Abaddon's Gate

Chapter Thirteen: Bull

Arriving at the Ring was a political fiction, but that didn’t keep it from being real. There was no physical boundary to say that this was within the realm of the object. There was no port to dock at. The Behemoth’s sensory arrays had been sucking in data from the Ring since before they’d left Tycho. The Martian science ships and Earth military forces that had been there before the doomed Belter kid had become its first casualty were still there, where they had been, but resupplied now. The new Martian ships had joined them, matched orbit, and were hanging quietly in the sky. The Earth flotilla, like the Behemoth, was in the last part of the burn, pulling up to whatever range they’d chosen to stop at. To say, We have come across the vast abyss to float at this distance and now we are here. We’ve arrived.

As far as anyone could tell, the Ring didn’t give a damn.

The structure itself was eerie. The surface was a series of twisting ridges that spiraled around its body. At first they appeared uneven, almost messy. The mathematicians, architects, and physicists assured them all that there was a deep regularity there: the height of the ridges in a complex harmony with the width and the spacing between the peaks and valleys. The reports were breathless, finding one layer of complexity after another, the intimations of intention and design all laid bare without any hint of what it all might mean.

“The official Martian reports have been very conservative,” the science officer said. His name was Chan Bao-Zhi, and on Earth, he’d have been Chinese. Here, he was a Belter from Pallas Station. “They’ve given a lot of summary and maybe a tenth of the data they’ve collected. Fortunately, we’ve been able to observe most of their experiments and make our own analysis.”

“Which Earth will have been doing too,” Ashford said.

“Without doubt, sir,” Chan said.

Like any ritual, the staff meeting carried more significance than information. The heads of all the major branches of the Behemoth’s structural tree were present: Sam for engineering, Bull for security, Chan for the research teams, Bennie Cortland-Mapu for health services, Anamarie Ruiz for infrastructure, and so on, filling the two dozen seats around the great conference table. Ashford sat in the place of honor, another beneficent Christ painted on the wall behind him. Pa sat at his right hand, and Bull—by tradition—at his left.

“What have we got?” Ashford said. “Short form.”

“It’s fucking weird, sir,” Chan said, and everyone chuckled. “Our best analysis is that the Ring is an artificially sustained Einstein-Rosen bridge. You go through the Ring, you don’t come out the other side here.”

“So it’s a gate,” Ashford said.

“Yes, sir. It appears that the protomolecule or Phoebe bug or whatever you want to call it was launched at the solar system several billion years ago, aiming for Earth with the intention of hijacking primitive life to build a gateway. We’re positing that whoever created the protomolecule did it as a first step toward making travel to the solar system more convenient and practical later.”

Bull took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It was what everyone had been thinking, but hearing it spoken in this official setting made it seem more real. The Ring was a way for something to get here. Not just a gateway. A beachhead.

“When the Y Que went through it, the mass and velocity of the ship triggered some mechanism in the Ring,” Chan said. “The Martians have a good dataset from the moment it happened, and there was a massive outpouring of energy within the Ring structure and a whole cascade of microlevel conformation changes. The entire object went up to about five thousand degrees Kelvin, and it has been cooling regularly ever since. So it took a lot of effort to get that thing running, but it looks like not much to maintain.”

“What do we know about what’s on the other side?” Pa asked. Her expression was neutral, her voice pleasant and unemotional. She could have been asking him to justify a line item in his budget.

“It’s hard to know much,” Chan said. “We’re peeking through a keyhole, and the Ring itself seems to be generating interference and radiation that makes getting consistent readings difficult. We know the Y Que wasn’t destroyed. We’re still getting the video feed that the kid was spewing when he went through, it’s just not showing us much.”

“Stars?” Ashford said. “Something we can start to navigate from?”

“No, sir,” Chan said. “The far side of the Ring doesn’t have any stars, and the background microwave radiation is significantly different from what we’d expect.”

“Meaning what?” Ashford said.

“Meaning, ‘Huh, that’s weird,’” Chan said. “Sir.”

Ashford’s smile was cool as he motioned the science officer to continue. Chan coughed before he went on.

“We have a couple of other anomalies that we aren’t quite sure what to make of. It looks like there’s a maximum speed on the other side.”

