Abaddon's Gate

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Bull

The truth was, distance was always measured in time. It wasn’t the sort of thing Bull usually thought about, but his enforced physical stillness was doing strange things with his awareness. Even in the middle of the constant press of events, the calls and coordination, the scolding from his doctor, he felt some part of his mind coming loose. And strange ideas kept floating in, like the way that distance got measured in time.

Centuries before, a trip across the Atlantic Ocean could take months. There was a town near New Mexico named Wheeless where the story was some ancient travelers of the dust and caliche had a wagon break down and decided that it was easier to put down roots than go on. Technologies had come, each building on the ones before, and months became weeks and then hours. And outside the gravity well, where machines were freed from the tyranny of air resistance and gravity, the effect was even more profound. When the orbits were right, the journey from Luna to Mars could take as little as twelve days. The trek from Saturn to Ceres, a few months. And because they were out there with their primate brains, evolved on the plains of prehistoric Africa, everyone had a sense of how far it was. Saturn to Ceres was a few months. Luna to Mars was a few days. Distance was time, and so they didn’t get overwhelmed by it.

The slow zone had changed that. Looking at a readout, the ships from Earth and Mars were clustered together like a handful of dried peas thrown in the same bowl. They were drifting now, coming together and spreading apart, taking their places in the captured ring around the eerie station. Compared to the volume of ring-bordered sphere, they seemed huddled close. But the distance between them and the Ring was time, and time meant death.

From the farthest of the ships to the Behemoth was two days’ travel in a shuttle, assuming that the maximum speed didn’t ratchet down again. The closest, he could have jumped to. The human universe had contracted, and was contracting more. With every connection, every stark, frightened voice he heard in the long, frantic hours, Bull grew more convinced that his plan could work. The vastness and strangeness and unreasonable danger of the universe had traumatized everyone it hadn’t killed. There was a hunger to go home, to huddle together, back in the village. The instinct was the opposite of war, and as long as he could see it cultivated, as long as the response to the tragedies of the lockdown were to get one another’s backs and see that everyone who needed care got it, the grief and fear might not turn to more violence.

The feed went to green, then blue, and then Monica Stuart was smiling professionally into the camera. She looked tired, sober, but human. A face people knew. One they could recognize and feel comfortable with.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “Welcome to the first broadcast of Radio Free Slow Zone, coming to you from our temporary offices here on board the OPA battleship Behemoth. I am a citizen of Earth and a civilian, but it’s my hope that this program can be of some use to all of us in this time of crisis. In addition to bringing whatever unclassified news and information we can, we will also be conducting interviews with the command crews of the ships, civilian leaders on the Thomas Prince, and live musical performances.

“It’s an honor to welcome our first guest, the Reverend Father Hector Cortez.”

A graphic window opened, and the priest appeared. To Bull’s eyes, the man looked pretty ragged. The too-bright teeth seemed false and the blazing white hair had a greasy look to it.

“Father Cortez,” Monica Stuart said. “You have been helping with the relief effort on the Thomas Prince?”

For a moment, the man seemed not to have heard her. A smile jerked into place.

“I have,” the old man said. “I have, and it has been… Monica, I’m humbled. I am… humbled.”

Bull turned off the feed. It was something. It was better than nothing.

The Martian frigate Cavalier, now under the command of a second lieutenant named Scupski, was shutting down its reactors and transferring all its remaining crew and supplies to the Behemoth. The Thomas Prince had agreed to move its wounded, its medical team, and all the remaining civilians—poets, priests, and politicians. Including the dead-eyed Hector Cortez. It was a beginning, but it wasn’t all he could do. If they were to keep coming, if the Behemoth was to become the symbol of calm and stability and certainty that he needed it to be, there had to be more. The broadcast channel could give a voice and a face to the growing consolidation. He’d need to talk to Monica Stuart about it some more. Maybe there could be some sort of organized mourning of the dead. A council with representatives from all sides that could make an evacuation plan and start getting people back through the Ring and home.

Except that when the lockdown came, they’d lost all their long-distance ships to it. And the Ring itself had retreated, because they had to move so slowly, and because distance was measured in time.

His hand terminal chirped, and he came back to wakefulness with a start. Outside his room a woman shouted and a man’s tense voice replied. Bull recognized the sound of the crash team rushing to try and revive some poor bastard from collapsing into death. He felt for the team of medics. He was doing the same kind of work, just on a different scale. He shifted his arms, scooped up the terminal, and accepted the connection. Serge appeared on the screen.

