Текст книги "Abaddon's Gate"

Автор книги: James S.A. Corey

Соавторы: Daniel Abraham
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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 31 страниц)

“There’s a siren,” Bull yelled as he passed the young man, and got an insolent nod in reply.

“Okay,” Serge said from the terminal. “We’re getting the first security analysis. Best guess, something blew out in one of the power conduits, fused the safety systems so they couldn’t shut it down. Would have taken about that long to turn the whole starboard main circuit to molten slag.”

“What blew?” Bull demanded.

“Probably a maneuvering thruster. About the right place for one. Get it hot enough, water skips steam and just goes straight to plasma. Cuts right through the bulkheads around it.”

Bull turned the cart around a tight corner and slowed to let a half dozen pedestrians get out of his way.

“Why’d they dump core?”

“Don’t know, but probably they thought they’d lose containment. They got six ships diverting now to keep from plowing into that mierda.”

“If they’d lost containment it’d be worse. They’d be diverting to avoid bodies and shrapnel. Are there survivors?”

“Yeah. They’re putting out the distress request. Medical and evacuation. Sounds pretty fucked up, que no?”

“What about trace data. Can we tell who shot ’em?”

“No one shot ’em. Either it was a straight accident, orc”

“Or?”

“Or it wasn’t.”

Bull bit his lip. An accident would be bad enough. People on all sides of the system’s power structure were on edge, and a reminder that Earth’s fleet was aging and poorly maintained wouldn’t make anything easier. Sabotage would be worse. The closest thing to good news was that everyone had seen it and there wouldn’t be any accusations of enemy action. If there’d been a gauss round or a lucky missile that had slipped through the Seung Un’s defenses undetected, the scientific mission could turn into a shooting war faster than Bull wanted to think about.

“Are we offering assistance?” Bull asked.

“Give us a breath, boss,” Serge said. “Ashford ain’t hearing any of this faster than us.”

Bull leaned forward, his hands wrapping the steering controls until his knuckles went white. Serge was right. What happened outside the ship was Ashford’s problem. And Pa’s. He was security chief, and he needed to think about what needed doing inside the Behemoth. People would be scared, and it was his job to make sure that fear didn’t turn into hysteria. Watching a ship blow out—even an enemy ship—reminded everyone how tenuous life was with only a thin skin of steel and ceramic to keep the vacuum at bay. It reminded him. The cart hit a larger bump than usual, and his hand terminal slipped onto its side.

“Okay,” Bull said. “Look, we’re going to need to get relief supplies ready in case the captain decides to offer assistance. How many survivors can we take on?”

Serge’s laughter rasped.

“All of them. We’re the pinche Behemoth. We got enough room for a city, us.”

“Okay,” Bull said, smiling a little despite himself. “It was a stupid question.”

“The only thing we got to worry about is—”

The line went dead.

“Serge? Not funny,” Bull said. And then, “Talk to me, mister.”

“We got something. Broadcast coming from a private corvette called the Rocinante.”

“Why do I know that name?” Bull asked.

“Yeah,” Serge said. “I’m putting it to you.”

The handset screen blacked out, jumped, and then a familiar face appeared. Bull let the cart slow as James Holden, the man whose announcement about the death of the ice hauler Canterburystarted the first war between Earth and Mars, once again made things worse.

“. . . ship that approaches the Ring without my personalpermission will be destroyed without warning. Do not test my resolve.”

“Oh no,” Bull said. “Oh shit no.”

“It has always been a personal mission of mine to assure that information and resources remain free to all people. The efforts of individuals and corporate entities may have helped us to colonize the planets of our solar system and make life possible where it was inconceivable before, but the danger of someone unscrupulous taking control of the Ring is too great. I have proven myself worthy of the trust of the people of the Belt. It is a moral imperative that this shining artifact be protected, and I will spill as much blood as I have to in order to do so.”

