“Well,” Holden said. “I guess Drummer changed her mind about letting Houston come to Medina. That’s disappointing.”
“Weird that Alex wouldn’t sound the alert first, though,” Naomi said, and then tapped her system console. “Alex? Everything all right?”
“I was about to ask you,” the pilot said through the speaker. “We have a change of plan?”
Holden pulled his hand terminal out of his pocket. “Amos? Did you just do a flip-and-burn?”
“Hey, Cap,” Amos’ real voice said behind him as the big man floated into the doorframe. “Wasn’t me. We got something going on?”
A chill ran down Holden’s back that had nothing to do with temperature. Naomi was already on it, querying the Roci’s logs and control systems, but Clarissa’s voice came from the speaker before she could find anything.
“I received an alert from the air recyclers,” she said, her reedy voice stronger than usual. “It got a manual command from engineering to drop oxygen output to zero and flood nitrogen.”
“That’s not good,” Holden said. “We shouldn’t do that.”
“I had an aftermarket override in place. No one changes my environmental settings without my say-so,” Clarissa said, as calmly as if she didn’t mean, My paranoia just saved our lives. “I’d like to know what’s going on, though.”
“Engineering, the machine shop, and the reactor are all locked down,” Naomi said, scrolling through system screens faster than Holden could follow. “I think I’ve got the drive shut down, but I can’t—”
But Holden was already pulling himself out of the room. Amos hauled himself flat against the wall of the corridor as he flew past, then followed along behind him. Through the galley, to the lift, then down one level. His heart was tripping over, the pulse tapping at his eardrums, but it was just adrenaline. Just fear. There wasn’t anything wrong with the air.
He hoped that was true.
The brig wasn’t really a brig so much as one of the crew cabins that had been set aside, the door controls isolated from the system and disabled on the inside. Over the years, nearly a dozen prisoners had spent days or weeks or months in it. Now the door stood halfway open, the control panel flickering and throwing error codes. Holden pulled himself toward it cautiously—doors and corners were where they got you—but when he reached it, he was already sure what he’d find.
The cabin stood empty apart from bits of floating debris. Anti-spalling cloth floated in ribbons. Bits of fluff from the mattress, like February snowflakes that never fell. Bright lines showed where the storage drawer had been pried off its runners and a length of the guide pulled free. A wall screen floated beside the bunk, and the exposed electronics showed where the door locks had been shorted out.
The governor of Freehold was nowhere to be seen.
“Well,” Amos said. “That’s new.”
Chapter Seven: Bobbie
There was a certain luxury to the thrust gravity of steady acceleration. Hooking your nethers to a vacuum toilet was one of the indignities space travel occasionally forced you into. On the float, with nothing to pull your waste away, it was that or have pee globes sharing your living space. Being able to just sit on a toilet in the crew head and relax for a moment while you did your business was something to appreciate. The fact that it felt like a luxury was also probably not very dignified, if you looked at it too closely.
Bobbie was just reaching behind her for the cleaning-pad dispenser mounted on the bulkhead when the gravity went off with no warning. The momentum of her twisting torso sent her floating off the toilet seat and into the air, pants still around her knees. Thankfully, the Roci immediately fired up the vacuum system on the toilet and spared her having to dodge floating waste.
While she tumbled through the air tugging at her waistband, she yelled, “Roci, get me the bridge!”
“Yo,” Alex replied almost immediately. “Where are you—”
“Not even a fucking warning light? I’m down in the head, taking a leak, and suddenly I’m trying to pull my pants up on the float!”
“Wasn’t my plan,” Alex said. “Looks like … Ah. Hold on.”
The system link picked up Naomi’s voice coming through a different channel. Alex? Everything all right?
“I was about to ask you,” Alex said. “We have a change of plan? Naomi? Um, Bobbie? I think we may have a situation.”
All it took was the tone of Alex’s voice. Bobbie planted one foot against a bulkhead, hooked a handhold with the other, and yanked up her pants.
