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Chapter Twenty-Seven: Melba
T
he darkness was beautiful and surreal The ships of the flotilla, drawn together by the uncanny power of the station, hugged closer to each other than they ever would have under huhts came frolow of the station It was like walking through a graveyard in thearc before her and behind, as if any direction she chose would lead up from where she was now
The EVA suit had limited propellant, and she wanted to conserve it for her retreat She scuttled through the vacuuainst the hull of the Prince until she reached its edge and launched herself into the gap between vessels, aiency airlock folded on her back massed almost fifty kilos, but with their courses htless as she was It was an illusion, she knew, but in the timeless reach between the Thoht
The EVA suit had a simple heads-up display that outlined the Rocinante with a thin green line It wasn’t the nearest ship The trip out to it would take hours, but she didn’t o anyplace
She huined her arrival Rehearsed it She let herself daydream that he would be there: Ji at her as she destroyed his ship She i the despair in his eyes when she refused They were beautiful dreaet the blood and horror behind her Not just the catastrophe on the Prince, but all of it—Ren, her father, Julie, everything The di violence like a promise about to be kept
If there was another part of her, a sliver of Clarissa that hadn’t quite been crushed yet that felt differently, it was snore
Of course it was just as likely they’d all be dead when she got there The catastrophe would have hit them as hard as the Thoht be nothing but cooling ht their funeral pyre There was, she thought, a beauty in that too She ran across the skins of the ships, leaped fro a synapse Like a bad idea being thought by a massive, moonlit brain
The air in the suit smelled like old plastic and her oeat The i her to the ships and then releasing her again translated up her leg, tug and release, tug and release And before her, as slowly as the hour hand of an analog clock, the ghost-green Rocinante grew larger and nearer
She knew the ship’s specs by heart She’d studied thened to the dooer The entry points were the crew airlock just aft of the ops deck, the aft cargo bay doors, and abeneath the reactor If the reactor was live, the maintenance access wouldn’t work The fore airlock had aled once the ship fell into Holden’s control Only a stupid e it, and Melba refused to believe a stupid leaned suggested that the cargo bay had been breached once already Repairs were aleaker than the original structure The choice was easy
The attitude of the ship put the cargo bay on the far side of the ship, the body of the Rocinante hiding its flaw fro as if it could actually be colder in the darkness She fastened the lare of the EVA suit’s work lamps The mech was the yellow of fresh lemons and police tape The cautions printed in three alphabets were like little Rosetta stones She felt an inexplicable fondness for theher hands into the waldoes The ned for violence, but it was suited for it Thattorch and the EVA suit’s an her slow invasion Sparks and tiny asteroids of melted steel flew off into the darkness around her The repair here the bay doors had been bent out and refitted was almost invisible If she hadn’t known to look, she wouldn’t have seen the weaknesses She wondered if they knew she was coined them hunched over their security displays, eyes ith fear at as digging its way under the Rocinante’s skin She found herself singing softly, snatches of popular songs and old holiday tunes, whatever came to mind Bits of lyrics and melody matched to the hum of the torch’s vibration
She breached the Rocinante, a patch of glowing steel no wider than her finger popping out No air vented through the gap into the vacuuo bay pressurized Thatinside, and the ship alar One problem solved even without her help It felt like fate She killed the torch and unfolded the eainst the hatch She unzipped the outer layer, closed it, unzipped the inner one, and stepped into the small additional rooe she’d have to do to get into the inner areas of the ship She didn’t want an accidental loss of ateance Holden needed to knoho’d done this to hi his ship had merely broken
Gently, she slipped the o door, long strips of steel blooh, she took the sides of the hole in her o bay Supply crates lined the walls and floors, held in place by electronets One had shattered, a victim of the catastrophe A cloud of textured protein packets floated in the air The LED on the panel beside the interior airlock door was green; the bay hadn’t been locked down Why would it? She punched the button to enter the airlock and begin the cycle Once the green pressure light came on, she slipped her hands out of theNo voices shouted or threatened She’d rin ached
Back in the mech, she opened the airlock into the interior of the ship and paused Still no alarently, silently into enemy territory