Abaddon's Gate (Expanse 3)

Somewhere deep in the structure of the Cerisier, one of the navigators started a minor correction burn and gravity shifted a half a degree. The couch moved under her, and she tried not to notice it. She preferred the times when she could pretend that she was in a gravity well to the little reminders that she was the puppet of acceleration and inertia.

Her hand terminal chimed once, announcing the arrival of a message. To anyone who didn’t look carefully, it would seem like just another advertisement. An investment opportunity she would be a fool to ignore with a video presentation attached that would seem like corrupted data to anyone who didn’t have the decryption key. She sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of the couch, and leaned close to the hand terminal.

The man who appeared on her screen wore black glasses dark enough to be opaque. His hair was cropped close to his skull, but she could see from the way it moved that he was under heavy burn. The soundman cleared his throat.

“The package is delivered and ready for testing. I’d appreciate the balance transfer as soon as you’ve confirmed. I’ve got some bills coming due, and I’m a little under the wire.” Something in the background hissed, and a distant voice started laughing. A woman. The file ended.

She replayed it four more times. Her heart was racing and her fingers felt like little electric currents were running through them. She’d need to confirm, of course. But this was the last, most dangerous step. The Rocinante had been cutting-edge military hardware when it had fallen into Holden’s hands. There could also have been any number of changes made to the security systems in the years since. She set up a simple remote connection looped through a disposable commercial account on Ceres Station. It might take days for the Rocinante’s acknowledgment to come back to her saying that the back door was installed and functioning, that the ship was hers. But if it did…

It was the last piece. Everything in place. A sense of almost religious well-being washed over her. The thin room with its scratched walls and too-bright LEDs had never seemed so benign. She levered herself up out of the couch. She wanted to celebrate, though of course there was no one she could tell. Talk to might be enough.

The halls of the Cerisier were so narrow that it was impossible to walk abreast or to pass someone coming the opposite way without turning sideways. The mess would fit twenty people sitting with their hips touching. The nearest thing to an open area was the fitness center off the medical bay. The treadmills and exercise machines required enough room that no one would be caught in the joints and belts. Safety regulations made it the widest, freest air in the ship, and so a good place to be around people.

Of her team, only Ren was present. In the usual microgravity, he would probably have been neck deep in a tank of resistance gel. With the full-g burn, he was on a regular treadmill. His pale skin was bright with sweat, his carrot-orange hair pulled back in a frizzed ponytail. It was strange watching him. His large head was made larger by his hair, and the thinness of his body made him seem more like something from a children’s program than an actual man.

He nodded to her as she came in.

“Ren,” she said, walking to the front of his machine. She felt the gazes of other crewmen on her, but on the Cerisier she didn’t feel as exposed. Or maybe it was the good news that carried her. “Do you have a minute?”

“Chief,” he said instead of yes, but he thumbed down the treadmill to a cool-down walk. “Que sa?”

“I heard some of the things Stanni was saying about me,” she said. Ren’s expression closed down. “I just wanted…”

She frowned, looked down, and then gave in to the impulse welling up in her.

“He’s right,” she said. “I’m in over my head with this job. I got it because of some political favors. I’m not qualified to do what I’m doing.”

He blinked rapidly. He shot a glance around her, checking to see if anyone had overheard them. She didn’t particularly care, but she thought it was sweet that he did.

“Not so bad, you,” he said. “I mean, little off here, little off there. But I’ve been under worse.”

“I need help,” she said. “To do all the work the way it should be done, I need help. I need someone I can trust. Someone I can count on.”

Ren nodded, but his forehead roughened. He blew out his breath and stepped off the treadmill.

“I want to get the work done right,” she said. “Not miss anything. And I want the team to respect me.”

“Okay, sure.”

“I know you should have had this job.”

Ren blew out another breath, his cheeks ballooning. It was more expressive than she’d ever seen him before. He leaned against the wall. When he met her gaze, it was like he was seeing her for the first time.

“Appreciate you saying it, chief, but we’re both of us outsiders here,” he said. “Stick together, bien?”

“Good,” she said, leaning against the wall next to him. “So. The brownout buffers? What did I get wrong?”

Ren sighed.

“The buffers are smart, but the design’s stupid,” he said. “They talk to each other, so they’re also a separate network, yah? Thing is, you put one in the wrong way? Works okay. But next time it resets, the signal down the line looks wrong. Triggers a diagnostic run in the next one down, and then the next one down. Whole network starts blinking like Christmas. Too many errors on the network and it fails closed, takes down the whole grid. And then you got us going through checking each one by hand. With flashlights and the supervisor chewing our nuts.”

“That’s… that can’t be right,” she said. “Seriously? It could have shut down the grid?”

“I know, right?” Ren said, smiling. “And all it would take is change the design so it don’t fit in if you got it wrong. But they never do. A lot of what we do is like that, boss. We try to catch the little ones before they get big. Some things, you get them wrong, it’s nothing. Some things, and it’s a big mess.”

The words felt like a church bell being struck. They resonated. She was that fault, that error. She didn’t know what she was doing, not really, and she’d get away with it. She’d pass. Until she didn’t, and then everything would fall apart. Her throat felt tighter. She almost wished she hadn’t said anything.

She was a brownout buffer pointed the wrong way. A flaw that was easy to overlook, with the potential to wreck everything.