Abaddon's Gate (Expanse 3)

He should go to his bunk.

“Come on, old man,” he said. “Time to get some rest.”

He had closed and locked the office door before Sam’s voice came to him in his memory. Even if everyone’s sober and working balls-out, my crew can’t get it done faster than that. He hesitated, his wide fingers over the keypad. It was late. He needed food and sleep and an hour or so checking in with the family aggregator his cousin had set up three years before to help everyone keep track of who was living where. He had a container of flash-frozen green chile from Hatch, back on Earth, waiting for him. It was all going to be there in the morning, and more besides. He didn’t need to make more work for himself. No one was going to thank him for it.

He went back in, turned his desk back on, and reread the injury report.

Sam had a good laugh. One that came from the gut. It filled the machining bay, echoing off ceiling and walls until it sounded like there was a crowd of her. Two of the techs on the far side turned to look toward her, smiling without knowing what they were smiling about.

“Technical support?” she said. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Rail gun’s a pretty technical piece of equipment,” Bull said. “It needs support.”

“So you redefined what I do as technical support.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s never going to fly,” she said.

“Then get the job done quick,” Bull said.

“Ashford will pull you up for disciplinary action,” she said, the amusement fading but not quite gone yet.

“He has that right. But there’s this other thing I wanted to talk about. You said something yesterday about how long it would take to do the job if everyone on your crew was sober?”

It was like turning off a light. The smile left Sam’s face as if it had never been there. She crossed her arms. Tiny half-moon shapes dented in at the corners of her mouth, making her look older than she was. Bull nodded to her like she’d said something.

“You’ve got techs coming to work high,” he said.

“Sometimes,” she said. And then, reluctantly, “Some of it’s alcohol, but mostly it’s pixie dust to make up for lack of sleep.”

“I got a report about a kid got his knee blown out. His blood was clean, but it doesn’t look like anyone tested the guy who was driving the mech. Driver isn’t even named in the report. Weird, eh?”

“If you say so,” she said.

Bull looked down at his feet. The gray-and-black service utility boots. The spotless floor.

“I need a name, Sam.”

“You know I can’t do that,” she said. “These ass**les are my crew. If I lose their respect, we’re done here.”

“I won’t bust your guys unless they’re dealing.”

“You can’t ask me to pick sides. And sorry for saying this, but you already don’t have a lot of friends around here. You should be careful how you alienate people.”

Across the bay, the two technicians lifted a broken mech onto a steel repair hoist. The murmur of their conversation was just the sound of words without the words themselves. If he couldn’t hear them, Bull figured they couldn’t hear him.

“Yeah. So Sam?”

“Bull.”

“I’m gonna need you to pick sides.”

He watched her vacillate. It only took a few seconds. Then he looked across the bay. The technicians had the mech open, pulling an electric motor out of its spine. It was smaller than a six-pack of beer and built to put out enough torque to rip steel. Not the sort of thing to play with drunk. Sam followed his gaze and his train of thought.

“For a guy who bends so many rules, you can be pretty f**king uncompromising.”

“Strong believer in doing what needs to get done.”

It took her another minute, but she gave him a name.

Chapter Six: Holden

“

U

ranus is really far away,” Naomi said as they walked along the corridor to the docking bay. It was the third objection to the contract that she’d listed so far, and something in her voice told Holden there were a lot more points on her list. Under other circumstances, he would have thought she was just angry that he’d accepted the job. She was angry. But not just.

“Yes,” he said. “It is.”

“And Titania is a shitty little moon with one tiny little science base on it,” Naomi continued.

“Yes.”

“We could buy Titania for what it cost these people to hire us to fly out there,” Naomi said.

Holden shrugged. This part of Ceres was a maze of cheap warehouse tunnels and even cheaper office space. The walls were the grungy off-white of spray-on insulation foam. Someone with a pocketknife and a few minutes to kill could reach the bedrock of Ceres without much effort. From the ratty look of the corridor, there were a lot of people with knives and idle time.

A small forklift came down the corridor toward them with an electric whine and a constant high-pitched beep. Holden backed up against the wall and pulled Naomi to him to get her out of its way. The driver gave Holden a tiny nod of thanks as she drove by.

“So why are they hiring us?” she asked. Demanded.

“Because we’re awesome?”

“Titania has, what, a couple hundred people living at the science base?” Naomi said. “You know how they usually send supplies out there? They load them into a single-use braking rocket, and fling them at Uranus’ orbit with a rail gun.”

“Usually,” Holden agreed.

“And the company? Outer Fringe Exports? If I was making a cheap, disposable shell corporation, you know what I’d call it?”

“Outer Fringe Exports?”

“Outer Fringe Exports,” she said.

Naomi stopped at the entry hatch that opened to the rental docking bay and the Rocinante. The sign overhead listed the present user: Outer Fringe Exports. Holden started to reach for the controls to cycle the pressure doors open, but Naomi put a hand on his arm.

“These people are hiring a warship to transport something to Titania,” she said, lowering her voice as though afraid someone might be listening. “How can they possibly afford to do that? Our cargo hold is the size of a hatbox.”

“We gave them a good rate?” Holden said, trying for funny and failing.

“What would someone be sending to Titania that requires a fast, stealthy, and heavily armed ship? Have you asked what’s in those crates we signed up to carry?”