“Can you unpack that, please?” Pa said.

“The Y Que went through the Ring going very fast,” Chan said. “About seven-tenths of a second after it reached the other side, it started a massive deceleration. Bled off almost all its speed in about five seconds. It looks like the nearly instant deceleration was what killed the pilot. Since then, it seems as if the ship is being moved out away from the Ring and deeper into whatever’s on the other side.”

“We know that when the protomolecule’s active, it’s been able to… alter what we’d expect from inertia,” Sam said. “Is that how it stopped the ship?”

“That’s entirely possible,” Chan said. “Mars has been pitching probes through the Ring, and it looks like we start seeing the effect right around six hundred meters per second. Under that, mass behaves just the way we expect it to. Over that, it stops dead and then moves off in approximately the same direction that the Y Que is going.”

Sam whistled under her breath.

“That’s really slow,” she said. “The main drives would be almost useless.”

“It’s slower than a rifle shot,” Chan said. “The good news is it only affects mass above the quantum level. The electromagnetic spectrum seems to behave normally, including visible light.”

“Thank God for small favors,” Sam said.

“What else are the probes telling us?”

“There’s something out there,” Chan said, and for the first time a sense of dread leaked into his voice. “The probes are seeing objects. Large ones. But there’s not much light except what we’re shining through the Ring or mounting on the probes. And, as I said, the Ring has always given inconsistent returns. If whatever’s in there is made of the same stuff, who knows?”

“Ships?” Ashford said.

“Maybe.”

“How many?”

“Over a hundred, under a hundred thousand. Probably.”

Bull leaned forward, his elbows on the table. Ashford and Pa were looking around the table at the graying faces. They’d known before, because they weren’t going to wait for a staff meeting to get their information. Now they were judging the reactions. So he’d give them a reaction. Control the fall.

“Be weirder if there wasn’t anything there. If it was an attack fleet, they’d have attacked by now.”

“Yeah,” Ruiz said, latching on to the words.

Ashford opened the floor for questions. How many probes had Mars fired through? How long would it take something going at six hundred meters per second to reach one of the structures? Had they tried sending small probes in? Had there been any contact from the protomolecule itself, the stolen voices of humans, the way there had been with Eros? Chan did his best to be reassuring without actually having anything more that he could say. Bull assumed there was a deeper report that Ashford and Pa were getting, and he wondered what was in it. Being kept out chafed.

“All right. This is all interesting, but it’s not our focus,” Ashford said, bringing the Q-and-A session to a halt. “We’re not here to send probes through the Ring. We’re not here to start a fight. We’re just making sure that whatever the inner planets do, we’re at the table. If something comes out of the Ring, we’ll worry about it then.”

“Yes, sir,” Bull said, throwing his own weight behind Ashford’s. It wasn’t like there was another strategy. Better that the crew see them all unified. People were watching how this all came down, and not just the crew.

“Mister Pa?” Ashford said. The XO nodded and glanced at Bull. Instinct dropped a weight in his gut.

“There have been some irregularities in the ship’s accounting structure,” Pa said. “Chief Engineer Rosenberg?”

Sam nodded, surprise on her face. “XO?” she said.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to restrict you to quarters and revoke your access privileges until this is all clarified. Chief Watanabe will relieve you. Mister Baca, you’ll see to it.”

The room was just as silent, but the meaning behind it was different now. Sam’s eyes were wide with disbelief and rising fury.

“Excuse me?” she said. Pa met her gaze coolly, and Bull understood all of it in an instant.

“Records show you’ve been drawing resources from work and materials budgets that weren’t appropriate,” Pa said, “and until the matter is resolved—”

“If this is about the tech support thing, that’s on me,” Bull said. “I authorized that. It’s got nothing to do with Sam.”

“I’m conducting a full audit, Mister Baca. If I find you’ve been drawing resources inappropriately, I’ll take the actions I deem appropriate. As your executive officer, I am informing you that Samara Rosenberg is to be confined to quarters and her access to ship’s systems blocked. Do you have any questions about that?”

She’d waited until they’d made the trip, until they’d gotten where they were going, and now it was time to establish that she was in control. To get back at him for the drug dealer he’d spaced and punish Sam for being his ally. Would have been stupid to do until their shakedown run was over. But now it was.

