Expanse 03 - Abaddon’s Gate (11 page)

“You’re saying this man was responsible for all those other people performing badly at their work, so you killed him?” Ashford said, but the wind was out of his sails. He was going to fold like wet cardboard. Bull recognized that Ashford’s weakness was going to work to his advantage this time, but he still hated it.

“I’m saying he was putting the ship at risk for his own financial gain, just like he was stealing air filters. And sure he did. There was a demand, he filled it. If I lock him up, that makes it so that the risk is higher. Prices are higher. Get caught, you maybe go to jail when we get back to Tycho.”

“And you made it so that the risk is death.”

“No,” Bull said. “I mean, yeah, but I don’t shoot him. I do what you do to people who risk the ship. Belters know what getting spaced means, right? It frames the issue.”

“This was a mistake.”

“I’ve got a list of fifty people he sold to,” Bull said. “Some of them are skilled technicians. A couple are mid-level overseers. We could lock ’em all up, but then we’ve got less people to do the work. And anyway, they won’t be doing it anymore. Supply’s gone. But if you want I could talk to them. Let ’em know I’m keeping an eye open.”

Pa’s chuckle was mirthless.

“That would be difficult if you’re in the brig on charges,” she said.

“We don’t have a brig,” Bull said. “Plan was the church elders were just gonna talk everything out.” He kept his tone carefully free of sarcasm.

Ashford waffled. It was like watching a cat trying to decide whether to jump from one tree limb to another. His expression was calculating, internal, uncertain. Bull waited.

“This never happens again,” Ashford said. “You decide someone needs to go out the airlock, you come to me. I’ll be the one that pushes the button.”

“All right.”

“All right, what?” Ashford bit the words. Bull lowered his head, looking at the deck. He’d gotten what he came for. He could let Ashford feel like he’d gotten a little win too.

“I mean, yes, sir, Captain. Solid copy. I understand and will comply.”

“You’re damn right you will,” Ashford said. “Now get the hell back to work.”

“Yes, sir.”

When the door closed behind him, Bull leaned against the wall and took a few deep breaths. He was intensely aware of the sound of the ship—low hum of the air recyclers, the distant murmur of voices, the chimes and beeps of a thousand different system alerts. The air smelled of plastic and ozone. He’d taken his calculated risk, and he’d pulled it off.

Walking back down, level by level, he felt the attention on him. In the lift, a man tried not to stare at him. In the hall outside the security office, a woman smiled at him and nodded, nervous as a mouse that smells cat. Bull smiled back.

In the security office, Serge and another man from the team—a Europan named Casimir—lifted their fists, greeting him in the physical idiom of the Belt. Bull returned the gesture and ambled over.

“What we got?” Bull asked.

“A couple dozen people came to pay respects,” Serge said. “I figure about half a kilo more dust just appeared out of nowhere.”

“Okay, then.”

“I’ve got a file of everyone who went in. You want me to flag them in the system?”

“Nope,” Bull said. “I told them it was no big deal. It’s no big deal. You can kill the file.”

“You got it, boss.”

“I’ll be in my office,” Bull said. “Let me know if something comes up. And somebody start a pot of coffee.”

He sat down on the desk, his feet resting on the seat of his chair, and leaned forward. He was suddenly exhausted. It had been a long, bad day, and losing the dread he’d been carrying for the weeks leading up to it was like being released from prison. It took a minute or two to notice he had a message waiting from Michio Pa. The XO hadn’t requested a connection. She didn’t want to talk to him, then. She just wanted to say something.

In the recording, her face was lit from below with the backsplash of her hand terminal screen. Her smile was thin and tight and sort of faded away somewhere around her cheekbones.

“I saw what you did there. That was very nice. Very clever. Wrapping yourself in the OPA flag, making the old man wonder if the crew wouldn’t take your side. More-Belter-than-thou. It was
graceful
.”

Bull scratched his chin. The stubble that had grown in since morning made his fingernails sound like a rasp. It was probably too much to ask that he not make any enemies with this, but he was sorry it was Pa.

“You can’t sugarcoat it with me. We both know that killing someone doesn’t make you admirable. I’m not about to forget this. I just hope you have enough soul left that what you’ve done still bothers you.”

The recording ended, and Bull smiled at the blank screen wearily.

“Every time,” he told the hand terminal. “And next time too.”

T
he
Rocinante
was not a small ship. Her normal crew complement was over a dozen navy personnel and officers, and on many missions she’d also carry six marines. Running the
Roci
with four people meant each of them did several jobs, and that didn’t leave a lot of downtime. It also meant that it was pretty easy at first to avoid the four strangers living on the ship. With the documentary crew restricted from entering ops, the airlock deck, the machine shop, or engineering, they were stuck on the two crew decks with access only to their quarters, the head, the galley, and sick bay.

