It turned out she didn’t need it.

“Sir, if we don’t take the initiative, someone else will, and then it’s going to be too late for clarifications. Denials are fine if they’re believed, but Holden and his crew were known to be working with us previously and they’re claiming to represent us now. We’re four hours’ lag to Ceres. We can’t wait for answers. We have to make the division between us and Holden unequivocal. Mister Baca’s right. We need to engage the Rocinante.”

Ashford’s face was gray.

“I’m not going to start a shooting war,” he said.

“You listening to the same feeds as me, Captain?” Bull asked. “Everyone already thinks we did.”

“The Rocinante’s one ship. We can take her out,” Pa said. “If we fight Earth or Mars, we’ll lose.”

The truth lay on the floor between them. Ashford put a hand to his chin. His eyes were flickering back and forth like he was reading something that wasn’t there. Every second he didn’t respond, his cowardice showed through, and Bull could see that the man knew it. Resented it. Ashford was responsible, and didn’t want the responsibility. He was more afraid of looking bad than of losing.

“Mister Chen,” Ashford said. “Get a tightbeam to the Rocinante. Tell Captain Holden that it’s an urgent matter.”

“Yes, sir,” the communications officer said, and then a moment later, “The Rocinanteisn’t accepting the connection, sir.”

“Captain?” the man at the sensor array said. “The Rocinante’s changing course.”

“Where’s she going?” Ashford demanded, his gaze still locked on Bull.

“Um. Toward us? Sir?”

Ashford closed his eyes.

“Mister Corley,” he growled. “Power up the port missile array. Mister Chen, I want tightbeam connections to the Earth and Mars command ships, and I want them now.”

Bull let himself sag back. The sense of urgency giving way to relief and a kind of melancholy. One more time, Colonel Johnson. We dodged the bullet one more time.

“Weapons board is green, sir,” the weapons officer said, her voice crisp and excited as a kid at an arcade.

“Lock target,” Ashford said. “Do I have those tightbeams yet?”

“We’re acknowledged and pending, sir,” Chen said. “They know we want to talk.”

“That’ll do,” Ashford said, and began pacing the bridge like an old-time captain on a wooden quarterdeck. His hands were clasped behind his back.

“We have lock,” the weapons officer said. Then, “The Rocinante’s weapons systems are powering up.”

Ashford sank into his couch. His expression was sour. He’d been hoping, Bull realized, that it might be true. That the OPA might be making a play to control the Ring.

The man was an idiot.

“Should we fire, sir?” the weapons officer asked, the strain in her voice like a dog on a leash. She wanted to. Badly. Bull didn’t think better of her for it. He glanced at Pa, but she was making a point of not looking at him.

“Yes,” Ashford said. “Go ahead. Fire.”

“One away, sir,” the weapons officer said.

“I’m getting an error code,” the operations officer said. “We’re getting feedback from the launcher.”

Bull’s mouth tasted like a penny. If Holden had put a bomb on the Behemothtoo, their problems might only be starting.

“Is the missile out?” Pa snapped. “Tell me we don’t have an armed torpedo stuck in the tube.”

“Yes, sir,” the weapons officer said. “The missile is away. We have confirmation.”

“The Rocinanteis taking evasive maneuvers.”

“Is she returning fire?” Ashford said.

“No, sir. Not yet, sir.”

“I’m getting errors in the electrical grid, sir. I think something’s shorted out. We might—”

The bridge went dark.

“—lose power. Sir.”

The monitors were black. The lights were off. The only sound was the hum of the air recyclers, running, Bull imagined, off the battery backups. Ashford’s voice came out of the darkness.

“Mister Pa, did we ever test-fire the missile systems?”

“I believe it’s on the schedule for next week, sir,” the XO said. Bull tuned his hand terminal screen to its brightest, lifting it like a torch. He glanced up at the emergency lighting set into the walls all around the room, sitting there as dark as everything else. Another system that hadn’t been tested yet.

A few seconds later, half of the bridge crew pulled flashlights out of recessed emergency lockers. The light level came up as beams played across the room. No one spoke. No one needed to. If the Rocinantefired back, they were a dead target, but the chances were that they wouldn’t lose the whole ship. If they’d waited until they were in pitched battle against Earth or Mars or both, the Behemothwould have died. Instead, they’d just shown the whole system how unprepared they were. It was the first time Bull was really glad to be just the security officer.

“XO?” Bull said.

“Yes.”

“Permission to release the chief engineer from house arrest?”

Pa’s face was monochrome gray in the dim light, and solemn as the grave. Still, he thought he saw a glint of bleak amusement in her eyes.

“Permission granted,” she said.

Chapter Sixteen: Holden

“Well,” Amos said. “That’s just fucking peculiar.”

The message began to repeat.

“This is Captain James Holden. What you’ve just seen is a demonstration of the danger you are inc”

The ops deck was in a stunned silence, then Naomi began working the ship ops panel with a quiet fury. In Holden’s peripheral vision, Monica motioned to her crew and Okju lifted a camera. The tacit decision to let the “no civilians on the ops deck” rule slide suddenly seemed like it might have been a mistake.

“It’s a fake,” Holden said. “I never recorded that. That’s not me.”

“Sort of sounds like you, though,” Amos said.

“Jim,” Naomi said, panic beginning to distort her voice. “That broadcast is coming from us. It’s coming from the Rociright now.”

Holden shook his head, denying the assertion outright. The only thing more ridiculous than the message itself was the idea that it was coming from hisship.

“That broadcast is coming from us,” Naomi said, slamming her hand against her screen. “And I can’t stop it!”

Everything seemed to recede from Holden, the noises in the room coming from far away. He recognized it as a panic reaction, but he gave in to it, accepted the short moment of peace it brought. Monica was shouting questions at him he could barely hear. Naomi was furiously pounding on her workstation, flipping through menu screens faster than he could follow. Over the ship’s comm, Alex was shouting demands for orders. From across the room, Amos was staring at him with a look of almost comical puzzlement. The two camera operators, equipment still clutched in one hand, were trying to belt themselves into crash couches with the other. Cohen floated in the middle of the room, lips pursed in a faint frown.

“This was the setup,” Holden said. “This is what it was for.”

Everything: the Martian lawsuit, the loss of his Titania job, the camera crew going to the Ring, all leading to this. The only thing he couldn’t imagine was why.

“What do you mean?” Monica asked, pushing close to get into the shot with him. “What setup?”

Amos put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head once.

“Naomi,” Holden said, “is the only system you’ve lost control of comms?”

“I don’t know. I think so.”

“Then kill it. If you can’t, help Amos isolate the entire comm system from the power grid. Cut it out of the damn ship if you have to.”

She nodded again and then turned to Amos.

“Alex,” Holden said. Monica started to say something to him, but he held up one finger to silence her, and she closed her mouth with a snap. “Get us burning toward the Behemoth. We’re not really claiming the Ring for the OPA, but as long as everyone thinks we are, they’re the team least likely to shoot us.”