Bull scooped up the hand terminal and tried to connect to Ashford. The red trefoil of command block blinked on the screen and shunted him to a menu that let him record a message for later. He tried Pa and got the same thing. Holden’s message was looping now, the replayed words just as idiotic and toxic the second time through. Bull said something obscene through clenched teeth. He pulled on the cart, turning the wheels as far as they would go, and stamped on the accelerator. The central lifts were only a minute or two away. He could get there. Just please God let Ashford not do anything stupid before he got to the bridge.

“That true, boss?” Serge said. “Did Holden just claim us all the Ring?”

“I want everyone on security mobilized right now,” Bull said. “Enemy action protocols. Corridors clear and bulkheads closed. Anyone on a weapons or damage control team, wake ’em up and get ’em dressed. You’re in charge of that.”

“You got it, boss,” Serge said. “Someone asks, where are you?”

“Trying to keep from needing them.”

“Bien.”

The familiar corridors seemed longer than usual, the awkwardness of floors built to be walls and walls intended as ceilings more surreal. If he’d been on a real battleship, there would have been a simple, direct path. If the Behemoth’s great belly had been spinning, it would have been better than this. He willed the cart faster, pushing the engine past what it could do. The alert Klaxon sounded: Serge calling everyone to brace for battle.

A crowd had formed at the lift: men and women trying to get back to their stations. Bull pushed through them, the shortest person there. An Earther, like Holden. At the lift, he activated the security override, called the first car, and stepped in. A tall, dark-skinned man tried to follow him. Bull put a hand on the man’s chest, stopping him.

“Take the next one,” Bull said. “I’m not going where you want to be.”

As the lift rose toward the bridge like it was ascending to heaven, Bull used his hand terminal to grasp for any information. He didn’t have access to the secure channels—only the captain and the XO had those—but there was more than enough public chatter. He ran through the open feeds, grasping for a sense of the situation, watching for a few seconds here, a few seconds there.

The Martian science team and their escort were raging at Holden on every feed, calling him a terrorist and a criminal. The Earth flotilla’s reaction was quieter. Most of the public conversation was coordinating the rescue efforts on the Seung Un. The high-energy gas from the core dump was confusing some of the relief crew’s comms, and someone fairly smart had started using the public feeds to coordinate them. It had the grim efficiency of a military operation, and it gave Bull hope for the Earth navy crew still alive on the Seung Unas much as it scared him about what was going to come after.

Holden’s message was repeating, spilling out over the public feeds. At first it just came from the Rocinante, but soon it was being relayed on other feeds along with commentary. Once the signal got back to the Belt and the inner planets, it was going to be the only thing anyone talked about. Bull could already imagine the negotiations between Earth and Mars, could practically hear them reaching the conclusion that the OPA had gotten too confident and needed to be taken down a notch.

Someone on the Behemothput out a copy of Holden’s message with the split circle emblem over it and a commentary track saying that it was about time that the Belt take its place and demand the respect it deserved. Bull told Serge to find the feed and shut it down.

After what felt like hours and probably wasn’t more than four minutes, the lift reached the bridge, the doors opening silently before him, and let Bull out.

The bridge wasn’t designed for battle. Instead of a real war machine’s system of multiple stations and controlled lines of command, the Behemoth’s bridge was built like the largest tugboat ever made, only with angels blowing golden trumpets adorning the walls. The stations—single stations with a rotating backup scheme—were manned by Belters looking at each other and chatting. The security station was through a separate door and stood unmanned. The bridge crew were acting like children or civilians, their expressions were bright and excited. People who didn’t recognize danger when they saw it and assumed that whatever the crisis was, it would all work out in the end.

Ashford and Pa were at the command station. Ashford was speaking into a camera, talking with someone on one of the other ships. Pa, scowling, strode toward Bull. Her eyes were narrow and her lips bloodless.

“What the hell are you doing here, Mister Baca?”

