Abaddon's Gate (Expanse 3)

“What about you?” Cortez asked. He put his hand against her back. “Do you believe in redemption?”

“No,” she said. “Just sacrifice.”

“Mao,” Ashford barked from the other room. “Get out here.”

Clarissa floated to the doorway. The captain looked grayer than he had before. There was swelling around his eyes that would have been dark circles if they’d had any gravity.

“Captain?”

“You understand how all this crap is wired up.”

“A little,” she said.

“I’ve got something I need you to do.”

Chapter Forty-Seven: Holden

T

he elevator shaft that ran outside the entire two-kilometer length of the Behemoth’s drum section stretched out ahead of him. With Naomi consolidating control over the ship, most of the ancillary systems were down or unsafe to use. The primary elevator was locked at the shaft’s midway point. There was a secondary elevator in storage near the top of the shaft, but it could only be activated if the first elevator was removed from the tracks and locked down. So instead of a comfortable four-minute ride, the trip to the bridge was a two-kilometer-long zero-g float through hard vacuum with a big steel-and-ceramic box blocking the midpoint.

It could be worse. From the security camera streams Naomi had been able to dig into, it didn’t look like Ashford expected anyone to come at the bridge that way. He’d fortified his position at the command-level transition point once word had gone out about the attack on engineering. But so far they hadn’t reinforced the elevator shaft at all. They’d been expecting to hold both ends, and apparently it hadn’t occurred to them yet that they didn’t.

Bull had warned him that Ashford might be losing his mind under the stress of the situation, but he wasn’t a stupid man. He’d had a notably mistake-free career as an OPA captain up to that point, which was why he’d seemed the safe choice to Fred Johnson. Holden couldn’t count on him to make mistakes that would make things easy. But if Naomi won out in engineering it wouldn’t matter. By the time they reached the bridge everyone there would be blissfully asleep.

Holden had the broadcast from Radio Free Slow Zone playing at low volume in his helmet. Anna and Monica were still explaining to the flotilla about the need to shut down all the power in a back-and-forth sort of interview format while occasional volleys of gunfire popped in the background. Somehow it made the crazy things Anna was saying seem sane. Holden gave Monica points for knowing it would work that way. And, so far, the sounds of fighting seemed light. Amos was probably bored.

They’d made a plan, and so far everything was more or less going the way they’d hoped. The thought left Holden increasingly terrified.

Without warning the wall-mounted LEDs in the shaft went out. Holden turned on his suit lights but didn’t slow his climb. He threw a strange double shadow on the bulkhead when Corin’s suit lights came on.

“I’m not sure if that means we’re winning or losing,” he said, just to have something to say.

Corin grunted at him noncommittally. “I see the lift.”

Holden tilted his torso back to shine the suit lights farther up the shaft. The bottom of the elevator was visible a hundred meters ahead as a wall of metal and composite.

“There’s supposed to be a maintenance hatch we can open.”

Corin held up a fist in assent, and while still drifting up the elevator shaft began rummaging around in the duffel she’d brought from engineering. She pulled out a handheld plasma torch.

Holden rotated his body to hit the bottom of the elevator feet first, then kicked on his boot magnets. He walked over to the hatch and tried to open it, but as they suspected it was locked from the inside. Without waiting to be asked Corin started cutting it open with her torch.

“Bull, you there?” Holden asked, switching to the agreed-upon channel.

“Trouble?”

“Just cutting the elevator right now, wanted to check in.”

“Well,” Bull said, drawing the word out. “We’re hitting either home runs or strikes here. We own the essential systems, we’ve got the laser down, and we’re working on killing the reactor.”

“What are we missing?” Holden asked. Corin’s torch sputtered and went out, and she began a quiet profanity-laced conversation with herself as she replaced the power pack with another from her duffel.

“Naomi can’t get into the bridge systems. They’ve got her totally locked out, which means no knockout gas for the entry.”

Which meant, by last count, him and Corin fighting their way past at least fifteen of Ashford’s people, and possibly more. Through a narrow doorway, down a long corridor with no cover. It would make the entry into engineering look like a walk in the park.

“We can’t do that with two people,” Holden said. “There’s no chance.”

Corin, who’d been listening in on her radio, looked up. She hit the elevator hatch with one gauntleted fist and the cut piece fell inside, edges glowing dull red. She made no move to enter, waiting for the outcome of his conversation with Bull. Her expression was blank; it could have meant anything.

“We’re sending some help, so sit tight at the command deck entry hatch and wait for—” He stopped, and Holden could hear someone speaking to him, though the words were too low to make out. It sounded like Naomi.

“What’s up?” Holden asked, but Bull didn’t answer. An increasingly animated conversation happened on Bull’s end for several minutes. Bull’s replies were fragments that without context meant nothing to Holden. He waited impatiently.

“Okay, new problem,” Bull finally said.

“Bigger than the ‘we can’t get into the bridge without dying’ problem?”

“Yeah,” Bull said. Holden felt his stomach drop. “Naomi caught something on a security cam they missed in the corridor outside the bridge. Four people in power armor just left the command deck. It’s the armor we took from the Martians. No way to track them, but I can guess where they’re headed.”

There was only one place Ashford would be sending that much firepower. Engineering.

“Get out,” Holden said, more panic in his voice than he’d hoped to hear. “Get out now.”

Bull chuckled. It was not a reassuring sound. “Oh, my friend, this will be a problem for you before it is for us.”

Holden waited. Corin shrugged with her hands and climbed inside the elevator to open the upper hatch. No need to cut it. The locks were on the inside.