“Is there anything we can do?” Anna yelled at Holden.
“Sounds to me like you’re in some shit there yourself, Preacher,” Holden replied. His voice was weary. Sad. “Unless you’ve got the bridge access controls nearby, I’d say you should concentrate on your own problems.”
More fire came through the offices, but it was sporadic. Amos had driven off their big attack, and now they were taking petulant potshots. Monica was staring at her, waiting for her to issue another order. Somehow, she’d become the person in charge.
“Set me to broadcast on the Radio Free Slow Zone feed,” Anna said. In the end, talking was all she had to offer. Monica nodded at her and pointed a small camera at her face.
“This is Anna Volovodov broadcasting from the offices of Radio Free Slow Zone to anyone on the Behemoth that’s still listening. We’ve failed to hold engineering, so our plan to shut down the reactor and get everyone back home is failing as well. We have people trapped in the external elevator shaft, and they can’t get onto the bridge.
“So, please, if anyone listening to this can help, we need you. Everyone on this flotilla needs you. The people dying right outside your door need you. Most of all, the people we left behind on Earth and Mars and the Belt need you. If the captain does what he’s planning, if he fires the laser at the Ring, everyone back home will die too. Please, if you can hear me, help us.”
She stopped, and Monica put down the camera.
“Think that will work?” Monica asked.
Anna was about to say no when the wall comm panel buzzed at her. A voice said, “How do you know that?” A young voice, female, sad. Clarissa. “What you said about destroying Earth if we attack the Ring, how do you know that?”
“Clarissa,” Anna said. “Where are you?”
“I’m here, on the bridge. I’m in the security station. I was watching your broadcast.”
“Can you open the door and let our people in?”
“Yes.”
“Will you do that?”
“How,” Clarissa repeated, her tone not changing at all, “do you know what you said?”
A man generally regarded as the instigator of two solar system–wide wars got all this information from a protomolecule-created ghost that no one else can see. It wasn’t a particularly compelling argument.
“James Holden got it while he was on the station.”
“So he told you that this would happen,” Clarissa said, her tone doubtful.
“Yes.”
“So how do you know?”
“I don’t, Claire,” Anna said, appropriating Tilly’s pet name to try and create a connection. “I don’t know. But Holden believes it’s true, and the consequences if he’s right are too extreme to risk. So I’m taking it on faith.”
There was a long moment of silence. Then a male voice said, “Clarissa, who are you talking to in here?”
It took Anna a moment to recognize it as Hector Cortez. She’d known he was on the bridge with Ashford, but somehow the reminder that he’d sided with the men who killed Bull was too much. She had to restrain herself from cursing at him.
“Anna wants me to open the elevator airlock and let the other side into the bridge. She wants me to help stop Ashford from destroying the Ring. She says it will kill everyone on Earth if we do.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Cortez said. “She’s just afraid.”
“Afraid?” Anna yelled. “Do you hear those sounds, Hector? That’s gunfire. Bullets are flying by even as we speak. You’re locked away safe and snug on the command deck planning to destroy something you don’t understand, while I am risking gunshot wounds to stop you. Who’s afraid here?”
“You’re afraid to make the necessary sacrifices to protect the people we’ve left behind. You’re only thinking of yourself,” he yelled back. Anna heard the sound of a door closing in the background. Someone had shut the door to the security station to keep the argument from being overheard. If it was Clarissa, that was a good sign.
“Clarissa,” Anna said, keeping her voice as calm as she could with the ongoing sounds of a gunfight behind her. “Claire, the people waiting outside the airlock door are going to be killed if you don’t open it. They are trapped there. People are coming to kill them.”
“Don’t change the subject,” Cortez started.
“It’s Holden and Naomi out there,” Anna continued, ignoring him. “And Bull is there too. Ashford will have them all killed.”
“They wouldn’t be in danger if they hadn’t attacked Ashford’s rightful command,” Cortez said.
“That’s three people who all made the choice to give you a second chance,” Anna said. “Bull chose to protect you from the UN fleet’s vengeance when he had no reason to. When I asked her to, Naomi forgave you for almost killing her. Holden agreed not to hurt you, in spite of the many provocations you gave him.”
“Those people are criminals—” Cortez tried to say over the top of her, but she kept her voice level and continued.
“These people, the people who forgive, who try to help others. The people who give their lives to save strangers, they’re on the other side of that door, dying. I don’t have to take that on faith. That’s fact. That’s happening right now.”
Anna paused, waiting for any sign Clarissa was listening. There was none. Even Cortez had stopped speaking. The comm station hissed faintly, the only sign it was still on.
“Those are the people I’m asking you to help,” Anna said. “The person I’m asking you to betray is a man who kills innocent people for expedience’s sake. Forget Earth, and the Ring, and everything else you’d have to take on faith. Ask yourself this: Do you want to let Ashford kill Holden and Naomi? No faith. Just that simple question, Claire. Can you let them die? What choice did they make when the same question was asked of them about you?”
Anna knew she was rambling. Knew she was repeating herself. But she had to force herself to stop speaking anyway. She wasn’t used to trying to save a person’s soul without being able to see them, to measure the effect her words were having by their reaction. She kept trying to fill that empty space with more talking.
“I don’t like the idea of those people being killed any more than you do,” Cortez said. He sounded sad, but committed to his position. “But there is the necessity for sacrifice. To sacrifice is literally to be made sacred.”