“Not a problem,” Alex said. “We’ll just tap back down to a good coasting speed until we’re right up alongside them. Final braking won’t catch anyone in the plume.”
“And keep the torpedoes and PDCs hot,” Holden said. “Just in case.”
“On it,” Bobbie said. “We’re getting painted by ranging lasers.”
“Whose?” Holden asked, dropping the exterior camera and going back to tactical. The scattering of fleet ships. The surface defenses of Ceres. The slowly approaching captured ship and its Free Navy escort.
“Oh,” Naomi said, tapping through a list of connection reports longer than her screen. “Pretty much everyone.”
“The escort ship?”
“They’re painting us too.”
On his screen, the incoming ships stuttered, the data around them updating as they killed their braking burns, appearing from behind clouds of superheated gas. The Roci’s sensor arrays checked contour and heat signatures, confirming almost instantly. The larger ship matched the Minsky—large, blocky, and awkward with communications satellites meant to bootstrap a network around an alien planet covering its sides like warts. The smaller was a Martian corvette, a generation newer than the Roci, a little lighter, streamlined for atmosphere and probably loaded with similar ordnance. Its transponder wasn’t answering.
“Hate seeing this,” Alex said. “Two good Martian-built ships squaring off? It ain’t right.”
“Well,” Holden said. “Who knows? Maybe we’re on the same side.”
“If it is a fight,” Bobbie said, “let’s win it. Permission to lock target?”
“Has it locked on us?” Holden asked.
“Not yet,” Naomi said.
“Hold off, then,” Holden said. “I don’t want to go first.”
An incoming comm request appeared on his screen from Fred Johnson, and for a confused half second, he wondered what Fred was doing on the gunship, then saw the tightbeam was coming from Ceres. When this was over, he was really going to need to sleep. He accepted the connection, and Fred appeared in a separate window on the side of his screen.
“Regretting this yet?” Fred asked.
“Only a little,” Holden said. “You?”
“I want to make something clear. If—if—you take possession of that colony ship, under no circumstances does it come within three thousand klicks of my dock. If there are people who need medical assistance on board, they stay on board and we’ll send help out to them. Nothing comes off that ship until it’s been examined, scanned, reloaded, disinfected, and sprinkled with holy water by whatever flavor of priest I can put my hands on. I’m not running Troy here.”
“Understood.”
“The only reason I’m letting you do this at all is the chance of recovering prisoners of the Free Navy alive.”
“That’s the only reason?” Holden said. “So you’ll hand all the supplies on the ship back over to the former owners instead of using them to keep Ceres alive?”
Fred’s smile was gentle and warm. “Don’t be an asshole.”
“Okay,” Bobbie said. “Now they’re painting us. Permission to return the favor?”
“Granted,” Holden said.
Bobbie said something under her breath that he couldn’t make out, but it sounded happy.
“Be careful, Holden,” Fred said again. “I don’t like anything about this.”
“Well, if it’s a trap, you can say I told you so to whatever scraps of us are left.”
“I’ve got thirty ships that’ll make sure you have a nuclear funeral pyre big enough they’d see it on Proxima Centauri in four years. You know. If anyone’s there.”
“That’s not comforting,” Holden said.
“We should open comms,” Naomi said.
“Fred? I’ve gotta go do this thing. I’ll let you know how it went when it’s done.”
Fred nodded. The connection dropped. Holden swallowed past the tightness in his throat. “How are we for range?”
“Inside effective torpedo range,” Bobbie said. “And we’ll be good for PDCs in eight minutes and ten seconds.”
“Rail gun all warmed up?”
“Oh hell yes.”
“All right,” Holden said. “Naomi, get me a channel.”
A moment later, a new frame appeared on his screen. Dark but with the yellow border of an open connection. They were so close, there was effectively no light delay. That alone made him nervous.
“Attention, unidentified warship. This is James Holden of the independent freighter Rocinante. We’re here to transfer possession of the Minsky. Hope that’s what brought you here too. I’d appreciate it if you’d identify.”
The screen stayed dark. Anxiety crept up his back. The seconds stretched without a reply. Something was wrong. Without moving, he rehearsed what he’d say to Alex. Get us out of here. Something’s about to blow up. What he’d say to Bobbie. Protect the Roci first. Disable the gunship if you can. Kill it if you have to.
The frame flickered. For a fraction of a second, an unfamiliar blond woman with sharp features appeared, and then immediately the image shifted to a woman with dark hair tied back. A small, cynical smile on her lips. Holden realized he’d been holding his breath and exhaled.
“Rocinante,” she said, “this is Michio Pa of the Connaught. Weird to see you again, Captain Holden.”
Chapter Twenty-Three: Pa
The Munroe died second. Marco’s forces caught it near a cloud of machining equipment and medical supplies that had been buried in the void. As best Michio could reconstruct it, a plea for help had come from a mining ship called the Corvid. They had five families on the ship, and an outbreak of complex meningitis that had the children in medical comas. The Munroe, charging to the rescue, was intercepted by two Free Navy corvettes, and fled from them into two others. Marco had recorded the captain—a middle-aged man named Levi Watts who Michio had hardly known before he was placed under her command—begging for the life of his crew before his ship was overwhelmed.
It hadn’t been dignified, and it ended in fire. Copies of it went on a dozen anonymous feeds with an attached listing of all the other vessels that had chosen to follow her.
The Corvid’s transponder vanished. The discussions of whether it had also been destroyed or invented as bait for the ambush came to nothing. The message was the same either way: No one could betray the Free Navy, and the Free Navy was Marco Inaros. Evans and Nadia had taken the responsibility of remaking the communication protocols for Michio’s remaining fleet. She could see the concern in their eyes and hear it in the timbre of their voices. She loved them for caring, but there was a distance in that love for now. A coldness. She couldn’t say how long her rage and grief would stay cold, but for now ruthless analysis was the only way she could mourn.
Maybe that was what worried them.
The Minsky had been flying dark outside the ecliptic in an orbit that, given several months, would have taken it near enough to the ring gate that it could have made a break for it, dodged into the slow zone before any of the Free Navy ships could intercept it. So when Foyle and the Serrio Mal captured it, she’d also saved the lives of everyone aboard. It would have been a matter of minutes between the ship passing through the gate and rail gun defenses ripping it to pieces. Not that the colonists knew that. Not that Michio had told them.
Even when Foyle learned that the prize ship was being routed to Ceres and into the arms of the enemy, she’d been willing to escort it. Michio had been tempted to let her, but it was the wrong move. Reaching out to Fred Johnson had been her decision. If it was going to go pear-shaped, she should be the one to deal with it.