Abaddon's Gate (Page 81)
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 144
The air in the room began to smell different. Hot, and with the melted plastic odor her damaged taser had given off when it died. A spot of red appeared on the deck hatch, then shifted to yellow, then to white. The girl in the mech, coming for them.
The hatch above them, the one that led forward on the ship, was closed and flashing the lockdown message. Naomi hadn’t told her what the override code was. The airlock was on their level, but it was locked down too.
The deck hatch began to open in lurching increments. Anna could hear Melba panting and cursing as she forced it. And Naomi’s lockdown code hadn’t kept the insane woman out, it had only locked them in.
Anna pulled Naomi’s limp body over to one of the large vacuum suit storage lockers and put her inside, climbing in after her. There was no lock on the door. Between the unconscious woman and the suit, there was hardly enough room for her to close it. She set both of her feet at the corner where the door of the locker met the deck and set the magnets up to full. She felt the suit lock onto the metal, clamping her legs into place and pulling her up close against the locker door.
On the far side, metal shrieked. Something wet brushed against the back of Anna’s neck. Naomi’s hand, limp and bloody. Anna tried not to move, tried not to breathe loudly. The prayer she offered up was hardly more than a confusion of fear and hope.
A locker door slammed open off to her left. Then another one, closer. And then another. Anna wondered where Naomi’s gun had gotten to. It was in the locker somewhere, but there was no light, and she’d have to unlock the magnets on her boots to look for it. She hoped they hadn’t left it outside with the crazy woman. Another locker opened.
The door centimeters from Anna’s face shifted, but didn’t open. The vents and the cracks in the locker door flared the white of a cutting torch, then went dark. A mechanical voice said, “Backup power depleted.” The curse from the other side was pure frustration. It was followed by a series of grunts and thumps: Melba taking the mech rig off. Anna felt a surge of hope.
“Open it,” Melba said. Her voice was low, rough, and bestial.
“No.”
“Open it.”
“You… I can hear that you’re feeling upset,” Anna said, horrified by the words even as she spoke them. “I think we should talk about this if you—”
Melba’s scream was unlike anything Anna had heard before, deep and vicious and wild. If the id had a throat, it would have sounded like that. If the devil spoke.
Something struck the metal door and Anna flinched back. Then another blow. And another. The metal began to bow in, and droplets of blood clung to the vent slits. Her fists, Anna thought. She’s doing this with her hands.
The screaming was wild now, obscene where it wasn’t wordless, and inhuman as a hurricane. The thick metal of the door bent in, the hinges starting to shudder and bend with each new assault. Anna closed her eyes.
The top hinge gave way, shattering.
And then, without warning, silence fell. Anna waited, sure she was being lulled into a trap. No sound came except a small animal gurgle. She could smell the stomach-turning acid stench of fresh vomit. After what felt like hours, she turned off the magnets and pushed the warped and abused door open.
Melba floated curled against the wall, her hands pressed to her belly and her body shuddering.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Bull
T
he 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.
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 144