“Sam,” Holden said, patting the air in a calming gesture. “Keep in mind I have no idea who these people are or why they are important, and we don’t have time for a who’s who. Just tell us the important bits.”
Sam started to object, then shrugged and briefly explained the plan to use the comm laser. “If I do what he’s asking me to do, we’ll be able to get a pulse out of it that’ll be hotter than a star for about three-quarters of a second. It will melt that entire side of the ship in the process.”
“Does he know that?” Naomi asked, incredulity in her voice.
“He doesn’t care. Whether it works on the Ring or not, we have to stop him. There are thousands of people on this ship right now, and they’ll all die if he gets his way.”
Holden sank down onto the edge of the gurney with a long exhale. “Oh, we’re the least of the problem,” he said. “This is suddenly much, much bigger than that.”
Sam cocked her head at him, frowning a question.
“I’ve seen what this station does to threats,” Holden said. “Miller showed me, when I was there. All this slow zone stuff is non-lethal deterrent as far as it’s concerned. If that big blue ball out there decides us monkeys are an actual threat, it will autoclave our solar system.”
“Who’s Miller?” Sam asked.
“Dead guy,” Amos said.
“And he was on the station?”
“Apparently,” Amos said with a lopsided shrug.
“Jim?” Naomi said, putting her hand on his arm. This was the first she’d heard him speak of his experiences on the station, and he felt a pang of guilt for not telling her before.
“Something was attacking them, the protomolecule masters or whatever they were. Their defense was causing the star in any… infected solar system to go supernova. That station has the power to blow up stars, Naomi.
“If Ashford does this, it will kill every human there is. Everyone.”
There was a long silence. Amos had stopped rubbing his arm and grunting. Naomi stared up at him from the bed, eyes wide, the fear on her face mirroring his own.
“Well,” Sam finally said. “Good thing I’m not gonna let him, then, isn’t it?”
“Say again?” Amos said from the floor.
“I didn’t know about this other thing with ghosts and aliens,” Sam said in a tone of voice that made it clear she wasn’t totally buying Holden’s story. “But I’ve been sabotaging the laser upgrades. Delaying the process while I build in short points. Weaknesses that will blow every time he tries to fire it. It should be easy enough to explain away because of course the system was never designed for this, and the ship is a flying hunk of cobbled-together junk at this point anyway.”
“How long can you get us?”
“Day. Maybe a day and a half.”
“I think I love you,” Alex said, the words coming out in a pain- and medication-induced mumble.
“We all do, Sam,” Holden said to cover for him. “That’s brilliant, but there aren’t very many of us, and it’s a big, complicated ship. The question is how we get control of it.”
“Bull,” she replied. “That’s why I called you. Bull’s kind of messed up right now and he needs help and I don’t know anyone else on this ship I trust.” This last part she directed at Naomi.
“We’ll do whatever we can,” Naomi replied, holding up her hand. Sam crossed the room and took it. “Anything you need, Sammy. Tell us where Bull is, and I’ll send my boys to go collect him.”
Amos pushed himself up off the floor with a grunt and moved to the gurney. “Yeah, whatever you need, Sam. We owe you about a million at this point, and this Ashford guy sounds like an ass**le.”
Sam gave a relieved smile and squeezed Naomi’s fingers. “I really appreciate it. But be careful. Ashford loyalists are everywhere, and they’ve already killed some people. If you run into any more of them, there’ll be trouble.”
Amos pulled one of the shotguns out from under the sheet and laid it casually across his shoulder.
“Man can hope.”
Chapter Forty-One: Bull
T
he storage cells were too large to be a prison. They were warehouses for the supplies to start again after a hundred ecological collapses. Seed vaults and soil and enough compressed hydrogen and oxygen to recreate the shallow ocean of a generation ship. Bull drove his mech across the vast open space, as wide and tall and airy as a cathedral, but without a single image of God. It was a temple dedicated to utility and engineering, the beauty of function and the grandeur of the experiment that would have launched humanity at the distant stars.
Everything was falling to shit around him. All the information he could put together, hunched close to his hand terminal like he was trying to crawl into it, showed that Ashford had taken over engineering and the reactor at the far south of the drum and command at the north. His squads were moving through the drum with impunity. Pa was missing and might be dead. She still had a lot of people loyal to her, including Bull, to his surprise, but if they found her body in a recycler someplace that would fade quickly. He’d done everything he could. He hadn’t had the power, so he’d tried for finesse, and when that didn’t work, he’d grabbed the power. He’d taken the massacre of thousands by the protomolecule’s station and gone at least halfway to building a city out of it. A little civilization in the mouth of the void. If he’d been a little more ruthless, maybe he could have made it work. Clanking softly through the massive space, that was the thing that haunted him. Not his sins, not even the people he’d killed, but the thought that if he’d killed just one or two more it might have been enough.
And even with that darkness in his heart, he couldn’t keep from feeling moved by the scale of the steel and ceramic. The industrial beauty of design. He wished they’d gone to the stars instead of flying it into the mouth of hell. He wished he’d been able to make it all work out.
He tried to connect with Serge, but got nothing. He tried Corin. He wanted to reach out to Sam again, but he couldn’t risk Ashford finding out they were in contact. He checked the broadcast feed or Radio Free Slow Zone, but Monica Stuart and her crew hadn’t made any announcements. He let himself hope that Ashford’s plan would collapse in on itself the way that all of his own plans had. Not much chance of that, though. Ashford just wanted to blow shit up. That was always easier than making something.