James Corey - Abaddon's Gate

“All right,” Bull said. “You two go take a rest. I’ll watch the shop until the others get back. You two have done more than—”

The security desk chimed. The connection request was from Sam. Bull lifted a finger to Serge and Corin, and pulled himself over to the desk.

“Sam?” he said.

“Bull,” she replied, and the single syllable, short and sharp, carried a weight of annoyance and anger that verged on rage. “I need you to come down here.”

“You can call whoever you want,” a man’s voice said in the background. “I don’t care, you hear? I don’t care anymore. You do whatever you want.”

Bull checked the connection location. She was down near the machine shops. It wasn’t too far.

“I need to bring a sidearm?” Bull asked.

“I won’t stop you, sweetie,” Sam said.

“On my way,” he said, and dropped the connection.

“Gehst du,” Corin said to Serge. “You’ve been up longer. I’ll keep the place from burning.”

“You going to be all right?” Serge asked, and it took Bull a second to realize the man was talking to him.

“Unstoppable,” Bull said, trying to mean it.

Being exhausted in zero gravity wasn’t the same as it was under thrust or down a gravity well. Growing up, Bull had been dead tired pretty often, and the sense of weight, of his muscles falling off the bone like overcooked chicken, was what desperate fatigue meant. He’d been off of Earth for more years now than he’d been on it, and it still confused him on an almost cellular level to be worn to the point of collapse and not feel it in his joints. Intellectually, he knew it left him feeling that he could do more than he actually could. There were other signs: the grit against his eyes, the headache that bloomed slowly out from the center of his skull, the mild nausea. None of them had the same power, and none of them convinced.

The corridors weren’t empty, but they weren’t crowded. Even at full alert, with every team working double shifts and busting ass, the Behemoth was mostly empty. He moved through the ship, launching himself handhold to handhold, sailing down each long straightaway like he was in a dream. He was tempted to speed up, slapping at the handholds and ladders as they passed and adding just a touch of kinetic energy to his float the way he and his men had back in his days as a marine. More than one concussion had come out of the game, and he didn’t have time for it now. He wasn’t young anymore either.

He found Sam and her crew in a massive service bay. Four men in welding rigs floated near the wall, fixing lengths of conduit to the bulkhead with showers of sparks and lights brighter than staring at the sun. Sam floated nearby, her body at a forty-five-degree angle from the work. A young Belter floated near her, his body at an angle that pointed his feet toward her. Bull understood it was an insult.

“Bull,” Sam said. The young man’s face was a pale mask of rage. “This is Gareth. He’s decided laying conduit’s icky.”

“I’m an engineer ,” Gareth said, spitting out the word so violently it gave him a degree of spin. “Did eight years on Tycho Station! I’m not going to get used like a fucking technician .”

The other welders didn’t turn from their work, but Bull could see them all listening. He looked at Sam, and her face was closed. Bull couldn’t tell if calling him in for help had been hard for her or if it was part of how she expected him to make things right to her after the thing with Pa. That it had been the shortest detention on record didn’t pull the sting of being caught up in his political struggles. Either way, she’d escalated the problem to him, and so it was his now.

Bull took a deep breath.

“So what are we working on here?” he asked, less because he cared than that it would give him a few extra seconds to think and his brain wasn’t at its best.

“I’ve got a major line faulting out,” Sam said. “I can take three days and diagnose the whole thing or I can take twenty hours and put up a workaround.”

“And the conduit’s for the workaround?”

“Is.”

Bull lifted his fist in the Belter’s equivalent of a nod and then turned his attention to the boy. Gareth was young and he was tired and he was an OPA Belter, which meant he’d never been through any kind of real military indoctrination. Bull had to figure Sam had yelled at him enough before she’d called for backup.

“All right, then,” Bull said.

“Está-hey bullshit is,” the man said, his educated grammar fracturing.

“I understand,” Bull said. “You can go. Just help me get your rig on first.”

Gareth blinked. Bull thought he saw the ghost of a smile in the corners of Sam’s bloodshot eyes, but that could have meant anything. Pleasure at the weariness in Bull’s voice or at Gareth’s confusion, or maybe she’d understood what Bull was doing and she thought he was really clever.

“I talk to the guys on the other ships some,” Bull said. “Earth or Mars. Someone’ll be sending a ship back. I’ll see if I can’t get you a ride as far as Ceres anyway.”

Gareth’s mouth opened and closed like a goldfish. Sam pushed off, hooking the welder’s rig with one hand, pulling it close to speed up the turn and then extending her arm to slow it. Bull took it from her and started pulling on the straps.

“You know how to do this?” Sam asked.

“Good enough to hang conduit,” Bull said.

“Security can lose you?”

“Shift’s done,” Bull said. “I was just heading for my bunk, but this needs doing, I can do it.”

“All right, then,” Sam said. “Take the length at the end, and I’ll have someone join it up with Marca’s. I’ll come check your work in a minute.”

“Sounds good,” Bull said. He was spinning just a few degrees each second and he let the momentum carry him around to face the boy. The rage was still there, but it was sinking under a layer of embarrassment. All his arguments and bluster about not doing something because it was beneath him, and now the head of security was using his off-shift to do the same work. Bull could feel the attention of the other welders on them. Bull lit his torch, just testing it out, and the air between them went white for a second. “Okay, then. I got this. You can go if you want.”

The boy shifted, getting ready to launch himself back across the bay and out into the ship. Bull tried to remember the last time he’d actually welded something with no gravity. He was pretty sure he could do it, but he’d have to start slow. Then Gareth’s shoulders cupped forward, and he knew he wouldn’t have to. Bull started taking off the straps, and Gareth moved forward to help him.

“You’re tired,” Bull said, his voice low enough not to carry to the others. “You been working too hard, and it got to you a little. Happens to everyone.”

“Bien.”

He put the torch in the boy’s hand and squeezed it there.

“This is a privilege,” Bull said. “Being out here, doing this bullshit, working our asses off for no one to give a shit? It’s a privilege. Next time you undermine Chief Engineer Rosenberg’s authority, I will ship your ass home with a note that says you couldn’t handle it.”

The boy muttered something Bull couldn’t make out. The flare from the other torches made the boy’s face dance white and brown and white again. Bull put a hand on his arm.

“Yes, sir,” Gareth said. Bull let go, and the boy pushed off to the wall, situating himself over the length of pipe that was waiting there for him. Sam appeared at Bull’s elbow, sliding down from the blind spot above and behind him.

“That worked,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t hurt that you’re an Earther.”