“And she has combat implants,” Ashford was saying as he pointed his fist back toward her. One of the guards looked back toward her. The one with off-colored eyes and the scar on his chin. Jojo.
“You sure she’s one of us, Captain?”
“The enemy of my enemy, Jojo,” Ashford said.
“I will vouch for her,” Cortez said.
You shouldn’t, Clarissa thought, but didn’t say.
“Claro,” Jojo said with a Belter gesture equivalent to a shrug. “She’s on command deck with tu alles tu.”
“That’ll be fine,” Ashford said.
The hall opened into a larger corridor. White LEDs left the walls looking pale and antiseptic. A dozen people armed with slug throwers, men and women both, sat in electric carts or stood beside them. Clarissa wanted the air itself to smell different, but it didn’t. It was all just plastic and heat. Captain Ashford and three armed men jostled in the cart just ahead.
“It will take some time before the ship is fully secured,” Cortez said. “We’ll have to gather what allies we can. Suppress the resistance. Once we assemble everything we need and get off the drum, they won’t be able to stop us.” He sounded like he was trying to talk himself into believing something. “Don’t be afraid. This has all happened for a reason. If we have faith, there is nothing to fear.”
“I’m not afraid,” Clarissa said. Cortez looked over at her, a smile in his eyes. When he met her gaze the smile faltered a little. He looked away.
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Bull
Bull tried not to cough. The doctor listened to his breath, moved the stethoscope a few inches, listened some more. He couldn’t tell if the little silver disk was cold. He couldn’t feel it. He coughed up a hard knob of mucus and accepted a bit of tissue from the doctor to spit it into. She tapped a few notes into her hand terminal. The light from its screen showed how tired she looked.
“Well, you’re clearing a little,” the doctor said. “Your white count is still through the roof, though.”
“And the spine?”
“Your spine is a mess, and it’s getting worse. By which I mean it’s getting harder to make it better.”
“That’s a sacrifice.”
“When’s it going to be enough?” she asked.
“Depends on what you mean by ‘it,’” Bull said.
“You wanted to get everyone together. They’re together.”
“Still got crews on half the ships.”
“Skeleton crews,” the doctor said. “I know how many people you have on this ship. I treat them. You wanted to bring everyone together. They’re together. Is that enough?”
“Be nice to make sure everyone doesn’t just start shooting at each other,” Bull said.
The doctor lifted her hands, exasperated. “So as soon as humans aren’t humans anymore, then you’ll let me do my job.”
Bull laughed, which was a mistake. His cough was deeper now, rattling in the caverns of his chest, but it wasn’t violent. Before he could really work up a good gut-wrencher, he’d need abdominal muscles that fired. The doctor handed him another tissue. He used it.
“We get everything under control,” he said, “you can knock me out, all right?”
“Is that going to happen?” she asked. It was the thing everyone wanted to know, whether they came right out and said it or not. The truth was, he didn’t like the plan. Part of that was because it came from Jim Holden, part was that it came from the protomolecule, and part was that he badly wanted it to be true. The fallback was that he’d start evacuating who he could with the shuttles he had, except that shuttles weren’t built for long-haul work. It wasn’t viable.
They had to start making food. Generating soil to fill the interior of the drum. Growing crops under the false strip of sun that ran along the Behemoth’s axis. And getting the goddamned heat under control. He had to see to it that they made it, whatever that meant. Medical comas could last a pretty long time when ships slower than a decent fastball made a voyage across emptiness wider than Earth’s oceans.
All of the reasons they’d come out—Earth, Mars, the OPA; all of them—seemed almost impossibly distant. Worrying about the OPA’s place in the political calculus of the system was like trying to remember whether he’d paid back a guy who bought him a beer when he was twenty. After a certain point, the past becomes irrelevant. Nothing that happened outside the slow zone mattered. All that counted now was keeping things civilized until they found out if Holden’s mad plan was more than a pipe dream.
And in order to do that, he had to keep breathing.
“Might pull it off. Captain Pa’s got a plan she’s looking at might get us burning again. Maybe,” he said. “While we’re waiting, though, you think you could hook me up?”
She scowled, but she got an inhaler from the pack beside the bed and tossed it to him. His arms still worked. He shook the thing twice, then put the formed ceramics to his lips and breathed. The steroids smelled like the ocean, and they burned a little. He tried not to cough.
“That’s not going to fix anything,” she said. “All we’re doing is masking the symptoms.”
“It’s just got to get me through,” Bull said, trying out a smile. The truth was he felt like crap. He didn’t hurt, he just felt tired. And sick. And desperate.
With the inhaler stowed, he angled the walker back out toward the corridor. The medical bays were still full. The growing heat gave everything the sick, close feeling of a tropical summer. The smell of bodies and illness, blood and corruption and fake floral antiseptics made the rooms feel smaller than they were. Practice had made him more graceful with the mechanism. He used the two joysticks to shift out of the way of the nurses and therapists, making himself as unobtrusive as the rig allowed as he made his way back toward the security office.