“Copy that,” she said, the flat, emotionless tones of the old Marine taking over. “On the move.”
She found Holden and Amos floating just inside the door of their makeshift brig when she arrived. They were examining a wall screen that someone had pried out of the wall. The prisoner wasn’t there.
“How long has he been out?” Bobbie asked as she came to a stop with one hand on the doorframe.
“Roci started throwing errors from this door almost an hour ago,” Amos said with a grimace. “This is on me, Cap. Shoulda been paying attention, but I was—”
“Forget it,” Holden said. “Let’s just keep him from doing any more damage.”
“He’s down in engineering, if he was able to kill the drive and spin the ship,” Bobbie said.
“That’s where he is,” Holden said. “Naomi’s working to keep him from making too big a mess, but she’s working remotely, and this guy has demonstrated surprising technical skills.”
“Options?” Bobbie asked. The tactical situation wasn’t optimal. If the prisoner was locked in engineering and had also managed to seal off the machine shop above it, then they’d need to cut or breach two doors just to get to him. Even with Naomi hacking the control systems, physical proximity to the reactor gave Houston options she just didn’t have. And Bobbie didn’t like him having.
Holden drummed his fingers on his leg for a moment, the movement imparting an almost imperceptible spin to him as he floated.
“If he feels like he has no way out, he might blow the reactor out of spite,” Holden said, mirroring Bobbie’s own thoughts. “So a standard breach has to be last choice. Amos, you’re in charge of that. Have Clarissa help you hotwire the door sensor to the machine shop so you can cut it without Houston knowing. Then put a mining charge on the door to engineering and wait for my signal.”
“Got it,” Amos said and pushed off down the corridor. He already had his terminal out, and was saying, “Peaches? Meet me at the machine shop hatch …”
“If I’m not breaching, then—” Bobbie started, but Holden cut her off with a shake of his head.
“I want you using the aft maintenance hatch. You can come in from behind. Keep us from doing a very risky breach.”
“Okay,” Bobbie said, stretching the word out. “But, that access is unusable with the drive on.”
“Naomi will make sure it stays off.”
“And if she doesn’t.”
“You’ll get cooked,” Holden said with a nod. “But we’re playing against the clock here. We don’t know how long we’ve got until Houston decides dying in a fireball is more romantic than jail.”
“Betsy won’t fit into that tight maintenance crawl.”
“No, she won’t,” Holden agreed. “Pretty sure you can still kick this guy’s ass, though.”
“Not in doubt.”
“Then gear up, Marine. You’re going outside.”
Bobbie wasn’t really much of a ship mechanic, but she knew how to turn a wrench or draw a straight bead with a welding torch. Over her last couple decades of making the Rocinante her home she’d spent a fair amount of time outside the ship. Sometimes with Amos, who called her Babs for a reason only he understood, and who often assumed she knew what she was doing even when she didn’t. Sometimes with Clarissa, who occasionally slipped and called her Roberta, and who explained every procedure in the exhaustive detail you’d use with someone who knew nothing.
And, almost without her know
ing it, they’d become her family. She still had brothers and nieces and nephews back on Mars related to her by blood, but she rarely spoke to them. Even then it was always in a recorded message fired across space on the end of a laser. Instead, she had Amos, the gruff big brother who’d let her fuck up on a repair job and just laugh at her, but then fix it later and never mention it again. And she had Clarissa, the annoying know-it-all little sister who wrapped herself in rules and procedure lists and formality like a shell around her fragile center.
And then Holden and Naomi, who couldn’t help but become the parents of the ship. Alex, the best friend she’d ever had, and the person she’d realized recently she had every intention of growing old with, in spite of never having seen him naked. It was an odd group of people to fall in love with, to adopt as your own kin and tribe, but there it was, and she wasn’t ever going back.
And now Payne Houston was threatening them.
“You fucked up, man,” she said to herself as she drifted to a stop over the reactor-bay emergency-access panel. “You just fucked all the way up.”