“I’ve got to talk to the captain,” Bull said.

“Captain Ashford’s busy right now,” Pa said. “You might have noticed we have a situation on our hands. I would have expected you to be at your duty station.”

“Yes, XO, but—”

“Your station isn’t on the bridge. You should leave now.”

Bull clenched his jaw. He wanted to shout at her, but this wasn’t the time for it. He was here to make it work, and that wasn’t going to help.

“We’ve got to shoot him, ma’am,” Bull said. “We’ve got to fire on the Rocinante, and we’ve got to do it now.”

All heads had turned toward them. Ashford ended his transmission and stepped toward them. Uncertainty made him look haughty. The captain’s eyes flickered toward the crew members at their stations and back again. Bull could see how aware Ashford was that he was being watched. It deformed all his decisions, but there wasn’t time for privacy.

“I have this under control, Mister Baca,” Ashford said.

“All respect, Captain,” Bull said, “but we’ve got to shoot down Holden, and we have to do it before anyone else does.”

“We’re not going to do a damn thing until we know what’s going on, mister,” Ashford said, his voice taking a dangerous buzz. “I’ve sent back a request for clarification to Ceres to see whether the higher-ups authorized Holden’s action, and I am monitoring the activity of the Earther fleet.”

The slip was telling. Not UN. Earther. Bull felt the blood in his neck. Ashford’s casual racism and incompetence was about to get them all killed. He gritted his teeth, lowered his head, and raised his voice.

“Sir, there’s a calculation happening right now with Earth and Mars both—”

“This is a potentially volatile situation, Mister Baca—”

“—where they have to decide whether to take direct response or let Holden win—”

“—and I am not going to be the one to throw gas on the fire. Escalating to violence at this point—”

“—and once they start shooting at him, they’re going to start shooting at us.”

Pa’s voice cut through the air like a single flute in a bass symphony.

“He’s right, sir.”

Bull and Ashford turned toward her. Ashford’s surprise was a mirror of his own. The man at the sensor station muttered something to the woman next to him, the hiss of his voice carrying in the sudden silence.

“Mister Baca’s right,” Pa said. “Holden’s identified himself as a representative of the OPA. He’s taken violent action against the Earth forces. The opposing commanders will have to look on us as his backup.”

“Holden isn’t a representative of the OPA,” Ashford said. The bluster made him sound unsure.

“You called Ceres,” Bull said. “If you’re not sure, they’re not either.”

Ashford’s face flushed red.

“Holden hasn’t had any official status with the OPA since Fred Johnson fired him over his handling of Ganymede. If there’s a question, I can clarify with the other commanders that Holden doesn’t speak for us, but no one’s taking any action. The best thing is to wait and let things cool down.”

Pa looked down, then up again. It didn’t matter that she’d humiliated Bull and Sam in front of the command staff. All that counted was doing this next part right. Bull wanted to reach out, touch her arm, lend her the courage to stand up to Ashford.

It turned out she didn’t need it.

“Sir, if we don’t take the initiative, someone else will, and then it’s going to be too late for clarifications. Denials are fine if they’re believed, but Holden and his crew were known to be working with us previously and they’re claiming to represent us now. We’re four hours’ lag to Ceres. We can’t wait for answers. We have to make the division between us and Holden unequivocal. Mister Baca’s right. We need to engage the Rocinante.”

Ashford’s face was gray.

“I’m not going to start a shooting war,” he said.

“You listening to the same feeds as me, Captain?” Bull asked. “Everyone already thinks we did.”

“The Rocinante’s one ship. We can take her out,” Pa said. “If we fight Earth or Mars, we’ll lose.”

The truth lay on the floor between them. Ashford put a hand to his chin. His eyes were flickering back and forth like he was reading something that wasn’t there. Every second he didn’t respond, his cowardice showed through, and Bull could see that the man knew it. Resented it. Ashford was responsible, and didn’t want the responsibility. He was more afraid of looking bad than of losing.

