James Corey - Abaddon's Gate

“It’s a fake,” Holden said. “I never recorded that. That’s not me.”

“Sort of sounds like you, though,” Amos said.

“Jim,” Naomi said, panic beginning to distort her voice. “That broadcast is coming from us. It’s coming from the Roci right now.”

Holden shook his head, denying the assertion outright. The only thing more ridiculous than the message itself was the idea that it was coming from his ship.

“That broadcast is coming from us,” Naomi said, slamming her hand against her screen. “And I can’t stop it!”

Everything seemed to recede from Holden, the noises in the room coming from far away. He recognized it as a panic reaction, but he gave in to it, accepted the short moment of peace it brought. Monica was shouting questions at him he could barely hear. Naomi was furiously pounding on her workstation, flipping through menu screens faster than he could follow. Over the ship’s comm, Alex was shouting demands for orders. From across the room, Amos was staring at him with a look of almost comical puzzlement. The two camera operators, equipment still clutched in one hand, were trying to belt themselves into crash couches with the other. Cohen floated in the middle of the room, lips pursed in a faint frown.

“This was the setup,” Holden said. “This is what it was for.”

Everything: the Martian lawsuit, the loss of his Titania job, the camera crew going to the Ring, all leading to this. The only thing he couldn’t imagine was why.

“What do you mean?” Monica asked, pushing close to get into the shot with him. “What setup?”

Amos put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head once.

“Naomi,” Holden said, “is the only system you’ve lost control of comms?”

“I don’t know. I think so.”

“Then kill it. If you can’t, help Amos isolate the entire comm system from the power grid. Cut it out of the damn ship if you have to.”

She nodded again and then turned to Amos.

“Alex,” Holden said. Monica started to say something to him, but he held up one finger to silence her, and she closed her mouth with a snap. “Get us burning toward the Behemoth . We’re not really claiming the Ring for the OPA, but as long as everyone thinks we are, they’re the team least likely to shoot us.”

“What can you tell me about what’s going on?” Monica said. “Are we in danger here? Is this dangerous?” Her usual smirk was gone. Open fear had replaced it.

“Strap in,” Holden said. “All of you. Do it now.”

Okju and Clip were already belted into crash couches, and Monica and Cohen quickly followed suit. The entire documentary crew had the good sense to stay quiet.

“Cap,” Alex said. His voice had taken on the almost sleepy tone he got when in a high-stress situation. “The Behemoth just lit us up with their targeting laser.”

Holden belted himself into the combat ops station and warmed it up. The Roci began counting ships within their threat radius. It turned out to be all of them. The ship asked him if any should be marked as hostiles.

“Your guess is as good as mine, honey.”

“Huh?” Naomi asked.

“Um,” Alex said. “Are you guys warming up the weapons?”

“No,” Holden said.

“Oh, I’m really sorry to hear that,” Alex said. “Weapons systems are coming online.”

“Are we shooting at anyone?”

“Not yet?”

Holden told the Roci to mark anything that hit them with a targeting system as hostile and was relieved when the system actually responded. The Behemoth shifted to red on the display. Then, after a moment’s thought, he told the ship to lump all the Martians and Earth ships into two groups. If they wound up fighting with one ship in a group, they’d be fighting them all.

There were too many. The Roci was caught between Fred Johnson’s two-kilometer-long OPA overcompensation and most of the remaining Martian navy. And beyond the Martians, the Ring.

“Okay,” he said, desperately trying to think of what to do now. They were as far from a hiding spot as it was possible to be in the solar system. It was a two-month trip just to the nearest rock bigger than their ship. He doubted he could outrun three fleets and all their torpedoes for two months. Or two minutes, really, if it came to that. “How’s that radio coming?”

“Down,” Amos said. “Easy enough to just pull the plug.”

“Do we have any way to tell everyone that the broadcast wasn’t us? I will happily signal full and complete surrender at this point,” Holden said.

“Not without turning it back on,” Amos replied.

“Everyone out there is probably trying to contact us,” Holden said. “The longer we don’t answer, the worse this will look. What about the weapons?”

“Warmed up, not shooting,” Amos said. “And not responding to us.”

“Can we pull power on those too?”

“We can,” Amos said, looking pained. “But damn, I sure don’t want to.”

“Fast mover!” Naomi yelled.

“Holy shit,” Alex said. “The OPA just fired a torpedo at us.”

On Holden’s panel, a yellow dot separated from the Behemoth and shifted to orange as it took off at high g.

“Go evasive!” Holden said. “Naomi, can you blind it?”

“No. No laser,” she replied, her voice surprisingly calm now. “And no radio. Countermeasures aren’t responding.”

“Fuck me,” Amos said. “Why did someone drag us all the way out here just to kill us? Coulda done that at Ceres, saved us the trip.”

“Alex, here’s your course.” Holden sent the pilot a vector that would take them right through the heart of the Martian fleet. As far as he knew, the Martians only wanted to arrest him. That sounded okay. “Has the Behemoth fired again?”

“No,” Naomi replied. “They’ve gone dark. No active sensors, no drives.”

“Kinda big and kinda close to be trying for sneaky,” Alex said without any real humor. “Here comes the juice.”

While the couches pumped them full of drugs to keep the high g from killing them, apropos of nothing Cohen said, “Fucking bitch .”

Before Holden could ask what he meant, Alex opened up the Roci ’s throttle and the ship took off like a racehorse feeling the spurs. The sudden acceleration slammed Holden into his couch hard enough to daze him for a second. The ship buzzed him back to his senses when a missile proximity alarm warned him the Behemoth ’s torpedo was getting closer. Helpless to do anything about it, Holden watched the orange dot that meant all their deaths creeping ever closer to the fleeing Rocinante . He looked up at Naomi, and she was looking back, as helpless as he was, all her best tricks taken away when the comm array was powered down.

The gravity dropped suddenly. “Got an idea,” Alex said over the comm, then the ship jerked through several sharp maneuvers, and the gravity went away again. The Rocinante had added a new alarm to her song. A collision warning was sounding. Holden realized he’d never actually heard a collision alarm outside of drills. When do spaceships run into each other?

He turned on the exterior cameras to a field of uniform black. For a second, he thought they were broken, but then Alex took control of them, panning out along the vast expanse of a Martian cruiser’s skin. The target lock buzzer cut out, the missile losing them.

“Put this Martian heavy between us and the missile,” Alex said, almost whispering it, as though the missile might hear if he spoke too loud.

“How close are we to them?” Holden asked, his voice matching Alex’s.

“’Bout ten meters,” Alex said, pride in his voice. “More or less.”