Monica was a lovely person. Calm, friendly, charismatic. If even a part of her charm translated to the other side of the camera, it was easy to see how she’d succeeded. The others—Okju, Clip, Cohen—made clear overtures of friendship, cracking jokes with the
Rocinante
’s crew, making dinners. Reaching out, but it wasn’t clear to Holden whether it was the usual honeymoon period that came when any crew first came together for a long voyage or something more calculated. Maybe a little of both.

What he did see was his own crew drawing back. After two days of the documentary team being on board, Naomi simply retreated to the ops deck where she couldn’t be found. Amos had made a halfhearted pass at Monica, and a slightly more serious attempt with Okju. When both failed, he began spending most of his time in the machine shop. Of them all, only Alex took time to socialize with their passengers, and him not all that often. He’d taken to sometimes sleeping in the pilot’s couch.

They’d agreed to being interviewed, and Holden knew they couldn’t avoid it forever. They hadn’t been out for a full week yet, and even on a fairly high burn it would be months to their destination. Besides, it was in their contract. The discomfort of it was almost enough to distract him from the fact that every day brought them closer to the Ring and whatever it was that Miller wanted him out there for. Almost.

“It’s Saturday,” Naomi said. She was lounging in a crash couch near the comm station. She hadn’t cut her hair for a while, and it was getting long enough to become an annoyance to her. For the last ten minutes, she’d been trying to braid it. The thick black curls resisted her efforts, seeming to move with a will of their own. Based on past experience, Holden knew this was the precursor to cutting half of it off in exasperation. Naomi liked the idea of growing her hair very long, but not the reality. Holden sat at the combat ops panel watching her struggle with it and letting his mind drift.

“Did you hear me?” she said.

“It’s Saturday.”

“Are we inviting our guests to dinner?”

It had become custom on the ship that no matter what else was going on, the crew tried to have dinner as a group once a week. By unspoken agreement it was usually Saturday. Which day of the week it happened to be didn’t really matter much on a ship, but by holding their dinner on Saturday, Holden thought they were doing some small bit to celebrate the passing of a week, the beginning of another. A gentle reminder that there was still a solar system outside of the four of them.

But he hadn’t considered inviting the documentary crew to join them. It felt like an invasion. The Saturday dinner was for
crew
.

“We can’t keep them out of it.” He sighed. “Can we?”

“Not unless we want to eat up here. You did give them the run of the galley.”

“Dammit,” he said. “Should have confined them to quarters.”

“For four months?”

“We could have shoved ration bars and catheter bags under the door to them.”

She smiled and said, “It’s Amos’ turn to cook.”

“Right, I’ll call and let him know it’s dinner for eight.”

 

 

Amos made pasta and mushrooms, heavy on the garlic, heavy on the Parmesan. It was his favorite, and he always splurged to buy real cloves of garlic and actual Parmesan cheese to grate. Another small luxury they wouldn’t be able to afford if they wound up in a courtroom battle with Mars.

While Amos finished sautéing the mushrooms and garlic, Alex set the table and took drink orders. Holden sat next to Naomi on one side of the table, while the documentary crew sat together on the other. The banter was polite and friendly, and if there was an uncomfortable undercurrent to it all, he still wasn’t quite sure why.

Holden had asked them not to bring cameras or recording equipment to the dinner table, and Monica had agreed. Clip, the Martian, was talking about sports history with Alex. Okju and Cohen, sitting across from Naomi, were telling stories about the last assignment they’d been on, covering a new scientific station that was in stationary orbit around Mercury. It should have been almost pleasant, and it just wasn’t.

Holden said, “We don’t usually eat this well while flying, but we try to do something nice for our weekly dinner together.”

Okju smiled and said, “Smells lovely.” She was wearing half a dozen rings, a blouse with buttons on it, a silver pendant, and an ivory-colored comb holding back her frizzy brown hair. The soundman gazed serenely at nothing, his black glasses hiding the top of his face, his expression calm and open. Monica watched him look over her crew, saying nothing, a faint smile on her lips.

“Chow,” Amos said, then began putting bowls of food on the table. While the meal was handed around in a slow circuit, Okju bowed her head and mumbled something. It took Holden a moment to realize she was praying. He hadn’t seen anyone do it for years, not since he’d left home. One of his fathers, Caesar, had sometimes prayed before meals. Holden waited for her to finish before he started eating.

“This is very nice,” Monica said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said Holden.

“We’re a week out of Ceres,” she said, “and I think we’re all settled in. Was wondering if we could start scheduling some preliminary interviews? It’s mostly so we can test out the equipment.”

“You can interview me,” Amos said, not quite hiding his leer.

Monica smiled at him and speared a mushroom with her fork, then stared at him while she popped it into her mouth and chewed slowly.

