Chapter Twenty-Seven: Melba
T
he darkness was beautiful and surreal. The ships of the flotilla, drawn together by the uncanny power of the station, hugged closer to each other than they ever would have under human control. The only lights came from the occasional exterior maintenance array and the eerie glow of the station. It was like walking through a graveyard in the moonlight. The ring of ships and debris glittered in a rising arc before her and behind, as if any direction she chose would lead up from where she was now.
The EVA suit had limited propellant, and she wanted to conserve it for her retreat. She scuttled through the vacuum, magnetic boots clicking against the hull of the Prince until she reached its edge and launched herself into the gap between vessels, aiming toward a Martian supply ship. The half mech and emergency airlock folded on her back massed almost fifty kilos, but with their courses matched, they were as weightless as she was. It was an illusion, she knew, but in the timeless reach between the Thomas Prince and hated Rocinante, all her burdens seemed light.
The EVA suit had a simple heads-up display that outlined the Rocinante with a thin green line. It wasn’t the nearest ship. The trip out to it would take hours, but she didn’t mind. It was as trapped as all the others. It couldn’t go anyplace.
She hummed to herself as she imagined her arrival. Rehearsed it. She let herself daydream that he would be there: Jim Holden returned from the station. She imagined him raging at her as she destroyed his ship. She imagined him weeping and begging her forgiveness, and seeing the despair in his eyes when she refused. They were beautiful dreams, and folded safely inside them, she could forget the blood and horror behind her. Not just the catastrophe on the Prince, but all of it—Ren, her father, Julie, everything. The dim blue light of the not-moon felt like home, and the impending violence like a promise about to be kept.
If there was another part of her, a sliver of Clarissa that hadn’t quite been crushed yet that felt differently, it was small enough to ignore.
Of course it was just as likely they’d all be dead when she got there. The catastrophe would have hit them as hard as the Thomas Prince or any of the other ships. Holden’s crew might be nothing but cooling meat already, only waiting for her to come and light their funeral pyre. There was, she thought, a beauty in that too. She ran across the skins of the ships, leaped from one to the next like a nerve impulse crossing a synapse. Like a bad idea being thought by a massive, moonlit brain.
The air in the suit smelled like old plastic and her own sweat. The impact of the magnetic boots pulling her to the ships and then releasing her again translated up her leg, tug and release, tug and release. And before her, as slowly as the hour hand of an analog clock, the ghost-green Rocinante grew larger and nearer.
She knew the ship’s specs by heart. She’d studied them for weeks. Martian corvette, originally assigned to the doomed Donnager. The entry points were the crew airlock just aft of the ops deck, the aft cargo bay doors, and a maintenance port that ran along beneath the reactor. If the reactor was live, the maintenance access wouldn’t work. The fore airlock had almost certainly had its security profile changed once the ship fell into Holden’s control. Only a stupid man wouldn’t change it, and Melba refused to believe a stupid man could bring down her father. The service records she’d gleaned suggested that the cargo bay had been breached once already. Repairs were always weaker than the original structure. The choice was easy.
The attitude of the ship put the cargo bay on the far side of the ship, the body of the Rocinante hiding its flaw from the light. Melba stepped into shadow, shivering as if it could actually be colder in the darkness. She fastened the mech to the ship’s skin and assembled it for use under the glare of the EVA suit’s work lamps. The mech was the yellow of fresh lemons and police tape. The cautions printed in three alphabets were like little Rosetta stones. She felt an inexplicable fondness for the machine as she strapped it across her back, fitting her hands into the waldoes. The mech hadn’t been designed for violence, but it was suited for it. That made her and it the same.
She lit the cutting torch and the EVA suit’s mask went dark. Melba clung to the ship and began her slow invasion. Sparks and tiny asteroids of melted steel flew off into the darkness around her. The repair work where the bay doors had been bent out and refitted was almost invisible. If she hadn’t known to look, she wouldn’t have seen the weaknesses. She wondered if they knew she was coming. She imagined them hunched over their security displays, eyes wide with fear at what was digging its way under the Rocinante’s skin. She found herself singing softly, snatches of popular songs and old holiday tunes, whatever came to mind. Bits of lyrics and melody matched to the hum of the torch’s vibration.
She breached the Rocinante, a patch of glowing steel no wider than her finger popping out. No air vented through the gap into the vacuum. They didn’t keep the cargo bay pressurized. That meant the atmosphere wasn’t dropping inside, and the ship alarms weren’t blaring. One problem solved even without her help. It felt like fate. She killed the torch and unfolded the emergency airlock, sealing it against the hatch. She unzipped the outer layer, closed it, unzipped the inner one, and stepped into the small additional room she’d created. She didn’t know how much damage she’d have to do to get into the inner areas of the ship. She didn’t want an accidental loss of atmosphere to rob her of her vengeance. Holden needed to know who’d done this to him, not gasp out his last breaths thinking his ship had merely broken.
Gently, she slipped the mech’s hand into the hole, braced, and peeled back the cargo door, long strips of steel blooming like an iris blossom. When it was wide enough, she took the sides of the hole in her mechanical hands and pulled herself into the cargo bay. Supply crates lined the walls and floors, held in place by electromagnets. One had shattered, a victim of the catastrophe. A cloud of textured protein packets floated in the air. The LED on the panel beside the interior airlock door was green; the bay hadn’t been locked down. Why would it? She punched the button to enter the airlock and begin the cycle. Once the green pressure light came on, she slipped her hands out of the mech and lifted off the helmet. No Klaxons were ringing. No voices shouted or threatened. She’d made it on without alarming anyone. Her grin ached.
Back in the mech, she opened the airlock into the interior of the ship and paused. Still no alarms. Melba pulled herself gently, silently into enemy territory.