James Corey - Abaddon's Gate

“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.”

“Then you kill him,” Amos said, his words terrifyingly flat and emotionless. “None of this trial bullshit. No righteous man among the savages bullshit. You fucking kill him, or so help me God…”

Holden felt a sudden nausea almost drive him to his knees. He took a few deep breaths to push it back. This was what they had to offer to Sam’s memory. After all she’d done for them. All she’d meant to them. They had violence, arguments about the best way to get revenge. Sam, who as far as he knew had never hurt another person in her life. Would she want this? He could picture her there, telling Amos and Bull to put their testosterone away and act like adults. The thought almost made him vomit.

Monica put a hand on his back. “Are you okay?”

“I have to tell Naomi,” was all he could say, then he pushed her hand away and walked across a floor that moved under his feet like the rolling deck of an oceangoing ship.

Naomi reacted only with sorrow, not with anger. She cried, but didn’t demand revenge. She repeated Sam’s name through her tears, but didn’t say Ashford’s once. It seemed like the right reaction. It seemed like love.

He was holding Naomi while she gently wept when Bull clumped up behind him. He felt a flash of anger, but swallowed it.

“What?”

“Look,” Bull said, rubbing his buzz cut with both hands. “I know this is a shitty time, but we have to talk about where we go from here.”

Holden shrugged.

“Sam’s gone, and she was pretty central to our plans…”

“I understand,” Naomi said. “I’ll go.”

“What?” Holden said, feeling like they were having a conversation in some kind of code he didn’t understand. “Go where?”

“With Sam gone, Naomi is the best engineer we’ve got,” Bull said.

“What about this Ruiz person? I thought she was the chief engineer now.”

“She was in charge of infrastructure,” Bull said. “And I’ve seen Nagata’s background. She’s got the training and the experience. And we trust her. If someone’s going to take Sam’s place—”

“No,” Holden said without thinking about it. Naomi was hurt. She couldn’t fight her way into the engine room now. And Sam had been killed.

“I’ll go,” Naomi repeated. “My arm is for shit, but I can walk. If someone can help me once we get there, I can take out the bridge and shut down the reactor.”

“No,” Holden said again.

“Yeah, me too,” Alex added. He was sitting on the edge of the gurney facing away from them. He’d been shaking like he was crying, but hadn’t made a sound. His voice sounded dry, like fallen leaves rustling in the wind. Brittle and empty. “I guess I have to go too.”

“Alex, you don’t—” Naomi started, but he kept talking over the top of her.

“Nobody pulled the Roci ’s batteries off-line when we left, so if we’re shutting everything down, she’ll need someone to do it.”

Bull nodded. Holden wanted to smack him for agreeing with any of this.

“And that’ll be me,” Alex said. “I can tag along as far as engineering, grab an EVA pack there, and use the aft airlock to get out.”

Amos moved over behind Bull, his face still flat, emotionless, but his hands in fists. “Alex is going?”

“New plan,” Bull said loud enough for everyone to hear. People stopped whatever they were doing and moved over to listen. More must have arrived, because there were almost fifty in the office now. At the back of the room stood a small knot of people in military uniforms. Anna the redheaded preacher was with them. She was holding hands with an aggressively thin woman who alternated smoking and tapping her front teeth with her pinky fingernail. Bull spotted them at the same time Holden did, and waved them forward.

“Anna, come on up here,” he said. “Most everyone is here now, so this is how it’s going to go down.”

The room got quiet. Anna made her way up to Bull and waited. Her skinny friend came with her, staring at the crowd around the preacher with the suspicious eyes of a bodyguard.

“In”—Bull stopped to look at a nearby wall panel with a clock on it—“thirty minutes, I will take a team made up of security personnel and the crew of the Rocinante to the southern drum access point. We will retake that access point and gain entrance into the engineering level. Once we control engineering, Monica and her team will begin a broadcast explaining to the rest of the fleet about the need to kill the power. Preacher, that’s where you and your people come in.”

Anna turned and smiled at her group, a motley collection of people in the uniforms of a variety of services and planetary allegiances. Most of them injured in one way or another. Some quite badly.

“The target for the shutdown is 1900 hours local, about two and a half hours from now. We need them to keep it down for two hours. That’s our window. We need the Behemoth down during that two hours.”

“We’ll make it happen,” Naomi said.

“But when our broadcast starts, Ashford will probably try to take this location. Amos and the remainder of my team, along with any volunteers from among the rest of you, will hold this position as long as possible. The more bad guys you can tie up here, the fewer we’ll have trying to take engineering back from us. But I need you to hold. If we can’t keep Anna and her people on the air long enough to get everyone on board with our shutdown plan, this thing ends before it starts.”

“We’ll hold,” Amos said. No one disagreed.

“Once we control engineering, we’ll send a team forward to put restraints on the hopefully unconscious people on the bridge and we’ll own the ship. The lights go out, the aliens let us go, and we get the fuck out of this miserable stretch of space once and for all. How’s that sound?”

Bull raised his voice with the final question, looking for a cheer from the group, and the group obliged. People began to drift back toward their various tasks. Holden squeezed Naomi’s uninjured shoulder and moved over to Anna. She looked lost. Along the way he grabbed Amos by the arm.

“Anna,” Holden said. “Do you remember Amos?”

She smiled and nodded. “Hello, Amos.”

“How you doing, Red?”

“Amos will be here to protect you and the others,” Holden continued. “If you need anything, you let him know. I feel safe in saying nothing will get in here to stop you from doing your job as long as he’s alive.”

“That’s the truth,” Amos said. “Ma’am.”

“Hey, guys,” someone called out from the doorway. “Look what followed me home. Can I keep them?”

Holden patted Anna on the arm and gave Amos a meaningful look. Protect this one with your life. Amos nodded back. He looked vaguely offended.

He left them together and caught up with Bull heading for the door. The security officer Corin, Bull’s new second-in-command, was leaning next to the door with a shit-eating grin.