Abaddon's Gate (Expanse 3)

“It’s the risk I came here to take,” Anna said. “You can find us a place. An… an interview room. You have those, don’t you?”

The guard’s stance settled deeper into his knees and hips, immovable.

“Can stay here until the sun burns out,” he said. “That door’s staying closed.”

“It’s all right,” Clarissa said.

“No it isn’t,” Anna said. “I’m her priest, and the things we need to talk about are private. Please open the door and take us someplace we can talk.”

“Jojo,” the captain at the far end of the hall said. Ashford. That was his name. “It’s all right. You can put them in the meat freezer. It’s not in use and it locks from the outside.”

“Then I get a dead preacher, ano sa?”

“I believe that you won’t,” Anna said.

“Then you believe in vacuum fairies,” the guard said, but he unlocked the cell door. The bars swung open. Clarissa hesitated. Behind guard and priest, the disgraced Captain Ashford watched her, peering through his bars to get a look. He needed to shave and he looked like he’d been crying. For a moment, Clarissa gripped the cold steel bars of her door. The urge to pull them closed, to retreat, was almost overwhelming.

“It’s all right,” Anna said.

Clarissa let go of the door and stepped out. The guard drew his sidearm and pressed it against the back of her neck. Anna looked pained. Ashford’s expression didn’t shift a millimeter.

“Is that necessary?” Anna asked.

“Implants,” the guard said and prodded Clarissa to move forward. She walked.

The freezer was warm and larger than the galley back on the Cerisier. Strips of metal ran along floor and ceiling and both walls with notches every few centimeters to allow the Mormon colonists who never were to lock walls and partitions into place. It made sense that the veterinary stalls that had been pressed into service as her prison would be near the slaughterhouse. Harsh white light spilled from LEDs set into the walls, unsoftened and directional, casting hard shadows.

“I’m back in fifteen minutes,” the guard said as he pushed Clarissa through the doorway. “Anything looks funny, I’ll shoot you.”

“Thank you for giving us privacy,” Anna said, stepping through after her. The door closed. The latch sounded like the gates of hell, closing. The lights flickered, and the first thought that flashed across Clarissa’s mind, rich with disapproval, was, Shouldn’t tie the locking magnet to the same circuit as the control board. It was like a relic from another life.

Anna gathered herself, smiled, and put out her hand.

“We’ve met before,” she said, “but we haven’t really been introduced. My name’s Anna.”

A lifetime’s etiquette accepted the offered hand on Clarissa’s behalf. The woman’s fingers were very warm.

“My priest?” Clarissa said.

“Sorry about that,” Anna said. “I didn’t mean to presume. I was getting angry, and I tried to pull rank.”

“I know people who do worse. When they’re angry.”

Clarissa released the woman’s hand.

“I’m a friend of Tilly’s. She helped me after the ship crashed. I was hurt and not thinking very straight, and she helped me,” she said.

“She’s good that way.”

“She knew your sister too. Your father. The whole family,” Anna said, then pressed her lips together impatiently. “I wish they’d given us chairs. I feel like we’re standing around at a bus terminal.”

Anna took a deep breath, sighing out her nose, then sat there in the middle of the room with her legs crossed. She patted the metal decking at her side. Clarissa hesitated, then lowered herself to sit. She had the overwhelming memory of being five years old, sitting on a rug in kindergarten.

“That’s better,” Anna said. “So, Tilly’s told me a lot about you. She’s worried.”

Clarissa tilted her head. From just the form, it seemed like the place where she would reply. She felt the urge to speak, and she couldn’t imagine what she would say. After a moment, Anna went on, trying again without seeming to.

“I’m worried about you too.”

“Why?”

Anna’s eyes clouded. For a moment, she seemed to be having some internal conversation. But only for a moment. She leaned forward, her hands clasped.

“I didn’t help you before. I saw you just before the Seung Un blew up,” she said. “Just before you set off the bomb.”

“It was too late by then,” Clarissa said. Ren had already been dead. “You couldn’t have stopped it.”

“You’re right,” Anna said. “That’s not the only reason I’m here. I also… I lost someone. When all the ships stopped, I lost someone.”

“Someone you cared about,” Clarissa said. “Someone you loved.”

“Someone I hardly knew, but it was a real loss. And also I was scared of you. I am scared of you. But Tilly told me a lot about you, and it’s helped me to get past some of my fear.”

“Not all of it?”

“No. Not all of it.”

Something deep in the structure of the ship thumped, the whole structure around them ringing for a moment like a gigantic bell tolling far, far away.

“I could kill you,” Clarissa said. “Before they got the door open.”

“I know. I saw.”

Clarissa put her hand out, her palm against the notched runner. The finish was smooth and the metal cool.

“You want a confession, then?” she said.

“If you want to offer one.”

“I did it,” Clarissa said. “I sabotaged the Rocinante and the Seung Un. I killed Ren. I killed some people back on Earth. I lied about who I was. All of it. I’m guilty.”

“All right.”

“Are we done, then?”

Anna scratched her nose and sighed. “I came out to the Ring even though it upset my wife. Even though it meant not seeing my baby for months. I told myself that I wanted to come see it. To help people make sense of it and, whatever it was, to not be afraid. You came out here to… save your father. To redeem him.”

“Is that what Tilly says?”

“She’s not as polite about it.”

Clarissa coughed out a laugh. Everything she could say felt trite. Worse, it felt naive and stupid. Jim Holden destroyed my family and I wanted my father to be proud of me and I was wrong.