James Corey - Abaddon's Gate

“The gates are all open out there?”

Miller gave him a quizzical look.

“You know,” Holden continued. “In reality?”

“What’s reality?” Miller said, looking back up at the swirling gates and the night sky.

“The place where I live?”

“Yeah, fine. The gates are all open.”

“And are there invading fleets of monsters pouring through to kill us all?”

“Not yet,” Miller said. “Which is kind of interesting in its own way.”

“I was joking.”

“I wasn’t,” Miller said. “It was a calculated risk. But it looks clear for now.”

“We can go through those gates, though. We can go there.”

“Can,” Miller said. “And knowing you, you will.”

For a moment, Holden forgot about Ashford, the Behemoth , the deaths and the violence and the thousand other things that had distracted him from where they really were. What they were really doing.

What it all meant.

He would live to see humanity’s spread to the stars. He and Naomi, their children, their children’s children. Thousands of worlds, no procreation restrictions. A new golden age for the species. And the Nauvoo had made it happen, in a way. Fred could tell the Mormons. Maybe they’d stop suing him now.

“Wow,” he said.

“Yeah, well let’s not get too happy,” Miller said. “I keep warning you. Doors and corners, kid. That’s where they get you. Humans are too fucking stupid to listen. Well, you’ll learn your lessons soon enough, and it’s not my job to nursemaid the species through the next steps.”

Holden scuffed at the ground cover with his toe. When it was scraped, a clear fluid that smelled like honey seeped out. This world was in the station’s catalog, Miller had said. I could live here someday. The thought was astounding.

The sky shifted, and now all the ships that had been trapped around the station were visible. They drifted slowly away from each other. “You let them go?”

“I didn’t. Station’s off lockdown,” Miller said. “And I’ve killed the security system permanently. No need for it. Just an accident waiting to happen when one of you monkeys sticks a finger where it doesn’t belong. Is this Ashford cocksucker really thinking he can hurt the gates?”

“And there are worlds like this on the other side of all those gates?”

“Some of them, maybe. Who knows?” Miller turned to face Holden again, his blue eyes eerie and full of secrets. “Someone fought a war here, kid. One that spanned this galaxy and maybe more. My team lost, and they’re all gone now. A couple billion years gone. Who knows what’s waiting on the other side of those doors?”

“We’ll find out, I guess,” Holden replied, putting on a bold front but frightened in spite of himself.

“Doors and corners,” Miller said again. Something in his voice told Holden it was the last warning.

They looked up at the sky, watching the ships slowly drift away from them. Holden waited to see the first missiles fly, but it didn’t happen. Everyone was playing nice. Maybe what had happened on the Behemoth had changed people. Maybe they’d take that change back to where they came from, infect others with it. It was a lot to hope for, but Holden was an unapologetic optimist. Give people the information they need. Trust them to do the right thing. He didn’t know any other way to play it.

Or maybe the ships moving was just Miller playing with his simulation, and humanity hadn’t learned a thing.

“So,” Holden said after a few minutes of quiet sky watching. “Thanks for the visit. I guess I’d better be getting back to my gunfight.”

“Not done with you,” Miller said. The tone was light, but the words were ominous.

“Okay.”

“I wasn’t built to fix shit humanity broke,” Miller said. “I didn’t come here to open gates for you and get the lockdown to let you go. That’s incidental. The thing that made me just builds roads. And now it’s using me to find out what happened to the galaxy-spanning civilization that wanted the road.”

“Why does that matter now, if they’re all gone?”

“It doesn’t,” Miller said with a weary shrug. “Not a bit. If you set the nav computer on the Roci to take you somewhere, and then fall over dead a second later, can the Roci decide it doesn’t matter anymore and just not go?”

“No,” Holden said, understanding and finding a sadness for this Miller construct he wouldn’t have guessed was possible.

“We were supposed to connect with the network. We’re just trying to do that, doesn’t matter that the network’s gone. What came up off of Venus is dumb, kid. Just knows how to do one thing. It doesn’t know how to investigate. But I do. And it had me. So I’m going to investigate even though none of the answers will mean fuck-all to the universe at large.”

“I understand,” Holden said. “Good luck, Miller, I—”

“I said I’m not done with you.”

Holden took a step back, suddenly very frightened about where this might be going. “What does that mean?”

“It means, kid, that I’ll need a ride.”

Holden was floating in free fall in an environment suit in absolute darkness. People were yelling. There was the sound of a gunshot, then silence, then an electric pop and a groan.

“Stop!” someone yelled. Holden couldn’t place the voice. “Everyone stop shooting!”

Because someone was saying it with authority in their voice, people did. Holden fumbled with the controls on his wrist, and his suit’s light came on. The rest of his team quickly followed his example. Corin and Cass were still unhurt. Holden wondered how long in actual time his jaunt into the simulation had taken.

“My name is Hector Cortez,” the stop-firing voice said. “What’s happening out there? Does anyone know?”

“It’s over,” Holden yelled back, then let his body relax into a dead man’s float in the corridor. He was so tired that it was a struggle to not just go to sleep right where he was. “It’s all over. You can turn everything back on.”

Lights started coming on in the bridge as people took out hand terminals or emergency flashlights.

“Call Ruiz,” Cortez said. “Have her send a team up here to fix whatever Clarissa did. We need to get the ship’s power back. People will be panicking in the habitation drum right now. And get a medical team up here.”

Holden wondered where Ashford was and why this Cortez guy was in charge. But he was saying all the right things, so Holden let it go. He pushed his way into the bridge, ready to help where he could, but keeping his hand near his pistol. Cass and Naomi traded places with Juarez, so Naomi could help with the repairs.

Clarissa, formerly Melba, was floating near an open access panel, blood seeping out of a gunshot wound. Cortez was pressing an emergency bandage to it. Ashford floated across the room, his mouth slack and his muscles twitching. Holden wondered if the captain was dead and then didn’t care.

“Naomi. Call down to the radio offices. See if they’ve got working comms. Find out about Anna and Monica and Amos. Try to raise the Roci next. I really really want to get the hell out of here.”

She nodded and started trying to make connections.

“Will she live?” Holden asked the white-haired man tending to her.

“I think so,” he replied. “She did this,” he added, waving a hand around to indicate the lack of lights and power.

“Huh,” Holden said. “I guess I’m glad we didn’t space her.”

She woke up in stages, aware of the discomfort before she knew what hurt. Aware that something was wrong before she could even begin to put together some kind of story, some frame that gave the loose, rattling toolbox of sensations any kind of meaning. Even when the most abstract parts of herself returned—her name, where she was—Clarissa was mostly aware that she was compromised. That something was wrong with her.