Part 34 (1/2)
The three were silent for a moment. When Fred spoke, his voice was low and mordant. ”Well, that's cheerful. You coming to help this along, Captain?”
Holden looked at Drummer. She held herself professionally at attention, but he thought he saw a glimmer of unease in her eyes. Fred Johnson had run Tycho Station for almost two decades, and now he was leaving. He might not come back. And Holden might not either.
Everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
”Let's give this part to Foster,” Holden said. ”Let him get a feel for the s.h.i.+p. There's something I need to take care of on the station before we go.”
Monica was in new rooms. To look at her, sitting on the couch, it was like she was meeting him for the first time. The months they'd spent her crew and his s.h.i.+pping out to the Ring, the desperate work she'd done on the Behemoth back before it became Medina Station, her abduction and his rescue of her. All of it was gone. Her expression was polite, and it was closed.
”So,” Holden said. ”I'm about to take off. I'm not sure when or even if I'll see you again. And I feel like we're not good.”
”Why do you feel like that?”
”Off the record?”
The silence cooled the room, then Monica took her new hand terminal out of her pocket and tapped it twice. It chimed and she rested it on her thigh. ”Fine. Off the record.”
”Because I lied to you, and you know it. And you're angry about it. And because you tried to get me to talk about things I didn't want to talk about by springing questions on me in the middle of an interview, and I'm angry with you about that.”
Monica sighed, but her face softened. She looked older now than when they'd first met. Still camera-ready and perfect at all times, but worn by the universe. ”What happened to you, Holden? You used to be the man who didn't hide anything. You were the one voice everyone could trust, because even if you didn't know all of it, you'd at least tell the truth you did know. This reading the press release thing? It's not you.”
”Fred asked me not to say that he'd been targeted.”
”Or that they got away with the protomolecule sample,” Monica said, then held up her hand terminal. ”We're off the record. Do me the courtesy of not lying to me now too.”
”And that they got away with the protomolecule,” Holden said.
Monica's face softened. She scratched her arm, fingernails hissing against the cloth. ”That's critical. That's the scariest thing that's happened since this all started. Don't you think that people have a right to know the danger they're in?”
”Fred knows. He's told Avasarala and Smith. Earth and Mars know. The OPA knows. Panicking people for no reason -”
”Panicking at this point isn't unreasonable,” Monica said. ”And deciding for people what they should get to know so they do what you think they should do? That isn't how the good guys act, and you know it. It's paternalistic, it's condescending, and it's beneath you. Maybe not them. The political movers and shakers. But it's beneath you.”
Holden felt a warmth rising in his chest. Shame or anger or something more complicated, he couldn't say. He remembered Mother Tamara saying It hurts most if there's something true in it. He wanted to say something mean. To hit back. He laced his fingers together. ”Does what you do matter?”
”What?”
”Reporting? Telling things to people. Does it have any power?”
”Of course it does.”
”Then how you use that power matters too. I'm not saying that we were right to put the protomolecule thing under the rug. I'm saying that telling everyone about it especially right now while whatever the h.e.l.l this is is still going on is worse. When we were in the slow zone, you were the voice that pulled us all together. You gave a shape to that moment of chaos. And it made people safer and calmer and more rational. More civilized. We need that again. I need that again.”
”How can you say -” Monica began, and her hand terminal buzzed. She looked down at it in annoyance, then did a double take. She lifted a finger to him. Just a second.
”What is it?” Holden said, but she was reading her terminal, her eyes getting wider. ”Monica? If this is some kind of object lesson about how s.h.i.+tty it is to withhold information, I admit it's weirdly elegant. But if you could stop it now -”
”The attack s.h.i.+ps. The ones going after the Martian prime minister. The command s.h.i.+p put out a message.” She looked up at him. ”It's for you.”
Naomi's voice on the hand terminal was thin and tinny and like waking up from a nightmare into something worse. ”If you receive this, please retransmit. This is Naomi Nagata of the Rocinante. Message is for James Holden. The software controlling the magnetic bottle has been sabotaged. Do not start the reactor -”
She kept talking, but Holden already had his hand terminal up. His knuckles ached, and he had to force himself to stop squeezing the device. He put out a connection request to Drummer. His heart beat against his ribs and he felt like he was falling, like he'd stepped off a tower and hadn't quite caught the ledge on the way down. Monica was cursing quietly under her breath. It sounded like prayer.
It the reactor came up and the bottle failed, the Rocinante would die in a fraction of a second. Tycho Station might survive. Some of it, anyway.
”Drummer here,” his hand terminal said. ”How can I help you, Captain?”
”Have you started the reactor?” Holden said.
Drummer went silent for maybe half a second. It felt like years. ”Yes, sir. We're at sixty percent, and looking great.”
”Shut it down,” Holden said. ”Shut it down right now.”
There was a moment of silence. Don't ask me why, Holden thought. Don't argue or ask me to explain. Please don't.
”Done. The core is down,” Drummer said. ”So can I ask what this is about?”
Chapter Thirty-four: Alex.
... Do not start the reactor without reloading the hardware drivers from a known good source. If you hear this message, please retr-”
The message cut off.
”We have to get this out,” Alex said. ”We have to get that to Holden.”
”I'll take care of it,” the captain said. ”You and the prime minister need to evacuate. Right now.”
Alex looked at her, confused. Naomi was on the attack s.h.i.+ps. The Roci had been sabotaged. He felt like the moment of stillness between being hit in the head and the bloom of pain. His first semi-coherent, irrational thought was If Naomi's with them, maybe they're not so bad.
”Mister Kamal?”
”No, I'm fine. It's just -”
Prime Minister Smith looked at him, the man's gentle, innocuous eyes seeming utterly out of place. ”Does this change anything for us?”
”No,” Alex said. ”I just... No. No, we should go. Wait. Bobbie...”
”Gunny Draper knows where you're going,” Captain Choudhary said. ”I'll see she doesn't get lost.”
They moved to the lift, the two marines before and behind them. The lift car gave Alex a moment of orientation as it pushed them down into the heart of the s.h.i.+p. It only took a few seconds to match velocity and go back to floating, but it was enough of a cue that his mind made one direction into down, the other into up. The lift car was wide enough for three times the load. The marines took stations at the door, ready to face danger if there was any. The prime minister took a place at the side near the front, where there was a little cover. No one commented on it. It was just a thing that happened. The dynamics of political power as positions in an elevator.
Naomi was here. Right here. Maybe less than ten thousand kilometers away. It was like he'd turned a corner and she was there. Except, of course, that she wasn't. Even close-quarters battle meant distances that were vast in any other context. If the s.h.i.+p had been transparent, the enemy vessels would only have been visible by their drive plumes dots of light in a sky filled with them. The Pella could be as far from him right now as Boston was from Sri Lanka, and it would still be almost intimate in the vast scale of the solar system.
”You're thinking of your friend,” Smith said.
”Yes, sir,” Alex said.