James Corey - Abaddon's Gate

“Didn’t. How’s it all coming?”

“Apart,” Sam said. “But we’ll stick it back together with bubblegum if we have to.”

“Least no one was shooting at us.”

Sam’s laugh had some warmth in it.

“They wouldn’t have had to do it twice.”

The alert tone came from all their hand terminals at once, simultaneous with the ship address system. Bull felt his lips press thin.

“Well, that timing’s a little ominous,” Sam said before Captain Ashford’s voice rang out through the ship. The openness of the spaces and the different speakers made the words echo like the voice of God.

“This is your captain speaking. I have just received confirmation from the OPA central authority that the actions undertaken by the criminal James Holden were unauthorized by any part of the Outer Planets Alliance. His actions put not only this ship but the reputation and good standing of the alliance in threat. I have informed the central authority that we took swift and decisive action against Holden, and that he escaped from us only by retreating through the Ring.”

“Thanks for that, by the way,” Sam said.

“De nada.”

“I have requested and received,” Ashford continued, “the authority to continue action to address this insult as I deem fit. The evidence of our own sensors and of the Martian and Earth feeds to which we have access all show that the Rocinante has passed through the Ring in good condition and appears to have sustained no damage despite the physical anomalies on the other side.

“In light of that, I have made the decision to follow Holden through the Ring and take him and his crew into custody. I will be sending out specific instructions to all department heads outlining what preparations we will need to complete before we begin our burn, but I expect to be in pursuit within the next six hours. It is imperative for the pride, dignity, and honor of the OPA that this insult not go unanswered and that the hands that bring Holden to justice be ours.

“I want you all to know that I am honored to serve with such a valiant crew, and that together we will make history. Take these next hours, all of you, to rest and prepare. God bless each and every one of you, and the Outer Planets Alliance.”

With a resounding click from a hundred speakers, Ashford dropped the connection. The flashing white light of the welding torches was gone, and the bay was darker. Laughter warred against despair in Bull’s gut.

“Is he drunk, do you think?” Sam said.

“Worse. Embarrassed. He’s trying to save face,” Bull said.

“The Behemoth filled its diddies in front of God and everyone, so now we’re going to be the biggest badass in the system to make up for it?”

“Pretty much.”

“Gonna talk him out of it?”

“Gonna try.”

Sam scratched her cheek.

“Could be hard to back down after that little once-more-into-the-breach thing.”

“He won’t,” Bull said. “But I’ve got to try.”

The inner planets came out to the black with an understanding that they were soldiers sent to a foreign land. Bull remembered the feeling from when he’d first shipped out: the sense that his home was behind him. For the inners, the expansion out into the solar system had always had the military at its core.

The Belters didn’t have that. They were the natives here. The forces that had brought their ancestors out to the Belt had roots in trade, commerce, and the overwhelming promise of freedom. The OPA had begun its life more like a labor union than a nation. The difference was subtle but powerful, and it showed in strange ways.

If they had been in any of the Earth or Mars ships that floated now in the darkness near the Ring, Bull would have come from his thorough and profound dressing down by the captain to seek out XO Pa in a galley or mess hall. But this was the Behemoth , so he found her in a bar.

It was a small place with bulbs of alcohol, chocolate, coffee, and tea all set with temperature controls in the nipple, so the uniformly tepid drinks could come out anywhere from almost boiling to just this side of ice. The décor was cheap nightclub, with colored lights and cheap graphic films to hide the walls. Half a dozen people floated on handholds or tethers, and Pa was one of them.

His first thought as he pulled himself toward her was that she needed a haircut. With the false gravity of acceleration gone, her hair floated around her, too short to tie back but still long enough to interfere with her vision and creep into her mouth. His second thought was that she looked as tired as he was.

“Mister Baca,” Pa said.

“XO. You mind if I join you?”

“I was expecting you. You’ve been to see the captain?”

Bull wished he could sit down, not for any actual reason so much as the small physical punctuation it would have given their conversation.

“I have. He wasn’t happy to see me. Showed me the proposal you’d built up on how to remove me from my position.”

“It was a contingency plan,” she said.

“Yeah. So this idea where we take the Behemoth through the Ring? We can’t do that. We start any kind of serious burn, we’re going to have two navies on our butts. And we don’t know what’s on the other side except that it’s way more powerful than we are.”

“Do you want an alien civilization taking its ideas of humanity from Jim Holden?”

Ashford had said the same thing, word for word. It had been his most cogent argument, and now Bull knew where he’d borrowed it from. He’d had the long trip down in the lift to let his sleep-deprived brain come up with its counterargument.

“That’s not even going to come into play if they shoot our nuts off before we get there,” he said. “You really think Earth and Mars are going to go for the whole ‘we’re just playing sheriff’ line? There’s going to be a bunch of them who still think whatever Holden was up to, we were in on it. But even if they don’t, the part where they stand to the side and let us take the lead isn’t going to happen. You can bet your ass the head of the Mars force is asking his XO if they want an alien civilization taking its ideas of humanity from Ashford.”

“That was nice,” Pa said. “The reversal thing? That was good.”

“The inner planets may not be making threats yet,” Bull said, “but—”

“They are. Mars has threatened to open fire on us if we get within a hundred thousand kilometers of the Ring.”

Bull put his hand to his mouth. He could feel his mind struggling to make sense of the words. The Martian navy had already laid down an ultimatum. Ashford hadn’t even mentioned it.

“So what the hell are we doing?”

“We’re preparing for burn in four and three-quarter hours, Mister Baca,” Pa said. “Because that’s what we’ve been ordered to do.”

The bitterness wasn’t only in her voice. It was in her eyes and the angle of her mouth. Sympathy and outrage battled in Bull’s mind, and underneath them a rising panic. He was too tired to be having this conversation. Too tired to be doing what had to get done. It had stripped away all the protections that would have made him hesitate to speak. If he could have gotten just one good cycle’s rest, maybe he could have found another way, but this was the hand he’d been dealt, so it was the hand he’d play.

“You don’t agree with him,” Bull said. “If it was your call, you wouldn’t do it.”

Pa took a long pull at her bulb, the flexible foil buckling under the suction. Bull was pretty sure she wasn’t drinking for the taste, and the urge to get some whiskey for himself came on him like an unexpected blow.