James Corey - Abaddon's Gate

The feed went to green, then blue, and then Monica Stuart was smiling professionally into the camera. She looked tired, sober, but human. A face people knew. One they could recognize and feel comfortable with.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “Welcome to the first broadcast of Radio Free Slow Zone, coming to you from our temporary offices here on board the OPA battleship Behemoth . I am a citizen of Earth and a civilian, but it’s my hope that this program can be of some use to all of us in this time of crisis. In addition to bringing whatever unclassified news and information we can, we will also be conducting interviews with the command crews of the ships, civilian leaders on the Thomas Prince , and live musical performances.

“It’s an honor to welcome our first guest, the Reverend Father Hector Cortez.”

A graphic window opened, and the priest appeared. To Bull’s eyes, the man looked pretty ragged. The too-bright teeth seemed false and the blazing white hair had a greasy look to it.

“Father Cortez,” Monica Stuart said. “You have been helping with the relief effort on the Thomas Prince ?”

For a moment, the man seemed not to have heard her. A smile jerked into place.

“I have,” the old man said. “I have, and it has been… Monica, I’m humbled. I am… humbled.”

Bull turned off the feed. It was something. It was better than nothing.

The Martian frigate Cavalier , now under the command of a second lieutenant named Scupski, was shutting down its reactors and transferring all its remaining crew and supplies to the Behemoth . The Thomas Prince had agreed to move its wounded, its medical team, and all the remaining civilians—poets, priests, and politicians. Including the dead-eyed Hector Cortez. It was a beginning, but it wasn’t all he could do. If they were to keep coming, if the Behemoth was to become the symbol of calm and stability and certainty that he needed it to be, there had to be more. The broadcast channel could give a voice and a face to the growing consolidation. He’d need to talk to Monica Stuart about it some more. Maybe there could be some sort of organized mourning of the dead. A council with representatives from all sides that could make an evacuation plan and start getting people back through the Ring and home.

Except that when the lockdown came, they’d lost all their long-distance ships to it. And the Ring itself had retreated, because they had to move so slowly, and because distance was measured in time.

His hand terminal chirped, and he came back to wakefulness with a start. Outside his room a woman shouted and a man’s tense voice replied. Bull recognized the sound of the crash team rushing to try and revive some poor bastard from collapsing into death. He felt for the team of medics. He was doing the same kind of work, just on a different scale. He shifted his arms, scooped up the terminal, and accepted the connection. Serge appeared on the screen.

“Bist?” he asked.

“I’m doing great,” Bull said dryly. “What’s up?”

“Mars. They got him. Hauling the cabron back alive.”

Instinctively, uselessly, Bull tried to sit up. He couldn’t sit and up was a polite abstraction.

“Holden?” he said.

“Who else, right? He’s on a skiff puttering slow for the MCRN Hammurabi . Should be there in a few hours.”

“No,” Bull said. “They’ve got to bring him here.”

Serge raised his hand in a Belter’s nod, but his expression was skeptical.

“Asi dulcie si, but I don’t see them doing it.”

Somewhere far away down below Bull’s chest, the compression sleeves hissed and chuffed and expanded, massaging the blood and lymph around his body now that movement wouldn’t keep his fluids from pooling. He couldn’t feel it. If they’d caught fire, he wouldn’t feel it. Something deep and atavistic shifted in fear and disgust as his hindbrain rediscovered his injuries for the thousandth time. Bull ground the heel of his palm against the bridge of his nose.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do. What does Sam say about the project?”

“She got the rail guns off and they’re working on cutting back the extra torpedo tubes, but the captain found out and he’s throwing grand mal.”

“Well, that had to happen sometime,” Bull said. “Guess I’ll take care of that too. Anything else?”

“Unless tu láve mis yannis, I think you got plenty. Take a breath, we’ll take a turn, sa sa? You don’t have to do it all yourself.”

“I’ve got to do something,” Bull said as the compression sleeves relaxed with a sigh. “I’ll be in touch.”

Tense, low voices drifted in with the burned-moth stink of cauterized flesh. Bull let his gaze focus on the blue-white ceiling above the bed he was strapped to.

Holden was back. They hadn’t killed him. If there was one thing that had the potential to destroy the fragile cooperation he was building, it would be the fight over who got to hold James Holden’s nuts to a Bunsen burner.

Bull scratched his shoulder more for the sensation than because it itched and considered the consequences. Protocol was that they’d question him, hold him in detention, and start negotiating extradition with whoever on the Earth side was investigating the Seung Un . Bull’s guess was they’d beat him bloody and drop him outside. The man was in custody, but he was responsible for too many deaths to assume he’d be safe there.

It was time to try hailing the Rocinante again. Maybe this time they’d answer. Since the catastrophe, they’d been silent. Their communications array might have been damaged, they might be staying silent as some sort of political tactic, or they might all be dying or dead. He requested a connection again and waited with no particular hope of being answered.

Later, when they were outside the Ring, people could wrestle for jurisdiction as much as they wanted. Right now, Bull needed them to work together. Maybe if he—

Against all expectation, the connection to the Rocinante opened. A woman Bull didn’t recognize appeared. Pale skin, unrestrained red hair haloing her face. The smudge on her cheek might have been grease or blood.

“Yes,” the woman said. “Hello? Who is this? Can you help us?”

“My name’s Carlos Baca,” Bull said, swallowing shock and confusion before they could get to his voice. “I’m chief security officer on the Behemoth . And yes, I can help you.”

“Oh, thank God,” the woman said.

“So how about you tell me who you are and what the situation is over there.”

“My name is Anna Volovodov, and I have a woman who tried to kill the crew of the Rocinante in… um… custody? I used all the sedatives in the emergency pack because I can’t get into the actual medical bay. I taped her to a chair. Also, I think she may have blown up the Seung Un .”

Bull folded his hands together.

“Why don’t you tell me about that?” he said.

Captain Jakande was an older woman, silver-haired with a take-no-shit military attitude that Bull respected, even though he didn’t like it.

“I still don’t have orders to release the prisoner,” Captain Jakande said. “I don’t see that it’s likely that I’ll get them. So for the foreseeable future, no.”

“I have a shuttle already going to collect his crew and the woman he accused of being the real saboteur,” Bull said. “And last time I looked, I have two dozen of your people slated to come over once we have the drum spun up.”

Jakande nodded once, confirming everything he’d said without being moved by any of it. Bull knotted his fingers together and squeezed until the knuckles were white, but he did it out of range of the communication deck’s cameras.