A final prayer and the service was over. Not one of her congregation pushed toward the door to leave. Eleven young faces stared at her, waiting. The oppressive aura of fear she’d managed to push away during the communion crept back into the room.
Anna pulled herself around the podium and joined their loose cloud. “Should I expect anyone next week? You guys are making me nervous.”
Chris spoke first. “No, it was real nice.” He seemed to want to say more, but stopped and looked down at his hands instead.
“Back on Europa, people would have brought snacks and coffee for after the service,” Anna said. “We could do that next time, if you want.”
A few halfhearted nods. A muscular young woman in a marine uniform pulled her hand terminal halfway out of her pocket to check the time. Anna felt herself losing them. They needed something else from her, but they weren’t going to ask for it. And it definitely wasn’t coffee and snacks.
“I had a whole sermon on David,” she said, keeping her tone casual. Conversational. “On the burden we place on our soldiers. The sacrifices we ask you to make for the rest of us.”
Chris looked up from his hands. The young marine put her hand terminal away. With her podium behind her, the meeting room was just a featureless gray box. The little knot of soldiers floated in front of her, and suddenly the perspective shifted and she was above them, falling toward them. She blinked rapidly to break up the scene and swallowed to get the lemony taste of nausea out of her throat.
“David?” a young man with brown hair and dark skin said. He had an accent that she thought might be Australian.
“King of Israel,” another young man said.
“That’s just the nice version,” the marine countered. “He’s the guy who killed one of his own men so he could sleep with his wife.”
“He fought for his country and his faith,” Anna cut in, using the teacher’s voice she used in Bible classes for teenagers. The one that made sure everyone knew she was the voice of authority. “That’s the part I care about right now. Before he was a king, he was a soldier. Often unappreciated by those he served. He put his body over and over again between danger and those he’d sworn to protect, even when his leaders were unworthy of him.”
A few more nods. No one looking at hand terminals. She felt herself getting them all back.
“And we’ve been asking that of our soldiers since the beginning of time,” she continued. “Everyone here gave up something to be here. Often we’re unworthy of you and you do it anyway.”
“So why didn’t you?” Chris asked. “You know, do the David sermon?”
“Because I’m scared,” Anna said, taking Chris’ hand with her left, and the hand of the Australian boy with her right. Without anyone saying anything, the loose cloud became a circle of held hands. “I’m so afraid. And I don’t want to talk about soldiers and sacrifice. I want to talk about God watching me. Caring about what happens to me. And I thought maybe other people would too.”
More nods. Chris said, “When the skinnies blew that ship, I thought we were all dead.”
“No shit,” the marine said. She gave Anna an embarrassed look. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“It’s okay.”
“They say they didn’t,” another woman said. “They shot at Holden.”
“Yeah, and then their whole ship mysteriously turned off. If the dusters hadn’t pinged Holden, he’d have flown off scot free.”
“They’re gonna follow him,” the young marine said.
“Dusters say they’ll smoke them if they go in.”
“Fuck the dusters,” the Australian said. “We’ll grease every one of them if they start anything.”
“Okay,” Anna cut in, keeping her voice gentle. “Dusters are Martians. They prefer Martians. And calling people from the outer planets skinnies is also rude. Epithets like that are an attempt to dehumanize a group so that you won’t feel as bad about killing them.”
The marine snorted and looked away.
“And,” Anna continued, “fighting out here is the last thing we should be doing. Am I right?”
“Yeah,” Chris said. “If we fight out here, we’ll all die. No support, no reinforcements, nothing to hide behind. Three armed fleets and nothing bigger than a stray hydrogen atom for cover. This is what we call the kill box.”
The silence stretched for a moment, then the Australian sighed and said, “Yeah.”
“And something may come out of the Ring.”
Saying the thing out loud and then acknowledging it drained the tension out of the air. With everyone floating in microgravity, no one could slump. But shoulders and foreheads relaxed. There were a few sad smiles. Even her angry young marine ran a hand through her blond crew cut and nodded without looking at anyone.
“Let’s do this again next week,” Anna said while she still had them. “We can celebrate communion, then maybe just chat for a while. And in the meantime, my door is always open. Please call me if you need to talk.”
The group began to break up, heading for the door. Anna kept hold of Chris’ hand. “Could you wait a moment? I need to ask you about something.”
“Chris,” the marine said with a mocking singsong voice. “Gonna get a little preacher action.”
“That’s not funny,” Anna said, using the full weight of her teacher voice. The marine had the grace to blush.
“Sorry, ma’am.”
“You may leave,” Anna said, and her marine did. “Chris, do you remember the young woman who was in the officers’ mess that first time we met?”
He shrugged. “There were lots of people coming and going.”
“This one had long dark hair. She looked very sad. She was wearing civilian clothes.”
“Oh,” Chris said with a grin. “The cute one. Yeah, I remember her.”
“Do you know her?”
“No. Just a civvy contractor fixing the plumbing, I’d guess. We have a couple ships full of them in the fleet. Why?”
