“I have two injured men in there. My crew. They’re helpless,” Naomi finally said. “Now they’re as safe as I can make them. So you and I are going to go up to the next deck, get a gun, and make sure she follows us. When she shows up, we’re going to kill her.”
“I don’t—” Anna started.
“Kill. Her. Can you do that?”
“Kill? No. I can’t,” Anna said. It was the truth.
Naomi stared at her for a second longer, then just shrugged with her good hand. “Okay, then, come with me.”
They moved through the next hatch to the deck above. Most of the space was taken up by an airlock and storage lockers. Some of the lockers were large enough to hold vacuum suits and EVA packs. Others were smaller. Naomi opened one of the smaller lockers and pulled out a thick black handgun.
“I’ve never shot anyone either,” she said, pulling the slide back and loading a round. To Anna’s eye the bullet looked like a tiny rocket. “But those two in the med bay are my family, and this is my home.”
“I understand,” Anna said.
“Good, because I can’t have you—” Naomi started, then her eyes rolled up in her head and her body went limp. The gun drifted away from her relaxed hand.
“No no no,” Anna repeated in a sudden wash of panic. She floated over to Naomi and held her wrist. There was still a pulse, but it was faint. She dug through the first aid pack, looking for something to help. One ampule said it was for keeping people from going into shock, so Anna jabbed Naomi with it. She didn’t wake up.
The air in the room began to smell different. Hot, and with the melted plastic odor her damaged taser had given off when it died. A spot of red appeared on the deck hatch, then shifted to yellow, then to white. The girl in the mech, coming for them.
The hatch above them, the one that led forward on the ship, was closed and flashing the lockdown message. Naomi hadn’t told her what the override code was. The airlock was on their level, but it was locked down too.
The deck hatch began to open in lurching increments. Anna could hear Melba panting and cursing as she forced it. And Naomi’s lockdown code hadn’t kept the insane woman out, it had only locked them in.
Anna pulled Naomi’s limp body over to one of the large vacuum suit storage lockers and put her inside, climbing in after her. There was no lock on the door. Between the unconscious woman and the suit, there was hardly enough room for her to close it. She set both of her feet at the corner where the door of the locker met the deck and set the magnets up to full. She felt the suit lock onto the metal, clamping her legs into place and pulling her up close against the locker door.
On the far side, metal shrieked. Something wet brushed against the back of Anna’s neck. Naomi’s hand, limp and bloody. Anna tried not to move, tried not to breathe loudly. The prayer she offered up was hardly more than a confusion of fear and hope.
A locker door slammed open off to her left. Then another one, closer. And then another. Anna wondered where Naomi’s gun had gotten to. It was in the locker somewhere, but there was no light, and she’d have to unlock the magnets on her boots to look for it. She hoped they hadn’t left it outside with the crazy woman. Another locker opened.
The door centimeters from Anna’s face shifted, but didn’t open. The vents and the cracks in the locker door flared the white of a cutting torch, then went dark. A mechanical voice said, “Backup power depleted.” The curse from the other side was pure frustration. It was followed by a series of grunts and thumps: Melba taking the mech rig off. Anna felt a surge of hope.
“Open it,” Melba said. Her voice was low, rough, and bestial.
“No.”
“Open it.”
“You… I can hear that you’re feeling upset,” Anna said, horrified by the words even as she spoke them. “I think we should talk about this if you—”
Melba’s scream was unlike anything Anna had heard before, deep and vicious and wild. If the id had a throat, it would have sounded like that. If the devil spoke.
Something struck the metal door and Anna flinched back. Then another blow. And another. The metal began to bow in, and droplets of blood clung to the vent slits. Her fists, Anna thought. She’s doing this with her hands.
The screaming was wild now, obscene where it wasn’t wordless, and inhuman as a hurricane. The thick metal of the door bent in, the hinges starting to shudder and bend with each new assault. Anna closed her eyes.
The top hinge gave way, shattering.
And then, without warning, silence fell. Anna waited, sure she was being lulled into a trap. No sound came except a small animal gurgle. She could smell the stomach-turning acid stench of fresh vomit. After what felt like hours, she turned off the magnets and pushed the warped and abused door open.
Melba floated curled against the wall, her hands pressed to her belly and her body shuddering.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Bull
The truth was, distance was always measured in time. It wasn’t the sort of thing Bull usually thought about, but his enforced physical stillness was doing strange things with his awareness. Even in the middle of the constant press of events, the calls and coordination, the scolding from his doctor, he felt some part of his mind coming loose. And strange ideas kept floating in, like the way that distance got measured in time.
