Amos pulled one of the shotguns out from under the sheet and laid it casually across his shoulder.
“Man can hope.”
Chapter Forty-One: Bull
The storage cells were too large to be a prison. They were warehouses for the supplies to start again after a hundred ecological collapses. Seed vaults and soil and enough compressed hydrogen and oxygen to recreate the shallow ocean of a generation ship. Bull drove his mech across the vast open space, as wide and tall and airy as a cathedral, but without a single image of God. It was a temple dedicated to utility and engineering, the beauty of function and the grandeur of the experiment that would have launched humanity at the distant stars.
Everything was falling to shit around him. All the information he could put together, hunched close to his hand terminal like he was trying to crawl into it, showed that Ashford had taken over engineering and the reactor at the far south of the drum and command at the north. His squads were moving through the drum with impunity. Pa was missing and might be dead. She still had a lot of people loyal to her, including Bull, to his surprise, but if they found her body in a recycler someplace that would fade quickly. He’d done everything he could. He hadn’t had the power, so he’d tried for finesse, and when that didn’t work, he’d grabbed the power. He’d taken the massacre of thousands by the protomolecule’s station and gone at least halfway to building a city out of it. A little civilization in the mouth of the void. If he’d been a little more ruthless, maybe he could have made it work. Clanking softly through the massive space, that was the thing that haunted him. Not his sins, not even the people he’d killed, but the thought that if he’d killed just one or two more it might have been enough.
And even with that darkness in his heart, he couldn’t keep from feeling moved by the scale of the steel and ceramic. The industrial beauty of design. He wished they’d gone to the stars instead of flying it into the mouth of hell. He wished he’d been able to make it all work out.
He tried to connect with Serge, but got nothing. He tried Corin. He wanted to reach out to Sam again, but he couldn’t risk Ashford finding out they were in contact. He checked the broadcast feed or Radio Free Slow Zone, but Monica Stuart and her crew hadn’t made any announcements. He let himself hope that Ashford’s plan would collapse in on itself the way that all of his own plans had. Not much chance of that, though. Ashford just wanted to blow shit up. That was always easier than making something.
He thought about recording a last message to Fred Johnson, but he didn’t know if he wanted to apologize, commiserate, or make the man feel guilty for putting a petulant little boy like Ashford in charge, so instead he waited and hoped for something unexpected. And maybe good for a change.
He heard the footsteps coming from the aftmost access corridor. More than one person. Two. Maybe three. If it was Ashford’s men coming for him, he wasn’t going to have to worry much about what to say to Fred. He took the pistol out of his holster and checked the magazine. The soft metallic sounds echoed. The footsteps faltered.
“Bull?” a familiar voice called out. “Are you in there?”
“Who’s asking?” Bull said, then coughed. He spat on the deck.
“Jim Holden,” the voice said. “You aren’t planning to shoot me, are you? Because Sam sort of gave us the impression that we were on the same side.”
Holden stepped into the storage area. This was who she’d meant when she said she knew who she could trust. And she had a point. Holden was outside every command. His reputation was built on being a man without subtexts. The man behind him with the shotgun was Amos Burton. For a moment, Bull was surprised to see the wounded Earther on his feet, then remembered his own condition and smiled. He lowered his gun, but he didn’t put it away.
“And why would she think that?” he asked.
“Same enemies,” Holden said. “We have to stop Ashford. If he does what he’s planning, we’re all trapped in here until we die. And I’m pretty sure the Ring kills everybody on the other side. Earth, Mars. The Belt. Everyone.”
Bull felt something deep in his chest settle. He didn’t know if it was only the weight of his worst fears coming true or if something unpleasant was happening in his lungs. He put the pistol in his holster, took the joysticks, and angled himself toward the two men. The mech’s movements seemed louder now that there were other people to hear them.
“Okay,” Bull said. “How about you start at the beginning and tell me what the hell you’re going on about.”