That was a good question. She honestly wasn’t sure why the angry young woman weighed on her mind so much over the last few days. But something about her stuck in Anna’s memory like a burr in her clothing. She’d feel irritated and antsy and suddenly the girl’s face would pop into her mind. The anger, the sense of threat she’d radiated. The proximity of that encounter to the sudden hostilities and damaged ships and people shooting at each other. There was nothing that tied them all together, but Anna couldn’t shake the feeling that they were connected.
“I’m worried about her?” Anna finally said. At least it wasn’t a lie.
Chris was tinkering with his hand terminal. After a few seconds, he said, “Melba Koh. Electrochemical engineer. She’ll probably be on and off the ship here and all the way home. Maybe you’ll run into her.”
“Great,” Anna said, wondering if she actually wanted that to happen.
“You know what sucks?” Tilly asked. Before Anna could say anything, Tilly said, “This sucks.”
She didn’t have to elaborate. They were floating together near a table in the civilian commissary. A small plastic box was attached to the table with magnetic feet. Inside it was a variety of tubes filled with protein and carbohydrate pastes in an array of colors and flavors. Next to the box sat two bulbs. Anna’s held tea. Tilly’s coffee. The officers’ mess, with its polite waiters, custom-cooked meals, and open bar, was a distant memory. Tilly hadn’t had an alcoholic drink in several days. Neither of them had eaten anything that required chewing in as long.
“The oat and raisin isn’t bad. I think it might actually have real honey in it,” Anna said, holding up one of the white plastic squeeze packs. Tilly was no stranger to space travel. Her husband owned estates on every major rock in the solar system. But Anna suspected she’d never eaten food out of a plastic tube in her entire life before this. Any pilot who had the poor planning to put Tilly’s ship at null g during one of her meals was probably fired at the next port.
Tilly picked up a packet of the oat mus
h, wrinkled her lip at it, and flicked it away with her fingers. It sat spinning next to her head like a miniature helicopter.
“Annie,” Tilly said. “If I wanted to suck vile fluids out of a flaccid and indifferent tube, I’d have stayed on Earth with my husband.”
At some point Anna had become Annie to Tilly, and her objection to this nickname hadn’t fazed Tilly at all. “You have to eat, eventually. Who knows how long we’ll be out here.”
“Not much longer, if I have anything to say about it,” said a booming voice from behind Anna.
If she’d been touching the floor, she would have jumped. But floating in the air, all she managed was an undignified jerk and squeak.
“Sorry to startle you,” Cortez continued, sliding into her field of view. “But I had hoped we might speak.”
He was scuffing across the floor wearing the magnetic booties the navy had handed out. Anna had tried them, but drifting free while your feet remained pinned to the floor had given her an uncomfortable underwater sensation that made her even sicker than just floating around did. She never used them.
Cortez nodded to Tilly, his too-white smile beaming at her in his nut-brown face. Without asking if he could join them, he used the menu screen on the table to order himself a soda water. Tilly smiled back. It was the fake I don’t really see you smile she used on people who carried her luggage or waited on her table. Their mutual contempt established, Tilly sipped her coffee and ignored his presence. Cortez placed one large hand on Anna’s shoulder and said, “Doctor Volovodov, I am putting together a coalition of the important civilian counselors on this ship to make a request of the captain, and I’d like your support.”
Anna admired the absolute sincerity Cortez managed to pack into a sentence that was almost entirely composed of flattery. Cortez was here because he was the spiritual advisor to the UN secretary-general. Anna was here because the United Methodist Council could spare her, and her home happened to be on the way. If she was on any list of important counselors, then the bar was set pretty low.
“I’m happy to talk about it, Doctor Cortez,” Anna said, then reached for her tea bulb. It gave her an excuse to extricate her arm from his grip. “How can I help?”
“First, I have to commend you on your initiative in arranging worship services for the women and men on the ship. I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it first, but I’m happy to follow your lead. We’re already arranging for similar meetings with leaders of the various faiths on board.”
Anna felt a blush come up, even though she suspected that everything Cortez said was manipulative. He was so good, he could get the response he wanted even when you knew exactly what he was up to. Anna couldn’t help but admire it a little.
“I’m sure the sailors appreciate it.”
“But there is other work we can be doing,” Cortez said. “Greater work. And that’s what I came to ask you about.”
Tilly turned back to the table and gave Cortez a sharp look. “What are you up to, Hank?”
Cortez ignored her. “Anna, may I call you Anna?”
“Here it comes, Annie,” Tilly said.
“Annie?”
“No,” Anna cut in. “Anna is fine. Please call me Anna.”
Cortez nodded his big white-and-brown head at her, blinding her with his smile. “Thank you, Anna. What I want to ask you to do is sign a petition I’m circulating, and add your voice to ours.”
“Ours?”
“You know that the Behemoth has begun to burn toward the Ring?”
“I’d heard.”
“We’re asking the captain to accompany it.”
