James Corey - Abaddon's Gate

“Last I saw her, she was checking the backup power supply for the reactor bottle, sir. Should I find her?”

“Who’s acting as her second?”

“Anamarie Ruiz.”

“Get Sam and Anamarie up to command, please. If you have to take them under guard, that’s fine.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ashford closed the connection and pushed away from the console, his crash couch shushing on its bearings.

“Is there a problem, Captain?” Cortez asked. His voice was thick and a little bleary.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” Ashford replied.

It was almost another hour before Clarissa heard the doors from the external elevator shaft open. New voices came down the hall. The gabble of conversation tried to hide some deeper strain. Ashford tugged at his uniform.

Two women floated in the room. The first was a pretty woman with a heart-shaped face and grease-streaked red hair pulled back in a bun. It made her think of Anna. The second was thin, even for a Belter, with skin the color of dry soil and brown eyes so dark they were black. Three men with pistols followed them in.

“Chief Rosenberg,” Ashford said.

“Sir,” the red-haired woman said. She didn’t sound like Anna.

“We are on our fourth last-minute delay now. The more time we waste, the more likely it is that the rogue elements in the drum will cause trouble.”

“I’m doing my best, Captain. This isn’t the kind of thing we get to take a second shot at, though. We need to be thorough.”

“Two hours ago, you said we’d be ready to fire in two hours. Are we ready to fire now?”

“No, sir,” she said. “I looked up the specs, and the reactor’s safeties won’t allow an output the size we need. I’m fabricating some new breakers that won’t screw us up. And then we have to replace some cabling as well.”

“How long will that take?” Ashford asked. His voice was dry. Clarissa thought she heard danger in it, but the engineer didn’t react to it.

“Six hours, six and a half hours,” she said. “The fab printers only go so fast.”

Ashford nodded and turned to the second woman. Ruiz.

“Do you agree with that assessment?”

“All respect to Chief Rosenberg, I don’t,” Ruiz said. “I don’t see why we can’t use conductive foam instead.”

“How long would that take?”

“Two hours,” Ruiz said.

Ashford drew a pistol. Almost before the chief engineer’s eyes could widen, the gun fired. In the tight quarters, the sound itself was an assault. Sam’s head snapped back and her feet kicked forward. A bright red globe shivered in the air, smaller droplets flying out from it. Violent moons around a dead planet.

“Mister Ruiz,” Ashford said. “Please be ready to fire in two hours.”

For a moment, the woman was silent. She shook her head like she was trying to come back from a dream.

“Sir,” she said.

Ashford smiled. He was enjoying the effect he’d just had.

“You can go,” he said. “Tick-tock. Tick-tock.”

Ruiz and the three guards pulled themselves back out. Ashford put his pistol away.

“Would someone please clean this mess away,” he said.

“My God,” Cortez said, his voice somewhere between a prayer and blasphemy. “Oh my God. What have you done?”

Ashford craned his neck. Two of the guards moved forward. One of them had a utility vacuum. When he thumbed it on, the little motor whined. When he put it in the blood, the tone of it dropped half a tone from E to D-sharp.

“I shot a saboteur,” Ashford said, “and cleared the way to saving humanity from the alien threat.”

“You killed her,” Cortez said. “She had no trial. No defense.”

“Father Cortez,” Ashford said, “these are extreme circumstances.”

“But—”

Ashford turned, bending his just-too-large Belter head forward.

“With all respect, this is my command. These are my people. And if you think I am prepared to accept another mutiny, you are very much mistaken.” There was a buzz in the captain’s voice like a drunk man on the edge of a fight. Clarissa put a hand on Cortez’s shoulder and shook her head.

The older man frowned, ran a hand across his white hair, and put on a professionally compassionate expression.

“I understand the need for discipline, Captain,” Cortez said. “And even some violence, if it is called for, but—”

“Don’t make me put you back in the drum,” Ashford said. Cortez closed his mouth, his head bowed as if being humbled was old territory for him. Even though she knew that wasn’t true, Clarissa felt a warm sympathy for him. He’d seen dead people. He’d seen people die. Seeing someone killed was different. And killing someone was different than that, so in some ways, she was ahead of him.

“Come on,” she said. Cortez blinked at her. There were tears in his eyes, floating more or less evenly across his sclera, unable to fall. “The head’s this way. I’ll get you there.”

“Thank you,” he said.

Two of the guards were wrapping the dead engineer with tape. The bullet had struck just above her right eye, and a hemisphere of blood adhered to it, shuddering but not growing larger. The woman wasn’t bleeding anymore. She was the enemy , Clarissa thought, but the idea had a tentative quality about it. Like she was trying on a vest to see how it fit. She was the enemy and so she deserved to die even though she had red hair like Anna. It wasn’t as comforting as she’d hoped.

In the head, Cortez washed his face and hands with the towelettes and then fed them into the recycler. Clarissa mentally followed them down to the churn and through the guts of the ship. She knew how it would work on the Cerisier or the Prince . Here, she could only speculate.

You’re trying to distract yourself , a small part of herself said. The thought came in words, just like that. Not from outside, not from someone else. A part of her talking to the rest. You’re trying to distract yourself.

From what? she wondered.

“Thank you,” Cortez said. His smile looked more familiar now. More like the man she saw on screens. “I knew that there would be some resistance to doing the right thing here. But I wasn’t ready for it. Spiritually, I wasn’t ready for it. Surprised me.”

“It’ll do that,” Clarissa said.

Cortez nodded. He was about her father’s age. She tried to imagine Jules-Pierre Mao floating in the little space, weeping over a dead engineer. She couldn’t. She couldn’t imagine him here at all, couldn’t picture what he looked like exactly. All of her impressions were of his power, his wit, his overwhelming importance. The physical details were beside the point. Cortez looked at himself in the mirror, set his own expression.

He’s about to die , she thought. He’s about to condemn himself and everyone on this ship to dying beyond help, here in the darkness, because he thinks it is the right and noble thing to do . Was that what Ashford was doing too? She wished now that she’d talked to him more when they’d been prisoners together. Gotten to understand him and who he was. Why he was willing to die for this. And more than that, why he was willing to kill. Maybe it was altruism and nobility. Maybe it was fear. Or grief. As long as he did what needed doing, it didn’t matter why, but she found she was curious. She knew why she was here, at least. To redeem herself. To die for a reason, and make amends.

You’re trying to distract yourself.

“—don’t you think?” Cortez said. His smile was gentle and rueful, and she didn’t have any idea what he’d been saying.

“I guess,” she said and pushed back from the doorframe to give him room. Cortez pulled himself by handholds, trying to keep his body oriented with head toward the ceiling and feet toward the floor, even though crawling along the walls was probably safer and more efficient. It was something people who lived with weight did by instinct. Clarissa only noticed it because she wasn’t doing it. The room was just the room, no up or down, anything a floor or a wall or a ceiling. She expected a wave of vertigo that didn’t come.