Page 29 (1/1)

The corridors by the relief center were packed like a slaughterhouse Men and woer and healthier than he was, pushed against each other, ot to the port, the ht-headed he felt The air was almost warm here, the barn-hot of bodies It stank of keytone-acrid breath Saint’s breath, his mother called it The s their own muscles to survive He wondered how many people in the crowd knehat that scent was

People were yelling Shoving The crowd around hiht press against a beach

“Then open the doors and let us look!” a woht This is a food riot

He pushed for the edges, trying to get out Trying to get away Ahead of hi Behind hilohite and gold The walls were industrial gray He put a hand out He’d gotten to a wall Somewhere, the dam burst, and the crowd flowed suddenly forward, the collectiveaway into the flow He kept a hand on the wall The crowd thinned, and Prax staggered forward The loading bay doors stood open Beside them Prax saw a familiar face but couldn’t place it Someone from the lab, maybe? The man was thick-boned and muscular An Earther Maybe so station Had he seen thefor food? But no, he looked too well fed There was no gauntness to his cheeks He was like a friend and also a stranger Soeneral or a fa, but he couldn’t stop He knew that face He knew it It had to do with the war

Prax had a sudden flashbulbMei in his ar, the doctors still tinkering to find the right pharmaceutical cocktail to keep her alive Over her colic wail, the news streams were a constant alarmed chatter A man’s face played over and over

My name is James Holden and my ship, the Canterbury, was just destroyed by a warship with stealth technology and what appear to be parts stamped with Martian Navy serial nunized the face and felt that he’d never seen it before Prax felt a tug from somewhere near the center of his chest and found hi doors, someone whooped Prax took out his hand terone And at the bottoe, in simple block characters: Get help

Prax turned toward the man who’d started wars and saved planets, suddenly shy and uncertain

“Get help,” he said, and walked forward

Chapter Eleven: Holden

Santichai and Melissa Supitaya pnwere a pair of eighty-year-old earthborn ion that eschewed supernaturalisy boiled down to Humans can be better than they are, so let’s do that They also ran the relief depot headquarters with the ruthless efficiency of natural-born dictators Minutes after arriving, Holden had been thoroughly dressed down by Santichai, a frail wisp of awhite hair, about his altercation with custo to explain himself, only to be shouted down by the tiny ized

“Don’t make our situation here any more precarious,” Santichai repeated, apparentlyto drive this point hoer in Holden’s face

“Got it,” Holden said, holding up his hands in surrender The rest of his crew had vanished at Santichai’s first angry outburst, leaving Holden to deal with the e open warehouse space of the relief depot, talking calmly to Melissa, Santichai’s hopefully less volatile wife Holden couldn’t hear any shouting, though with the voices of several dozen people and the grinding gears and engine whine and reverse alerts of three lift trucks, Melissa could have been flinging grenades at Nao for an opportunity to escape, Holden pointed at Naomi across the room and said, “Excuse me, I—”

Santichai cut hie robes swirling Holden found himself unable to disobey the tinyin the direction of the crates being brought in froh”

“I—”

“The OPA promised us twenty-two thousand kilos of protein and supplements by last week This is less than twelve thousand kilos,” Santichai said, punctuating his statee of—”

“Why would they pro? Promise twelve thousand if that is what you have Do not promise twenty-two thousand and then deliver twelve,” he said, acco out of poke range with his hands up “I totally agree I’ll call my contact on Tycho Station immediately to find out where the rest of the promised supplies are I’ed in another swirl of orange

“See that you do,” he said, then steamed off toward one of the lift trucks “You! You! Do you see the sign that says ‘s that are not medicine in that place?”

Holden used this distraction to ed over to Naomi and Melissa Nao solanced around the warehouse space while Naomi worked The Somnambulist was just one of almost twenty relief ships that had landed in the last twenty-four hours, and theup with crates of supplies The chill air smelled of dust and ozone and hot oil frouely unpleasant setation As he watched, Santichai darted across the warehouse floor, shouting instructions to a pair of workers carrying a heavy crate

“Your husband is so else, ma’am,” Holden said to Melissa

Melissa was both taller and heavier than her tiny husband, but she had the sa white hair he had She also had bright blue eyes that nearly disappeared in her face when she s now