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The Rocinante was built floor by floor fro deck, to the alley and crew cabins andthe crew airlock, then on up to the command deck and pilot’s station farthest forward Under thrust, it would be like a narrow building Without thrust, the ship was directionless

She had choices to ive her access to engineering and the reactor She could sneak in there and start the reactor on its overload Or she could go up, try taking the crew by surprise, and set the ship to self-destruct from the command deck

She took a deep breath The Rocinante had four regular crew including Holden, and she didn’t knohether the docuular crew had ht be able to take theot the drop on theh The reactor was nearest, it was easiest, and she could get out through the cargo bay She pulled herself along the corridors she knew only from simulations, toward the reactor and the death of the ship

When she opened the hatch to engineering, a wo iron in one hand and a spool of wire in the other She had the elongated frarown up under low g Brown skin and dark hair pulled back in a utilitarian knot Naoe to tear off the ue across the roof of her rab the narrow Belter’s neck in her bare hands and feel the bones snap It would be a yearlong dreae made tactile and perfect But two other crew members were on the ship, and she didn’t knohere they were The terror she’d felt in that sleazy Balti helplessly on the floor in the post-drug collapse while people banged at the door to get in She couldn’t risk a crash until she knehere everyone was

Naomi looked up at the sound of the door, pleasure in the woman’s dark eyes as if the interruption were a happy surprise, and then shock, and then a cold fury

For a moment, neither one moved

With a yell, the wo the spool of wire in front of her Melba tried to dodge, but the bulk of the mech and its slow response made it impossible The wire hit her left cheek with a sound like a brick falling to earth, and for a h block, taking the Belter solidly in the ribs and sending therabbed at a handhold, missed it, and then tried for another Thetheit froh the air at Melba, teeth bared like a shark Melba tried to get the mech’s free arm up to bat her away, but the Belter was already too close She grabbed the front of Melba’s ju a hard knee into her ribs, punctuating each bloith a word

“You Don’t Get To hurt My Ship”

Melba felt a rib give way She reached her tongue for the roof of her ain she didn’t make the small private circles that would flush her blood with fire She had to be awake and functional when the fight was over She gritted her teeth and curled the ainst itself, and then snapped her hand closed The Belter screamed The ain and heard the

She threw the Belter across the room as hard as the motors let her Where the woman bounced off the far wall, a s the Belter rotate in the air, directionless and loose as a rag doll sinking to the botto sphere of blood adhered to the woman’s shoulder and neck

“I do what I want,” Melba said, and the voice sounded like someone else’s

Carefully, she pulled herself to the control panel The panel was off, fixed to the deck with a length of adhesive tape The guts within were a e in the catastrophe, but not so ed out of the mech, cracked her knuckles, traced the ed them back into the panel The local memory check took only a few seconds, and she overrode the full syste she could have done before she left Earth, but Melba Koh had spent uts ofSoledad, Stanni, and Bob would have checked on if they’d been working ht her

Her fingers curled, stuot it back

The control specs of the reactor canetic bottle that kept the core froned to be difficult Changing the limits on the reaction itself until it would eventually outstrip the bottle’s ability to contain it was also hard, but less so And it would give her a little tiet out of the ship and back toward the Thoht even know that someone had survived the death of the Rocinante

A flicker in her peripheral vision was the only warning she had, but it was enough Melba twisted out of the way, the Belter’s h the air where her te frantically to wor attack, but no blows caed into thethe wall and spinning back to the fight just as the Belter looked up fro up the woman’s neck, held to her by surface tension, and her smile was triumphant The control panel flashed red and a screen of code crawled over it too fast to read The lights in the rooency LEDs flickered on Melba felt her throat go tight

The Belter had dumped core The reaction Melba had coas behind the ship The Belter’s s,” Melba said It hurt to talk “You have torpedoes I’ll overload one of those”

“Not inwas lopsided, though Cluainst the e The Belter launched herself out of reach just as Melba swung an ar her injured ar droplets of blood whenever she changed direction