Leviathan Wakes

“The weapons panel is sayin’ the same thing, Cap,” Alex said. “And full loads in all the point defense cannons. You know, except…”

Except the burst you fired into the men who killed Gomez.

“Oh, and, Captain, when we put Kelly in the cargo hold, I found a big crate with the letters MAP on the side. According to the manifest, it stands for ‘Mobile Assault Package.’ Apparently navy-speak for a big box of guns,” Naomi said.

“Yeah,” Alex said. “It’s full kit for eight marines.”

“Okay,” Holden said. “So with the fleet-quality Epstein, we’ve got legs. And if you guys are right about the weapons load out, we’ve also got teeth. The next question is what do we do with it? I’m inclined to take Colonel Johnson’s offer of refuge. Any thoughts?”

“I’m all for that, Captain,” Amos said. “I always did think the Belters were getting the short end of the stick. I’ll go be a revolutionary for a while, I guess.”

“Earthman’s burden, Amos?” Naomi asked with a grin.

“What the fuck does that even mean?”

“Nothing, just teasing,” she said. “I know you like our side because you just want to steal our women.”

Amos grinned back, suddenly in on the joke.

“Well, you ladies do have the legs that go all the way up,” he said.

“Okay, enough,” Holden said, raising his hand. “So, two votes for Fred. Anyone else?”

Naomi raised her hand.

“I vote for Fred,” she said.

“Alex? What do you think?” Holden asked.

The Martian pilot leaned back in his chair and scratched his head.

“I got nowhere in particular to be, so I’ll stick with you guys, I guess,” he said. “But I hope this don’t turn into another round of bein’ told what to do.”

“It won’t,” Holden replied. “I have a ship with guns on it now, and the next time someone orders me to do something, I’m using them.”

* * *

After dinner, Holden took a long, slow tour of his new ship. He opened every door, looked in every closet, turned on every panel, and read every readout. He stood in engineering next to the fusion reactor and closed his eyes, getting used to the almost subliminal vibration she made. If something ever went wrong with it, he wanted to feel it in his bones before any warning ever sounded. He stopped and touched all the tools in the well-stocked machine shop, and he climbed up to the personnel deck and wandered through the crew cabins until he found one he liked, and messed up the bed to show it was taken. He found a bunch of jumpsuits in what looked like his size, then moved them to the closet in his new room. He took a second shower and let the hot water massage knots in his back that were three weeks old. As he wandered back to his cabin, he trailed his fingers along the wall, feeling the soft give of the fire-retardant foam and anti-spalling webbing over the top of the armored steel bulkheads. When he arrived at his cabin, Alex and Amos were both getting settled into theirs.

“Which cabin did Naomi take?” he asked.

Amos shrugged. “She’s still up in ops, fiddling with something.”

Holden decided to put off sleep for a while and rode the keel ladder-lift—we have a lift! — up to the operations deck. Naomi was sitting on the floor, an open bulkhead panel in front of her and what looked like a hundred small parts and wires laid out around her in precise patterns. She was staring at something inside the open compartment.

“Hey, Naomi, you should really get some sleep. What are you working on?”

She gestured vaguely at the compartment.

“Transponder,” she said.

Holden moved over and sat down on the floor next to her.

“Tell me how to help.”

She handed him her hand terminal; Fred’s instructions for changing the transponder signal were open on the screen.

“It’s ready to go. I’ve got the console hooked up to the transponder’s data port just like he says. I’ve got the computer program set up to run the override he describes. The new transponder code and ship registry data are ready to be entered. I put in the new name. Did Fred pick it?”

“No, that was me.”

“Oh. All right, then. But…” Her voice trailed off, and she waved at the transponder again.

“What’s the problem?” Holden asked.

“Jim, they make these things not to be fiddled with. The civilian version of this device fuses itself into a solid lump of silicon if it thinks it’s being tampered with. Who knows what the military version of the fail-safe is? Drop the magnetic bottle in the reactor? Turn us into a supernova?”

Naomi turned to look at him.

“I’ve got it all set up and ready to go, but now I don’t think we should throw the switch,” she said. “We don’t know the consequences of failure.”

Holden got up off the floor and moved over to the computer console. A program Naomi had named Trans01 was waiting to be run. He hesitated for one second, then pressed the button to execute. The ship failed to vaporize.

“I guess Fred wants us alive, then,” he said.

Naomi slumped down with a noisy, extended exhale.

“See, this is why I can’t ever be in command,” she said.

“Don’t like making tough calls with incomplete information?”