James Corey - Abaddon's Gate

Everyone had lost something in the wake of the protomolecule. The species as a whole had lost its sense of its own importance. Its primacy in the universal plan.

Holden had lost his certainty.

When he thought back to the man he’d been before the death of the Cant , he remembered a man filled with righteous certainty. Right was right, wrong was wrong, you drew the lines thus and so. His time with Miller had stripped him of some of that. His time working for Fred Johnson had, if not removed, then filed down what remained. A sort of creeping nihilism had taken its place. A sense that the protomolecule had broken the human race in ways that could never be repaired. Humanity had gotten a two-billion-year reprieve on a death sentence it hadn’t known it had, but time was up. All that was left was the kicking and screaming.

Oddly enough, it was Miller who had given him his sense of purpose back. Or whatever the Miller construct was. He couldn’t really remember that version of himself who’d known exactly where all the lines were drawn. He wasn’t sure of much of anything anymore. But whatever had climbed up off of Venus and built the Ring, it had built Miller too.

And it had wanted to talk. To him.

A small thing, maybe. The new Miller didn’t make much sense. It had an agenda that it wasn’t explaining. The protomolecule didn’t seem particularly sorry for all the chaos and death it had caused.

But it wanted to talk. And it wanted to talk to him. Holden realized he’d found a lifeline there. Maybe there was a way out of all of the chaos. Maybe he could help find it. He recognized that latching on to the idea that the protomolecule, or at least their agent Miller, had picked him as their contact fed all of his worst inclinations to arrogance and self-importance. But it was better than despair.

And now, only starting to see that murky path out of the hole the protomolecule had dug and humanity had hurled itself into with self-destructive gusto, now he was about to be killed because of yet another petty human with more power than sense. It didn’t seem fair. He wanted to live to see how humanity bounced back. He wanted to be part of it. For the first time in a long time he felt like he might be able to turn into the kind of man who could make a difference.

And he wanted to explain this to Naomi. To tell her that he was turning into a better person. The kind of person who would have seen her as more than just a good engineer all those years ago. As if he could, by being a different person now, retroactively fix the shallow, vain man he’d been then. Maybe even make himself worthy of her.

“I like you,” he said instead.

“Jim,” she replied after a moment. Her voice was thick.

“I’ve enjoyed your company ever since we met. Even when you were just an engineer and shipmate, you were a very likable one.”

There was only a faint static hiss on the radio. Holden pictured Naomi retreating into herself, letting her hair fall across her eyes to hide them in that way she did when she was in an uncomfortable emotional situation. Of course, that was silly. With no gravity her hair wouldn’t do that. But the image made him smile.

“Thank you,” he said, letting her off the hook. “Thank you for everything.”

“I love you, Jim,” she finally said. Holden felt his body relax. He saw his coming death, and wasn’t afraid of it anymore. He’d miss all the good stuff to follow, but he’d help make it happen. And a very good person loved him. It was more than most people got in a lifetime.

A low screech started, which cycled up into a howl. For a second, Holden thought Naomi was screaming into her headset. He almost started comforting her before he realized he could feel the vibration in his feet. The sound wasn’t coming across the radio. It was transmitting through his boots on the elevator wall. The entire ship was vibrating.

Holden placed his helmet against the wall to get a better sound, and the scream of the ship was almost deafening. It stopped after an endless minute with an ear-shattering bang. Silence followed.

“What the fuck?” Corin said under her breath.

“Naomi? Bull? Anyone still on the line?” Holden yelled, thinking that whatever had happened had torn the ship apart.

“Yeah,” Bull said. “We’re here.”

“What—” Holden started.

“Mission change,” Bull continued. “That sound was them slamming the brakes on the habitat drum. Catastrophic inertia change 2.0. There are a lot of people in that drum getting thrown around right now.”

“Why would they do that? Just to stop the broadcast?”

“Nope,” Bull said with a tired sigh. He sounded like a man who’d just been informed he was going to have to pull a double shift. “It means they think we fortified the elevator shaft and they’re coming the other way.”

“We’re on our way back,” Holden said, gesturing at Corin to follow him.

“Negative,” Bull said. “If they get the laser back online here while Ashford’s still sitting at that control panel, we lose.”

“So what? We’re supposed to get up there, break into the bridge, and shoot everyone while their guys are down there breaking into engineering and shooting all of you?”

Bull’s sigh sounded tired.

“Yeah.”

They came out of the maintenance shaft like an explosion. Four black-and-red monsters in roughly human shape. Bull and the people he’d managed to gather opened fire as soon as they saw them. A dozen guns against a maelstrom.

“Don’t let them get to the reactor controls,” Bull shouted.

“Roger that,” one of the Earthers said. “Any idea how we stop them, sir?”

He didn’t have one. He unloaded his pistol’s clip with one hand, driving the mech backward across the deck with the other. One of the Martian marines cut across overhead, rifle blazing. Small white marks appeared on the breastplate of the nearest attacker, like a child’s thumbprints on a window. The man in powered armor reached the nearest workstation, ripped the crash couch out of the decking with one hand, and threw it like a massive baseball. The couch sang through the air and shattered against the bulkhead where it hit. If there had been anyone in its path, it would have been worse than a bullet.

Bull kept backing up. When his clip ran out, he gave his full attention to driving the mech. The last of the attackers out of the shaft tried to leap across the room, but the armor’s amplification made it more like a launch. The red-and-black blur careened off the far wall with a sound like a car wreck.

“And that,” Sergeant Verbinski said across the radio, “is why we spend six months training before they put us in those things.” He sounded amused. Good thing somebody was.

Fighting in null g complicated the tactics of a firefight, but the basic rule stayed the same. Hold territory, stay behind cover, have someone there to keep the other side busy when you had to move. The problem, Bull saw almost at once, was that they didn’t have anything that would damage their opponents. The best they could do was make loud noises and trust the people in the battle armor to give in to their reflexive caution. It wouldn’t win the war. Hell, it would barely postpone losing the battle.

“Naomi,” Bull said. “How’re you doing back there?”

“I can dump the core, power this whole bastard down. Just give me three more minutes,” she said. He could hear the focus and drive in her voice. The determination. It didn’t count for shit.

“That’s not going to happen,” he said.

“Just… just hold on.”

“They’re coming back that way now,” Bull said. “And there’s not a goddamn thing we can do to stop them.”