“Mister Chen,” Ashford said. “Get a tightbeam to the Rocinante. Tell Captain Holden that it’s an urgent matter.”

“Yes, sir,” the communications officer said, and then a moment later, “The Rocinanteisn’t accepting the connection, sir.”

“Captain?” the man at the sensor array said. “The Rocinante’s changing course.”

“Where’s she going?” Ashford demanded, his gaze still locked on Bull.

“Um. Toward us? Sir?”

Ashford closed his eyes.

“Mister Corley,” he growled. “Power up the port missile array. Mister Chen, I want tightbeam connections to the Earth and Mars command ships, and I want them now.”

Bull let himself sag back. The sense of urgency giving way to relief and a kind of melancholy. One more time, Colonel Johnson. We dodged the bullet one more time.

“Weapons board is green, sir,” the weapons officer said, her voice crisp and excited as a kid at an arcade.

“Lock target,” Ashford said. “Do I have those tightbeams yet?”

“We’re acknowledged and pending, sir,” Chen said. “They know we want to talk.”

“That’ll do,” Ashford said, and began pacing the bridge like an old-time captain on a wooden quarterdeck. His hands were clasped behind his back.

“We have lock,” the weapons officer said. Then, “The Rocinante’s weapons systems are powering up.”

Ashford sank into his couch. His expression was sour. He’d been hoping, Bull realized, that it might be true. That the OPA might be making a play to control the Ring.

The man was an idiot.

“Should we fire, sir?” the weapons officer asked, the strain in her voice like a dog on a leash. She wanted to. Badly. Bull didn’t think better of her for it. He glanced at Pa, but she was making a point of not looking at him.

“Yes,” Ashford said. “Go ahead. Fire.”

“One away, sir,” the weapons officer said.

“I’m getting an error code,” the operations officer said. “We’re getting feedback from the launcher.”

Bull’s mouth tasted like a penny. If Holden had put a bomb on the Behemothtoo, their problems might only be starting.

“Is the missile out?” Pa snapped. “Tell me we don’t have an armed torpedo stuck in the tube.”

“Yes, sir,” the weapons officer said. “The missile is away. We have confirmation.”

“The Rocinanteis taking evasive maneuvers.”

“Is she returning fire?” Ashford said.

“No, sir. Not yet, sir.”

“I’m getting errors in the electrical grid, sir. I think something’s shorted out. We might—”

The bridge went dark.

“—lose power. Sir.”

The monitors were black. The lights were off. The only sound was the hum of the air recyclers, running, Bull imagined, off the battery backups. Ashford’s voice came out of the darkness.

“Mister Pa, did we ever test-fire the missile systems?”

“I believe it’s on the schedule for next week, sir,” the XO said. Bull tuned his hand terminal screen to its brightest, lifting it like a torch. He glanced up at the emergency lighting set into the walls all around the room, sitting there as dark as everything else. Another system that hadn’t been tested yet.

A few seconds later, half of the bridge crew pulled flashlights out of recessed emergency lockers. The light level came up as beams played across the room. No one spoke. No one needed to. If the Rocinantefired back, they were a dead target, but the chances were that they wouldn’t lose the whole ship. If they’d waited until they were in pitched battle against Earth or Mars or both, the Behemothwould have died. Instead, they’d just shown the whole system how unprepared they were. It was the first time Bull was really glad to be just the security officer.

“XO?” Bull said.

“Yes.”

“Permission to release the chief engineer from house arrest?”

Pa’s face was monochrome gray in the dim light, and solemn as the grave. Still, he thought he saw a glint of bleak amusement in her eyes.

“Permission granted,” she said.

Chapter Sixteen: Holden

“Well,” Amos said. “That’s just fucking peculiar.”

The message began to repeat.