His hand terminal chimed. He drove to a turn in the corridor, snugging himself into the corner to stay out of the way, then dropped the joysticks and took up the terminal. Corin requesting a connection. He thumbed to accept.
“Corin,” he said. “What you got?”
“Boss?” she said. The tension in her voice brought his head up a degree. “You running a drill?”
“What’s going on?”
“Jojo and Gutmansdottir just came by and said they were taking over the security office. When I told them they could have it when my shift was up, they drew down on me.”
Bull felt a black dread descending upon him. He gripped the terminal and kept his voice low.
“They what?”
He pulled up his security interface, but the red border refused him. He was locked out of the command systems. They’d been moving fast.
“Was hoping it was some kind of test. Way they were talking, I got the feeling they were looking to find you there. I’m heading over to Serge’s. He’s trying to figure out what the hell’s going on,” she said. “If it was the wrong call—”
“It wasn’t. You walked away, you did the right thing. Where were they supposed to be?”
“Sir?”
“They were on shift. Where were they supposed to be?”
For a moment, Corin’s wide face was a mask of confusion. He watched her understand, a calm and deadly focus coming into her eyes. She didn’t need to say it. Jojo and Gutmansdottir had been guarding the prisoners. Meaning Ashford.
Pa should have let him kill the bastard.
“Okay. Find Serge and anyone you trust. We’ve got to get this shit contained.”
“Bien.”
They’d be going for the armory. If they had security, the guns and gear were already theirs. Bull let a thin trickle of conversational obscenities fall from his lips while he tried to think. If he knew how many of his people had turned back to Ashford, he’d know what he had to work with.
“We can’t let him get to Monica and the broadcast center,” Bull said. “It gets out that we’ve got fighting in the drum, we’ll get a dozen half-assed rescue missions trying to get their people out.”
“You w
ant us to concentrate there?” Corin asked.
“Don’t concentrate anywhere,” Bull said. “Not until we know what we’re looking at. Just get as many people and guns as you can and stay in touch.”
He had to get a plan. He had to have one now, only his brain wasn’t working the way it should. He was sick. Hell, he was dying. It seemed deeply unfair that he should have to improvise at the same time.
“Get to Serge,” he said. “We’ll worry about it from there. I’ve got some people I’ve got to talk to.”
“Bien, boss,” Corin repeated, and dropped the connection.
A nurse pushed a rolling table around the corner, and Bull had to put his terminal away in order to step out of the man’s path. He wished like hell he could walk and hold his terminal at the same damn time. He requested a priority connection to Pa. For a long moment, he was sure she wouldn’t pick up, that Ashford had gotten to her already. The screen flickered, and she was there. He couldn’t see what room she was in, but there were voices speaking in the background.
“Mister Baca,” Pa said.
“Ashford’s loose,” he said. “I don’t know how many people he’s got or what he’s doing, but a couple of my people just drew weapons and took over the security station.”
Pa blinked. To her credit, she didn’t show even a moment’s fear, only the mental shifting of gears.
“Thank you, Mister Baca,” Pa said. He could tell from the movement of her image on the screen that she was already walking away from wherever she’d been. Getting someplace unpredictable. That was what he needed to be doing too.
“I’ll try to get in touch when I have a better idea what I’m looking at,” he said.
“I appreciate that,” she said. “I have a few people nearby that I trust. I’m going there now.”
“I figure he’s going to try to take over the broadcast station.”
“Then we’ll try to reinforce them,” Pa said.
“Maybe it’s just a few assholes,” Bull said. “Ashford may be trying to keep his head low too.”
“Or he may be getting ready to throw us both into a soil recycler,” Pa said. “Which way do you want to bet?”
Bull smiled. He almost meant it.
“Take care of yourself, Captain.”
“You too, Mister Baca.”
“And hey,” he said. “I’m sorry I got you into this.”
Now it was Pa’s turn to smile. She looked tired. She looked old.
“You didn’t make any decisions for me,” she said. “If I’m paying for my sins, at least give me that they’re mine.”
Her gaze jumped up from the terminal’s camera toward something off the screen. Her lips pressed thin and the connection dropped. Bull had to fight not to request another connection, just so he could know what happened. But there wasn’t time. He had to hurry. He tried connections to Ruiz in infrastructure and Chen without getting replies. He wondered how many supporters Ashford had gotten from the upper ranks of the staff. He cursed himself for having let Ashford pass under his radar. But he’d been so busy…
He tried Sam, and almost as soon as he put in the request, she was there.
“We got a problem,” he said. “Ashford’s trying to take back the ship. He’s got security already.”
“And engineering,” Sam said.
Bull licked his lips.
“Where are you, Sam?”
