James Corey - Abaddon's Gate

The room was dirty, the air a few degrees too hot. She lay in the thin, sweat-stinking bed, an IV drip hanging above her. The significance of that took a long time to come to her. The bag hung there. She wasn’t floating. There was gravity. She didn’t know if it was spin or thrust, or even the calm pull of mass against mass that being on a planet brought. She didn’t have the context to know. Only that it was nice to have weight again. It meant that something had gone right. Something was working.

When she closed her eyes, she dreamed that she had killed Ren, that she’d hidden him inside her own body and so she had to keep anyone from taking an imaging scan for fear they’d find him in her. It was a pleasure to wake up and remember that everyone already knew.

Sometimes Tilly came, sat by her bed. She looked like she’d been crying. Clarissa wanted to ask what was wrong, but she didn’t have the strength. Sometimes Anna was there. The doctor who checked on her was a beautiful old woman with eyes that had seen everything. Cortez never came. Sleeping and waking lost their edges. Healing and being ill too. It was difficult if not impossible to draw a line between them.

She woke once to voices, to the hated voice, to Holden. He was standing at the foot of her bed, his arms crossed on his chest. Naomi was next to him, and then the others. The pale one who looked like a truck driver, the brown one who looked like a schoolteacher. Amos and Alex. The crew of the Rocinante . The people she hadn’t managed to kill. She was glad to see them.

“There is absolutely no way,” Holden said.

“Look at her,” Anna said. Clarissa craned her neck to see the woman standing behind her. The priest looked older. Worn out. Or maybe distilled. Cooked down to something like her essence. She was beautiful too. Beautiful and terrible and uncompromising in her compassion. It was in her face. It made her hard to look at. “She’ll be killed.”

Alex, the schoolteacher, raised his hand.

“You mean she’ll be tried in a court of law, with a lawyer, for killin’ a bunch of folks that we all pretty much know she killed.”

I did , Clarissa thought. It’s true . Above her, Anna pressed her hands together.

“I mean that’s what I want to happen,” Anna said. “A trial. Lawyers. Justice. But I need someone to get her safely from here to the courts on Luna. With the evacuation starting, you have the only independent ship in the slow zone. You are the only crew that I trust to get her out safely.”

Naomi looked over at Holden. Clarissa couldn’t read the woman’s expression.

“I’m not taking her on my ship,” Holden said. “She tried to kill us. She almost did kill Naomi.”

“She also saved you both,” Anna said. “And everybody else.”

“I’m not sure being a decent human that one time means I owe her something,” Holden said.

“I’m not saying it does,” Anna said. “But if we don’t treat her with the same sense of justice that we’d ask for ourselves—”

“Look, Red,” Amos said. “Everybody in this room except maybe you and the captain has a flexible sense of morality. None of us got clean hands. That’s not the point.”

“This is a tactical thing,” Alex agreed.

“It is?” Holden said.

“It is,” Naomi said. “Pretend that she’s not a danger in and of herself. Taking her on board, even just to transport her to a safe place, puts us at risk from three different legal systems, and our situation is already… ‘tenuous’ is a nice word.”

Clarissa reached up, took Anna’s shirt between her fingers, tugging like a child at her mother.

“It’s okay,” she croaked. “I understand. It’s all right.”

“How much?” Anna asked. And then, off their blank looks, “If it’s just risk versus return, how much would it take to be worth it to you?”

“More than you have,” Holden said, but there was an apology in his tone. He didn’t want to disappoint Anna and he didn’t want to do what she said. No way for him to win.

“What if I bought the Rocinante ?” Anna said.

“It’s not for sale,” Holden said.

“Not from you. I know about your legal troubles. What if I bought the Rocinante from Mars. Gave you the rights to it, free and clear.”

“You’re going to buy a warship?” Alex said. “Do churches get to do that?”

“Sure,” Holden said, “do that, and I’ll smuggle her out.”

Anna held up a finger, then pulled her hand terminal out of her pocket. Clarissa could see her hands were trembling. She tapped at the screen, and a few seconds later a familiar voice came from the box.

“Annie,” Tilly Fagan said. “Where are you? I’m having cocktails with half a dozen very important people and they’re boring me to tears. The least you can do is come up and let them fawn over you for a while.”

“Tilly,” Anna said. “You remember that really expensive favor you owe me? I know what it is.”

“I’m all ears,” Tilly said.

“I need you to buy the Rocinante from Mars and give it to Captain Holden.” Tilly was silent. Clarissa could practically see the woman’s eyebrows rising. “It’s the only way to take care of Clarissa.”

Tilly’s exhalation could have been a sigh or laughter.

“Sure, what the hell. I’ll tell Robert to do it. He will. It’ll be less than I’d get in a divorce. Anything else, dear? Shall I change the Earth’s orbit for you while I’m at it?”

“No,” Anna said. “That’s plenty.”

“You’re damn right it is. Get up here soon. Really, everyone’s swooning over you, and it’ll be much more amusing for me to watch them try to squeeze up next to you in person.”

“I will,” Anna said. She put her hand terminal back in her pocket and took Clarissa’s hand in her own. Her fingers were warm. “Well?”

Holden’s face had gone pale. He looked from Clarissa to Anna and back and blew out a long breath.

“Um,” he said. “Wow. Okay. We may not be going home right away, though. Is that cool?”

Clarissa held out her hand, astounded by its weight. It took them all a moment to understand what she was doing. Then Holden—the man she’d moved heaven and earth to humiliate and murder—took her hand.

“Pleased to meet you,” she croaked.

They installed a medical restraint cuff to her ankle set to sedate her on a signal from any of the crew, or if it detected any of the products of her artificial glands, or if she left the crew decks of the ship. It was three kilos of formed yellow plastic that clung to her leg like a barnacle. The transfer came during the memorial service. Captain Michio Pa, her face still bandaged from the fighting, spoke in glowing terms about Carlos Baca and Samantha Rosenberg and a dozen other names and commended their ashes to the void. Then each of the commanders of the other ships in the flotilla took their turns, standing before the cameras on the decks of their own ships, speaking a few words, moving on. No one mentioned Ashford, locked away and sedated. No one mentioned her.

It was the last ceremony before the exodus. Before the return. Clarissa watched it on her hand terminal when she wasn’t looking at the screen that showed the shuttle’s exterior view. The alien station was inert now. It didn’t glow, didn’t react, didn’t read to the sensors as anything more than a huge slug of mixed metals and carbonate structures floating in a starless void.

“They’re not all going back, you know,” Alex said. “The Martian team is plannin’ to stay here, run surveys on all the gates. See what’s on the other side.”