Persepolis Rising (Expanse 7)

“Got any bright ideas?”

“Lemme try something,” he said, and hunkered down.

He cut again, but in a tight curve, not making a hole they could breach through, but something smaller. When he got around it, he punched in, pushing the little core of hull material into the space within the ship. The circle he’d made instantly began closing, but Amos was carving slivers off its edge. He pared the hole wider and wider, even as it fought to narrow. His motions were fast and efficient. He didn’t slow down even as the ship bucked and turned under them, the proof of a lifetime’s physical labor made into elegance. Bobbie knew that if she’d tried this, she’d never have been able to keep up, but with Amos, the hole grew wider.

“Edges are going to be toasty,” Amos said. “Nothing I can do about that.”

Saba’s voice murmured in Bobbie’s ear. Marine fire teams have reached the detention cells. Time to turn our little friends off.

“Sooner would be better than later,” Bobbie said.

“You ain’t wrong about that,” Amos said. He started whistling tunelessly between his teeth. “I’m not going to be able to stop this while folks go through.”

“Fuck that,” one of the others said. “Not winding up half in and half out, me.”

Bobbie turned to the solider. “You’ll do as you’re told, or I will shoot you in the head as an example to others,” she said, she thought more politely than the man deserved. “Get next to the hole. You’re going in on one. Three … two …”

The man dove through, Amos cutting through the nylon bands as he went. The hole didn’t close over him, but only because Amos kept carving the sides.

“Next up,” Bobbie said, pointing at the nearest soldier. “You. Three. Two. One.”

Again and again, Bobbie shoved one of her team through the molten hole of the hull. The abandoned magnetic locks clustered around it like wildflowers in a garden, the cut tethers shifting as the ship shifted. Like seaweed in an unsteady current.

Medina swam above them, and twice Bobbie caught glimpses of the Rocinante’s drive plume limning the station like a sunrise that never came.

“Gonna be tight, Babs. This is taking a lot more fuel than I budgeted.”

“Keep going,” she said.

He did. Eight. Nine. Ten. And then it was just the two of them.

“We’re good,” she said. “Give me the rig. I’ll get you in.”

“I appreciate that thought,” Amos said. “But just between you and me? You’re not that good a welder. Head in. I’ll make it.”

“No heroic gestures.”

“Oh, I’m not dying out here,” Amos said, and pointed toward the interior of the ship with

his chin. “Worst-case scenario, I’m dying inside there.”

Bobbie shifted her magnetic locks to the edge of the burning hole, then launched through, tucking her legs in. Arms caught her and pulled her to the side. The suits’ worklights filled the space between the hulls with blue-white radiance.

It was eerie. It was familiar as a well-loved face, but wrong. Where spars of titanium, ceramic, and steel should have been, crystals grew. Lines of fracture shot through them and then disappeared like watching lightning discharge in a bottle. Where sheets of metal and carbon lace should have been, seamless blankets of something that she tried to think of as lobster shell and then fabric and then ice defined the spaces.

It was unmistakably a Martian destroyer. And it was like nothing she’d ever seen before.

“Coming through,” Amos said, and she turned to pull him safely to a handhold. The hole where they’d breached squeezed tight. It didn’t completely close, but the opening ended up five centimeters across. In the worklights, Amos smiled his empty, amiable smile.

“Well, that part’s done,” he said. “Hope the next hull’s a bit more familiar, if you know what I mean.”

Alex was keeping the chase consistent. It was the only reason they weren’t being bounced through the space between the hulls like rats in a dryer. The entry into the ship proper was always the most dangerous moment. Bobbie had known that from the start.

They moved quickly, bracing at the hand- and footholds, until they found a stretch of bulkhead. Amos checked the fuel on the welding rig and shook his head, but he didn’t speak. The smoke shook and fell away with every turn of the ship like water falling from a faucet. The hull didn’t heal itself, but that was the only good thing.

“That’s going to be small,” she said.

“It’s going to get done,” Amos said. “Any more, and we’ll be trying to bend it to get through.”