Bull had been around charisma before. The sense that some people had of moving through their lives in a cloud of likability or power. Fred Johnson had that, and there were glimmers of it in Holden too. In fact, there was something about Holden’s open-faced honesty that reminded Bull of the young Fred Johnson’s candor. He said things in a simple, matter-of-fact way—the station wouldn’t come off lockdown until they turned off all the reactors and enough of the electronics on the ships; the makers of the protomolecule had been devoured by some mysterious force even badder-ass than they were; the station would destroy the solar system if it decided humans and their weapons constituted a real threat—that made them all seem plausible. Maybe it was the depth of his own belief. Maybe it was just a talent some people were born with. Bull felt a growing respect for Jim Holden, the same way he’d respect a rattlesnake. The man was dangerous just by being what he was.
When Holden ran out of steam, repeating himself that they had to stop Ashford, that Sam was buying them time, that the skeleton crews on the other ships had to shut down their reactors and power down their backup systems, Bull scratched his chin.
“What if Ashford’s right?” he said.
“I don’t understand,” Holden said.
“All this stuff you got from the alien? What if it’s bullshitting you?”
Holden’s jaw went hard, but a moment later he nodded.
“He might be,” he said. “I don’t have any way of making sure. But Sam says Ashford’s going to sacrifice the Behemoth when he shoots at the Ring, and if Miller wasn’t lying, he’s sacrificing everything else along with it. Is that a chance you’re willing to take?”
“Taking it either way,” Bull said. “Maybe we stop him, and we save the system. Maybe we leave the Ring open for an invasion by things that are going eat our brains on toast. Flip a coin, ese. And we got no time to test it out. No way to make sure. Either way, it’s a risk.”
“It is,” Holden said. “So. What are you going to do?”
Bull’s sigh started him coughing again. The mucus that came up into his mouth tasted like steroid spray. He spat. That was what it came down to. It wasn’t really a question.
“Figure we got to retake engineering,” Bull said. “Probably going to be a bitch of a fight, but we got to do it. With the drum spinning, the only path between engineering and command is the external lift or in through the command transition point, and then all the way through the drum to the engineering transition point with a shitload of people and spin gravity to slow them down. Any reinforcements he’s got up top won’t make it before the fight’s done one way or the other.”
“Sammy’s already in engineering,” Amos said. “Might be she could soften up the terrain for us before we go in.”
“That’d be good,” Bull said.
“And once we take it?” Holden said.
“Pump an assload of nitrogen into command, and pull ’em all out after they’ve gone to sleep, I figure,” Bull said. “If Captain Pa’s still alive, they’re her problem.”
“What if she ain’t?” Amos said.
“Then they’re mine,” Bull said. Amos’ smile meant the man had unpacked Bull’s words just the way he’d meant them.
“And the reactor?” Holden said. “Are you going to shut it down?”
“That’s the backup plan,” Bull said with a grin. “We shut it down. We get everyone else to shut down.”
“Can I ask why?”
“Might be that we can get this thing off of lockdown
and it won’t kill off the sun, even if Ashford does get a shot off,” Bull said.
“Fair enough,” Holden said. “I’ve got my crew. We’re a little banged up.”
“Pure of heart, though,” Amos said.
“I don’t know how many people I still got,” Bull said. “If I can get through to a couple of them, I can find out.”
“So where do we set up shop?”
Bull paused. If they were going to try an assault on engineering, a distraction would help. Something that would pull Ashford’s attention away from what actually mattered to something else. If there was a way to slap him down. Hurt his pride. Ashford hadn’t been the kind of man who thought things through well before the catastrophe, but he had been cautious. If there was a way to make him angry, to overcome that caution. But doing that and getting the word to the other ships that they needed to shut down would be more time than he had, unless…
“Yeah,” he said sourly. “I know where we’re going. May be a little dangerous getting there. Ashford’s people are all through the drum.”
