Expanse 03 - Abaddon’s Gate (7 page)

And somehow, he was going to make the mission work. Because Fred had asked him to.

“Hey, chief,” Serge said. Bull looked up from the terminal feed in his desk. Serge stood in the office doorway. “Shift’s up, and I’m out.”

“All right,” Bull said. “I still got some stuff. I can lock up when I’m done.”

“Bien alles,” Serge said with a nod. His light, shuffling footsteps hissed through the front room. In the corridor, Gutmansdottir stroked his white beard and Casimir said something that made them both chuckle. Corin lifted her chin to Serge as he stepped out. The door closed behind him. When he was sure he was alone, Bull pulled up the operational plan and started hunting. He didn’t have authority to change it, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t change anything.

Two hours later, when he was done, he turned off the screen and stood. The office was dark and colder than he liked it. The hum of the ventilation system comforted him. If it were ever completely silent, that would be the time to worry. He stretched, the vertebrae between his shoulder blades crunching like gravel.

They would still be in the bar, most likely. Serge and Corin and Casimir. Macondo and Garza, so similar they could have been brothers. Jojo. His people, to the degree that they were his. He should go. Be with them. Make friends.

He should go to his bunk.

“Come on, old man,” he said. “Time to get some rest.”

He had closed and locked the office door before Sam’s voice came to him in his memory.
Even if everyone’s sober and working balls-out, my crew can’t get it done faster than that.
He hesitated, his wide fingers over the keypad. It was late. He needed food and sleep and an hour or so checking in with the family aggregator his cousin had set up three years before to help everyone keep track of who was living where. He had a container of flash-frozen green chile from Hatch, back on Earth, waiting for him. It was all going to be there in the morning, and more besides. He didn’t need to make more work for himself. No one was going to thank him for it.

He went back in, turned his desk back on, and reread the injury report.

 

 

Sam had a good laugh. One that came from the gut. It filled the machining bay, echoing off ceiling and walls until it sounded like there was a crowd of her. Two of the techs on the far side turned to look toward her, smiling without knowing what they were smiling about.

“Technical support?” she said. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Rail gun’s a pretty technical piece of equipment,” Bull said. “It needs support.”

“So you redefined what I do as technical support.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s never going to fly,” she said.

“Then get the job done quick,” Bull said.

“Ashford will pull you up for disciplinary action,” she said, the amusement fading but not quite gone yet.

“He has that right. But there’s this other thing I wanted to talk about. You said something yesterday about how long it would take to do the job if everyone on your crew was sober?”

It was like turning off a light. The smile left Sam’s face as if it had never been there. She crossed her arms. Tiny half-moon shapes dented in at the corners of her mouth, making her look older than she was. Bull nodded to her like she’d said something.

“You’ve got techs coming to work high,” he said.

“Sometimes,” she said. And then, reluctantly, “Some of it’s alcohol, but mostly it’s pixie dust to make up for lack of sleep.”

“I got a report about a kid got his knee blown out. His blood was clean, but it doesn’t look like anyone tested the guy who was driving the mech. Driver isn’t even named in the report. Weird, eh?”

“If you say so,” she said.

Bull looked down at his feet. The gray-and-black service utility boots. The spotless floor.

“I need a name, Sam.”

“You know I can’t do that,” she said. “These assholes are my crew. If I lose their respect, we’re done here.”

“I won’t bust your guys unless they’re dealing.”

“You can’t ask me to pick sides. And sorry for saying this, but you already don’t have a lot of friends around here. You should be careful how you alienate people.”

Across the bay, the two technicians lifted a broken mech onto a steel repair hoist. The murmur of their conversation was just the sound of words without the words themselves. If he couldn’t hear them, Bull figured they couldn’t hear him.

“Yeah. So Sam?”

“Bull.”

“I’m gonna need you to pick sides.”

He watched her vacillate. It only took a few seconds. Then he looked across the bay. The technicians had the mech open, pulling an electric motor out of its spine. It was smaller than a six-pack of beer and built to put out enough torque to rip steel. Not the sort of thing to play with drunk. Sam followed his gaze and his train of thought.

“For a guy who bends so many rules, you can be pretty fucking uncompromising.”

“Strong believer in doing what needs to get done.”

It took her another minute, but she gave him a name.

“
U
ranus is really far away,” Naomi said as they walked along the corridor to the docking bay. It was the third objection to the contract that she’d listed so far, and something in her voice told Holden there were a lot more points on her list. Under other circumstances, he would have thought she was just angry that he’d accepted the job. She
was
angry. But not
just
.

“Yes,” he said. “It is.”

“And Titania is a shitty little moon with one tiny little science base on it,” Naomi continued.

“Yes.”

“We could
buy
Titania for what it cost these people to hire us to fly out there,” Naomi said.

Holden shrugged. This part of Ceres was a maze of cheap warehouse tunnels and even cheaper office space. The walls were the grungy off-white of spray-on insulation foam. Someone with a pocketknife and a few minutes to kill could reach the bedrock of Ceres without much effort. From the ratty look of the corridor, there were a lot of people with knives and idle time.

