Ashford stood up.
“We aren’t anarchists,” he said, his voice dripping with scorn.
“OPA tradition, maybe I’m wrong, is that someone does something that intentionally endangers the ship, they get to hitchhike back to wherever there’s air,” Bull said.
“You hauled him out of a water vat. How was he endangering the ship? Was he going to throw kelp at it?” Pa said, her voice brittle.
“People been coming on shift high,” Bull said, lacing his fingers together on one knee. “Don’t trust me. Ask around. And, c’mon. Of course they are, right? We’ve got three times as much work needs to get done as we can do. Pixie dust, and they don’t feel tired. Don’t take breaks. Don’t slow down. Get more done. Thing about bad judgment? You got to have good judgment to notice you’ve got it. We already got people hurt. Matter of time before someone died. Or worse.”
“You’re saying this man was responsible for all those other people performing badly at their work, so you killed him?” Ashford said, but the wind was out of his sails. He was going to fold like wet cardboard. Bull recognized that Ashford’s weakness was going to work to his advantage this time, but he still hated it.
“I’m saying he was putting the ship at risk for his own financial gain, just like he was stealing air filters. And sure he did. There was a demand, he filled it. If I lock him up, that makes it so that the risk is higher. Prices are higher. Get caught, you maybe go to jail when we get back to Tycho.”
“And you made it so that the risk is death.”
“No,” Bull said. “I mean, yeah, but I don’t shoot him. I do what you do to people who risk the ship. Belters know what getting spaced means, right? It frames the issue.”
“This was a mistake.”
“I’ve got a list of fifty people he sold to,” Bull said. “Some of them are skilled technicians. A couple are mid-level overseers. We could lock ’em all up, but then we’ve got less people to do the work. And anyway, they won’t be doing it anymore. Supply’s gone. But if you want I could talk to them. Let ’em know I’m keeping an eye open.”
Pa’s chuckle was mirthless.
“That would be difficult if you’re in the brig on charges,” she said.
“We don’t have a brig,” Bull said. “Plan was the church elders were just gonna talk everything out.” He kept his tone carefully free of sarcasm.
Ashford waffled. It was like watching a cat trying to decide whether to jump from one tree limb to another. His expression was calculating, internal, uncertain. Bull waited.
“This never happens again,” Ashford said. “You decide someone needs to go out the airlock, you come to me. I’ll be the one that pushes the button.”
“All right.”
“All right, what?” Ashford bit the words. Bull lowered his head, looking at the deck. He’d gotten what he came for. He could let Ashford feel like he’d gotten a little win too.
“I mean, yes, sir, Captain. Solid copy. I understand and will comply.”
“You’re damn right you will,” Ashford said. “Now get the hell back to work.”
“Yes, sir.”
When the door closed behind him, Bull leaned against the wall and took a few deep breaths. He was intensely aware of the sound of the ship—low hum of the air recyclers, the distant murmur of voices, the chimes and beeps of a thousand different system alerts. The air smelled of plastic and ozone. He’d taken his calculated risk, and he’d pulled it off.
Walking back down, level by level, he felt the attention on him. In the lift, a man tried not to stare at him. In the hall outside the security office, a woman smiled at him and nodded, nervous as a mouse that smells cat. Bull smiled back.
In the security office, Serge and another man from the team—a Europan named Casimir—lifted their fists, greeting him in the physical idiom of the Belt. Bull returned the gesture and ambled over.
“What we got?” Bull asked.
“A couple dozen people came to pay respects,” Serge said. “I figure about half a kilo more dust just appeared out of nowhere.”
“Okay, then.”
“I’ve got a file of everyone who went in. You want me to flag them in the system?”
“Nope,” Bull said. “I told them it was no big deal. It’s no big deal. You can kill the file.”
“You got it, boss.”
“I’ll be in my office,” Bull said. “Let me know if something comes up. And somebody start a pot of coffee.”
He sat down on the desk, his feet resting on the seat of his chair, and leaned forward. He was suddenly exhausted. It had been a long, bad day, and losing the dread he’d been carrying for the weeks leading up to it was like being released from prison. It took a minute or two to notice he had a message waiting from Michio Pa. The XO hadn’t requested a connection. She didn’t want to talk to him, then. She just wanted to say something.
In the recording, her face was lit from below with the backsplash of her hand terminal screen. Her smile was thin and tight and sort of faded away somewhere around her cheekbones.
“I saw what you did there. That was very nice. Very clever. Wrapping yourself in the OPA flag, making the old man wonder if the crew wouldn’t take your side. More-Belter-than-thou. It was graceful.”
Bull scratched his chin. The stubble that had grown in since morning made his fingernails sound like a rasp. It was probably too much to ask that he not make any enemies with this, but he was sorry it was Pa.
“You can’t sugarcoat it with me. We both know that killing someone doesn’t make you admirable. I’m not about to forget this. I just hope you have enough soul left that what you’ve done still bothers you.”
The recording ended, and Bull smiled at the blank screen wearily.
“Every time,” he told the hand terminal. “And next time too.”
Chapter Ten: Holden
T
he Rocinante was not a small ship. Her normal crew complement was over a dozen navy personnel and officers, and on many missions she’d also carry six marines. Running the Roci with four people meant each of them did several jobs, and that didn’t leave a lot of downtime. It also meant that it was pretty easy at first to avoid the four strangers living on the ship. With the documentary crew restricted from entering ops, the airlock deck, the machine shop, or engineering, they were stuck on the two crew decks with access only to their quarters, the head, the galley, and sick bay.