“I know what you did,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “I know you put Cortázar up to it.”
“We have to go,” Teresa said. Elvi noticed for the first time that the girl was doing something in the gully. Digging away a drift of fallen snow. Holden’s sleeves were crusted with ice where he’d been doing the same.
“She’s just a kid, Holden. Whatever your plan is, she doesn’t have to be part of it.”
“I’m more part of her plan at this point,” he said.
“We have to go!” Teresa said. “We don’t have time for this. Muskrat! Shut up!”
The dog wagged, happily ignoring the order. Footsteps came from behind Elvi. Fayez, stumbling through the snow. A deep, rolling sound came from the north. The earth trembled, and the rail-gun flashes stopped. Without their voices, the night seemed weirdly silent.
“What’s going on?” Fayez said.
“I’m leaving,” Teresa said. “I’m trading their prisoner for a way out, and I’m leaving. His ship is coming for us right now, and we have to get to the rendezvous.”
“He tried to get you killed,” Elvi said. “You can’t trust him.”
“I can’t trust anyone,” Teresa said, and the weariness and bitterness in her voice belonged to a much older woman.
“No,” Holden said. “That wasn’t about Teresa. That was about you. Hey, Fayez.”
“Hey, Holden,” Fayez said, and dropped to his knees at Elvi’s side. Snowflakes landed on his hair and stayed there, unmelting.
“I don’t understand.”
“This has all been about you,” Holden said. “Literally from the minute I found out about the alien rip-in-space thing that showed up on the Tempest, I’ve been trying to get Cortázar out and you in his place. All this?” He gestured at the now-quiet sky. “I don’t know anything about it. I haven’t been in touch with anybody. None of it’s been me.”
Elvi shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“I got you the job,” Holden said. “I’m the one who told Duarte you’d been studying what killed the protomolecule engineers. And yes, I talked Cortázar into getting himself in trouble. And then I tried to rat him out. It was the only thing I could think of that Duarte would care about enough to get rid of his pet mad scientist. And since you were the expert, you’d get the promotion.”
The punch in her chest was betrayal. She felt betrayed. She’d seen Sagale and Travon die because of Holden. She’d almost lost her leg, almost lost her husband, suffered through everything because of him. “Why would you do this to me?”
“I wanted to get someone sane and rational in charge before Duarte did something stupid that we couldn’t take back.” He lifted his hands and then let them fall, a gesture of powerlessness. “I’m not sure it worked, but it was all I could do.”
Teresa stood up. Her black sweater was white with ice. “We can get through. The space is big enough. But the second I’m off the grounds, security’s going to know it. We can’t stop running once we start.”
Holden nodded, but his eyes were on Elvi. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Make up for it. We’re here. Take us with you. And in the other half of her mind, the labs. The pens. The Falcon and all the data she’d acquired with it, still waiting to be sifted through. Was Ochida going to take it up if she left? Would he be better than Cortázar?
Was there anyone, anywhere she’d trust with this more than she trusted herself? And the enemy—the deep enemy—had tried to hurt them already. Was looking for a way. Her leg throbbed like it was reminding her of the black things between the spaces. Was someone else going to stop them?
She looked at Holden’s face. He was one of those men who was going to look boyish until the day he died. Fuck you for putting me in this position, she thought. Fuck you for making this the right thing for me to do.
It wasn’t what she said aloud.
“Go.”
Chapter Forty-Seven: Naomi
Alex?”
“I see it,” he shouted. “What do we do?”
A wave of disorientation washed through her, like she had started floating again without having stopped the first time. The ship jumped and shuddered around her as she pulled up the record of Amos’ mission and cross-checked. It looked real. If it was false, it was convincing.
The plan was to hit the platforms and then burn hard to get away before the enemy forces could get back. She’d given them a wide window for it. Adding in a surface landing and extraction…