“Not as many as there were when we started,” Amos said. Bull didn’t ask what he meant.
“Lead on,” Holden said. “We’ll follow you.”
Bull tapped his fingers on the joysticks. Embarrassment and shame clawed their way up his guts. A shadow of confusion crossed Holden’s face. Bull felt a stab of disgust with himself. He was about to put a bunch of civilians in danger in order to draw Ashford’s attention, he was going to do it of his own free will, and he was ashamed of the things that he didn’t actually have any control over. He didn’t know what that said about him, but he figured it couldn’t be good.
Radio Free Slow Zone was in what had once been the colonial administrative offices. The narrow office spaces had been designed into the walls and bulkheads of the original ship, back when it had been the Nauvoo, and the amount of work it would have taken to strip the cubicles back until the space could be used for something else had never been worth the effort. Bull had given it to Monica Stuart and her crew because it was a cheap favor. Something he didn’t need—the old offices—for something he did: a familiar face and reassuring voice to help make the Behemoth into the gathering place for the full and fractured fleet.
The broadcast studio was a sheet of formed green plastic that someone had pried off the floor and set on edge. The lights were jerry-rigged and stuck to whatever surfaces came to hand. Bull recognized most of the faces, though he didn’t know many of them. Monica Stuart, of course. Her production team was down to an Earther woman named Okju and a dark-skinned Martian called Clip. Holden had called his crew there, but they hadn’t arrived yet.
Bull considered the space from a tactical point of view. It wouldn’t be hard to block off accessways. The little half walls provided a lot of cover, and they were solid enough to stop most slug throwers. An hour or two with some structural steel and a couple welders and the place could be almost defensible. He hoped it wouldn’t need to be. Except that he hoped it would.
“We went black as soon as the fighting started,” Monica said. “Thought it would be better not to go off half-cocked.”
“Good plan,” Bull said, and his hand terminal chimed. He held up a finger and fumbled to accept the connection. Corin’s face flickered to life. She looked pale. Shell-shocked. He knew the expression.
“How bad?”
“I’ve got about thirty people, sir,” Corin said. “Armed and armored. We control the commissary and most of the civilians. Once Ashford got control of the transition points, he mostly fell back.”
“Pa?”
“Alive,” Corin said. “Pretty beat up, but alive.”
“We’ll call that a win.”
“We lost Serge,” Corin said, her voice flat and calm. That was it, then. Bull felt I’m sorry coming by reflex and pushed it back. Later. He could offer sympathy later. Right now, he only had room for strong.
“All right,” he said. “Bring whoever you can spare to the colonial administrative offices. And weapons. All the weapons we’ve got, bring them here.”
“New headquarters?”
“Security station in exile,” Bull said, and Corin almost smiled. There was no joy in it, but maybe a little amusement. Good enough for now. She saluted, and he returned the gesture as best he could before dropping the connection.
“So this is a coup,” Monica said.
“Counter-countercoup, technically,” Bull said. “Here’s what I need you to do. I want you reporting on what’s going on here. Broadcast. The Behemoth, the other ships in the fleet. Hell, tell the station if you think it’ll listen. Captain Ashford was relieved for mental health reasons. The trauma was too much for him. He and a few people who are still personally loyal to him have holed up in command, and the security team of the Behemoth is going to extract him.”
“And is any of that true?”
“Maybe half,” Bull said.
Behind Monica’s back, the wide-set Earther woman named Okju looked up and then away.
“I’m not a propagandist,” Monica said.
“Ashford’s going to get us all killed,” Bull said. “Maybe everyone back home too, if he does what he’s thinking. The catastrophe? Everything we’ve been through here? These were the kid gloves. He’s trying to start a real fight.”
It was strange how saying the words himself made them seem real in a way that hearing from Holden hadn’t. He still wasn’t sure whether he believed it was true, even. But right now, it needed to be, and so it was. Monica’s eyes went a little rounder and bright red splotches appeared on her cheeks.