“This is Captain James Holden. What you’ve just seen is a demonstration of the danger you are inc”

The ops deck was in a stunned silence, then Naomi began working the ship ops panel with a quiet fury. In Holden’s peripheral vision, Monica motioned to her crew and Okju lifted a camera. The tacit decision to let the “no civilians on the ops deck” rule slide suddenly seemed like it might have been a mistake.

“It’s a fake,” Holden said. “I never recorded that. That’s not me.”

“Sort of sounds like you, though,” Amos said.

“Jim,” Naomi said, panic beginning to distort her voice. “That broadcast is coming from us. It’s coming from the Rociright now.”

Holden shook his head, denying the assertion outright. The only thing more ridiculous than the message itself was the idea that it was coming from hisship.

“That broadcast is coming from us,” Naomi said, slamming her hand against her screen. “And I can’t stop it!”

Everything seemed to recede from Holden, the noises in the room coming from far away. He recognized it as a panic reaction, but he gave in to it, accepted the short moment of peace it brought. Monica was shouting questions at him he could barely hear. Naomi was furiously pounding on her workstation, flipping through menu screens faster than he could follow. Over the ship’s comm, Alex was shouting demands for orders. From across the room, Amos was staring at him with a look of almost comical puzzlement. The two camera operators, equipment still clutched in one hand, were trying to belt themselves into crash couches with the other. Cohen floated in the middle of the room, lips pursed in a faint frown.

“This was the setup,” Holden said. “This is what it was for.”

Everything: the Martian lawsuit, the loss of his Titania job, the camera crew going to the Ring, all leading to this. The only thing he couldn’t imagine was why.

“What do you mean?” Monica asked, pushing close to get into the shot with him. “What setup?”

Amos put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head once.

“Naomi,” Holden said, “is the only system you’ve lost control of comms?”

“I don’t know. I think so.”

“Then kill it. If you can’t, help Amos isolate the entire comm system from the power grid. Cut it out of the damn ship if you have to.”

She nodded again and then turned to Amos.

“Alex,” Holden said. Monica started to say something to him, but he held up one finger to silence her, and she closed her mouth with a snap. “Get us burning toward the Behemoth. We’re not really claiming the Ring for the OPA, but as long as everyone thinks we are, they’re the team least likely to shoot us.”

“What can you tell me about what’s going on?” Monica said. “Are we in danger here? Is this dangerous?” Her usual smirk was gone. Open fear had replaced it.

“Strap in,” Holden said. “All of you. Do it now.”

Okju and Clip were already belted into crash couches, and Monica and Cohen quickly followed suit. The entire documentary crew had the good sense to stay quiet.

“Cap,” Alex said. His voice had taken on the almost sleepy tone he got when in a high-stress situation. “The Behemothjust lit us up with their targeting laser.”

Holden belted himself into the combat ops station and warmed it up. The Rocibegan counting ships within their threat radius. It turned out to be all of them. The ship asked him if any should be marked as hostiles.

“Your guess is as good as mine, honey.”

“Huh?” Naomi asked.

“Um,” Alex said. “Are you guys warming up the weapons?”

“No,” Holden said.

“Oh, I’m really sorry to hear that,” Alex said. “Weapons systems are coming online.”

“Are we shooting at anyone?”

“Not yet?”

Holden told the Rocito mark anything that hit them with a targeting system as hostile and was relieved when the system actually responded. The Behemothshifted to red on the display. Then, after a moment’s thought, he told the ship to lump all the Martians and Earth ships into two groups. If they wound up fighting with one ship in a group, they’d be fighting them all.

There were too many. The Rociwas caught between Fred Johnson’s two-kilometer-long OPA overcompensation and most of the remaining Martian navy. And beyond the Martians, the Ring.

“Okay,” he said, desperately trying to think of what to do now. They were as far from a hiding spot as it was possible to be in the solar system. It was a two-month trip just to the nearest rock bigger than their ship. He doubted he could outrun three fleets and all their torpedoes for two months. Or two minutes, really, if it came to that. “How’s that radio coming?”

