“Tell Trejo,” she said. “You need to tell Trejo.”
“He’s busy commanding the defenses. Holden stunned the guards. They’re still unconscious.”
“Jesus Christ,” she said. “What do you want me to do about it?”
Ilich stammered for a few seconds. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Secure the pocket nuke that’s in the same facility, then get a security team and start looking for him,” Elvi said.
“Yes,” Ilich said. “Right.”
He dropped the connection. Fayez was sitting on the edge of the bed, his eyes wide and alarmed.
“That man,” Elvi said, “is not great in a crisis. I’m starting to think he’s got the wrong job.”
“Elvi,” Fayez said. “Holden. Teresa.”
It only took a moment. “Shit.”
She went for the door, Fayez close behind her. The air was cold and wet and stinging. It numbed her face instantly. Flakes of snow swirled down from the sky like ashes from a huge fire. The distant ground-based rail guns made a constant rolling thunder, and the clouds flickered red and orange in the north as they fired. Far above the clouds, a battle was going on. Elvi put her head down and ran. Fayez came along just behind her, his footsteps falling in and out of sync with her own.
An alarm sounded, screaming out across the State Building and its compound. She didn’t know if it was about the war or the escaped prisoner.
At Teresa’s rooms, she pounded the door with her fist and shouted the girl’s name, but the only answer was frantic barking. The thunder of the planetary defenses grew louder, almost deafening. Something terribly bright happened somewhere above the clouds and turned the white snow-struck landscape to noon for three long seconds.
“We need to take shelter,” Fayez said, and Elvi kicked Teresa’s door. Fayez did too. It seemed like it wouldn’t be enough. They’d beat themselves against it forever and never get through. And then the frame gave way, the door slammed inward, and Teresa’s dog ran out into the night, barking madly.
“Get inside,” Fayez shouted, but Elvi was already following the dog. It bounded through the fallen snow, throwing up ice like dust. Its bark was urgent, and it led Elvi on. She couldn’t feel her feet well, and her wounded leg burned and ached, but one foot went in front of the other.
Snowfall and the battle light had changed the gardens into a vision of hell. She didn’t know where she was, didn’t know where the State Building was, couldn’t tell where she was going, except that she was following the trail of paw prints and broken snow.
She should have gotten a gun. She was a major. Someone would have given her one if she’d asked. Better, she should have called Ilich and the security team. It was too late, though. She couldn’t turn back, and she had to believe that the James Holden she knew would listen to her. Would hear her. Would stop whatever his plan was before the girl got hurt.
The dog vanished into the gloom ahead, barking and howling. She’d been stupid. She’d been overworked. Duarte and Cortázar and the war and the things from beyond time and space. They’d overwhelmed her and she’d lost sight of the girl who was right in front of her and the man who’d planned to kill her.
All the panic and the fear and the driving need to flee distilled into this moment, this doomed rush, the snow, and the howls of the dog.
And voices.
“Stop!” Elvi shouted, and her voice was hoarse. “Holden, stop!”
The trail led almost to the fence. High in the darkness, the mountain beyond the State Building reared up, transformed by snow and darkness into a vast gray wave. And there, in a snow-filled gully, James Holden stood in a black guard’s uniform. His hair was wild and his skin was pale except for two bright-red patches at the cheeks where the cold had bitten him.
The dog capered and yapped at his side, and Holden raised a hand like he was seeing an unexpected friend at a cocktail party. But there was another voice. Teresa’s voice, scolding the dog and telling it to be quiet.
“Holden,” Elvi gasped. Now that she was slowing down, her side hurt like someone was stabbing her. “Holden, stop. Don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.”
“Do what?” he said. And then, “Are you okay?”
“Let her go. It won’t fix anything to hurt her.”
Holden’s forehead furrowed, and for a moment, she could see the young man he’d been the first time she’d met him, decades ago on a different planet. She held tight to the chance he might still be the same man, somewhere deep inside.
