am not going to be the one to throw gas on the fire. Escalating to violence at this point—”
“—and once they start shooting at him, they’re going to start shooting at us.”
Pa’s voice cut through the air like a single flute in a bass symphony.
“He’s right, sir.”
Bull and Ashford turned toward her. Ashford’s surprise was a mirror of his own. The man at the sensor station muttered something to the woman next to him, the hiss of his voice carrying in the sudden silence.
“Mister Baca’s right,” Pa said. “Holden’s identified himself as a representative of the OPA. He’s taken violent action against the Earth forces. The opposing commanders will have to look on us as his backup.”
“Holden isn’t a representative of the OPA,” Ashford said. The bluster made him sound unsure.
“You called Ceres,” Bull said. “If you’re not sure, they’re not either.”