“Right now? Funny you should ask. Engineering. Ashford left about five minutes ago. Had a little wish list of things he’d like me to do and about two dozen fellas with guns and scowls. That man’s lost his shit, Bull. Seriously. He used to be a prick, but… He wants me to take out the Ring. Your comm laser trick? He wants it overclocked.”
“You got to be kidding me.”
“Not.”
“He’s looking to nuke the way home?”
“Calls it saving humanity from the alien threat,” Sam said sweetly. Her eyes were hard.
“All right,” Bull said, even though nothing about this was all right.
“And he’s not at all happy with you. Are you someplace safe?”
Bull looked up and down the corridor. There wasn’t cover. And even if there was, he was one man in a modified lifting mech and no spinal cord past the middle of his back.
“No,” he said. “I don’t think I am.”
“Might want to get moving.”
“I’ve got no place safe to go,” Bull said.
Someone on the other end of the connection shouted and Sam looked up at them.
“I’m trying to scramble up all the technicians I can,” she shouted back. “Things have been a tiny bit disorganized. Had a little trouble with the rules of physics changing on us. Maybe you noticed.”
The first voice shouted again. Bull couldn’t hear the words, but he knew the timbre of the voice. Garza. The guy who’d always gotten bulbs of coffee for whoever was stuck in the security office. Garza was one of theirs. Bull wished he’d gotten to know the man better. Especially after the catastrophe, he should have been checking in with his staff more. He should have seen this all coming.
This was his fault. All of this was his fault.
Sam looked back down at the screen. At him.
“Okay, sweetie,” she said. “You should get scarce. Head for the second level, section M. There’s a bunch of empty storage there. The door codes are all on default. Straight zeros.”
“Why are they on default?”
“Because there’s nothing in them, bossypants, and changing the locks on all the empties never made the top of my to-do list. Is this really the time?”
“Sorry,” Bull said.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Both of us under a little stress right now. Just get your head down before someone knocks it off. And Pa—”
“Pa knows. She’s heading for safety too.”
“All right, then. I’ll try to get you some help.”
“No,” Bull said. “You don’t know who you can trust.”
“Yes, I do,” Sam said. “Let’s don’t argue in front of the children.”
A voice brought him back to the corridor, the medical center. Not the groans of the wounded, not the professional calm of the nurses. Someone was excited and aggressive. Angry. Someone answered in a lower voice, and the first one came back with Do I look like I care? It was trouble, and despite everything, his first impulse was to turn toward it. His job was to get in the middle of things, to make sure that no one got hurt, and if anyone did, it was him. Him first, then the bad guys.
“I got to go,” he said, and dropped the connection. It only took a second to stow his hand terminal and get his palms back on the mech’s controls. Long enough for him to fight back his instincts. He shifted the mech to head down the corridor, away from the voices. They were Ashford’s people. Ashford and whoever was backing him. If he got caught now, he wouldn’t be any use to anybody. Chances were they’d just kill him. Might not even get as far as the airlock first. The mech’s legs moved slowly. Even full-out, it didn’t go more than a modest walk. The voices behind him shifted. Something crashed. He heard his doctor shouting now and waited for the report of gunfire. If they started shooting, he’d have to go back. The mech inched toward the farther door, toward the exit and what passed for safety. Bull pressed the joystick forward so hard his fingers ached, as if the force would make the machine understand the danger.
The voices got louder, coming close. Bull shifted the mech so that it was walking along the wall. If someone came around the corner behind him, it would give him an extra fraction of a second before he was seen. The thick metal legs slid forward, shifted weight, shifted again.
The doorway was six feet away. Four. Three. He let go of the controls and reached out for the door a little too soon and had to inch the mech forward before he tried again. He was sweating, and he hoped it was only fear. If something in his guts had given way, he wouldn’t have known. Probably it was just fear.
The door opened, and he slammed the little joysti
ck forward again. The mech took him through, and he closed the door behind him. He didn’t have time to wait or think. He angled the mech down another hall toward the internal lifts and the long trip to second level, section M.
The great interior halls and passageways of the Behemoth had never seemed less like home. As he descended, the spin gravity grew almost imperceptibly stronger. His numb flesh sat a little heavier in its harness. He was going to have to get someone to change out his piss bag soon unless he could figure out some way to get his arms inside the mech’s frame, but his elbows only bent one direction, so that seemed unlikely. And if his spine didn’t grow back, if they didn’t get the Behemoth and everyone else back out of the trap the protomolecule had caught them in, he’d live like this until he died.
Don’t think about it, he told himself. Too far ahead. Don’t think about it. Just do your job.
He didn’t take one of the main internal lifts. Chances were too good that Ashford’s men would be watching for that. Instead, he found one of the long, spiraling maintenance passages and set the mech to walking on its own. If it drifted too near one wall or the other, he could correct it, but it gave him a few seconds. He pulled out the hand terminal. He was shaking and his skin looked gray under the brown.