Expanse 03 - Abaddon’s Gate (10 page)

“Nice to meet you, Tilly,” Anna said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t drink.”

“God, save me from temperance,” Tilly said. “You haven’t seen a party till you get a group of Anglicans and Catholics trying to beat each other to the bottom of a bottle.”

 

 

“Now, that’s not nice, Mrs. Fagan,” Father Michel said. “I’ve never met an Anglican that could keep up with me.”

“Hank, why is Esteban letting you out of his sight?” It took Anna a moment to realize that Tilly was talking about the secretary-general of the United Nations.

Cortez shook his head and feigned a wounded look without losing his ever-present toothy grin. “Mrs. Fagan, I’m humbled by the secretary-general’s faith and trust in me, as we speed off toward the single most important event in human history since the death of our Lord.”

Tilly snorted. “You mean his faith and trust in the hundred million voters you can throw his way in June.”

“Ma’am,” Cortez said, turning to look at Tilly’s face for the first time. His grin never changed, but something chilled the air between them. “Maybe you’ve had a bit too much champagne.”

“Oh, not nearly enough.”

Father Michel charged in to the rescue, taking Tilly’s hand and saying, “I think our dear secretary-general is probably even more grateful for your husband’s many campaign contributions. Though that does make this the most expensive cruise in history, for you.”

Tilly snorted and looked away from Cortez. “Robert can fucking afford it.”

The obscenity created an awkward silence for a few moments, and Father Michel gave Anna an apologetic smile. She smiled back, so far out of her depth that she’d abandoned trying to keep up.

“What’s he getting with them, I wonder?” Tilly said, pointing attention at anyone other than herself. “These artists and writers and actors. How many votes does a performance artist bring to the table? Do they even vote?”

“It’s symbolic,” Father Michel said, his face taking on a well-practiced expression of thoughtfulness. “We are all of humanity coming together to explore the great question of our time. The secular and the divine come to stand together before that overwhelming mystery: What is the Ring?”

“Nice,” Tilly said. “Rehearsal pays off.”

“Thank you,” the bishop said.

“What is the Ring?” Anna said with a frown. “It’s a wormhole gate. There’s no question, right? We’ve been talking about these on a theoretical basis for centuries. They look just like this. Something goes through it and the place on the other side isn’t here. We get the transmission signals bleeding back out and attenuating. It’s a wormhole.”

“That’s certainly a possibility,” Father Michel said. Tilly smiled at the sourness in his voice. “How do you see our mission here, Anna?”

“It isn’t what it
is
that’s at issue,” she said, glad to be back in a conversation she understood. “It’s what it
means
. This changes everything, and even if it’s something wonderful, it’ll be displacing. People will need to understand how to fit this in with their understanding of the universe. Of what this means about God, what this new thing tells us about Him. By being here, we can offer comfort that we couldn’t otherwise.”

“I agree,” Cortez said. “Our work is to help people come to grips with the great mysteries, and this one’s a doozy.”

“No,” Anna started, “explaining isn’t what I—”

“Play your cards right, and it might get Esteban another four years,” Tilly said over the top of her. “Then we can call it a miracle.”

Cortez grinned a white grin at someone across the room. A man in a small group of men and women in loose orange robes raised his hand, waving at them.

“Can you
believe
those people?” Tilly asked.

“I believe those are delegates from the Church of Humanity Ascendant,” Anna said.

Tilly shook her head. “Humanity Ascendant. I mean, really. Let’s just make up our own religion and pretend we’re the gods.”

“Careful,” Cortez said. “They’re not the only ones.”

Seeing Anna’s discomfort, Father Michel attempted to rescue her. “Doctor Volovodov, I know the elder of that group. Wonderful woman. I’d love to introduce you. If you all would excuse us.”

“Excuse me,” Anna started, then stopped when the room suddenly went silent. Father Michel and Cortez were both looking toward something at the center of the gathering near the bar, and Anna moved around Tilly to get a better view. It was hard to see at first, because everyone in the room was moving away toward the walls. But eventually, a young man dressed in a hideous bright red suit was revealed. He’d poured something all over himself; his hair and the shoulders of his jacket were dripping a clear fluid onto the floor. A strong alcohol scent filled the room.

“This is for the people’s Ashtun Collective!” the young man yelled out in a voice that trembled with fear and excitement. “Free Etienne Barbara! And free the Afghan people!”