“Repeat?” Alex said quietly in her ear. Bobbie realized she’d left the channel open and the volume low as she’d made the climb down from the crew airlock to the rear of the ship.
“Nothing,” she said, turning the volume back up. “I’m in position.”
“Patching you back into the master channel,” Alex replied, and then suddenly there were half a dozen voices breathing in her ear.
“Sound off,” Holden said.
“We got through the machine shop door okay, and Peaches says no alerts were triggered. Breaching charge is ready. Just call it.” Amos’ voice, calm and faintly amused. He could have been reporting football scores.
“I’ve got the Roci in diagnostic mode, so she’s asking me to verify any orders coming from the engineering console,” Naomi’s voice said. “But that can’t last. Pretty soon he can just start breaking things the old-fashioned way.”
“Draper here. I’m outside the emergency-access hatch.”
“How long once that door opens?”
Bobbie ran through the layout in her head. It was an old habit, beaten into her by years of training in the toughest military outfit humanity had ever created. Plan it through before you go in, because once the bullets start flying, the time for thinking is over. All you can do is move and react.
“Fifteen seconds to cycle the hatch closed. A few seconds to squeeze past the reactor housing; it’s a tight fit. But a good thirty seconds to equalize the pressure, so that’s our speed bump. Once the atmo in the crawlspace is equalized, I can be through that inner hatch in less than five.”
“Naomi? Can you keep our guest out of the controls for the next minute so we don’t cook our only good Martian?”
“Hey, Cap, that’s low,” Alex said with a laugh. Bobbie found it reassuring and terrifying that they could joke at a time like this.
“Bobbie,” Naomi’s voice said, gentle but firm. “No way he gets that reactor on while I’m alive.”
“Copy that. Draper is a go on your mark.”
Holden simply said, “Okay.”
The hatch in front of her vibrated under the palm of her vacuum suit’s glove as Naomi cycled it open. A faint puff of vapor escaped as the hatch popped open. Bobbie pulled herself inside, squeezing into the curved space between the inner hull of the ship and the outer shielding of the Roci’s reactor core. The hatch began to cycle closed behind her.
“Governor Houston,” Holden said over the radio. “I’m sending this over the 1MC so I know you can hear me. It won’t compromise your position at all to at least open a dialogue.”
Bobbie pulled herself around the curve of the reactor to the inner hatch. The panel glowed red with the lock symbol, and the status read, NEG ATMOSPHERE. The timer in her HUD showed only ten seconds had elapsed, so the outer door wasn’t even finished cycling. Almost forty seconds, then, before she could pop the inner hatch and go kick this Houston’s ass up one side of the ship and down the other. She pulled the heavy recoilless pistol from the harness on her chest and double-checked the ammo counter. Ten self-propelled high-explosive antipersonnel rounds. If Houston forced her to shoot him, they’d be cleaning up red stains for a month.
Bobbie had served on ships most of her life. She wasn’t scared of a little mopping.
“Come on, man,” Holden said. “At this point, we can keep you from doing just about anything. Sooner or later, you’ll need a snack.”
To her surprise, Houston’s voice answered. “Naw. Found your mechanic’s beer fridge down here. Had a big bag of sesame sticks in it. Jalapeño-flavored. Bit spicy for me, but still tasty.”
“Better not be drinking my fucking beer,” Amos said in that same nonchalant voice.
“Anyway,” Holden cut in, “we still have a situation. You’re not going to be able to take the ship, and I’d really like to start using it again. How do we come to some sort of agreement?”
Bobbie heard the first hiss of the atmosphere system outside her suit. The pressurization was almost done. She held the pistol in her right hand and gripped the door with her left. The second it showed green, she’d be in the room with that asshole.
The asshole said, “I don’t know that we do. You’re right. I can’t get past that diagnostic lockdown. That was smart work, by the way. But I figure I can probably get the reactor back online from in here, and then I figure I can collapse the bottle if I just find the right wires to pull. You figure the same way?”
