“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.”
Chapter Nine: Bull
It 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.”