James Corey - Abaddon's Gate

“I’m sorry ,” she shrieked. The words ripped at her throat. They had hooks on them. “I’m sorry . I’m sorry .”

“I know, honey. I know.”

She had her arms around Tilly’s waist now, burying her face against her side, holding on to her like Tilly’s body could keep her from sinking down. From drowning. The guard said something, and she felt Tilly shaking her head no, the motion translated through their bodies.

“I did it,” she said. “I killed him. I thought I had to. I told him to look at the readout so that he’d bend, so that he’d bend his neck, and he did . And I—and I—and I— Oh, God, I’m going to puke.”

“Trashy people puke,” Tilly said. “Ladies are unwell .”

It made her laugh. Despite everything, Clarissa laughed, and then she put her head down again and cried. Her chest hurt so badly she was sure something really was breaking. Aortic aneurysm, pulmonary embolism, something. Sorrow couldn’t really feel like a heart breaking, could it? That was just a phrase.

It went on forever. And then past that, and then it slowed. Her body was as limp as a rag. Tilly’s blouse was soaked with tears and snot and saliva, but she was still sitting just as she’d been. Her hand still ran through Clarissa’s hair. Her fingernails traced the curve of her ear.

“You put the bomb on the Seung Un ,” Tilly said, “and framed Jim Holden for it.”

It wasn’t a question or an accusation. She didn’t want Clarissa to confess, just to confirm. Clarissa nodded against Tilly’s lap. When she spoke, her voice clicked and her throat felt thick and raw.

“He hurt Daddy. Had to do something.”

Tilly sighed.

“Your father is a first-class shit,” she said, and because it was her saying it, it didn’t hurt to hear.

“I’ve got to tell the chief,” the guard said, apology in her voice. “I mean about what happened. He wants me to report in.”

“I’m not stopping you,” Tilly said.

“You need to come with me,” the guard said. “I can’t leave you there with her. It’s not safe.”

A flash of panic lit her mind. She couldn’t be alone. Not now. They couldn’t leave her locked up and alone.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tilly said. “You go do whatever it is you need to do. I’ll be here with Claire.”

“Ah. That girl killed a lot of people, ma’am.”

The silence was just a beat, and without shifting her head, Clarissa knew what look was on Tilly’s face. The guard cleared her throat.

“I’ll have to lock the door, ma’am.”

“Do what you need to, Officer,” Tilly said.

The bars shifted and crashed. The lock clacked home. The footsteps retreated. Clarissa wept for Ren. Maybe the others would come later. The dead soldiers on the Seung Un . Holden’s lover whom she’d beaten and brutalized. All the men and women who’d died because they’d followed Holden through the Ring. She might have tears for them, but now it was only Ren, and she didn’t think she would stop in her lifetime.

“I deserve to die,” she said. “I’ve become a very bad person.”

Tilly didn’t disagree, but she didn’t stop cradling her either.

“There’s someone I’d like you to talk to,” she said.

The security force had come first, three soldiers in a shuttle with guns and restraints for Melba. Or Clarissa. Whoever she was. Then, much later, a medical evacuation had come, taking the Rocinante ’s crew.

Anna’s own ride arrived almost a day later, not an afterthought, but not a priority. The way things had all come about, she thought not being a priority was probably a sign things were going well for her.

When she arrived on the Behemoth , she had expected to see someone from that ship’s security team. Or, if they were well enough, maybe Naomi and the other two crewmen from the Rocinante .

Hector Cortez stood in the shuttle bay. He smiled when he saw her and raised his hand in a little wave of greeting. The motion reminded her of her grandfather in his failing days: careful and a little awkward. She thought Cortez had aged a decade in a few days, then realized he must have been injured in the catastrophe.

“Anna,” he said. “I am so glad to see you.”

The Behemoth ’s massive drum section was spinning now, creating a vertigo-inducing false gravity. Anna’s feet told her that she was standing on solid ground. Her inner ear argued that she was falling over sideways, and kept trying to get her to tilt her body the other direction. It wasn’t enough to make her steps unsteady, but it did make everything feel a little surreal. Having Hector Cortez, celebrity and minister to the powerful, kiss her cheek didn’t make things any less dreamlike.

“It’s good to see you too,” she said. “I didn’t know you were on the Behemoth .”

“We’ve all come,” he said. “They’ve left the smallest of crews on the Thomas Prince , and we’ve all come here. All of us that are left. We’ve lost so many. I attended services yesterday for the fallen. Father Michel. Rabbi Black. Paolo Sedon.”

Anna felt a little twinge of dread.

“Alonzo Guzman?”

Cortez shook his head.

“Neither alive nor dead,” he said. “They have him in a medical coma, but he’s not expected to survive.”

Anna remembered the man’s pleading eyes. If she’d only found help for him sooner…

“I’m sorry to have missed that service,” she said.

“I know,” Cortez said. “It’s why I wanted to meet you. May I walk with you?”

“Of course,” Anna said. “But I don’t know where I’m going.”

“Then I will give you the basic orientation,” the old man said, turning a degree and sweeping his hand toward the shuttle bay. “Come with me, and I will bring you to the glory of the lift system.”

Anna chuckled and let him lead the way. He walked carefully too. Not mincing, but not striding. He seemed like a different person than the one who’d called the three factions of humanity together to pass through the Ring and into the unknown. It was more than just how he held his body too.

“I thought it was important that those of us who were part of the petition speak at the service,” he said. “I wanted our regret to have a voice.”

“Our regret?”

He nodded.

“Yours. Mine. All of us who advised that we come to this darkness. It was hubris, and the innocent have suffered because of it. Died for listening to our bad advice. God has humbled me.”

His voice still had the richness of a lifetime’s practice, but there was a new note in it. A high, childlike whine underneath the grandeur. Sympathy for his distress and an uncharitable annoyance sprang up in her.

“I don’t know that I see it that way,” she said. “We didn’t come here to glorify ourselves. We did it to keep people from fighting. To remind ourselves and each other that we’re all together in this. I can’t think that’s an evil impulse. And I can’t see what happened to us as punishment. Time and chance—”

“Befall all men,” Hector said. “Yes.”

Behind them, a shuttle’s attitude rocket roared for a moment, then cut off. A pair of Belters in gray jumpsuits sauntered toward it, toolboxes in their hands. Cortez was scowling.

“But even given what grew from that seed? You still don’t think we were punished? The decision was not made out of arrogance?”

“History is made up of people recovering from the last disaster,” Anna said. “What happened was terrible. Is terrible. But I still can’t see God’s punishment in it.”

“I do,” Cortez said. “I believe we have fallen into a realm of evil. And more, Doctor Volovodov, I fear we have been tainted by it.”