Fred’s words, flattened and distorted by the comm system of their vacuum suits, were still a punch to the gut. That Fred, the nominal leader of the Outer Planets Alliance and one of the three most powerful people in the solar system, was taking a personal interest in his ship’s condition should have been reassuring. Instead, Holden felt like he had a father checking over his homework to make sure he hadn’t screwed anything up too badly.
“Interior mount’s bent,” a third voice said over the comm. A sour-faced man named Sakai, the new chief engineer at Tycho after the death of Samantha Rosenberg at what everyone was now calling the Slow Zone Incident. Sakai was monitoring the repairs from his office nearby through the mech’s suite of cameras and x-ray scanners.
“How did you do that?” Fred pointed at the rail-gun housing along the ship’s keel. The barrel of the gun ran nearly the entire length of the ship, and the support struts that attached it to the frame were visibly buckling in places.
“So,” Holden said, “have I ever told you the one about the time we used the Roci to drag a heavy freighter to a higher planetary orbit using our rail gun as a reaction drive?”
“Yeah, that’s a good one,” Sakai said without humor. “Some of those struts might be fixable, but I’m betting we’re going to find enough micro-fracturing in the alloy that replacing them all is the better bet.”
Fred whistled. “That won’t be cheap.”
The OPA leader was the Rocinante crew’s on-again, off-again patron and sponsor. Holden hoped they were in the on-again phase of the rocky relationship. Without a preferred client discount, the ship’s repair was going to get noticeably more expensive. Not that they couldn’t afford it.
“Lots of badly patched holes in the outer hull,” Sakai continued. “Inner looks okay from here, but we’ll go over it with a fine-toothed comb and make sure it’s sealed.”
Holden started to point out that the trip back from Ilus would have involved a lot more asphyxiation and death if the inner hull hadn’t been airtight, but stopped himself. There was no reason to antagonize the man who was now responsible for keeping his ship flying. Holden thought of Sam’s impish smile and habit of tempering her criticism with silliness, and felt something clench behind his breastbone. It had been years, but the grief could still sneak up on him.
“Thank you,” he said instead.
“This won’t be fast,” Sakai replied. The mech jetted off to another part of the ship, anchored itself on magnetic feet, and began cutting another section of the outer hull away with a bright flash.
“Let’s move to my office,” Fred said. “At my age, you can only take an e-suit so long.”
Many things about ship repair were made easier by the lack of gravity and atmosphere. The trade-off was forcing technicians to wear environment suits while they worked. Holden took Fred’s words to mean the old man needed to pee and hadn’t bothered with the condom catheter.
“Okay, let’s go.”
Fred’s office was large for something on a space station, and smelled of old leather and good coffee. The captain’s safe on the wall was done in titanium and bruised steel, like a prop from an old movie. The wall screen behind his desk showed a view of three skeletal ships under construction. Their design was large, bulky, and functional. Like sledgehammers. They were the beginnings of a custom built OPA naval fleet. Holden knew why the alliance felt the need to create its own armed defensive force, but given everything that had happened over the past few years, he couldn’t help but feel like humanity kept learning the wrong lessons from its traumas.
“Coffee?” Fred asked. At Holden’s nod, he began puttering around the coffee station on a side table, fixing two cups. The one he held out to Holden had a faded insignia on it. The split circle of the OPA, worn almost to invisibility.
Holden took it, waved at the screen, and said, “How long?”
“Six months is our current projection,” Fred said, then sat in his chair with an old man’s grunt. “Might as well be forever. A year and a half from now human social structures in this galaxy will be unrecognizable.”
“The diaspora.”
“If that’s what you want to call it,” Fred said with a nod. “I call it the land rush. A whole lot of covered wagons heading for the promised land.”
Over a thousand worlds open for the taking. People from every planet and station and rock in the solar system rushing to grab a piece. And back in the home system, three governments racing to build enough warships to control it all.
A welding array flared to life on the skin of one of the ships so brightly that the monitor dimmed in response.
“If Ilus was anything, it was a warning that a lot of people are going to die,” Holden said. “Was anyone listening?”