A small forklift came down the corridor toward them with an electric whine and a constant high-pitched beep. Holden backed up against the wall and pulled Naomi to him to get her out of its way. The driver gave Holden a tiny nod of thanks as she drove by.

“So why are they hiring us?” she asked. Demanded.

“Because we’re awesome?”

“Titania has, what, a couple hundred people living at the science base?” Naomi said. “You know how they usually send supplies out there? They load them into a single-use braking rocket, and fling them at Uranus’ orbit with a rail gun.”

“Usually,” Holden agreed.

“And the company? Outer Fringe Exports? If I was making a cheap, disposable shell corporation, you know what I’d call it?”

“Outer Fringe Exports?”

“Outer Fringe Exports,” she said.

Naomi stopped at the entry hatch that opened to the rental docking bay and the
Rocinante
. The sign overhead listed the present user: Outer Fringe Exports. Holden started to reach for the controls to cycle the pressure doors open, but Naomi put a hand on his arm.

“These people are hiring a warship to transport something to Titania,” she said, lowering her voice as though afraid someone might be listening. “How can they possibly afford to do that? Our cargo hold is the size of a hatbox.”

“We gave them a good rate?” Holden said, trying for funny and failing.

“What would someone be sending to Titania that requires a fast, stealthy, and heavily armed ship? Have you asked what’s in those crates we signed up to carry?”

“No,” Holden said. “No, I haven’t. And I normally would, but I’m trying really hard not to find out.”

Naomi frowned at him, her face shifting between angry and concerned. “Why?”

Holden pulled out his hand terminal and called up an orbital map of the solar system. “See this, all the way on this edge? This is the Ring.” He scrolled the display to the other edge of the solar system. “And this is Uranus. They are literally the two spots furthest from each other in the universe that have humans near them.”

“And?” Naomi said.

Holden took a deep breath. He could feel a surge of the anxiety he always tried to deny leaping up in him, and he pushed it back down.

“And I know I don’t talk about it much, but something really unpleasant and really big with a really high body count knows my name, and it’s connected to the Ring.”

“Miller,” Naomi said.

“The Ring opened, and he
knew when it happened
. It was the closest thing to making sense he’s done since…”

Since he rose from the dead
. The words didn’t fit in his throat, and Naomi didn’t make him say them. Her nod was enough. She understood. In an act of legendary cowardice, he was running away to the other side of the solar system to avoid Miller and the Ring and everything that had to do with them. If they had to transport black market human organs or drugs or sexbots or whatever was in those crates, he’d do it. Because he was scared.

Her eyes were unreadable. After all this time, she could still keep her thoughts out of her expression when she wanted to.

“Okay,” Naomi said, and pushed the entry door open for him.

At the outer edge of Ceres where the spin gravity was greatest, Holden almost felt like he could have been on Luna or Mars. Loading gantries fed into the skin of the station like thick veins, waiting for the mechs to load in the cargo. Poorly patched scars marked the walls where accidents had marred them. The air smelled of coolant and the kind of cheap air filters that reminded Holden of urinal cakes. Amos lounged on a small electric power lift, his eyes closed.

“We get the job?”

“We did,” Naomi said.

Amos cracked an eye open as they came near. A single frown line drew itself on his broad forehead.

“We happy about that?” he asked.

“We’re fine with it,” Naomi said. “Let’s get the lift warmed up. Cargo’s due in ten minutes and we probably want to get it off station as quickly as we can without raising suspicion.”

There was a beauty in the efficiency that came from a crew that had flown together as long as they had. A fluidity and intimacy and grace that grew from long experience. Eight minutes after Holden and Naomi had come in, the
Roci
was ready to take on cargo. Ten minutes later, nothing happened. Then twenty. Then an hour. Holden paced the gantry nearest the entry hatch with an uncomfortable tingling crawling up the back of his neck.

“You
sure
we got this job?” Amos asked.

“These guys seemed really sketchy to me,” Naomi said over the comm from her station in ops. “I’d think we’ve been scammed, except we haven’t given anyone our account numbers.”

“We’re on the clock here, boss,” Alex said from the cockpit. “These loading docks charge by the minute.”

Holden bit back his irritation and said, “I’ll call again.”

He pulled out his terminal and connected to the export company’s office. Their messaging system responded, as it had the last three times he’d requested a connection. He waited for the beep that would let him leave another message. Before he could, his display lit up with an incoming connection request from the same office. He switched to it.

“Holden here.”

“This is a courtesy call, Captain Holden,” the voice on the other end said. The video feed was the Outer Fringe Exports logo on a gray background. “We’re withdrawing the contract, and you might want to consider leaving that dock very, very soon.”

“You can’t back out now,” Holden said, trying to keep his voice calm and professional against the rising panic he felt. “We’ve signed the deal. We’ve got your deposit. It’s non-refundable.”

“Keep it,” his caller said. “But we consider your failure to inform us of your current situation as a prior breach.”

Situation?
Holden thought. They couldn’t know about Miller. He didn’t think they could. “I don’t—”

“The party that’s tracking you left our offices about five minutes ago, so you should probably get off Ceres in a hurry. Goodbye, Mr. Holden—”

“Wait!” Holden said. “Who was there? What’s going on?”

