Abaddon's Gate (Expanse 3)

“Bull?”

He looked up. The nurse seemed, if anything, more tired than the doctor had been.

“You’ve got a couple visitors, if you’re up for it,” he said.

“Depends. Who you got?”

“Priest,” he said. It took a moment to realize it wasn’t a name but a job description.

“The Russian from the Rocinante?”

The nurse shook his head. “The politician. Cortez.”

“What does he want?”

“As far as I can tell? Save your soul. He’s talking about protecting humanity from the devil. I think he wants you to help with that.”

“Tell him to talk to Serge at the security office. Who else wants a piece of me?”

The nurse’s expression changed. For a moment, Bull couldn’t say what was strange about it, then he realized it was the first time in his memory he’d seen the nurse smile.

“Someone’s got a little prezzie for you,” the nurse said, then leaned back out into the corridor. “Okay. Come on in.”

Bull coughed again, bringing up more phlegm. Sam appeared in the doorway, grinning. Behind her, two techs were carrying a blue plastic crate so big he could have put Sam inside it.

“Rosenberg? You been wasting time when you should be fixing my ship?”

“You’ve still got one more mutiny before it’s your ship,” Sam said. “And yeah, when the crew heard about what happened with you and Ashford, some of us wanted to put together a little present.”

Bull shifted, then caught himself. He was so used to having the muscles in his trunk to hold himself up that every time he began to fall, it was a little surprising. It was one of the things he missed about null g. Sam didn’t notice, or pretended not to. She shifted to the side and took hold of the crate’s release bar like a stage magician about to reveal an illusion. Doctor Sterling appeared in the doorway, a sly smile haunting her lips. Bull had the uncomfortable feeling of walking in on his own surprise party.

“You’re making me nervous,” he said.

“You’re getting smarter,” she said. “Ready?”

“Yeah, I don’t think so.”

The crate slid open. The mech inside looked complicated, blocky, and thick. Bull laughed for lack of anything he could think to say.

“It’s a standard lifting mech,” Sam said, “but we carved a bunch of the reinforcing out of its tummy and put in a TLS orthosis the medics gave me. We swapped out the leg actuation with a simple joystick control. It won’t take you dancing, and you’re still going to need help going potty, but you’re not stuck in bed. It’s not as comfortable as a top-end wheelchair, but it will get you anywhere in the ship you want to go, whether it was built for accessibility or not.”

Bull thought he was about to cough again until he felt the tears welling up in his eyes.

“Aw shit, Sam.”

“None of that, you big baby. Let’s just get you in and adjust the support plates.”

Sam took one shoulder, the nurse the other. The sensation of being carried was strange. Bull didn’t know the last time anyone had picked him up. The brace in the guts of the mech was like a girdle, and Sam had put straps along the mech’s struts to keep his legs from flapping around. It was an inversion of the usual; instead of using his legs to move the mech, he was using the mech to move his legs. For the first time since the catastrophe, Bull walked down the short hall and into the general ward. Sam kept pace, her gaze on the mechanism like a mother duck taking her ducklings for their first swim. His sense of wrongness didn’t leave, but it lessened.

The worst of the injured from all three sides were here, men and women, Belter and Earther and Martian. A bald man with skin an unhealthy yellow struggled to breathe; a woman so young-looking Bull could hardly believe she wasn’t a child lay almost naked in a bed, her skin mostly burned away and a distant look in her eyes; a thick-bodied man with an Old Testament prophet’s beard and body hair like a chimp moaned and shifted through his sedation. In the disposable plastic medical gowns, there was nothing to show who belonged to what side. They were people, and they were on his ship, so they were his people.

At the end of the corridor, Corin stood in front of a doorway, a pistol on her hip. Her salute was on the edge between serious and mocking.

“Macht sly, chief,” she said. “Suits.”

“Thank you,” Bull said.

“Here to see the prisoners?”

“Sure,” Bull said. He hadn’t meant to go anywhere in particular, but since he could, he could. The lockdown ward was smaller, but other than one of his security staff at the door, there weren’t any signs that the patients here were different. Prisoners was a strong word. None of them were legally bound. They ranged from high-value civilians from Earth to the highest-ranking Martian wounded. Anyone whom Bull thought might be particularly useful, now or later. All of the dozen beds were full.

“How’s it feeling?” Sam asked.

“Seems like it lists to the right a little,” Bull said.

“Yeah, I was thinking maybe—”

The new voice came from the farthest bed, weak and confused but unmistakable:

“Sam?”

Sam’s attention snapped to the back, and she took a couple tentative steps toward the woman who had spoken.

“Naomi? Oh holy crap, sweetie. What happened to you?”

“Got in a fight,” the XO of the Rocinante said through bruised and broken lips. “Whipped her ass.”

“You know Nagata?” Bull asked.

“From the bad old days,” Sam said, taking her hand. “We were roommates for about six days while she and Jim Holden were having a fight.”

“Where,” Naomi said. “Where’s my crew?”

“They’re here,” Bull said, maneuvering his mech closer to her. “All but Holden.”

“They’re all right?”

“I’ve felt better,” a balding, slightly pudgy man with skin the color of toast said. He had the drawl of Mariner Valley on Mars or West Texas on Earth. It was hard to tell the difference.

“Alex,” Naomi said. “Where’s Amos?”

“Next bed over,” Alex said. “He’s been sleepin’ a lot. What happened, anyway? We get arrested?”

“There was an accident,” Bull said. “A lot of people got hurt.”

“But we ain’t arrested,” Alex said.

“No.”