The first time Fred Johnson saved Bull’s life, he’d done it with a rifle and a mobile medical unit. The second time, he’d done it with a credit chip. Bull had mustered out at thirty and took his pension to Ceres. For three years, he’d just lived. Ate cheap, drank too much, slept in his own bed not knowing if he was sick from the alcohol or the spin. Not caring much. He got into a few fights, had a few disagreements with the local law. He didn’t see that he had a problem until it was unmistakable, and by then it was a hell of a problem.
Depression ran in his family. Self-medicating did too. His grandfather had died of the pair. His mother had been in therapy a couple times. His brother had graduated to heroin and lived five years in a treatment center in Roswell. None of it had seemed to have anything to do with Bull. He was a marine. He’d turned away from a life on basic to live in the stars, or if not the stars, at least the rocks that floated free in the night sky. He’d killed men. Bottle couldn’t beat him. But it almost had.
The day Fred Johnson had appeared at his door, it had been stranger than a dream. His former commanding officer looked different. Older, stronger. Truth was, their birthdays weren’t all that far apart, but Johnson had always been the Old Man. Bull had followed the news about the fallout from Anderson Station, and Fred’s changing sides. Some of the other marines he knew on Ceres had been angry about it. He’d just figured the Old Man knew what he was doing. He wouldn’t have done it without a reason.
Bull, Fred had said. Just that, at first. He could still remember Fred’s dark eyes meeting his. The shame had made Bull try to stand straighter, to suck in his gut a little. In that moment, he saw how far he’d fallen. Two seconds of seeing himself through Fred Johnson’s eyes was all it took for that.
Sir, Bull had replied, then stood back and let Johnson into the hole. The place stank of yeast and old tofu. And flop sweat. Fred ignored it all. I need you back on duty, soldier.
Okay, Bull had said. And the secret he carried with him, the one he’d take to his grave, was this: He hadn’t meant it. In that moment, all he’d wanted was for Fred Johnson to go away and let Bull forget him again. Lying to his old commanding officer, to the man who’d kept him from bleeding out under fire, came as naturally as breathing. It didn’t have anything to do with Earth or the Belt or Anderson Station. It wasn’t some greater loyalty. He just wasn’t done destroying himself. And even now, sitting alone at the security desk betraying Sam, he thought that Fred had known. Or guessed.
Fred had pressed a credit chip into his palm. It was one of the cheap, vaguely opalescent ones that the OPA had used to keep its funds untraceable, back in the bad old days. Get yourself a new uniform. Bull had saluted, already thinking about the booze he could buy.
The chit carried six months’ wages at his old pay grade. If it had been less, Bull wouldn’t have gone. Instead, he shaved for the first time in days, got a new suit, packed a valise, and threw out anything that didn’t fit in it. He hadn’t had a drink since, even on the nights he’d wanted one more than oxygen.
The security system chimed that the lockout was finished. Bull noted it and leaned back in the chair, reading the be-on-alert notice from the Cerisier and letting his mind wander. When Gathoni arrived to take the next shift, he walked two corridors down to a little mom-and-pop bodega, bought a blister-pack with four bulbs of beer, and headed over to Sam’s quarters. The guard on duty nodded to him. Legally, Bull didn’t have to knock. As head of security, he could have walked into Sam’s rooms at any time, with or without being welcome. He knocked.
Sam was wearing a simple sweater and black workpants with magnetic strips down the sides. Bull held up the beer. For a long moment, Sam glared at him. She stepped back and to the side. He followed her in.
Her rooms were clean, neat, and cluttered. The air smelled like industrial lubricant and old laundry. She leaned against the arm of a foam couch.
“Peace offering?” she said bitterly.
“Pretty much,” Bull said. “Pa’s pissed off at me, and she’s taking it out on you. She figured either I do it and I lose my best ally or I don’t and I’m the one confined to quarters, right? No way to lose for her.”
“This is bullshit.”
“It is,” Bull said. “And I’m sorry as hell about the whole damn thing.”
Sam’s breath rattled with anger. Bull accepted it. He had it coming. She walked across to him, grabbing the four-pack out of his hand, twisting it to shatter the plastic, and plucking one of the bulbs free.
“You want one?” she asked.
“Just water for me,” he said.
“What chafes me,” Sam said, “is the way Ashford just sits there like he’s so happy about the whole thing. He knows the score. He’s as much a part of it as Pa. Or you. Don’t think you can buy me off with a few cheap brews. You’re just as much at fault as they are.”
“I am.”
“I got into engineering because I didn’t want all the petty social birdshit. And now look at me.”
“Yeah,” Bull said.
Sam dropped to the couch with a sigh and said something obscene and colorful. Bull sat down across from her.
“Okay, stop that,” she said.
“What?”
“That looking repentant thing. I feel like I’m supposed to genuflect or something. It’s creepy.” She took a long pull at the bulb, the soft plastic collapsing under the suction, then expanding out a little as the beer outgassed. “Look, you and Pa are both doing what you think you ought to, and I’m getting screwed. I get it. Doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it. Thing is, you’re right. She wants you to lose allies. So no matter how much I want to tell you to go put your dick in a vise? I’m not going to, just because it would mean Pa won.”
“Thank you for that, Sam.”
“Go put your dick in a vise, Bull.”
Bull’s hand terminal chimed.
“Mister Baca?” Gathoni’s voice said. “You should come back to the office, maybe.”
Sam’s expression sobered and she put down the bulb. Bull’s belly tightened.
“What’s going on?” he asked. When Gathoni answered, her voice was controlled and calm as a medic calling for more pressure.
“Earth destroyer Seung-Un? It just blew up.”
Chapter Fourteen: Melba
W
hen she’d thought about it, planning the final, closing stages of her vengeance, she’d pictured herself as the conductor of a private symphony, moving her baton to the orchestrated chaos. It didn’t happen that way at all. The morning she went to the Thomas Prince, she didn’t know that the day had finally come.