Page 279 (1/1)

She decided that meant her

Determined to win one of those four coveted slots, she’d thrown herself into her boot ca she had It turned out that was quite a lot Not only did she make it into the top four, she was nuin And then the letter ca, and it was all worth it She called her father and just screaot her to cal about, he screaer You’re one of the best now, baby, he’d said at the end, and the warmth those words put in her heart had never really faded

Even now, sitting on the gray metal deck in the dirty machine shop on a stolen Martian warship Even with all her mates torn into pieces and scattered across the frozen surface of Ganymede Even with her military status in limbo and her loyalty to her nation justifiably in question Even with all that, You’re one of the best now, baby made her smile She felt an ache to call her father and tell him what had happened They’d always been close, and when neither of her brothers had followed in his footsteps by choosing a thened the connection She knew he’d understand what it was costing her to turn her back on everything she held sacred to avenge her teaain

Even if theytheuyen and the dozen or more ships he controlled didn’t ied to stop whatever was happening in orbit around Io with the Rocinante intact, Holden was still planning to land and save Prax’s daughter

The monsters would be there

She knew it as surely as she’d ever known anything in her life Each night she dreaers and staring at her with its too-large glowing blue eyes, ready to finish what it had started all those un that grew out of her hand, and started shooting it as it ran toward her, black spiderwebs spilling from holes that closed like water She aloke before it reached her, but she kne the drea on the ice She also knew that when Holden led his team down to the laboratories on Io where thewith him The scene from her dream would play out in real life She knew it like she knew her father’s love She welcomed it

On the floor around her lay the pieces of her armor With weeks of travel on the way to Io, she had time to completely strip and refit it The Rocinante’s machine shop ell stocked, and the tools were of Martian make It was the perfect location The suit had seen a lot of use withouthonest with herself, the distraction was the payoff A suit of Martian reconnaissance armor was an incredibly co and reasse it wasn’t a trivial task It required full concentration Everyon it was anotherto kill her on Io

Sadly, that distraction was over now She’d finished with thethethe slow but persistent leak of fluid in the suit’s knee actuator It was ti of ritual A final cleansing before going out to meet death on the battlefield

I’ve watched too ht, but couldn’t quite abandon the idea The ist and suicidal ideation into honor and noble sacrifice

She picked up the torso asse the last bits of dust andto the outside The smell of metal and lubricant filled the air And while she bolted ar back onto the fras and scratches, she stopped fighting the urge to ritualize the task and just let it happen She was very likely asse on how the final battle went, this ceraht house her corpse for the rest of eternity

She flipped the torso assee in the enae across Ganyht in front of her She picked up a wrench, then put it back down, tapping on the deck with her knuckle

Why then?

Why had the monster blown itself up at that moment? She re froht, that was the moment the constraint systems that Mao’s scientists had installed failed And they’d set the bo out of their control But that just pushed the question one level back Why had their control over the creature’s physiology failed at that precise ood place for constraint systeunfire as it had charged their lines It hadn’t seemed to hurt it at the time, but each wound represented a sudden burst of activity inside the creature’s cells, or whatever it had in place of cells, as the rowth to slip the leash

Maybe that was the answer Don’t try to kill the ram starts to break down and the self-destruct kicks in She wouldn’t even have to survive, just last long enough to harm the monster beyond its ability to safely repair itself All she needed was enough time to really hurt it

She put down the ar on and picked up the hele of the fight on it She hadn’t watched it again after Avasarala’s presentation to the crew of the Roci She hadn’t been able to

She pushed herself to her feet and hit the comm panel on the wall “Hey, Naomi? You in ops?”

“Yep,” Naoeant?”

“Do you think you can tell the Roci to talk to ot the radio on, but it won’t talk to civilian stuff This is one of our boats, so I figure the Roci has the keys and codes”

There was a long pause, so Bobbie put the helmet on a worktable next to the closest walla radio node that the Roci is calling ‘MCR MR Goliath III 24397A15’”