She wondered how the Behemoth felt about being the Behemoth and not the Nauvoo. She wondered how she felt about being Clarissa Mao and not Melba Koh. Would the ship feel the nobility of its sacrifice? Lost forever in the abyss, but with everyone else redeemed by her sacrifice. The symmetry seemed meaningful, but it might only have been the grinding combination of fear and uncertainty that made it seem that way.
Seven hours after they’d taken the bridge, Ashford stabbed at the control console again, waited a few seconds, and punched the console hard enough that the blow pushed him back into his couch. The sound of the violence startled Cortez awake and stopped the muttered conversation between the guards. Ashford ignored them all and tapped at the screen again. His fingertips sounded like hailstones striking rock.
The light from the screen flickered.
“Sir?”
“Where’s Sam Rosenberg?” Ashford snapped.
“Last I saw her, she was checking the backup power supply for the reactor bottle, sir. Should I find her?”
“Who’s acting as her second?”
“Anamarie Ruiz.”
“Get Sam and Anamarie up to command, please. If you have to take them under guard, that’s fine.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ashford closed the connection and pushed away from the console, his crash couch shushing on its bearings.
“Is there a problem, Captain?” Cortez asked. His voice was thick and a little bleary.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” Ashford replied.
It was almost another hour before Clarissa heard the doors from the external elevator shaft open. New voices came down the hall. The gabble of conversation tried to hide some deeper strain. Ashford tugged at his uniform.
Two women floated in the room. The first was a pretty woman with a heart-shaped face and grease-streaked red hair pulled back in a bun. It made her think of Anna. The second was thin, even for a Belter, with skin the color of dry soil and brown eyes so dark they were black. Three men with pistols followed them in.
“Chief Rosenberg,” Ashford said.
“Sir,” the red-haired woman said. She didn’t sound like Anna.
“We are on our fourth last-minute delay now. The more time we waste, the more likely it is that the rogue elements in the drum will cause trouble.”
“I’m doing my best, Captain. This isn’t the kind of thing we get to take a second shot at, though. We need to be thorough.”
“Two hours ago, you said we’d be ready to fire in two hours. Are we ready to fire now?”
“No, sir,” she said. “I looked up the specs, and the reactor’s safeties won’t allow an output the size we need. I’m fabricating some new breakers that won’t screw us up. And then we have to replace some cabling as well.”
“How long will that take?” Ashford asked. His voice was dry. Clarissa thought she heard danger in it, but the engineer didn’t react to it.
“Six hours, six and a half hours,” she said. “The fab printers only go so fast.”
Ashford nodded and turned to the second woman. Ruiz.
“Do you agree with that assessment?”
“All respect to Chief Rosenberg, I don’t,” Ruiz said. “I don’t see why we can’t use conductive foam instead.”
“How long would that take?”
“Two hours,” Ruiz said.
Ashford drew a pistol. Almost before the chief engineer’s eyes could widen, the gun fired. In the tight quarters, the sound itself was an assault. Sam’s head snapped back and her feet kicked forward. A bright red globe shivered in the air, smaller droplets flying out from it. Violent moons around a dead planet.
“Mister Ruiz,” Ashford said. “Please be ready to fire in two hours.”
For a moment, the woman was silent. She shook her head like she was trying to come back from a dream.
“Sir,” she said.
Ashford smiled. He was enjoying the effect he’d just had.
“You can go,” he said. “Tick-tock. Tick-tock.”
Ruiz and the three guards pulled themselves back out. Ashford put his pistol away.
“Would someone please clean this mess away,” he said.
“My God,” Cortez said, his voice somewhere between a prayer and blasphemy. “Oh my God. What have you done?”
Ashford craned his neck. Two of the guards moved forward. One of them had a utility vacuum. When he thumbed it on, the little motor whined. When he put it in the blood, the tone of it dropped half a tone from E to D-sharp.
“I shot a saboteur,” Ashford said, “and cleared the way to saving humanity from the alien threat.”
“You killed her,” Cortez said. “She had no trial. No defense.”
“Father Cortez,” Ashford said, “these are extreme circumstances.”
“But—”
Ashford turned, bending his just-too-large Belter head forward.
“With all respect, this is my command. These are my people. And if you think I am prepared to accept another mutiny, you are very much mistaken.” There was a buzz in the captain’s voice like a drunk man on the edge of a fight. Clarissa put a hand on Cortez’s shoulder and shook her head.
The older man frowned, ran a hand across his white hair, and put on a professionally compassionate expression.
“I understand the need for discipline, Captain,” Cortez said. “And even some violence, if it is called for, but—”
“Don’t make me put you back in the drum,” Ashford said. Cortez closed his mouth, his head bowed as if being humbled was old territory for him. Even though she knew that wasn’t true, Clarissa felt a warm sympathy for him. He’d seen dead people. He’d seen people die. Seeing someone killed was different. And killing someone was different than that, so in some ways, she was ahead of him.
“Come on,” she said. Cortez blinked at her. There were tears in his eyes, floating more or less evenly across his sclera, unable to fall. “The head’s this way. I’ll get you there.”
