Abaddon's Gate (Expanse 3)

“More than you have,” Holden said, but there was an apology in his tone. He didn’t want to disappoint Anna and he didn’t want to do what she said. No way for him to win.

“What if I bought the Rocinante?” Anna said.

“It’s not for sale,” Holden said.

“Not from you. I know about your legal troubles. What if I bought the Rocinante from Mars. Gave you the rights to it, free and clear.”

“You’re going to buy a warship?” Alex said. “Do churches get to do that?”

“Sure,” Holden said, “do that, and I’ll smuggle her out.”

Anna held up a finger, then pulled her hand terminal out of her pocket. Clarissa could see her hands were trembling. She tapped at the screen, and a few seconds later a familiar voice came from the box.

“Annie,” Tilly Fagan said. “Where are you? I’m having cocktails with half a dozen very important people and they’re boring me to tears. The least you can do is come up and let them fawn over you for a while.”

“Tilly,” Anna said. “You remember that really expensive favor you owe me? I know what it is.”

“I’m all ears,” Tilly said.

“I need you to buy the Rocinante from Mars and give it to Captain Holden.” Tilly was silent. Clarissa could practically see the woman’s eyebrows rising. “It’s the only way to take care of Clarissa.”

Tilly’s exhalation could have been a sigh or laughter.

“Sure, what the hell. I’ll tell Robert to do it. He will. It’ll be less than I’d get in a divorce. Anything else, dear? Shall I change the Earth’s orbit for you while I’m at it?”

“No,” Anna said. “That’s plenty.”

“You’re damn right it is. Get up here soon. Really, everyone’s swooning over you, and it’ll be much more amusing for me to watch them try to squeeze up next to you in person.”

“I will,” Anna said. She put her hand terminal back in her pocket and took Clarissa’s hand in her own. Her fingers were warm. “Well?”

Holden’s face had gone pale. He looked from Clarissa to Anna and back and blew out a long breath.

“Um,” he said. “Wow. Okay. We may not be going home right away, though. Is that cool?”

Clarissa held out her hand, astounded by its weight. It took them all a moment to understand what she was doing. Then Holden—the man she’d moved heaven and earth to humiliate and murder—took her hand.

“Pleased to meet you,” she croaked.

They installed a medical restraint cuff to her ankle set to sedate her on a signal from any of the crew, or if it detected any of the products of her artificial glands, or if she left the crew decks of the ship. It was three kilos of formed yellow plastic that clung to her leg like a barnacle. The transfer came during the memorial service. Captain Michio Pa, her face still bandaged from the fighting, spoke in glowing terms about Carlos Baca and Samantha Rosenberg and a dozen other names and commended their ashes to the void. Then each of the commanders of the other ships in the flotilla took their turns, standing before the cameras on the decks of their own ships, speaking a few words, moving on. No one mentioned Ashford, locked away and sedated. No one mentioned her.

It was the last ceremony before the exodus. Before the return. Clarissa watched it on her hand terminal when she wasn’t looking at the screen that showed the shuttle’s exterior view. The alien station was inert now. It didn’t glow, didn’t react, didn’t read to the sensors as anything more than a huge slug of mixed metals and carbonate structures floating in a starless void.

“They’re not all going back, you know,” Alex said. “The Martian team is plannin’ to stay here, run surveys on all the gates. See what’s on the other side.”

“I didn’t know that,” Clarissa said.

“Yeah. This right now,” the pilot said, gesturing toward the screen where a UN captain was speaking earnestly into the camera, her eyes hard as marbles and her jaw set against the sorrow of listing the names of the dead. “This is the still point. Before, this was all fear. After this, it’ll all be greed. But this…” He sighed. “Well, it’s a nice moment, anyway.”

“It is,” Clarissa said.

“So, just to check, are you still plannin’ to kill the captain? Because, you know, if you are it seems like you at least owe us a warning.”

“I’m not,” she said.

“And if you were?”

“I’d still say I wasn’t. But I’m not.”

“Fair enough.”

“Okay, Alex,” Holden said from the back. “Are we there yet?”

“Just about to knock,” Alex said. He tapped on the control panel, and on the screen the Rocinante’s exterior lights came on. The ship glowed gold and silver in the blackness, like seeing a whole city from above. “Okay, folks. We’re home.”

Clarissa’s bunk was larger than her quarters in the Cerisier, smaller than the one from the Prince. She wasn’t sharing it with anyone, though. It was hers as much as anything was.

All she had for clothing was a jumpsuit with the name Tachi imprinted in the weave. All her toiletries were the standard ship issue. Nothing was hers. Nothing was her. She kept to her room, going out to the galley and the head when she needed to. It wasn’t fear, exactly, so much as the sense of wanting to stay out of the way. It wasn’t her ship, it was theirs. She wasn’t one of them, and she didn’t deserve to be. She was a paid passenger, and not a fare they’d even wanted. The awareness of that weighed on her.

Over time, the bunk began to feel more like her cell on the Behemoth than anything else. That was enough to drive her out a little. Only a little, though. She’d seen the galley before in simulations, when she’d been planning how to destroy it, where to place her override. It looked different in person. Not smaller or larger, exactly, but different. The crew moved through the space going from one place to another, passing through in the way she couldn’t. They ate their meals and had their meetings, ignoring her like she was a ghost. Like she’d already lost her place in the world.

“Well,” Holden said, his voice grim, “we have a major problem. We’re out of coffee.”

“We still got beer,” Amos said.

“Yes,” Holden said. “But beer is not coffee. I’ve put in a request with the Behemoth, but I haven’t heard back, and I can’t see going into the vast and unknown void without coffee.”