Bull laced his fingers together. The refusal was on the back of his tongue, waiting. It would have been insubordination, and it would have been easy as breathing out. There were years—decades even—when he’d have done it, and taken the consequences as a badge of honor. It had been his call, and standing by while Sam was punished for it was more than dishonorable, it was disloyal. Pa knew that. Anyone who’d read his service records would know it. If it had just been his mission, his career on the line, he’d have done it, but Fred Johnson had asked him to make this work. So there was only one play to make.

“No questions,” he said, rising from his chair. “Sam. You should come with me now.”

The others were silent as he led her out of the conference room. They all looked stunned and confused, except Ashford and Pa. Pa wore a poker face, and Ashford had a little shadow of smugness in the corners of his mouth. Sam’s breath shook. Outrage and adrenaline left her skin pale. He helped her into the side seat of his security cart, then got behind the controls. They lurched into motion, four small engines whirring and whining. They were almost at the elevators when Sam laughed. A short, mirthless sound as much like a cry of pain as anything.

“Holy shit,” Sam said.

Bull couldn’t think of anything to say that would pull the punch, so he only nodded and took the cart into the wide elevator car. Sam wept, but there was nothing that looked like sorrow in her expression. He guessed that she’d never suffered that kind of disciplinary humiliation before. Or if she had, it hadn’t been often enough to build up a callus. The dishonor of letting her take the hit was like he’d swallowed something before he’d chewed it enough, and now it wouldn’t go down.

Back at the security office, Serge was at the main desk. The man’s eyebrows rose as Bull came in the room.

“Hoy, bossman,” the duty officer said. A hardcore OPA bruiser named Jojo. “Que pasa?”

“Nothing good. What did I miss?”

“Complaint from a carnicería down by engineering about a missing goat. Got a note from one of the Earth ships lost one of their crew, wondering if we’d come up with an extra. A couple coyos got shit-faced and we locked ’em in quarters, told ’em we’d sic the Bull on ’em.”

“How’d they take that?”

“We had them mop up after.”

Bull chuckled before he sighed.

“So. I’ve got Samara Rosenberg in the cart outside,” he said. “XO wants her confined to quarters for unauthorized use of resources.”

“I want a pony in a wetsuit.” Jojo grinned.

“XO gave an order,” Bull said. “I want you to take her to her quarters. I’ll get her access pulled. We’ll need to set a guard while we’re at it. She’s pissed.”

Jojo scratched at his neck. “We’re doing it?”

“Yeah.”

Jojo’s face closed. Bull nodded toward the door. Jojo left, and Bull took his place at the desk, identifying himself to the system and starting the process of locking Sam out of her own ship. While the security system ran its check against each of the Behemoth’s subsystems, he leaned on his elbows and watched.

The first time Fred Johnson saved Bull’s life, he’d done it with a rifle and a mobile medical unit. The second time, he’d done it with a credit chip. Bull had mustered out at thirty and took his pension to Ceres. For three years, he’d just lived. Ate cheap, drank too much, slept in his own bed not knowing if he was sick from the alcohol or the spin. Not caring much. He got into a few fights, had a few disagreements with the local law. He didn’t see that he had a problem until it was unmistakable, and by then it was a hell of a problem.

Depression ran in his family. Self-medicating did too. His grandfather had died of the pair. His mother had been in therapy a couple times. His brother had graduated to heroin and lived five years in a treatment center in Roswell. None of it had seemed to have anything to do with Bull. He was a marine. He’d turned away from a life on basic to live in the stars, or if not the stars, at least the rocks that floated free in the night sky. He’d killed men. Bottle couldn’t beat him. But it almost had.

The day Fred Johnson had appeared at his door, it had been stranger than a dream. His former commanding officer looked different. Older, stronger. Truth was, their birthdays weren’t all that far apart, but Johnson had always been the Old Man. Bull had followed the news about the fallout from Anderson Station, and Fred’s changing sides. Some of the other marines he knew on Ceres had been angry about it. He’d just figured the Old Man knew what he was doing. He wouldn’t have done it without a reason.