Anna blinked twice, then opened her mouth to speak and found nothing to say. She closed it with a snap when she realized both Cortez and Tilly were staring at her. Go into the Ring? Holden had made it inside, and it looked like he was still alive. But actually entering the Ring had never been part of the mission plan, at least not for the civilian contingent.
No one had any idea what the structures were that waited beyond the Ring, or what changes passing through the wormhole might make on humans. Or even if the Ring would stay open. It might have a preset mass limit, or a limited power supply, or anything. It might just slam shut after enough ships had gone through. It might slam shut with half a ship going through. Anna pictured the Prince cut in half, the two pieces drifting in space a billion light-years apart, humans spilling into vacuum from both sides.
“We’re also asking the Martians to come with us,” Cortez continued. “Now hear me out. If we join together in this—”
“Yes,” Anna said before she knew she was going to say it. She didn’t know why Cortez was pushing for it, and she didn’t care. Maybe it was to get votes in the Earth elections. Maybe it was a way for Cortez to exert control over the military commanders. Maybe he felt it was his calling. They hadn’t come here as explorers, not really. They’d come here to be seen by the people back at home who were watching. It was why they’d had so many protests and dramas on the way out. Once, this had been about the spectacle, but now things had changed, and this was the answer to the fear she’d seen at church.
The immediate danger wasn’t the Ring. At least not right now. It was humans taking their anxiety out on the nearest enemy they could actually see: each other. If the OPA went ahead with its plan to follow Holden into the Ring, and the UN and Martian forces joined together to follow, no one would have any reason to shoot anyone else. They’d be what they’d started out as again. They’d be a joint task force exploring the most important discovery in human history. If they stayed, they were three angry fleets trying to keep one another from getting an advantage. The whole thing spilled into Anna’s mind feeling very much like relief.
“Yes,” she said again. “I’ll sign it. The things we need to know, the things we need to learn and take back with us to all those frightened people back home. That’s where we’ll learn them. Not here. On the other side. Thank you for asking me, Doctor Cortez.”
“Hank, Anna. Please call me Hank.”
“Oh,” Tilly said, her coffee bulb floating forgotten in the air in front of her. “We are so fucked.”
“Hi Nono,” Anna said to the video camera in her room’s communication panel. “Hi Nami! Mom loves you. She loves you so much.” She hugged her pillow to her chest, squeezing it tight. “This is you. This is both of you.”
She put the pillow down, taking a moment to compose herself.
“Nono, I’m calling to apologize again.”
Chapter Nineteen: Melba
The injustice of it shrieked in the back of her skull; it wouldn’t let her sleep. It had come so close to working. So much of it had worked. But then Holden dove into the Ring, and something had saved him, and Melba felt a huge invisible fist drive itself into her gut. And it was still there.
She’d watched the whole thing unfold in her quarters, sitting cross-legged on her crash couch, her hand terminal seeking information from any feed. The network had been so swamped with other people doing the same thing, her own signal wouldn’t stand out. No one would wonder why she was watching when everyone else was doing the same. When the OPA had opened fire, she’d heard the Earth forces bracing for a wave of sabotage explosions that never came. The anger at Holden, the condemnations and recriminations had been like pouring cool water on a burn. Her team had been called up on an emergency run to the Seung Un, repairing the damage she’d done, but she’d checked in whenever there was a free moment. When Mars had turned its targeting lasers on the Rocinante, guiding the missile to him, she’d laughed out loud. Holden had stopped her outgoing message, but at the expense of killing his whole communications array. There was no way he could send out a retraction in time.
When he’d passed through the Ring, she’d been in three conversations simultaneously and watching an electrical meter for dangerous fluctuations. She didn’t find out until they were being rotated back to the Cerisier that Holden hadn’t died. That he wasn’t going to. The missile had been stopped and the enemy h
ad been spared.
Back on her ship, she’d gone straight to her bunk, curled up on the crash couch, and tried not to panic. Her brain felt like it had come untied; her thoughts ran in random directions. If the Martians had just launched a few missiles of their own instead of waiting for the OPA’s to do the job, Holden would be dead. If the Rocinante had been a few thousand kilometers closer to the Behemoth when it fired, Holden would be dead. The gimbaling under her couch hushed back and forth in the last of the deceleration burn, and she realized she was shaking her body, banging her back against the gel. If the thing that made the protomolecule—the nameless, evil thing that was hunched in the abyssal black on the other side of the Ring—hadn’t changed the laws of physics, Holden would be dead.
Holden was alive.
She’d always known that the destruction of James Holden was a fragile thing. Discrepancies would be there if anyone looked closely. She couldn’t match her announcement to the exact burn that the Rocinante would be on when she sprang her trap. There would be artifacts in the video that a sufficiently close analysis would detect. By the time that happened, though, it would have been too late. The story of James Holden would have been set. New evidence could be dismissed as crackpots and conspiracy theorists. But it required that Holden and his crew be dead. It was something she’d always heard her father say. If the other man’s dead, the judge only has one story to follow. When he put his communication array back together, the investigation would begin. She’d be caught. They’d find out it was her.
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