“Thank you,” he said.
Two of the guards were wrapping the dead engineer with tape. The bullet had struck just above her right eye, and a hemisphere of blood adhered to it, shuddering but not growing larger. The woman wasn’t bleeding anymore. She was the enemy, Clarissa thought, but the idea had a tentative quality about it. Like she was trying on a vest to see how it fit. She was the enemy and so she deserved to die even though she had red hair like Anna. It wasn’t as comforting as she’d hoped.
In the head, Cortez washed his face and hands with the towelettes and then fed them into the recycler. Clarissa mentally followed them down to the churn and through the guts of the ship. She knew how it would work on the Cerisier or the Prince. Here, she could only speculate.
You’re trying to distract yourself, a small part of herself said. The thought came in words, just like that. Not from outside, not from someone else. A part of her talking to the rest. You’re trying to distract yourself.
From what? she wondered.
“Thank you,” Cortez said. His smile looked more familiar now. More like the man she saw on screens. “I knew that there would be some resistance to doing the right thing here. But I wasn’t ready for it. Spiritually, I wasn’t ready for it. Surprised me.”
“It’ll do that,” Clarissa said.
Cortez nodded. He was about her father’s age. She tried to imagine Jules-Pierre Mao floating in the little space, weeping over a dead engineer. She couldn’t. She couldn’t imagine him here at all, couldn’t picture what he looked like exactly. All of her impressions were of his power, his wit, his overwhelming importance. The physical details were beside the point. Cortez looked at himself in the mirror, set his own expression.
He’s about to die, she thought. He’s about to condemn himself and everyone on this ship to dying beyond help, here in the darkness, because he thinks it is the right and noble thing to do. Was that what Ashford was doing too? She wished now that she’d talked to him more when they’d been prisoners together. Gotten to understand him and who h
e was. Why he was willing to die for this. And more than that, why he was willing to kill. Maybe it was altruism and nobility. Maybe it was fear. Or grief. As long as he did what needed doing, it didn’t matter why, but she found she was curious. She knew why she was here, at least. To redeem herself. To die for a reason, and make amends.
You’re trying to distract yourself.
“—don’t you think?” Cortez said. His smile was gentle and rueful, and she didn’t have any idea what he’d been saying.
“I guess,” she said and pushed back from the doorframe to give him room. Cortez pulled himself by handholds, trying to keep his body oriented with head toward the ceiling and feet toward the floor, even though crawling along the walls was probably safer and more efficient. It was something people who lived with weight did by instinct. Clarissa only noticed it because she wasn’t doing it. The room was just the room, no up or down, anything a floor or a wall or a ceiling. She expected a wave of vertigo that didn’t come.
“You know it doesn’t matter,” she said.
Cortez smiled at her, tilting his head in a question.
“If we’re all sacrifices, it doesn’t matter when we go,” Clarissa said. “She went a little before us. We’ll go a little later. It doesn’t even matter if we all go willingly to the altar, right? All that matters is that we break the Ring so everyone on the other side is safe.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Cortez said. “Thank you for reminding me.”
An alert sounded in the next room, and Clarissa turned toward it. Ashford had undone his straps and was floating above his control panel, his face stony with rage.
“What’s going on, Jojo?”
“I think we’ve got a problem, sir…”
Chapter Forty-Three: Holden
Everything about the former colonial administrative offices made Holden sad. The drab, institutional green walls, the cluster of cubicles in the central workspace, the lack of windows or architectural flourishes. The Mormons had been planning to run the human race’s first extrasolar colony from a place that would have been equally at home as an accounting office. It felt anticlimactic. Hello, welcome to your centuries-long voyage to build a human settlement around another star! Here’s your cubicle.
The space had been repurposed in a way that at least gave it a lived-in feel. A cobbled-together radio occupied one entire closet, just off the main broadcasting set. The size saying more about the slapdash construction than about the broadcasting power. The current fleet was in a small enough space to pick up a decent handheld set. A touch screen on one wall acted as a whiteboard for the office, lists of potential interviews and news stories listed along with contact names and potential public interest. Holden was oddly flattered to see his name next to the note Hot, find a way to get this.
Now the room buzzed with activity. Bull’s people were trickling in a few at a time. Most of them brought duffel bags full of weapons or ammunition. A few brought tools in formed plastic cases with wheels on the bottom. They were preparing to armor the former office space into a mini-fortress. Holden leaned against an unused desk and tried to stay out of everyone’s way.
“Hey,” Monica said, appearing at his side out of nowhere. She nodded her head at the board. “When I heard you were back from the station, I was hoping I could get an interview from you. Guess I missed my chance, though.”
“Why?”
“Next to this end-of-the-world shit, you’ve slipped a couple notches in the broadcast schedule.”
Holden nodded, then shrugged. “I’ve been famous before. It’s not so great.”
Monica sat on the desk next to him and handed him a drinking bulb. When Holden tasted it, it turned out to be excellent coffee. He closed his eyes for a moment, sighing with pleasure. “Okay, now I’m just a little in love with you.”
