They looked up at the sky, watching the ships slowly drift away from them. Holden waited to see the first missiles fly, but it didn’t happen. Everyone was playing nice. Maybe what had happened on the Behemoth had changed people. Maybe they’d take that change back to where they came from, infect others with it. It was a lot to hope for, but Holden was an unapologetic optimist. Give people the information they need. Trust them to do the right thing. He didn’t know any other way to play it.
Or maybe the ships moving was just Miller playing with his simulation, and humanity hadn’t learned a thing.
“So,” Holden said after a few minutes of quiet sky watching. “Thanks for the visit. I guess I’d better be getting back to my gunfight.”
“Not done with you,” Miller said. The tone was light, but the words were ominous.
“Okay.”
“I wasn’t built to fix shit humanity broke,” Miller said. “I didn’t come here to open gates for you and get the lockdown to let you go. That’s incidental. The thing that made me just builds roads. And now it’s using me to find out what happened to the galaxy-spanning civilization that wanted the road.”
“Why does that matter now, if they’re all gone?”
“It doesn’t,” Miller said with a weary shrug. “Not a bit. If you set the nav computer on the Roci to take you somewhere, and then fall over dead a second later, can the Roci decide it doesn’t matter anymore and just not go?”
“No,” Holden said, understanding and finding a sadness for this Miller construct he wouldn’t have guessed was possible.
“We were supposed to connect with the network. We’re just trying to do that, doesn’t matter that the network’s gone. What came up off of Venus is dumb, kid. Just knows how to do one thing. It doesn’t know how to investigate. But I do. And it had me. So I’m going to investigate even though none of the answers will mean fuck-all to the universe at large.”
“I understand,” Holden said. “Good luck, Miller, I—”
“I said I’m not done with you.”
Holden took a step back, suddenly very frightened about where this might be going. “What does that mean?”
“It means, kid, that I’ll need a ride.”
Holden was floating in free fall in an environment suit in absolute darkness. People were yelling. There was the sound of a gunshot, then silence, then an electric pop and a groan.
“Stop!” someone yelled. Holden couldn’t place the voice. “Everyone stop shooting!”
Because someone was saying it with authority in their voice, people did. Holden fumbled with the controls on his wrist, and his suit’s light came on. The rest of his team quickly followed his example. Corin and Cass were still unhurt. Holden wondered how long in actual time his jaunt into the simulation had taken.
“My name is Hector Cortez,” the stop-firing voice said. “What’s happening out there? Does anyone know?”
“It’s over,” Holden yelled back, then let his body relax into a dead man’s float in the corridor. He was so tired that it was a struggle to not just go to sleep right where he was. “It’s all over. You can turn everything back on.”
Lights started coming on in the bridge as people took out hand terminals or emergency flashlights.
“Call Ruiz,” Cortez said. “Have her send a team up here to fix whatever Clarissa did. We need to get the ship’s power back. People will be panicking in the habitation drum right now. And get a medical team up here.”
Holden wondered where Ashford was and why this Cortez guy was in charge. But he was saying all the right things, so Holden let it go. He pushed his way into the bridge, ready to help where he could, but keeping his hand near his pistol. Cass and Naomi traded places with Juarez, so Naomi could help with the repairs.
Clarissa, formerly Melba, was floating near an open access panel, blood seeping out of a gunshot wound. Cortez was pressing an emergency bandage to it. Ashford floated across the room, his mouth slack and his muscles twitching. Holden wondered if the captain was dead and then didn’t care.
“Naomi. Call down to the radio offices. See if they’ve got working comms. Find out about Anna and Monica and Amos. Try to raise the Roci next. I really really want to get the hell out of here.”
She nodded and started trying to make connections.
“Will she live?” Holden asked the white-haired man tending to her.
“I think so,” he replied. “She did this,” he added, waving a hand around to indicate the lack of lights and power.
“Huh,” Holden said. “I guess I’m glad we didn’t space her.”
Chapter Fifty-Three: Clarissa
She woke up in stages, aware of the discomfort before she knew what hurt. Aware that something was wrong before she could even begin to put together some kind of story, some frame that gave the loose, rattling toolbox of sensations any kind of meaning. Even when the most abstract parts of herself returned—her name, where she was—Clarissa was mostly aware that she was compromised. That something was wrong with her.
The room was dirty, the air a few degrees too hot. She lay in the thin, sweat-stinking bed, an IV drip hanging above her. The significance of that took a long time to come to her. The bag hung there. She wasn’t floating. There was gravity. She didn’t know if it was spin or thrust, or even the calm pull of mass against mass that being on a planet brought. She didn’t have the context to know. Only that it was nice to have weight again. It meant that something had gone right. Something was working.
When she closed her eyes, she dreamed that she had killed Ren, that she’d hidden him inside her own body and so she had to keep anyone from taking an imaging scan for fear they’d find him in her. It was a pleasure to wake up and remember that everyone already knew.
Sometimes Tilly came, sat by her bed. She looked like she’d been crying. Clarissa wanted to ask what was wrong, but she didn’t have the strength. Sometimes Anna was there. The doctor who checked on her was a beautiful old woman with eyes that had seen everything. Cortez never came. Sleeping and waking lost their edges. Healing and being ill too. It was difficult if not impossible to draw a line between them.
She woke once to voices, to the hated voice, to Holden. He was standing at the foot of her bed, his arms crossed on his chest. Naomi was next to him, and then the others. The pale one who looked like a truck driver, the brown one who looked like a schoolteacher. Amos and Alex. The crew of the Rocinante. The people she hadn’t managed to kill. She was glad to see them.
“There is absolutely no way,” Holden said.
“Look at her,” Anna said. Clarissa craned her neck to see the woman standing behind her. The priest looked older. Worn out. Or maybe distilled. Cooked down to something like her essence. She was beautiful too. Beautiful and terrible and uncompromising in her compassion. It was in her face. It made her hard to look at. “She’ll be killed.”
Alex, the schoolteacher, raised his hand.
“You mean she’ll be tried in a court of law, with a lawyer, for killin’ a bunch of folks that we all pretty much know she killed.”
I did, Clarissa thought. It’s true. Above her, Anna pressed her hands together.
“I mean that’s what I want to happen,” Anna said. “A trial. Lawyers. Justice. But I need someone to get her safely from here to the courts on Luna. With the evacuation starting, you have the only independent ship in the slow zone. You are the only crew that I trust to get her out safely.”
Naomi looked over at Holden. Clarissa couldn’t read the woman’s expression.