James Corey - Abaddon's Gate

“This is Anna Volovodov broadcasting from the offices of Radio Free Slow Zone to anyone on the Behemoth that’s still listening. We’ve failed to hold engineering, so our plan to shut down the reactor and get everyone back home is failing as well. We have people trapped in the external elevator shaft, and they can’t get onto the bridge.

“So, please, if anyone listening to this can help, we need you. Everyone on this flotilla needs you. The people dying right outside your door need you. Most of all, the people we left behind on Earth and Mars and the Belt need you. If the captain does what he’s planning, if he fires the laser at the Ring, everyone back home will die too. Please, if you can hear me, help us.”

She stopped, and Monica put down the camera.

“Think that will work?” Monica asked.

Anna was about to say no when the wall comm panel buzzed at her. A voice said, “How do you know that?” A young voice, female, sad. Clarissa. “What you said about destroying Earth if we attack the Ring, how do you know that?”

“Clarissa,” Anna said. “Where are you?”

“I’m here, on the bridge. I’m in the security station. I was watching your broadcast.”

“Can you open the door and let our people in?”

“Yes.”

“Will you do that?”

“How,” Clarissa repeated, her tone not changing at all, “do you know what you said?”

A man generally regarded as the instigator of two solar system–wide wars got all this information from a protomolecule-created ghost that no one else can see. It wasn’t a particularly compelling argument.

“James Holden got it while he was on the station.”

“So he told you that this would happen,” Clarissa said, her tone doubtful.

“Yes.”

“So how do you know ?”

“I don’t, Claire,” Anna said, appropriating Tilly’s pet name to try and create a connection. “I don’t know. But Holden believes it’s true, and the consequences if he’s right are too extreme to risk. So I’m taking it on faith.”

There was a long moment of silence. Then a male voice said, “Clarissa, who are you talking to in here?”

It took Anna a moment to recognize it as Hector Cortez. She’d known he was on the bridge with Ashford, but somehow the reminder that he’d sided with the men who killed Bull was too much. She had to restrain herself from cursing at him.

“Anna wants me to open the elevator airlock and let the other side into the bridge. She wants me to help stop Ashford from destroying the Ring. She says it will kill everyone on Earth if we do.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Cortez said. “She’s just afraid.”

“Afraid?” Anna yelled. “Do you hear those sounds, Hector? That’s gunfire. Bullets are flying by even as we speak. You’re locked away safe and snug on the command deck planning to destroy something you don’t understand, while I am risking gunshot wounds to stop you. Who’s afraid here?”

“You’re afraid to make the necessary sacrifices to protect the people we’ve left behind. You’re only thinking of yourself,” he yelled back. Anna heard the sound of a door closing in the background. Someone had shut the door to the security station to keep the argument from being overheard. If it was Clarissa, that was a good sign.

“Clarissa,” Anna said, keeping her voice as calm as she could with the ongoing sounds of a gunfight behind her. “Claire, the people waiting outside the airlock door are going to be killed if you don’t open it. They are trapped there. People are coming to kill them.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Cortez started.

“It’s Holden and Naomi out there,” Anna continued, ignoring him. “And Bull is there too. Ashford will have them all killed.”

“They wouldn’t be in danger if they hadn’t attacked Ashford’s rightful command,” Cortez said.

“That’s three people who all made the choice to give you a second chance,” Anna said. “Bull chose to protect you from the UN fleet’s vengeance when he had no reason to. When I asked her to, Naomi forgave you for almost killing her. Holden agreed not to hurt you, in spite of the many provocations you gave him.”

“Those people are criminals —” Cortez tried to say over the top of her, but she kept her voice level and continued.

“These people, the people who forgive, who try to help others. The people who give their lives to save strangers, they’re on the other side of that door, dying. I don’t have to take that on faith. That’s fact. That’s happening right now.”

Anna paused, waiting for any sign Clarissa was listening. There was none. Even Cortez had stopped speaking. The comm station hissed faintly, the only sign it was still on.

“Those are the people I’m asking you to help,” Anna said. “The person I’m asking you to betray is a man who kills innocent people for expedience’s sake. Forget Earth, and the Ring, and everything else you’d have to take on faith. Ask yourself this: Do you want to let Ashford kill Holden and Naomi? No faith. Just that simple question, Claire. Can you let them die? What choice did they make when the same question was asked of them about you?”

Anna knew she was rambling. Knew she was repeating herself. But she had to force herself to stop speaking anyway. She wasn’t used to trying to save a person’s soul without being able to see them, to measure the effect her words were having by their reaction. She kept trying to fill that empty space with more talking.

“I don’t like the idea of those people being killed any more than you do,” Cortez said. He sounded sad, but committed to his position. “But there is the necessity for sacrifice. To sacrifice is literally to be made sacred.”

“Seriously?” Anna gave a humorless laugh. “We’re going to do dueling etymology?”

“What we are facing here is more than humanity is ready for,” Cortez said.

“You don’t get to decide that, Hank,” Anna said, stabbing at the radio as if it were the man. “Think about the people you’re killing. Look at who you’re working with, and tell me that in clear conscience you know you’re doing the right thing.”

“Argument by association?” Cortez said. “Really? God’s tools have always been flawed. We are a fallen people, but that we have the strength of will to do what we must, even in the face of mortal punishment, is what makes us moral beings. And you of all people—”

The feed went silent for a moment.

“Cortez?” Anna said. But when Cortez’s voice came, he wasn’t speaking to her.

“Clarissa, what are you doing?”

Clarissa sounded calm, almost half asleep. “I opened the doors.”

Naomi had taken an access panel off the wall next to the command deck airlock. She’d crawled halfway inside, and only her belly and legs were visible. Holden had planted his mag boots next to the airlock’s outer door and was awaiting instructions from her. Occasionally she’d ask him to try opening the door again, but every attempt so far had failed. Corin floated next to him, watching down the elevator shaft through her gunsights. They’d seen a quick flash of light down there a few minutes back that had set the bulkheads to vibrating. Something violent and explosive had happened.

Holden, having now moved on to his second last stand of the day, had come to view the whole thing with a weary sense of humor. As far as places to die went, the small platform between the elevator shaft and the airlock was about as good as any other. It was a niche in the wall of the shaft about ten feet on a side. The floor, ceiling, and bulkheads were all the same ceramic steel of the ship’s outer hull. The back wall was the airlock door. The front was empty space where the elevator would normally sit. At the very least, when Ashford’s people came swarming up the shaft at them, the floor of the niche would offer some cover.