“Oh dear God,” Father Michel said. “He’s going to—”

Anna never saw what started the fire, but suddenly the young man was engulfed in flames. Tilly screamed. Anna’s shocked brain only registered annoyance at the sound. Really, when had someone screaming ever solved a problem? She recognized her fixation on this irritation as her own way of avoiding the horror in front of her, but only in a distant and dreamy sort of way. She was about to tell Tilly to just shut up when the fire-suppression system activated and five streams of foam shot out of hidden turrets in the walls and ceiling. The fiery man was covered in white bubbles and extinguished in seconds. The smell of burnt hair competed with the alcohol stench for dominance.

Before anyone else could react, naval personnel were streaming into the room. Stern-faced young men and women with holstered sidearms calmly told everyone to remain still while emergency crews worked. Medical technicians came in and scraped foam off the would-be suicide. He seemed more surprised than hurt. They handcuffed him and loaded him onto a stretcher. He was out of the room in less than a minute. Once he was gone, the people with guns seemed to relax a little.

“They certainly put him out fast,” Anna said to the armed young woman closest to her. “That’s good.”

The young woman, looking hardly older than a schoolgirl, laughed. “This is a battleship, ma’am. Our fire-suppression systems are robust.”

Cortez had darted across the room and was speaking to the ranking naval officer in a booming voice. He sounded upset. Father Michel seemed to be quietly praying, and Anna felt a strong urge to join him.

“Well,” Tilly said, waving at the room with her empty champagne glass. Her face was pale apart from two bright red dots on her cheeks “Maybe this trip won’t be boring after all.”

I
t would have gone faster if Bull had asked for more help, but until he knew who was doing what, he didn’t want to trust too many people. Or anyone.

A thousand people in the crew more or less made things a little muddier than they would have been in some ways. With a crew that big, the security chief could look for things like crew members from unlikely departments meeting up at odd times. Deviations from the pattern that every ship had. Since this was the shakedown voyage, the
Behemoth
didn’t have any patterns yet. It was still in a state of chaos, crew and ship getting to know one another. Making decisions, forming habits and customs and culture. Nothing was normal yet, and so nothing was strange.

On the other hand, it was only a thousand people.

Every ship had a black economy. Someone on the
Behemoth
would be trading sex for favors. Someone would run a card game or set up a pachinko parlor or start a little protection racket. People would be bribed to do things or not do things. It was what happened when you put people together. Bull’s job wasn’t to stamp it all out. His job was to keep it at a level that kept the ship moving and safe. And to set boundaries.

Alexi Myerson-Freud was a nutritionist. He’d worked mid-level jobs on Tycho, mostly in the yeast vats, tuning the bioengineering to produce the right mix of chemicals, minerals, and salts for keeping humans alive. He’d been married twice, had a kid he hadn’t seen in five years, was part of a network war-gaming group that simulated ancient battles, pitting themselves against the great generals of history. He was eight years younger than Bull. He had mouse-ass brown hair, an awkward smile, and a side business selling a combination stimulant and euphoric the Belters called pixie dust. Bull had worked it all until he was certain.

And even once he knew, he’d waited a few days. Not long. Just enough that he could follow Alexi around on the security system. He needed to make sure there wasn’t a bigger fish above him, a partner who was keeping a lower profile, or a connection to Bull’s own team—or else, God forbid, Ashford’s. There wasn’t.

Truth was, he didn’t want to do it. He knew what had to happen, and it was always easier to put it off for another fifteen minutes, or until after lunch, or until tomorrow. Only every time he did, it meant someone else was going on shift stoned, maybe making a stupid mistake, breaking the ship, getting injured, or getting killed.

The moment came in the middle of second shift. Bull turned down his console, stood up, took a couple of guns from the armory, and made a connection on his hand terminal.

“Serge?”

“Boss.”

“I’m gonna need you and one other. We’re going to go bust a drug dealer.”

The silence on the line sounded like surprise. Bull waited. This would tell him something too.

“You got it,” Serge said. “Be right there.”

Serge came into the office ten minutes later with another security grunt, a broad-shouldered, grim-faced woman named Corin. She was a good choice. Bull made a mental note in Serge’s favor, and handed them both guns. Corin checked the magazine, holstered it, and waited. Serge flipped his from hand to hand, judging the weight and feel, then shrugged.

“What’s the plan?” he asked.

