The Belters didn’t have that. They were the natives here. The forces that had brought their ancestors out to the Belt had roots in trade, commerce, and the overwhelming promise of freedom. The OPA had begun its life more like a labor union than a nation. The difference was subtle but powerful, and it showed in strange ways.

If they had been in any of the Earth or Mars ships that floated now in the darkness near the Ring, Bull would have come from his thorough and profound dressing down by the captain to seek out XO Pa in a galley or mess hall. But this was the Behemoth, so he found her in a bar.

It was a small place with bulbs of alcohol, chocolate, coffee, and tea all set with temperature controls in the nipple, so the uniformly tepid drinks could come out anywhere from almost boiling to just this side of ice. The décor was cheap nightclub, with colored lights and cheap graphic films to hide the walls. Half a dozen people floated on handholds or tethers, and Pa was one of them.

His first thought as he pulled himself toward her was that she needed a haircut. With the false gravity of acceleration gone, her hair floated around her, too short to tie back but still long enough to interfere with her vision and creep into her mouth. His second thought was that she looked as tired as he was.

“Mister Baca,” Pa said.

“XO. You mind if I join you?”

“I was expecting you. You’ve been to see the captain?”

Bull wished he could sit down, not for any actual reason so much as the small physical punctuation it would have given their conversation.

“I have. He wasn’t happy to see me. Showed me the proposal you’d built up on how to remove me from my position.”

“It was a contingency plan,” she said.

“Yeah. So this idea where we take the Behemoththrough the Ring? We can’t do that. We start any kind of serious burn, we’re going to have two navies on our butts. And we don’t know what’s on the other side except that it’s way more powerful than we are.”

“Do you want an alien civilization taking its ideas of humanity from Jim Holden?”

Ashford had said the same thing, word for word. It had been his most cogent argument, and now Bull knew where he’d borrowed it from. He’d had the long trip down in the lift to let his sleep-deprived brain come up with its counterargument.

“That’s not even going to come into play if they shoot our nuts off before we get there,” he said. “You really think Earth and Mars are going to go for the whole ‘we’re just playing sheriff’ line? There’s going to be a bunch of them who still think whatever Holden was up to, we were in on it. But even if they don’t, the part where they stand to the side and let us take the lead isn’t going to happen. You can bet your ass the head of the Mars force is asking his XO if they want an alien civilization taking its ideas of humanity from Ashford.”

“That was nice,” Pa said. “The reversal thing? That was good.”

“The inner planets may not be making threats yet,” Bull said, “but—”

“They are. Mars has threatened to open fire on us if we get within a hundred thousand kilometers of the Ring.”

Bull put his hand to his mouth. He could feel his mind struggling to make sense of the words. The Martian navy had already laid down an ultimatum. Ashford hadn’t even mentioned it.

“So what the hell are we doing?”

“We’re preparing for burn in four and three-quarter hours, Mister Baca,” Pa said. “Because that’s what we’ve been ordered to do.”

The bitterness wasn’t only in her voice. It was in her eyes and the angle of her mouth. Sympathy and outrage battled in Bull’s mind, and underneath them a rising panic. He was too tired to be having this conversation. Too tired to be doing what had to get done. It had stripped away all the protections that would have made him hesitate to speak. If he could have gotten just one good cycle’s rest, maybe he could have found another way, but this was the hand he’d been dealt, so it was the hand he’d play.

“You don’t agree with him,” Bull said. “If it was your call, you wouldn’t do it.”

Pa took a long pull at her bulb, the flexible foil buckling under the suction. Bull was pretty sure she wasn’t drinking for the taste, and the urge to get some whiskey for himself came on him like an unexpected blow.

“It doesn’t matter what I would or wouldn’t do,” Pa said. “It’s not my command, so it’s not my decision.”

“Unless something happens to the captain,” Bull said. “Then it would be.”

Pa went still. The sound of the music, the shifting patterns of lights, all of it seemed to recede. They were in their own small universe together. Pa thumbed on the bulb’s magnet and stuck it to the wall beside her.

“There are still hours before the burn starts. And then travel time. The situation may change, but I won’t take part in mutiny,” she said.

“Maybe you wouldn’t have to. Doesn’t have to have anything to do with you. But unless you’re going to specifically order me not to—”

“I am specifically ordering you, Mister Baca. I am ordering you not to take any action against the captain. I am ordering you to respect the chain of command. And if that means I have to commit to following through on Ashford’s orders, then I’ll make that commitment. Do you understand me?”

“Yeah,” Bull said slowly. “Either we’re all going to die, or we’re going through the Ring.”

Chapter Eighteen: Anna

Eleven people showed up for Anna’s first worship service. The contrast with her congregation on Europa was unsettling at first. On Europa, she’d have had twenty or so families straggling in over the half hour before the service began, and a few drifting in late. They’d have been all ages, from grandparents rolling in on personal mobility devices to screaming children and infants. Some would come in their Sunday best formal wear, others in ratty casual clothes. The buzz of conversation prior to the service would be in mixed Russian, English, and outer planets polyglot. By the end of the worship meeting, a few might be snoring in their pews.

Her UNN congregation showed up in a single group at exactly 9:55 a.m. Instead of walking in and taking seats, they floated in as a loose clump and then just hovered in a disconcerting cloud in front of her podium. They wore spotless dress uniforms so crisply pressed they looked sharp enough to cut skin. They didn’t speak, they just stared at her expectantly. And they were all so young. The oldest couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.

The unusual circumstances rendered her standard worship service inappropriate—no need for a children’s message or church announcements—so Anna launched directly into a prayer, followed by a scripture reading and a short sermon. She’d considered doing a sermon on duty and sacrifice; it seemed appropriate in the martial setting. But she had instead decided to speak mostly on God’s love. Given the fear Chris had expressed a few days prior, it felt like the better choice.

When she’d finished, she closed with another prayer, then served communion. The gentle ritual seemed to ease the tension she felt in the room. Each of her eleven young soldiers came up to her makeshift table, took a bulb of grape juice and a wafer, and returned to their prior position floating nearby. She read the familiar words in Matthew and Luke, then spoke the blessing. They ate the bread and drank from the bulb. And, as had always happened since the very first church service she could remember, Anna felt something vast and quiet settle on her. She also felt the shiver that tried to crawl up her spine competing with a threatening belly laugh. She had a sudden vision of Jesus, who’d asked His disciples to keep doing this in remembrance of Him, watching her little congregation as they floated in microgravity and drank reconstituted grape beverage out of suction bulbs. It seemed to stretch the boundaries of what He’d meant by this.