“Hurt who?” he said, and pointed at Teresa. “Her?”
“I know what you did,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “I know you put Cortázar up to it.”
“We have to go,” Teresa said. Elvi noticed for the first time that the girl was doing something in the gully. Digging away a drift of fallen snow. Holden’s sleeves were crusted with ice where he’d been doing the same.
“She’s just a kid, Holden. Whatever your plan is, she doesn’t have to be part of it.”
“I’m more part of her plan at this point,” he said.
“We have to go!” Teresa said. “We don’t have time for this. Muskrat! Shut up!”
The dog wagged, happily ignoring the order. Footsteps came from behind Elvi. Fayez, stumbling through the snow. A deep, rolling sound came from the north. The earth trembled, and the rail-gun flashes stopped. Without their voices, the night seemed weirdly silent.
“What’s going on?” Fayez said.
“I’m leaving,” Teresa said. “I’m trading their prisoner for a way out, and I’m leaving. His ship is coming for us right now, and we have to get to the rendezvous.”
“He tried to get you killed,” Elvi said. “You can’t trust him.”
“I can’t trust anyone,” Teresa said, and the weariness and bitterness in her voice belonged to a much older woman.
“No,” Holden said. “That wasn’t about Teresa. That was about you. Hey, Fayez.”
“Hey, Holden,” Fayez said, and dropped to his knees at Elvi’s side. Snowflakes landed on his hair and stayed there, unmelting.
“I don’t understand.”
“This has all been about you,” Holden said. “Literally from the minute I found out about the alien rip-in-space thing that showed up on the Tempest, I’ve been trying to get Cortázar out and you in his place. All this?” He gestured at the now-quiet sky. “I don’t know anything about it. I haven’t been in touch with anybody. None of it’s been me.”
Elvi shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“I got you the job,” Holden said. “I’m the one who told Duarte you’d been studying what killed the protomolecule engineers. And yes, I talked Cortázar into getting himself in trouble. And then I tried to rat him out. It was the only thing I could think of that Duarte would care about enough to get rid of his pet mad scientist. And since you were the expert, you’d get the promotion.”
The punch in her chest was betrayal. She felt betrayed. She’d seen Sagale and Travon die because of Holden. She’d almost lost her leg, almost lost her husband, suffered through everything because of him. “Why would you do this to me?”
“I wanted to get someone sane and rational in charge before Duarte did something stupid that we couldn’t take back.” He lifted his hands and then let them fall, a gesture of powerlessness. “I’m not sure it worked, but it was all I could do.”
Teresa stood up. Her black sweater was white with ice. “We can get through. The space is big enough. But the second I’m off the grounds, security’s going to know it. We can’t stop running once we start.”
Holden nodded, but his eyes were on Elvi. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Make up for it. We’re here. Take us with you. And in the other half of her mind, the labs. The pens. The Falcon and all the data she’d acquired with it, still waiting to be sifted through. Was Ochida going to take it up if she left? Would he be better than Cortázar?
Was there anyone, anywhere she’d trust with this more than she trusted herself? And the enemy—the deep enemy—had tried to hurt them already. Was looking for a way. Her leg throbbed like it was reminding her of the black things between the spaces. Was someone else going to stop them?
She looked at Holden’s face. He was one of those men who was going to look boyish until the day he died. Fuck you for putting me in this position, she thought. Fuck you for making this the right thing for me to do.
It wasn’t what she said aloud.
“Go.”
Chapter Forty-Seven: Naomi
Alex?”
“I see it,” he shouted. “What do we do?”
A wave of disorientation washed through her, like she had started floating again without having stopped the first time. The ship jumped and shuddered around her as she pulled up the record of Amos’ mission and cross-checked. It looked real. If it was false, it was convincing.
The plan was to hit the platforms and then burn hard to get away before the enemy forces could get back. She’d given them a wide window for it. Adding in a surface landing and extraction . . .
But if she didn’t, and Amos really was waiting. Or Jim.