“Come with me,” Bull said. “Someone tries to keep me from doing my job, warn them once, then shoot them.”

“Straightforward,” Serge said, and there was a sense of approval in the word.

The food processing complex was deep inside the ship, close to the massive, empty inner surface. In the long voyage to the stars, it would have been next to the farmlands of the small internal world of the
Nauvoo
. In the
Behemoth
, it wasn’t anywhere in particular. What had been logical became dumb, and all it took was changing the context. Bull drove them, the little electric cart’s foam wheels buzzing against the ramps. In the halls and corridors, people stopped, watched. Some stared. It said something that three armed security agents traveling together stood out. Bull wasn’t sure it was something good.

Near the vats, the air smelled different. There were more volatiles and unfiltered particulates. The processing complex itself was a network of tubs and vats and distilling columns. Half of the place was shut down, the extra capacity mothballed and waiting for a larger population to feed. Or else waiting to be torn out.

They found Alexi knee deep in one of the water treatment baths, orange rubber waders clinging to his legs and his hands full of thick green kelp. Bull pointed to him, and then to the catwalk on which he, Serge, and Corin stood. There might have been a flicker of unease in Alexi’s expression. It was hard to say.

“I can’t get out right now,” the dealer said, holding up a broad wet leaf. “I’m in the middle of something.”

Bull nodded and turned to Serge.

“You two stay here. Don’t let him go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”

“Sa sa, boss,” Serge said.

The locker room was down a ladder and through a hall. The bank of pea-green private storage bins had been pulled out of the wall, turned ninety degrees, and put back in to match the direction of thrust. Blobs and filaments of caulk still showed at the edges where it failed to sit quite flush. Two other water processing techs were sitting on the bench in different levels of undress, talking and flirting. They went silent when Bull walked in. He smiled at them, nodded, and walked past to a locker on the far end. When he reached it, he turned back.

“This belong to anyone?” he asked.

The two techs looked at each other.

“No, sir,” the woman said, pulling her jumpsuit a little more closed. “Most of these are just empty.”

“Okay, then,” Bull said. He thumbed in his override code and pulled the door open. The duffel bag inside was green and gray, the kind of thing he’d have put his clothes in when he went to work out. He ran a finger along the seal. About a hundred vials of yellow-white powder, a little more grainy than powdered milk. He closed the bag, put it on his shoulder.

“Is there a problem?” the male tech asked. His voice was tentative, but not scared. Curious, more. Excited. Well, God loved rubberneckers, and so did Bull.

“Myerson-Freud just stopped selling pixie dust on the side,” Bull said. “Should go tell all your friends, eh?”

The techs looked at each other, eyebrows raised, as Bull headed out. Back at the kelp tank, he dropped the bag, then pointed to Alexi and to the catwalk beside him, the same motions he’d used before. This time Alexi’s face went grim. Bull waited while the tech slogged through the deep water and pulled himself up.

“What’s the problem?” Alexi said. “What’s in the bag?”

Bull shook his head slowly, and only once. The chagrin on Alexi’s face was like a confession. Not that Bull had needed one.

“Hey, ese,” Bull said. “Just want you to know, I’m sorry about this.”

He punched Alexi in the nose. Cartilage and bone gave way under his knuckle and a bright red fountain of blood spilled slowly past the tech’s startled mouth.

“Put him on the back of the cart,” Bull said. “Where folks can see him.”

Serge and Corin exchanged a look that was a lot like the pair in the locker room.

“We heading to the brig, boss?” Serge asked, and his tone of voice meant he already knew the answer.

“We have a brig?” Bull asked as he scooped up the duffel bag.

“Pretty don’t.”

“Then we’re not going there.”

Bull had planned the route to pass through all the most populated public areas between the innermost areas of the ship and its skin. Word was already going around, and there were spectators all along the way. Alexi was making a high keening sound when he wasn’t shouting or begging or demanding to see the captain. Bull had the sudden, visceral memory of seeing a pig carried to the slaughter when he’d been younger. He didn’t know when it had happened; the memory was just there, floating unconnected from the rest of his life.