“Down,” Amos said. “Easy enough to just pull the plug.”

“Do we have any way to tell everyone that the broadcast wasn’t us? I will happily signal full and complete surrender at this point,” Holden said.

“Not without turning it back on,” Amos replied.

“Everyone out there is probably trying to contact us,” Holden said. “The longer we don’t answer, the worse this will look. What about the weapons?”

“Warmed up, not shooting,” Amos said. “And not responding to us.”

“Can we pull power on those too?”

“We can,” Amos said, looking pained. “But damn, I sure don’t want to.”

“Fast mover!” Naomi yelled.

“Holy shit,” Alex said. “The OPA just fired a torpedo at us.”

On Holden’s panel, a yellow dot separated from the Behemothand shifted to orange as it took off at high g.

“Go evasive!” Holden said. “Naomi, can you blind it?”

“No. No laser,” she replied, her voice surprisingly calm now. “And no radio. Countermeasures aren’t responding.”

“Fuck me,” Amos said. “Why did someone drag us all the way out here just to kill us? Coulda done that at Ceres, saved us the trip.”

“Alex, here’s your course.” Holden sent the pilot a vector that would take them right through the heart of the Martian fleet. As far as he knew, the Martians only wanted to arrest him. That sounded okay. “Has the Behemothfired again?”

“No,” Naomi replied. “They’ve gone dark. No active sensors, no drives.”

“Kinda big and kinda close to be trying for sneaky,” Alex said without any real humor. “Here comes the juice.”

While the couches pumped them full of drugs to keep the high g from killing them, apropos of nothing Cohen said, “Fucking bitch.”

Before Holden could ask what he meant, Alex opened up the Roci’s throttle and the ship took off like a racehorse feeling the spurs. The sudden acceleration slammed Holden into his couch hard enough to daze him for a second. The ship buzzed him back to his senses when a missile proximity alarm warned him the Behemoth’s torpedo was getting closer. Helpless to do anything about it, Holden watched the orange dot that meant all their deaths creeping ever closer to the fleeing Rocinante. He looked up at Naomi, and she was looking back, as helpless as he was, all her best tricks taken away when the comm array was powered down.

The gravity dropped suddenly. “Got an idea,” Alex said over the comm, then the ship jerked through several sharp maneuvers, and the gravity went away again. The Rocinantehad added a new alarm to her song. A collision warning was sounding. Holden realized he’d never actually heard a collision alarm outside of drills. When do spaceships run intoeach other?

He turned on the exterior cameras to a field of uniform black. For a second, he thought they were broken, but then Alex took control of them, panning out along the vast expanse of a Martian cruiser’s skin. The target lock buzzer cut out, the missile losing them.

“Put this Martian heavy between us and the missile,” Alex said, almost whispering it, as though the missile might hear if he spoke too loud.

“How close are we to them?” Holden asked, his voice matching Alex’s.

“’Bout ten meters,” Alex said, pride in his voice. “More or less.”

“This is really going to piss them off if the missile keeps coming,” Amos said. Then, almost meditatively, “I don’t even know what a point defense cannon does at a range like this.”

As if in answer, the cruiser hit them with a targeting laser. Then all of the other Martian ships did as well, adding a few dozen more alarms to the cacophony.

“Shit,” Alex said, and the gravity came back like a boulder rolled onto Holden’s chest. None of the Martian ships fired, but the original missile shot back into view on the scope. The Martians were guiding it in, now that the Behemothseemed to be out of action. Holden marveled that he’d lived justlong enough to finally see real Martian-OPA cooperation. It wasn’t as gratifying as he’d hoped.

Martian ships whipped past on both sides as the Rocinanteaccelerated through the main cluster of their fleet. Holden could imagine the targeting arrays and point defense cannons swiveling to track them as they went by. Once past them, there was nothing but the Ring and infinite star-speckled black all around it.