“Well,” Holden started, but the light on the inner hatch clicked green and Bobbie yanked it open.
The main console for the reactor would be to her left as she entered the compartment. It was likely that Houston was using that workstation, so that was her first target. If she pushed off hard, she’d come out of the small hatch like a missile, do a quick flip to land feetfirst on the opposite bulkhead. From there she’d have open sight lines to the entire engineering deck. Nowhere for Houston to hide.
Bobbie gripped the edge of the hatch and pulled with all her strength to launch herself into the room. She had to—
Something crashed into the side of her helmet and sent her into a flat spin through the air. She tried to get her hands up to keep from crashing facefirst into the bulkhead, and only half succeeded. Her left arm crumpled under her, and she felt something tear with a wet heat in her shoulder. She bounced off the wall and saw Houston standing on the bulkhead above the access hatch, mag-booted in place, and holding a heavy fire extinguisher with a dent in the bottom.
Miraculously, the gun was still in her hand. Blackness creeping in at the edge of her vision, Bobbie tried to line up a shot. Houston launched himself off the wall with one strong kick and brought the extinguisher down on her hand in a baseball-bat-style swing. She felt two of her fingers break, and the gun and extinguisher flew off in opposite directions across the room.
The deck seemed to swim up to meet her. She caught a glimpse of Houston spinning off toward the ceiling. She managed to turn on the mags in her glove and pull herself down long enough to get her boots locked onto the deck plating. If this was going hand-to-hand, she’d want leverage, and that meant planting her feet. She turned the boots’ mags almost up to full, and watched Houston catch himself on the ceiling.
She spread her arms wide, though from the tearing sensation in her left shoulder, she didn’t think that one was going to be much use. And the broken fingers in her right hand made grappling or throwing a punch problematic.
“You’re lucky you’re wearing that suit,” Houston said, gulping to catch his breath. “I put a dent in that helmet woulda knocked your brains out without it.”
“And you,” Bobbie said, “are very lucky it’s this suit. I’ve got another one.”
“Well. We gonna talk or are we gonna dance?”
“They’re playing my—” Bobbie started, then Houston launched himself off the ceiling straight at her. She was expecting it. Getting someone else to talk while you threw a
punch was an old trick. The moment he left the bulkhead above her, she was already shifting her body to the left and rotating through her hips. As Houston sailed past, she brought her right elbow into his chin.
Houston’s teeth slammed shut with a crunch that meant he’d cracked a few, then his whole body cartwheeled past her and into the wall with a thud. She kicked her mags off and pushed over to him, wrapping her right arm around his neck for a choke hold. It was unnecessary. His eyes were rolled up in his head, and he was breathing blood bubbles out of his ruined mouth. One and done. Just like the old days.
“I put our guest to bed,” Bobbie said over the radio, then hauled Houston over to the wall panel and removed the locks on the hatch. “Amos, take that bomb off the door before I open it, ’K?”
Bobbie sat in the galley, her left arm in a sling, and her right hand in a cast that the ship had spun for her out of carbon fiber. Holden sat across from her, a steaming cup of coffee on the table held down by the gentle 0.3 g Alex was flying them at.
“So,” Holden said, then paused to blow across the top of his coffee. “Turns out that guy had a few more skills than I clocked him for. Thanks for saving my ship.”
“I kind of feel like it’s mine, too,” she said with a smile. Holden was Holden. He’d need to take the weight for every bad thing that happened, and to overstate his appreciation for the good ones. It’s what made him him. He projected selfless heroism on everyone because that’s what he wanted to see in people. It was the same thing that caused most of the problems in his life—most people weren’t who he wanted them to be—but this was a nice moment. Ship safe. No one dead. Not even Houston, though if someone didn’t keep an eye on Amos, that might change.
“So it’s funny you should say that,” Holden said. He’d paused over his coffee long enough that she’d sort of forgotten what she said. “Would you like to buy the ship from me?”
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