“There are only three ways to get to us,” Bull continued. “They can go down through the drum, but that’s messy. The maintenance corridor on the other side of the drum can’t be accessed when the drum is rotating. That leaves one good way to head south on this beast.”
“Right through us,” Holden said.
“Yup. So guess what? Your mission just changed.”
“Delaying action,” Corin said.
“Give the lady a prize. We still might be able to win this thing if we can buy Naomi a little more time. You get to buy it for her.”
“Bull,” Holden said. “There are two of us with light assault rifles and sidearms here. Those people have force recon armor. I’ve watched someone work in that gear up close. We won’t be a delay. We’ll be a cloud of pink mist they fly through at full speed.”
“Not quite that fast. I’m not an idiot, I pulled all the ammo from the suits, and as an added precaution I went ahead and yanked the firing contacts in the guns.”
“That’s good news, actually, but can’t they just tear us limb from limb?”
“Yeah,” Bull said. “So don’t let them grab you if you can avoid it. Buy us as much time as you can. Bull out.”
Holden looked at Corin, who was looking back at him, the same blank expression on her broad face. His heart was beating triple time. Everything took on a sense of almost painful reality. It was like he’d just woken up.
He was about to die.
“Last stand time,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady.
“This is as good a place as any.” She pointed at the boxy and solid-looking elevator. “Use the upper hatch for cover, they’ll have to come at us without any cover of their own, and without guns they’ll have to close and engage at point blank. We can dump a lot of fire into them as they approach.”
“Corin,” Holden said. “Have you ever seen one of those suits at work?”
“Nope. Does it change what we need to do here?”
He hesitated.
“No,” he said. “I guess it really doesn’t.” He pulled the assault rifle off his back and left it floating next to him. He checked his ammo. Still the same six magazines it had been when he stuffed them in the bandolier.
Nothing to do but wait.
Corin found a spot by the hatch where she could hook one foot under a handhold set into what would be the wall under thrust. She settled in, staring up the elevator shaft through her sights. Holden tried doing the same, but got antsy and had to start moving around.
“Naomi?” he said, switching to their private channel and hoping she was still on the radio.
“I’m here,” she said after a few seconds.
Holden started to reply, then stopped. Everything that came into his head to say seemed trite. He’d been about to say that he’d loved her since the moment he met her, but that was ludicrous. He’d barely even noticed Naomi when they first met. She’d been a tall, skinny engineer. When he got to know her better, she’d become a tall, skinny, and brilliant engineer, but that was it. He felt like they’d eventually became friends, but the truth was he could barely remember the person he’d been back on the Canterbury now.
Everyone had lost something in the wake of the protomolecule. The species as a whole had lost its sense of its own importance. Its primacy in the universal plan.
Holden had lost his certainty.
When he thought back to the man he’d been before the death of the Cant, he remembered a man filled with righteous certainty. Right was right, wrong was wrong, you drew the lines thus and so. His time with Miller had stripped him of some of that. His time working for Fred Johnson had, if not removed, then filed down what remained. A sort of creeping nihilism had taken its place. A sense that the protomolecule had broken the human race in ways that could never be repaired. Humanity had gotten a two-billion-year reprieve on a death sentence it hadn’t known it had, but time was up. All that was left was the kicking and screaming.
Oddly enough, it was Miller who had given him his sense of purpose back. Or whatever the Miller construct was. He couldn’t really remember that version of himself who’d known exactly where all the lines were drawn. He wasn’t sure of much of anything anymore. But whatever had climbed up off of Venus and built the Ring, it had built Miller too.
And it had wanted to talk. To him.
A small thing, maybe. The new Miller didn’t make much sense. It had an agenda that it wasn’t explaining. The protomolecule didn’t seem particularly sorry for all the chaos and death it had caused.
But it wanted to talk. And it wanted to talk to him. Holden realized he’d found a lifeline there. Maybe there was a way out of all of the chaos. Maybe he could help find it. He recognized that latching on to the idea that the protomolecule, or at least their agent Miller, had picked him as their contact fed all of his worst inclinations to arrogance and self-importance. But it was better than despair.
And now, only starting to see that murky path out of the hole the protomolecule had dug and humanity had hurled itself into with self-destructive gusto, now he was about to be killed because of yet another petty human with more power than sense. It didn’t seem fair. He wanted to live to see how humanity bounced back. He wanted to be part of it. For the first time in a long time he felt like he might be able to turn into the kind of man who could make a difference.
And he wanted to explain this to Naomi. To tell her that he was turning into a better person. The kind of person who would have seen her as more than just a good engineer all those years ago. As if he could, by being a different person now, retroactively fix the shallow, vain man he’d been then. Maybe even make himself worthy of her.
“I like you,” he said instead.
“Jim,” she replied after a moment. Her voice was thick.
“I’ve enjoyed your company ever since we met. Even when you were just an engineer and shipmate, you were a very likable one.”
There was only a faint static hiss on the radio. Holden pictured Naomi retreating into herself, letting her hair fall across her eyes to hide them in that way she did when she was in an uncomfortable emotional situation. Of course, that was silly. With no gravity her hair wouldn’t do that. But the image made him smile.
“Thank you,” he said, letting her off the hook. “Thank you for everything.”
“I love you, Jim,” she finally said. Holden felt his body relax. He saw his coming death, and wasn’t afraid of it anymore. He’d miss all the good stuff to follow, but he’d help make it happen. And a very good person loved him. It was more than most people got in a lifetime.