“Bist?” he asked.

“I’m doing great,” Bull said dryly. “What’s up?”

“Mars. They got him. Hauling the cabron back alive.”

Instinctively, uselessly, Bull tried to sit up. He couldn’t sit and up was a polite abstraction.

“Holden?” he said.

“Who else, right? He’s on a skiff puttering slow for the MCRN Hammurabi. Should be there in a few hours.”

“No,” Bull said. “They’ve got to bring him here.”

Serge raised his hand in a Belter’s nod, but his expression was skeptical.

“Asi dulcie si, but I don’t see them doing it.”

Somewhere far away down below Bull’s chest, the compression sleeves hissed and chuffed and expanded, massaging the blood and lymph around his body now that movement wouldn’t keep his fluids from pooling. He couldn’t feel it. If they’d caught fire, he wouldn’t feel it. Something deep and atavistic shifted in fear and disgust as his hindbrain rediscovered his injuries for the thousandth time. Bull ground the heel of his palm against the bridge of his nose.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do. What does Sam say about the project?”

“She got the rail guns off and they’re working on cutting back the extra torpedo tubes, but the captain found out and he’s throwing grand mal.”

“Well, that had to happen sometime,” Bull said. “Guess I’ll take care of that too. Anything else?”

“Unless tu láve mis yannis, I think you got plenty. Take a breath, we’ll take a turn, sa sa? You don’t have to do it all yourself.”

“I’ve got to do something,” Bull said as the compression sleeves relaxed with a sigh. “I’ll be in touch.”

Tense, low voices drifted in with the burned-moth stink of cauterized flesh. Bull let his gaze focus on the blue-white ceiling above the bed he was strapped to.

Holden was back. They hadn’t killed him. If there was one thing that had the potential to destroy the fragile cooperation he was building, it would be the fight over who got to hold James Holden’s nuts to a Bunsen burner.

Bull scratched his shoulder more for the sensation than because it itched and considered the consequences. Protocol was that they’d question him, hold him in detention, and start negotiating extradition with whoever on the Earth side was investigating the Seung Un. Bull’s guess was they’d beat him bloody and drop him outside. The man was in custody, but he was responsible for too many deaths to assume he’d be safe there.

It was time to try hailing the Rocinante again. Maybe this time they’d answer. Since the catastrophe, they’d been silent. Their communications array might have been damaged, they might be staying silent as some sort of political tactic, or they might all be dying or dead. He requested a connection again and waited with no particular hope of being answered.

Later, when they were outside the Ring, people could wrestle for jurisdiction as much as they wanted. Right now, Bull needed them to work together. Maybe if he—

Against all expectation, the connection to the Rocinante opened. A woman Bull didn’t recognize appeared. Pale skin, unrestrained red hair haloing her face. The smudge on her cheek might have been grease or blood.

“Yes,” the woman said. “Hello? Who is this? Can you help us?”

“My name’s Carlos Baca,” Bull said, swallowing shock and confusion before they could get to his voice. “I’m chief security officer on the Behemoth. And yes, I can help you.”

“Oh, thank God,” the woman said.

“So how about you tell me who you are and what the situation is over there.”

“My name is Anna Volovodov, and I have a woman who tried to kill the crew of the Rocinante in… um… custody? I used all the sedatives in the emergency pack because I can’t get into the actual medical bay. I taped her to a chair. Also, I think she may have blown up the Seung Un.”

Bull folded his hands together.

“Why don’t you tell me about that?” he said.

Captain Jakande was an older woman, silver-haired with a take-no-shit military attitude that Bull respected, even though he didn’t like it.

“I still don’t have orders to release the prisoner,” Captain Jakande said. “I don’t see that it’s likely that I’ll get them. So for the foreseeable future, no.”

“I have a shuttle already going to collect his crew and the woman he accused of being the real saboteur,” Bull said. “And last time I looked, I have two dozen of your people slated to come over once we have the drum spun up.”

Jakande nodded once, confirming everything he’d said without being moved by any of it. Bull knotted his fingers together and squeezed until the knuckles were white, but he did it out of range of the communication deck’s cameras.

“It’s going to be better for all of us if we can get everyone together,” Bull said. “Pool resources and plan the evacuation. If you don’t have shuttles, I can arrange transportation for you and your crew. There’s plenty of space here.”

“I agree that it would be better to be under a single command,” Jakande said. “If you are offering to turn over the Behemoth, I’m willing to accept control and responsibility.”

“Not where I was taking that, no,” Bull said.

“I didn’t think so.”