“When this is over,” she said, “I want the full story. Exclusive. Everything that’s really going on. Why it came down the way it did. In-depth interviews with all the players.”
“Can’t speak for anyone but myself right now,” Bull said. “But that’s a fair deal by me. Also, I need you to talk the other ships in the fleet into shutting down their reactors and power grids, pulling the batteries out of every device they can find that’s got them.”
“Because?”
“We’re trying to get the lockdown on the ships taken off,” he said. “Let us go home. And if we can’t stop Ashford, getting off lockdown is the only chance we’ve got to keep the station from retaliating against the folks on the other side of the Ring.”
And because if the insults and provocations, the false threats and misdirections all failed, that would be enough. If Ashford could see the other plan coming together, if he could see his heroic gesture, his grand sacrifice being taken away, he would come. He’d do whatever he could to shut down the studio, and every gun that came here was one less that would be at engineering or command.
Monica looked nonplussed.
“And how am I going to convince them to do that, exactly?”
“I have an idea about that,” Bull said. “I know this priest lady who’s got people from damn near every ship out here coming to her services. I’m thinking we recruit her.”
Even, he didn’t say, if it puts her in the firing line.
Chapter Forty-Two: Clarissa
The end came. All the running around stopped, and a kind of calm descended on Ashford. On Cortez. All of them. The order went out to secure the transition points. No one was passing into or out of the drum. Not now. Not ever again.
It felt almost like relief.
“I’ve been thinking about your father,” Cortez said as the lift rose toward the transition point, spin gravity ebbing away and the growing Coriolis making everything feel a little bit off. Like a dream or the beginning of an unexpected illness. “He was a very clever man. Brilliant, some would say, and very private in his way.”
He tried to turn the protomolecule into a weapon and sell it to the highest bidder, Clarissa thought. The thought should have stung, but it didn’t. It was just a fact. Iron atoms formed in stars; a Daimo-Koch power relay had one fewer input than the standard models; her father had tried to militarize the protomolecule. He hadn’t known
what it was. No one had. That didn’t keep them from playing with it. Seeing what they could do. She had the sudden visual memory of a video she’d seen of a drunken soldier handing his assault rifle to a chimp. What had happened next was either hilarious or tragic, depending on her mood. Her father hadn’t been that different from the chimp. Just on a bigger scale.
“I’m sorry I didn’t have the chance to know him better,” Cortez said.
Ashford and seven of his men were on the lift with them. The captain stood at the front, hands clasped behind his back. Most of his men were Belters too. Long frames, large heads. Ren had had that look too. Like they were all part of the same family. Ashford’s soldiers had sidearms and bulletproof vests. She didn’t. And yet she kept catching them glancing over at her. They still thought of her as Melba. She was the terrorist and murderer with the combat modifications. That she looked like a normal young woman only added to the sense that she was eerie. This was why Ashford had wanted her so badly. She was an adornment. A trophy to show how strong he was and paper over his failure to hold his own ship before.
She wished that one of them would smile at her. The more they acted like she was Melba, the more she felt that version of herself coming back, seeping up into her cognition like ink soaking through paper.
“There was one time your brother Petyr came to the United Nations buildings when I was visiting there.”
“That would have been Michael,” she said. “Petyr hates the UN.”
“Does he?” Cortez said with a gentle laugh. “My mistake.”
The lift reached the axis of the drum, slowing gently so that they could all steady themselves with the handrails and not be launched up into the ceiling. Behind them, a series of vast conduits and transformers powered the long, linear sun of the drum. Before she’d come out to the Ring, she’d never seriously thought about balancing power loads and environmental control systems. That kind of thing had been for other people. Lesser people. Now, with all she’d learned, the scale of the Behemoth’s design was awing. She wished the others could have seen it. Soledad and Bob and Stanni. And Ren.
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