“If this is about the tech support thing, that’s on me,” Bull said. “I authorized that. It’s got nothing to do with Sam.”
“I’m conducting a full audit, Mister Baca. If I find you’ve been drawing resources inappropriately, I’ll take the actions I deem appropriate. As your executive officer, I am informing you that Samara Rosenberg is to be confined to quarters and her access to ship’s systems blocked. Do you have any questions about that?”
She’d waited until they’d made the trip, until they’d gotten where they were going, and now it was time to establish that she was in control. To get back at him for the drug dealer he’d spaced and punish Sam for being his ally. Would have been stupid to do until their shakedown run was over. But now it was.
Bull laced his fingers together. The refusal was on the back of his tongue, waiting. It would have been insubordination, and it would have been easy as breathing out. There were years—decades even—when he’d have done it, and taken the consequences as a badge of honor. It had been his call, and standing by while Sam was punished for it was more than dishonorable, it was disloyal. Pa knew that. Anyone who’d read his service records would know it. If it had just been his mission, his career on the line, he’d have done it, but Fred Johnson had asked him to make this work. So there was only one play to make.
“No questions,” he said, rising from his chair. “Sam. You should come with me now.”
The others were silent as he led her out of the conference room. They all looked stunned and confused, except Ashford and Pa. Pa wore a poker face, and Ashford had a little shadow of smugness in the corners of his mouth. Sam’s breath shook. Outrage and adrenaline left her skin pale. He helped her into the side seat of his security cart, then got behind the controls. They lurched into motion, four small engines whirring and whining. They were almost at the elevators when Sam laughed. A short, mirthless sound as much like a cry of pain as anything.
“Holy shit,” Sam said.
Bull couldn’t think of anything to say that would pull the punch, so he only nodded and took the cart into the wide elevator car. Sam wept, but there was nothing that looked like sorrow in her expression. He guessed that she’d never suffered that kind of disciplinary humiliation before. Or if she had, it hadn’t been often enough to build up a callus. The dishonor of letting her take the hit was like he’d swallowed something before he’d chewed it enough, and now it wouldn’t go down.
Back at the security office, Serge was at the main desk. The man’s eyebrows rose as Bull came in the room.
“Hoy, bossman,” the duty officer said. A hardcore OPA bruiser named Jojo. “Que pasa?”
“Nothing good. What did I miss?”
“Complaint from a carnicería down by engineering about a missing goat. Got a note from one of the Earth ships lost one of their crew, wondering if we’d come up with an extra. A couple coyos got shit-faced and we locked ’em in quarters, told ’em we’d sic the Bull on ’em.”
“How’d they take that?”
“We had them mop up after.”
Bull chuckled before he sighed.
“So. I’ve got Samara Rosenberg in the cart outside,” he said. “XO wants her confined to quarters for unauthorized use of resources.”
“I want a pony in a wetsuit.” Jojo grinned.
“XO gave an order,” Bull said. “I want you to take her to her quarters. I’ll get her access pulled. We’ll need to set a guard while we’re at it. She’s pissed.”
Jojo scratched at his neck. “We’re doing it?”
“Yeah.”
Jojo’s face closed. Bull nodded toward the door. Jojo left, and Bull took his place at the desk, identifying himself to the system and starting the process of locking Sam out of her own ship. While the security system ran its check against each of the Behemoth’s subsystems, he leaned on his elbows and watched.
The first time Fred Johnson saved Bull’s life, he’d done it with a rifle and a mobile medical unit. The second time, he’d done it with a credit chip. Bull had mustered out at thirty and took his pension to Ceres. For three years, he’d just lived. Ate cheap, drank too much, slept in his own bed not knowing if he was sick from the alcohol or the spin. Not caring much. He got into a few fights, had a few disagreements with the local law. He didn’t see that he had a problem until it was unmistakable, and by then it was a hell of a problem.
Depression ran in his family. Self-medicating did too. His grandfather had died of the pair. His mother had been in therapy a couple times. His brother had graduated to heroin and lived five years in a treatment center in Roswell. None of it had seemed to have anything to do with Bull. He was a marine. He’d turned away from a life on basic to live in the stars, or if not the stars, at least the rocks that floated free in the night sky. He’d killed men. Bottle couldn’t beat him. But it almost had.
The day Fred Johnson had appeared at his door, it had been stranger than a dream. His former commanding officer looked different. Older, stronger. Truth was, their birthdays weren’t all that far apart, but Johnson had always been the Old Man. Bull had followed the news about the fallout from Anderson Station, and Fred’s changing sides. Some of the other marines he knew on Ceres had been angry about it. He’d just figured the Old Man knew what he was doing. He wouldn’t have done it without a reason.
Bull, Fred had said. Just that, at first. He could still remember Fred’s dark eyes meeting his. The shame had made Bull try to stand straighter, to suck in his gut a little. In that moment, he saw how far he’d fallen. Two seconds of seeing himself through Fred Johnson’s eyes was all it took for that.
Sir, Bull had replied, then stood back and let Johnson into the hole. The place stank of yeast and old tofu. And flop sweat. Fred ignored it all. I need you back on duty, soldier.
Okay, Bull had said. And the secret he carried with him, the one he’d take to his grave, was this: He hadn’t meant it. In that moment, all he’d wanted was for Fred Johnson to go away and let Bull forget him again. Lying to his old commanding officer, to the man who’d kept him from bleeding out under fire, came as naturally as breathing. It didn’t have anything to do with Earth or the Belt or Anderson Station. It wasn’t some greater loyalty. He just wasn’t done destroying himself. And even now, sitting alone at the security desk betraying Sam, he thought that Fred had known. Or guessed.
Fred had pressed a credit chip into his palm. It was one of the cheap, vaguely opalescent ones that the OPA had used to keep its funds untraceable, back in the bad old days. Get yourself a new uniform. Bull had saluted, already thinking about the booze he could buy.
The chit carried six months’ wages at his old pay grade. If it had been less, Bull wouldn’t have gone. Instead, he shaved for the first time in days, got a new suit, packed a valise, and threw out anything that didn’t fit in it. He hadn’t had a drink since, even on the nights he’d wanted one more than oxygen.
The security system chimed that the lockout was finished. Bull noted it and leaned back in the chair, reading the be-on-alert notice from the Cerisier and letting his mind wander. When Gathoni arrived to take the next shift, he walked two corridors down to a little mom-and-pop bodega, bought a blister-pack with four bulbs of beer, and headed over to Sam’s quarters. The guard on duty nodded to him. Legally, Bull didn’t have to knock. As head of security, he could have walked into Sam’s rooms at any time, with or without being welcome. He knocked.