Centuries before, a trip across the Atlantic Ocean could take months. There was a town near New Mexico named Wheeless where the story was some ancient travelers of the dust and caliche had a wagon break down and decided that it was easier to put down roots than go on. Technologies had come, each building on the ones before, and months became weeks and then hours. And outside the gravity well, where machines were freed from the tyranny of air resistance and gravity, the effect was even more profound. When the orbits were right, the journey from Luna to Mars could take as little as twelve days. The trek from Saturn to Ceres, a few months. And because they were out there with their primate brains, evolved on the plains of prehistoric Africa, everyone had a sense of how far it was. Saturn to Ceres was a few months. Luna to Mars was a few days. Distance was time, and so they didn’t get overwhelmed by it.
The slow zone had changed that. Looking at a readout, the ships from Earth and Mars were clustered together like a handful of dried peas thrown in the same bowl. They were drifting now, coming together and spreading apart, taking their places in the captured ring around the eerie station. Compared to the volume of ring-bordered sphere, they seemed huddled close. But the distance between them and the Ring was time, and time meant death.
From the farthest of the ships to the Behemoth was two days’ travel in a shuttle, assuming that the maximum speed didn’t ratchet down again. The closest, he could have jumped to. The human universe had contracted, and was contracting more. With every connection, every stark, frightened voice he heard in the long, frantic hours, Bull grew more convinced that his plan could work. The vastness and strangeness and unreasonable danger of the universe had traumatized everyone it hadn’t killed. There was a hunger to go home, to huddle together, back in the village. The instinct was the opposite of war, and as long as he could see it cultivated, as long as the response to the tragedies of the lockdown were to get one another’s backs and see that everyone who needed care got it, the grief and fear might not turn to more violence.
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.
“It’s going to be better for all of us if we can get everyone together,” Bull said. “Pool resources and plan the evacuation. If you don’t have shuttles, I can arrange transportation for you and your crew. There’s plenty of space here.”
“I agree that it would be better to be under a single command,” Jakande said. “If you are offering to turn over the Behemoth, I’m willing to accept control and responsibility.”
“Not where I was taking that, no,” Bull said.
“I didn’t think so.”
“Mister Baca,” Ashford barked from the doorway. Bull held out a hand in a just-a-minute gesture.
“This is something we’re going to have to revisit,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of respect for you and your position, and I’m sure we can find a way to get this done right.”
Her expression made it clear she didn’t see anything wrong.
“I’ll be in touch,” Bull said, and dropped the connection. So much for the pleasant part of his day. Ashford pulled himself through the door, coming to rest against the wall nearest the foot of Bull’s bed. He looked angry, but it was a different kin
d of angry. Bull was used to seeing Ashford cautious, even tentative. This man wasn’t either. Everything about him spoke of barely restrained rage. Grief makes people crazy, Bull thought. Grief and guilt and embarrassment all together maybe did worse.
Maybe it broke people.
Pa floated in behind him, her eyes cast down. Her face had the odd waxy look that came from exhaustion. The doctor followed her, and then Serge and Macondo looking anyplace but at him. The crowd filled the little room past its capacity.
“Mister Baca,” Ashford said, biting at each syllable. “I understand you gave the order to disarm the ship. Is that true?”
“Disarm the ship?” Bull said, and looked at Doctor Sterling. Her gaze was straight on and unreadable. “I had Sam take the rail guns off so we could spin up the drum.”
“And you did this without my permission.”
“Permission for what?”
Blood darkened Ashford’s face, and rage roughened his voice.
“The rail guns are a central component of this ship’s defensive capabilities.”
“Not if they don’t work,” Bull said. “I had her take apart the thrust-gravity water reclamation system too. Rebuild it at ninety degrees so it’ll use the spin. You want me to run through all the stuff I’m having her repurpose because it doesn’t work anymore, or are we just caring about the guns?”
“I also understand that you have authorized non-OPA personnel to have access to the communications channels of the ship? Earthers. Martians. All the people we came out here to keep in line.”
“Is that why we came out here?” Bull said. It wasn’t a denial, and that seemed to be close enough to a confession for Ashford. Besides which, it wasn’t like Bull had been hiding it.
“And enemy military personnel? You’re bringing them aboard my ship as well?”
Pa had agreed to everything Ashford was listing off. But she stood behind the captain, not speaking up, expression unreadable. Bull wasn’t sure what was going on between the captain and his XO, but if they were working out some internal power struggle, Bull knew which side he’d want to end up on. So he bit the bullet and didn’t mention Pa’s involvement. “Yes, I’m bringing in everyone I can get. Humanitarian outreach and consolidation of control. It’s textbook. A second-year would know to do it.” Pa winced at that.