Bull, Fred had said. Just that, at first. He could still remember Fred’s dark eyes meeting his. The shame had made Bull try to stand straighter, to suck in his gut a little. In that moment, he saw how far he’d fallen. Two seconds of seeing himself through Fred Johnson’s eyes was all it took for that.

Sir, Bull had replied, then stood back and let Johnson into the hole. The place stank of yeast and old tofu. And flop sweat. Fred ignored it all. I need you back on duty, soldier.

Okay, Bull had said. And the secret he carried with him, the one he’d take to his grave, was this: He hadn’t meant it. In that moment, all he’d wanted was for Fred Johnson to go away and let Bull forget him again. Lying to his old commanding officer, to the man who’d kept him from bleeding out under fire, came as naturally as breathing. It didn’t have anything to do with Earth or the Belt or Anderson Station. It wasn’t some greater loyalty. He just wasn’t done destroying himself. And even now, sitting alone at the security desk betraying Sam, he thought that Fred had known. Or guessed.

Fred had pressed a credit chip into his palm. It was one of the cheap, vaguely opalescent ones that the OPA had used to keep its funds untraceable, back in the bad old days. Get yourself a new uniform. Bull had saluted, already thinking about the booze he could buy.

The chit carried six months’ wages at his old pay grade. If it had been less, Bull wouldn’t have gone. Instead, he shaved for the first time in days, got a new suit, packed a valise, and threw out anything that didn’t fit in it. He hadn’t had a drink since, even on the nights he’d wanted one more than oxygen.

The security system chimed that the lockout was finished. Bull noted it and leaned back in the chair, reading the be-on-alert notice from the Cerisier and letting his mind wander. When Gathoni arrived to take the next shift, he walked two corridors down to a little mom-and-pop bodega, bought a blister-pack with four bulbs of beer, and headed over to Sam’s quarters. The guard on duty nodded to him. Legally, Bull didn’t have to knock. As head of security, he could have walked into Sam’s rooms at any time, with or without being welcome. He knocked.

Sam was wearing a simple sweater and black workpants with magnetic strips down the sides. Bull held up the beer. For a long moment, Sam glared at him. She stepped back and to the side. He followed her in.

Her rooms were clean, neat, and cluttered. The air smelled like industrial lubricant and old laundry. She leaned against the arm of a foam couch.

“Peace offering?” she said bitterly.

“Pretty much,” Bull said. “Pa’s pissed off at me, and she’s taking it out on you. She figured either I do it and I lose my best ally or I don’t and I’m the one confined to quarters, right? No way to lose for her.”

“This is bullshit.”

“It is,” Bull said. “And I’m sorry as hell about the whole damn thing.”

Sam’s breath rattled with anger. Bull accepted it. He had it coming. She walked across to him, grabbing the four-pack out of his hand, twisting it to shatter the plastic, and plucking one of the bulbs free.

“You want one?” she asked.

“Just water for me,” he said.

“What chafes me,” Sam said, “is the way Ashford just sits there like he’s so happy about the whole thing. He knows the score. He’s as much a part of it as Pa. Or you. Don’t think you can buy me off with a few cheap brews. You’re just as much at fault as they are.”

“I am.”

“I got into engineering because I didn’t want all the petty social birdshit. And now look at me.”

“Yeah,” Bull said.

Sam dropped to the couch with a sigh and said something obscene and colorful. Bull sat down across from her.

“Okay, stop that,” she said.

“What?”

“That looking repentant thing. I feel like I’m supposed to genuflect or something. It’s creepy.” She took a long pull at the bulb, the soft plastic collapsing under the suction, then expanding out a little as the beer outgassed. “Look, you and Pa are both doing what you think you ought to, and I’m getting screwed. I get it. Doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it. Thing is, you’re right. She wants you to lose allies. So no matter how much I want to tell you to go put your dick in a vise? I’m not going to, just because it would mean Pa won.”

“Thank you for that, Sam.”

“Go put your dick in a vise, Bull.”

Bull’s hand terminal chimed.

“Mister Baca?” Gathoni’s voice said. “You should come back to the office, maybe.”

Sam’s expression sobered and she put down the bulb. Bull’s belly tightened.

“What’s going on?” he asked. When Gathoni answered, her voice was controlled and calm as a medic calling for more pressure.

“Earth destroyer Seung Un? It just blew up.”