“Mister Baca,” Ashford barked from the doorway. Bull held out a hand in a just-a-minute gesture.

“This is something we’re going to have to revisit,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of respect for you and your position, and I’m sure we can find a way to get this done right.”

Her expression made it clear she didn’t see anything wrong.

“I’ll be in touch,” Bull said, and dropped the connection. So much for the pleasant part of his day. Ashford pulled himself through the door, coming to rest against the wall nearest the foot of Bull’s bed. He looked angry, but it was a different kind of angry. Bull was used to seeing Ashford cautious, even tentative. This man wasn’t either. Everything about him spoke of barely restrained rage. Grief makes people crazy, Bull thought. Grief and guilt and embarrassment all together maybe did worse.

Maybe it broke people.

Pa floated in behind him, her eyes cast down. Her face had the odd waxy look that came from exhaustion. The doctor followed her, and then Serge and Macondo looking anyplace but at him. The crowd filled the little room past its capacity.

“Mister Baca,” Ashford said, biting at each syllable. “I understand you gave the order to disarm the ship. Is that true?”

“Disarm the ship?” Bull said, and looked at Doctor Sterling. Her gaze was straight on and unreadable. “I had Sam take the rail guns off so we could spin up the drum.”

“And you did this without my permission.”

“Permission for what?”

Blood darkened Ashford’s face, and rage roughened his voice.

“The rail guns are a central component of this ship’s defensive capabilities.”

“Not if they don’t work,” Bull said. “I had her take apart the thrust-gravity water reclamation system too. Rebuild it at ninety degrees so it’ll use the spin. You want me to run through all the stuff I’m having her repurpose because it doesn’t work anymore, or are we just caring about the guns?”

“I also understand that you have authorized non-OPA personnel to have access to the communications channels of the ship? Earthers. Martians. All the people we came out here to keep in line.”

“Is that why we came out here?” Bull said. It wasn’t a denial, and that seemed to be close enough to a confession for Ashford. Besides which, it wasn’t like Bull had been hiding it.

“And enemy military personnel? You’re bringing them aboard my ship as well?”

Pa had agreed to everything Ashford was listing off. But she stood behind the captain, not speaking up, expression unreadable. Bull wasn’t sure what was going on between the captain and his XO, but if they were working out some internal power struggle, Bull knew which side he’d want to end up on. So he bit the bullet and didn’t mention Pa’s involvement. “Yes, I’m bringing in everyone I can get. Humanitarian outreach and consolidation of control. It’s textbook. A second-year would know to do it.” Pa winced at that.

“Mister Baca, you have exceeded your authority. You have ignored the chain of command. All orders given by you, all permissions granted by you, are hereby revoked. I am relieving you of duty and instructing that you be placed in a medical coma until such time as you can be evacuated.”

“Like fuck you are,” Bull said. He hadn’t intended to, but the words came out like a reflex. They seemed to float in the air between them, and Bull discovered that he’d meant them.

“This isn’t open for debate,” Ashford said coldly.

“Damn right it’s not,” Bull said. “The reason you’re in charge of this mission and not me is that Fred Johnson didn’t think the crew would be comfortable with an Earther running a Belter ship. You got the job because you kissed all the right political asses. You know what? Good for you. Hope your career takes off like a fucking rocket. Pa’s here for the same reason. She’s got the right-sized head, though at least hers doesn’t seem to be empty.”

“That’s a racist insult,” Ashford said, trying to interrupt, “and I won’t have—”

“I’m here because they needed someone who could get the job done and they knew we were screwed. And you know what? We’re still screwed. But I’m going to get us out of here, and I’m going to keep Fred from being embarrassed by what we did here, and you are going to stay out of my way while I do it, you pinche motherfucker.”

“That’s enough, Mister Baca. I will—”

“You know it’s true,” Bull said, shifting to face Pa. Her expression was closed, empty. “If he’s in charge of this, he’s going to get it wrong. You’ve seen it. You know—”

“You will stop addressing the XO, Mister Baca.”

“—what kind of decisions he makes. He’ll send them back to their ships, even if it means people die because—”

“You are relieved. You will be—”

“—he wasn’t the one that invited them. It’s going to—”

“—quiet. I do not give you permission—”

“—make all of this more dangerous, and if someone—”

“—to speak to my staff. You will be—”

“—else pisses that thing off, we could all—”

“—quiet!” Ashford shouted, and he pushed forward, his mouth in a square gape of rage. He hit the medical bed too hard, pressing into Bull, grabbing him by the shoulder and shaking him hard enough to snap his teeth shut. “I told you to shut up!”