The call ended.

Amos was rubbing his pale, stubble-covered scalp with both hands. He sighed and said, “We got a problem, right?”

“Yep.”

“Be right back,” Amos replied, and climbed off the forklift.

“Alex? How long till we can clear this dock?” Holden asked. He loped across the bay to the entry hatch. There didn’t seem to be any way to lock it from his side. Why would there be? The bays were temporary rental space for loading and unloading cargo. No need for security.

“She’s warmed up,” Alex replied, not asking the obvious question. Holden was grateful for that. “Gimme ten to run the decouplin’ sequence, that should do it.”

“Start now,” Holden said, hurrying back toward the airlock. “Leave the ’lock open till the last minute. Amos and I will be out here making sure no one interferes.”

“Roger that, Cap,” Alex replied, and dropped the connection.

“Interferes?” Naomi said. “What’s going on… Okay, why is Amos going out there with a shotgun?”

“Those sketchy, scary gangster types we just signed on with?”

“Yes?”

“They just dropped
us
. And whatever scared them into doing it is coming here right now. I don’t think guns are an overreaction.”

Amos ran down the ramp, holding his auto-shotgun in his right hand and an assault rifle in his left. He tossed the rifle to Holden, then took up a cover position behind the forklift and aimed at the bay’s entry hatch. Like Alex, he didn’t ask why.

“Want me to come out?” Naomi asked.

“No, but prepare to defend the ship if they get past me and Amos,” Holden replied, then moved over to the forklift’s recharging station. It was the only other cover in the otherwise empty bay.

In a conversational tone, Amos said, “Any idea what we’re expecting here?”

“Nope,” Holden said. He clicked the rifle to autofire and felt a faint nausea rising in his throat.

“All right, then,” Amos said cheerfully.

“Eight minutes,” Naomi said from his hand terminal. Not a long time, but if they were trying to hold the bay under hostile fire, it would seem like an eternity.

The entry warning light at the cargo bay entrance flashed yellow three times, and the hatch slid open.

“Don’t shoot unless I do,” Holden said quietly. Amos grunted back at him.

A tall blond woman walked into the bay. She had an Earther’s build, a video star’s face, and couldn’t have been more than twenty. When she saw the two guns pointed at her, she raised her hands and wiggled her fingers. “Not armed,” she said. Her cheeks dimpled into a grin. Holden tried to imagine why a supermodel would be looking for him.

“Hi,” Amos said. He was grinning back at her.

“Who are you?” Holden said, keeping his gun trained on her.

“My name’s Adri. Are you James Holden?”

“I can be,” Amos said, “if you want.” She smiled. Amos smiled back, but his weapon was still in a carefully neutral position.

“What’ve we got down there?” Naomi asked, her voice tense in his ear. “Do we have a threat?”

“I don’t know yet,” Holden said.

“You are, though, right? You’re James Holden,” Adri said, walking toward him. The assault rifle in his hands didn’t seem to bother her at all. Up close, she smelled like strawberries and vanilla. “
Captain
James Holden, of the
Rocinante
?”

“Yes,” he said.

She held out a slim, throwaway hand terminal. He took it automatically. The terminal displayed a picture of him, along with his name and his UN citizen and UN naval ID numbers.

“You’ve been served,” she said. “Sorry. It was nice meeting you, though.”

She turned back to the door and walked away.

“What the fuck?” Amos said to no one, dropping the muzzle of his gun to the floor and rubbing his scalp again.

“Jim?” Naomi said.

“Give me a minute.”

He paged through the summons, jumping past seven pages of legalese to get to the point: The Martians wanted their ship back. Official proceedings had been started against him in both Earth and Martian courts challenging the salvage claim to the
Rocinante
. Only they were calling it the
Tachi
. The ship was under an order of impound pending adjudication, effective immediately.

His short conversation with Outer Fringe Exports suddenly made a lot more sense.

“Cap?” Alex said through the connection. “I’m getting a red light on the docking clamp release. I’m puttin’ a query in. Once I get that cleared, we can pop the cork.”

“What’s going on out there?” Naomi asked. “Are we still leaving?”

Holden took a long, deep breath, sighed, and said something obscene.

 

 

The longest layover the
Rocinante
had taken since Holden and the others had gone independent had been five and a half weeks. The twelve days that the
Roci
spent in lockup seemed longer. Naomi and Alex were on the ship most of the time, putting inquiries through to lawyers and legal aid societies around the system. With every letter and conversation, the consensus grew. Mars had been smart to begin legal proceedings in Earth courts as well as their own. Even if Holden and the
Roci
slipped the leash at Ceres, all major ports would be denied them. They’d have to skulk from one gray-market Belter port to the next. Even if there was enough work, they might not be able to find supplies to keep them flying.

If they took the case before a magistrate, they might or might not lose the ship, but it would be expensive to find out. Accounts that Holden had thought of as comfortably full suddenly looked an order of magnitude too small. Staying on Ceres Station made him antsy; being on the
Roci
left him sad.