“Don’t tease a girl,” she replied. “Will this work? This plan of Bull’s?”
“Am I on the record?”
Someone started welding a sheet of metal to the wall, forcing them both to throw up their hands to block the light. The air smelled like sulfur and hot steel.
“Always,” Monica said. “Will it?”
“Maybe. There’s a reason military ships are scuttled the second someone takes engineering. If you don’t own that ground, you don’t own the ship.”
Monica smiled as if that all made sense to her. Holden wondered how much actually did. She wasn’t a wartime reporter. She was a documentary producer who’d wound up in the wrong place at the right time. He finished off the last of his coffee with a pang of regret and waited to see if she had anything else to ask. If he was nice, maybe she’d find him a refill.
“And this Sam person can do that?” she said.
“Sam’s been keeping the Roci in the air for almost three years now. She was one of Tycho’s best and brightest. Yeah, if she’s got your engine room and she doesn’t like you, you’re screwed.”
“Want more coffee?”
“Good God, yes,” Holden said, holding out his bulb like a street beggar.
Before Monica could take it, Bull came clumping over to them in his mechanical walker. He started to speak and then began a wet, phlegmy cough that lasted several seconds. Holden thought he looked like a man who was dying by centimeters.
“Sorry,” Bull said, spitting into a wadded-up rag. “That’s disgusting.”
“If you die,” Monica said, “I won’t get my exclusive.”
Bull nodded and began another coughing fit.
“If you die,” Holden said, “can I have all your stuff?”
Bull gave a grand, sweeping gesture at the office around them. “Someday, my boy, this will all be yours.”
“What’s the word?” Holden asked, raising the bulb to his lips and being disappointed at its emptiness all over again.
“Corin found the preacher, huddled up with half her congregation in their church tent.”
“Great,” Holden said. “Things are starting to come together.”
“Better than you think. Half the people in that room were UN and Martian military. They’re coming with her. She says they’ll back her story when she asks the other ships to shut down. It also won’t hurt to have a few dozen more able bodies to man the defenses when Ashford comes after us.”
As Bull spoke, Holden saw Amos enter the offices pushing the bed Alex and Naomi were on. A knot he hadn’t even realized he had relaxed in his shoulders. Bull was still talking about utilizing the new troops for their defensive plans, but Holden wasn’t listening. He watched Amos move the gurney to a safe corner at the back of the room and then wander over to stand next to them.
“Nothing new outside,” Amos said when Bull stopped talking. “Same small patrols of Ashford goons walking the drum, but they don’t act like they know anything’s up.”
“They’ll know as soon as we do our first broadcast,” Monica said.
“How’s that shoulder?” Holden asked.
“Sore.”
“I’ve been thinking I want you to take command of the defense here once the shit hits the intake.”
“Yeah, okay,” Amos said. He knew Holden was asking him to protect Naomi and Alex. “I guess that means you’re going down to—”
He was interrupted by a loud buzzing coming from Bull’s pocket. Bull pulled a beat-up hand terminal out and stared at it like it might explode.
“Is that an alarm?” Holden asked.
“Emergency alert on my private security channel,” Bull said, still not answering it. “Only the senior staff can use that channel.”
“Ashford, trying to track you down?” Holden asked, but Bull ignored him and answered the call.
“Bull here. Ruiz, I—” Bull started, then stopped and just listened. He grunted a few times, though Holden couldn’t tell if they were assents or negations. When he finished the call, he dropped the hand terminal on the desk behind him without looking at it. His brown skin, recently gray with sickness, had turned almost white. He reached up with both hands to wipe awa
y what Holden realized with shock were tears. Holden would not have guessed the man was capable of weeping.
“Ashford,” Bull started, then began a long coughing fit that looked suspiciously like sobbing. When he’d finally stopped, his eyes and mouth were covered with mucus. He pulled a rag out of his pocket and wiped most of it off, then said, “Ashford killed Sam.”
“What?” Holden asked. His brain refused to believe this could be true. He’d heard the words clearly, but those words could not be, so he must have heard them wrong. “What?”
Bull took a long breath, gave his face one last wipe with the rag, then said, “He brought her up to the bridge to ask about the laser mods, and then he shot her. He made Anamarie Ruiz the chief engineer.”
“How do you know?” Monica asked.
“Because that was Ruiz on the line just now. She wants us to get her the hell out of there,” Bull said. Almost all traces of his grief were gone from his face. He took another long, shuddering breath. “She knows Ashford has completely gone around the bend, but what can she do?”
Holden shook his head, still refusing to believe it. Brilliant little Sam, who fixed his ship, who was Naomi’s best friend, whom Alex and Amos shared a good-natured crush on. That Sam couldn’t be dead.
Amos was staring at him. The big man’s hands were curled into fists, his knuckles a bloodless white.
“We have to hold this ground,” Holden said, hoping to head off Amos’ next words. “I need you to hold it or this whole thing falls apart.”
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