It took almost half an hour to reach the airlock. A crowd had gathered, a small sea of faces, most of them on wide heads and thin bodies. The Belters watching the Earther kill one of their own. Bull ignored them. He keyed in his passcode, opened the inner door of the lock, walked back to the cart, and hefted Alexi with one arm. In the low gravity it should have been easy, but Bull felt himself getting winded before he got back to the lock. It didn’t help that Alexi was thrashing. Bull pushed him in, closed the inner door, put in the override code, and opened the exterior door without evacuating the air first. The pop rang through the metal deck like a distant bell. The monitor showed that the lock was empty. Bull closed the exterior door. While the lock refilled, he walked back to the cart. He stood on the back of the cart where Alexi had been, the duffel bag over his head in both hands. Blood stained his sleeve and his left knee.

“This is pixie dust, right?” he said to the crowd. He didn’t use his terminal to amplify his voice. He didn’t need to. “I’m gonna leave this in the airlock for sixteen hours, then I’m spacing it. Any other dust comes in to join it before then, well, it just happened. No big deal. Any of this goes away, and that’s a problem. So everybody go tell everybody. And the next pendejo signs on shift high comes and talks to me.”

He walked back to the airlock slowly, letting everyone see him. He opened the inner door, slung the bag through, and turned away, leaving the door open behind him. Climbing back behind the wheel of the cart, he could feel the tension in the crowd, and it didn’t bother him at all. Other things did. What he’d just done was the easy part. What came next was harder, because he had less control over it.

“You want to set a guard on that, boss?” Serge asked.

“Think we need to?” Bull asked. He didn’t expect an answer, and he didn’t get one. The cart lurched forward, the spectators parting before it like a herd of antelope before a lion. Bull aimed them back toward the ramps that would take him to the security offices.

“Hardcore,” Corin said. She made it sound like a good thing.

 

 

Religious art decorated the captain’s office. Angels in blue and gold held the parabolas of the archways that rose overhead to meet at the image of a calm and bearded God. A beneficent Christ looked down from the wall behind Ashford’s desk, Caucasian features calm and serene. He didn’t look anything like the bloody, bent, crucified man Bull was familiar with. Arrayed at the Savior’s side were images of plenty: wheat, corn, goats, cows, and stars. Captain Ashford paced back and forth by Jesus’ knees, his face dark with blood and fury. Michio Pa was seated in the other guest chair, carefully not looking at Ashford or at Bull. Whatever the situation was with the Martian science ships and their military escort, with the massive Earth flotilla, it was forgotten for the moment.

Bull didn’t let the anxiety show in his face.

“This is unacceptable, Mister Baca.”

“Why do you think that, sir?”

Ashford stopped, put his wide hands on the desk, and leaned forward. Bull looked into his bloodshot eyes and wondered whether the captain was getting enough sleep.

“You killed a member of my crew,” Ashford said. “You did it with clear premeditation. You did it in front of a hundred witnesses.”

“Shit, you want witnesses, there’s surveillance footage,” Bull said. It wasn’t the right thing to do.

“You are relieved of duty, Mister Baca. And confined to quarters until we return to Tycho Station, where you will stand trial for murder.”

“He was selling drugs to the crew.”

“Then he should have been
arrested
!”

Bull took a deep breath, exhaling slowly through his nose.

“You think we’re more running a warship or a space station, sir?” he asked. Ashford’s brow furrowed, and he shook his head. To Bull’s right, Pa shifted in her seat. When neither of them spoke, Bull went on. “Reason I ask is if I’m a cop, then yeah, I should have taken him to the brig, if we had a brig. He should have gotten a lawyer. We could have done that whole thing. Me? I don’t think this is a station. I think it’s a battleship. I’m here to maintain military discipline in a potential combat zone. Not Earth navy discipline. Not Martian navy discipline. OPA discipline. The Belter way.”

Ashford stood up.

“We aren’t anarchists,” he said, his voice dripping with scorn.

“OPA tradition, maybe I’m wrong, is that someone does something that intentionally endangers the ship, they get to hitchhike back to wherever there’s air,” Bull said.

“You hauled him out of a water vat. How was he endangering the ship? Was he going to throw kelp at it?” Pa said, her voice brittle.

“People been coming on shift high,” Bull said, lacing his fingers together on one knee. “Don’t trust me. Ask around. And, c’mon. Of course they are, right? We’ve got three times as much work needs to get done as we can do. Pixie dust, and they don’t feel tired. Don’t take breaks. Don’t slow down. Get more done. Thing about bad judgment? You got to have good judgment to notice you’ve got it. We already got people hurt. Matter of time before someone died. Or worse.”