The restraints opened under Ashford’s attack, the Velcro ripping. Pain lanced through Bull’s neck like someone was pushing a screwdriver into his back. He tried to push the captain away, but there was nothing to grab hold of. His knuckles cracked against something hard: the table, the wall, something else. He couldn’t say what. People around him were shouting. His balance felt profoundly wrong, the dead weight of his body flowing limp and useless in the empty air, but tugged at by the tubes and the catheters.

When the world made sense again, he was at a forty-degree angle above the table, his head pointing down. Pa and Macondo were gripping Ashford’s arms, the captain’s hands bent into claws. Serge was bunched against the wall, ready to launch but not sure what direction he should go.

Doctor Sterling appeared at his side, gathering his legs and drawing him quickly and professionally back toward the bed.

“Could we please not assault the patient with the crushed spinal cord,” she said as she did, “because this makes me very uncomfortable.”

Another vicious flare of pain, hot and sharp and evil, ran through Bull’s neck and upper back as she strapped him down. One of the tubes was floating free, blood and a bit of flesh adhering to its end. He didn’t know what part of his body it had come out of. Pa was looking at him, and he kept his voice calm.

“We’ve already screwed up twice. We came through the Ring, and we let soldiers go on the station. We won’t get a third. We can get everyone together, and we can get them out of here.”

“That’s dangerous talk, mister,” Ashford spat.

“I can’t be captain,” Bull said. “Even if I wasn’t stuck in this bed, I’m an Earther. There has to be a Belter in charge. Fred was right about that.”

Ashford pulled his arms free of Pa and Macondo, plucked his sleeves back into trim, and steadied himself against the wall.

“Doctor, place Mister Baca in a medical coma. That is a direct order.”

“Serge,” Bull said. “I need you to take Captain Ashford into custody, and I need you to do it now.”

No one moved. Serge scratched his neck, the sounds of fingernails against stubble louder than anything in the room. Pa’s gaze locked in the middle distance, her face sour and angry. Ashford’s eyes narrowed, cutting over toward her. When she spoke, her voice was dead and joyless.

“Serge. You heard what the chief said.”

Ashford gathered himself to launch for Pa, but Serge already had a restraining hand on the captain’s shoulder.

“This is mutiny,” Ashford said. “There’ll be a reckoning for this.”

“You need to come with us now,” Serge said. Macondo took Ashford’s other arm and put it in an escort hold, and the three of them left together. Pa stayed against the wall, held steady by a strap, while the doctor, tutting and muttering under her breath, replaced the catheters and checked the monitors and tubes attached to his skin. For the most part, he didn’t feel it.

When she was done, the doctor left the room. The door slid closed behind her. For almost a minute, neither of them spoke.

“Guess your opinion on mutiny changed,” Bull said.

“Apparently,” Pa said, and sighed. “He’s not thinking straight. And he’s drinking too much.”

“He made the decision that brought us all here. He can sign his name to all the corpses on all those ships.”

“I don’t think he sees it that way,” Pa said. And then, “But I think he’s putting a lot of effort into not seeing it that way. And he’s slipping. I don’t think… I don’t think he’s well.”

“It’d be easier if he had an accident,” Bull said.

Pa managed a smile. “I haven’t changed that much, Mister Baca.”

“Didn’t figure. But I had to say it,” he said.

“Let’s focus on getting everyone safe, and then getting everyone home,” she said. “It was a nice career while it lasted. I’m sorry it’s ending this way.”

“Maybe it is,” Bull said. “But did you come out here to win medals or to do the right thing?”

Pa’s smile was thin.

“I’d hoped for both,” she said.

“Nothing wrong with a little optimism, long as it doesn’t set policy,” he said. “I’m going to keep on getting everyone on the Behemoth.”

“No weapons but ours,” she said. “We keep taking all comers, but not if it means having an armed force on the ship.”

“Already done,” Bull said.

Pa closed her eyes. It was easy to forget how much younger than him she was. This wasn’t her first tour, but it could have been her second. Bull tried to imagine what he’d have felt like, still half a kid, throwing his commanding officer into the brig. Scared as hell, probably.

“You did the right thing,” he said.

“You’d have to say that. I backed your play.”

Bull nodded. “I did the right thing. Thank you for supporting me, Captain. Please know that I’ll be returning that favor as long as you sit in the big chair.”

“We aren’t friends,” she said

“Don’t have to be, so long as we get the job done.”