“Okay,” she said. “We can start with background work. Baltimore?”

The silence was suddenly brittle. Amos started to stand, but a gentle hand on his arm from Naomi stopped him. He opened his mouth, closed it, then looked down at his plate while the pale skin on his scalp and neck turned bright red. Monica looked down at her plate, her expression at the friction point between embarrassed and annoyed.

“That’s not a good idea,” Holden said.

“Captain, I’m sensitive to privacy issues for you and your crew, but we have an agreement. And with all respect, you’ve been treating me and mine like we’re unwelcome.”

Around the table, the food was starting to cool off. It had hardly been touched. “I get it. You held up your end of the deal,” Holden said. “You got me out of Ceres, and you put money in our pockets. We haven’t been holding up our end. I get it. I’ll set aside an hour tomorrow for starters, does that work?”

“Sure,” she said. “Let’s eat.”

“Baltimore, huh?” Clip said to Amos. “Football fan?”

Amos said nothing, and Clip didn’t press it.

 

 

After the uncomfortable dinner, Holden wanted nothing more than to climb into bed. But while he was in the head brushing his teeth, Alex pretended to casually wander in and said, “Come on up to ops, Cap. Got something to talk about.”

When Holden followed him up, he found Amos and Naomi already waiting. Naomi was leaning back with her hands behind her head, but Amos sat on the edge of a crash couch, both feet on the floor and his hands clenched into a doubled fist in front of him. His expression was still dark with anger.

“So, Jim,” Alex said, walking over to another crash couch and dropping into it, “this ain’t a good start.”

“She’s looking stuff up about us,” Amos said to no one in particular, his gaze still on the floor. “Stuff she shouldn’t know.”

Holden knew what Amos meant. Monica’s reference to Baltimore was an allusion to Amos’ childhood as the product of a particularly nasty brand of unlicensed prostitution. But Holden couldn’t admit he knew it. He himself only knew because of an overheard conversation. He had no interest in humiliating Amos further.

“She’s a journalist, they do background research,” he said.

“She’s more than that,” Naomi said. “She’s a nice person. She’s charming and she’s friendly, and every one of us on this ship wants to like her.”

“That’s a problem?” Holden said.

“That’s a big fucking problem,” Amos said.

“I was on the
Canterbury
for a reason, Jim,” Alex said. His Mariner Valley drawl had stopped sounding silly, and just seemed sad instead. “I don’t need someone diggin’ up my skeletons to air them out.”

The
Canterbury
, the ice hauler they’d all worked on together before the Eros incident, was a bottom-of-the-barrel job for those who flew for a living. It attracted people who’d failed down to the level of their incompetence, or those who couldn’t pass the background checks a better job might require. Or, in his own case, those who had a dishonorable military discharge staining their record. After having served with his small crew for years, Holden knew it wasn’t incompetence that had put any of them on that ship.

“I know,” he started.

“Same here, Cap’n,” Amos said. “I got a lot of past in my past.”

“So do I,” Naomi said.

Holden started to reply, then stopped when the import of her words hit him. Naomi was hiding something that had driven her to take a glorified mechanic’s job on the
Canterbury
. Well, of course she was. Holden hadn’t wanted to think about it, but it was obvious. She was about the most talented engineer he’d ever met. He knew she had degrees from two universities, and had completed her three-year flight officer training in two. She’d started her career on an obvious command track. Something had happened, but she’d never talked about what it had been. He frowned a question at her, but she stopped him with a tiny shake of her head.

The fragility of their little family struck him full force. The paths that had pulled them all together had been so diverse, as improbable and unlikely as those kinds of things ever were. And the universe could just as easily take them apart. It left him feeling small and vulnerable and a little defensive.

“Everyone remembers why we did this, right?” Holden asked. “The lockdown? Mars coming after the
Rocinante
?”

“We didn’t have a choice,” Naomi replied. “We know. We all agreed to take this job.”

Amos nodded in agreement. Alex said, “No one’s sayin’ we shouldn’t have taken the job. What we’re sayin’ is that you’re the frontman for this band.”

“Yes,” Naomi said. “You need to be so interesting that this documentary crew forgets all about the rest of us. That’s your job for the rest of this flight. That’s the only way this works.”

“No,” Amos said, still not looking up. “There
is
another way, but I’ve never tossed a blind man out an airlock. Don’t know how I’d feel about that. Might not be fun.”

“Okay,” Holden said, patting the air with his hands in a calming motion. “I get it. I’ll keep the cameras out of your faces as much as I can, but this is a long trip. Be patient. When we get to the Ring, maybe they’ll be tired of us and we can pawn them off on some other ship.”

They were silent for a moment, then Alex shook his head.

“Well,” he said, “I think we just found the only thing that’ll make me look forward to getting
there
.”