The plan came to mind with the sick, sinking feeling of something horrible he’d always known and tried to forget. The missile was coming, and even if they avoided it, there would be others. He couldn’t dodge forever. He couldn’t surrender. For all he knew, his weapons might start firing at any second. For a moment, the ops deck seemed to go still, time slowing the way it did when something catastrophic was happening. He was intensely aware of Naomi, pressed back in her couch. Monica and Okju, their eyes wide with fear and thrust. Clip, his hand pressed awkwardly into the gel by his side. Cohen’s slack jaw and pale face.

“Huh,” Holden gurgled to himself, the g forces crushing his throat when he vocalized. He signaled Alex to cut thrust, and the gravity dropped away again.

“The Ring,” Holden said. “Aim for the Ring. Go.”

The gravity came back with a slap, and Holden rotated his chair to his workstation and brought up the navigational console. Watching the rapidly approaching orange dot out of the corner of his eye, he built a navigational package for Alex that would take them at high speed to the Ring, then spin them for a massive and almost suicidally dangerous deceleration burn just before they went in. He could slide them in under the velocity cap that had stopped the Y Queand all the fast-moving probes since. With any luck, the missile would be caught by whatever was on the other side, and the Roci, going slower, wouldn’t. The ship warned him that such high-g forces had a 3 percent chance to kill one of the crew members even during a short burn.

The missile would kill them all.

Holden sent the nav package to Alex, half expecting him to refuse. Hoping. Instead, the Rociaccelerated for an endless twenty-seven minutes, followed by a nauseating zero-g spin that lasted less than four seconds, and a deceleration burn that lasted four and a half minutes and knocked every single person on the ship unconscious.

“Wake up,” Miller said in the darkness.

The ship was in free fall. Holden began coughing furiously as his lungs attempted to find their normal shape again after the punishing deceleration burn. Miller floated beside him. No one else seemed to be awake yet. Naomi wasn’t moving at all. Holden watched her until he could see the gentle rise and fall of her rib cage. She was alive.

“Doors and corners,” Miller said. His voice was soft and rough. “I tell you check your doors and corners, and you blow into the middle of the room with your dick hanging out. Lucky sonofabitch. Give you this, though, you’re consistent.”

Something about the way he spoke seemed saner than usual. More controlled. As if guessing his thoughts, the detective turned to look at him. Smiled.

“Are you here?” Holden asked. His mind was still fuzzy, his brain abused by thrust and oxygen loss. “Are you real?”

“You’re not thinking straight. Take your time. Catch up. There’s no hurry.”

Holden pulled up the exterior cameras and blew out one long exhale that almost ended in a sob. The OPA missile was floating outside the ship, just over a hundred meters from the nose of the Roci. The torpedo’s drive was still firing, its tail a furious white torch stretching nearly a kilometer behind it. But the missile hung in space, motionless.

Holden didn’t know if the missile had been that close when they went through. He suspected not. More likely, they’d just wound up that close once they’d both stopped moving. Even so, the sight of the massive weapon, engine burning as it still fought to reach him, made a shiver go down his spine and his balls creep up into his belly. Ten meters closer and they’d have been in proximity. It would have detonated.

As he watched, the missile was slowly pulled away, dragged off to who knew where by whatever power set the speed limit on this side of the Ring.

“We made it,” he said. “We’re through.”

“Yeah,” Miller said.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it? This is why you did it.”

“You’re giving me too much credit.”

Amos and Naomi both groaned as they started to wake. The documentary crew was motionless. They might even be dead. Holden couldn’t tell without unstrapping, and his body wouldn’t allow that yet. Miller leaned close to the screen, squinting at it like he was searching for something. Holden pulled up the sensor data. A host of information flooded in. Numerous objects, clustered within a million kilometers, close as seeds in a pod. And past them, nothing. Not even starlight.

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