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“What about this Ruiz person? I thought she was the chief engineer now”

“She was in charge of infrastructure,” Bull said “And I’ve seen Nagata’s background She’s got the training and the experience And we trust her If so to take Sa about it Naoine rooo,” Naomi repeated “My arm is for shit, but I can walk If soe and shut down the reactor”

“No,” Holden said again

“Yeah, urney facing away fro, but hadn’t made a sound His voice sounded dry, like fallen leaves rustling in the wind Brittle and eo too”

“Alex, you don’t—” Nao over the top of her

“Nobody pulled the Roci’s batteries off-line e left, so if we’re shutting everything down, she’ll need someone to do it”

Bull nodded Holden wanted to s with any of this

“And that’ll be rab an EVA pack there, and use the aft airlock to get out”

Amos moved over behind Bull, his face still flat, e?”

“New plan,” Bull said loud enough for everyone to hear People stopped whatever they were doing and moved over to listen More must have arrived, because there were almost fifty in the office now At the back of the room stood a small knot of people in military unifor hands with an aggressively thin wo her front teeth with her pinky fingernail Bull spotted them at the same time Holden did, and waved them forward

“Anna, come on up here,” he said “Most everyone is here now, so this is how it’s going to go down”

The rooot quiet Anna made her way up to Bull and waited Her skinny friend ca at the crowd around the preacher with the suspicious eyes of a bodyguard

“In”—Bull stopped to look at a nearby wall panel with a clock on it—“thirty minutes, I will take a team made up of security personnel and the crew of the Rocinante to the southern druain entrance into the engineering level Once we control engineering, Monica and her tea to the rest of the fleet about the need to kill the power Preacher, that’s where you and your people coroup, a motley collection of people in the uniforiances Most of theet for the shutdown is 1900 hours local, about two and a half hours from now We need them to keep it down for two hours That’s ourWe need the Behe that two hours”

“We’ll make it happen,” Naomi said

“But when our broadcast starts, Ashford will probably try to take this location A with any volunteers fro as possible Theto take engineering back from us But I need you to hold If we can’t keep Anna and her people on the air long enough to get everyone on board with our shutdown plan, this thing ends before it starts”

“We’ll hold,” A, we’ll send a team forward to put restraints on the hopefully unconscious people on the bridge and we’ll own the ship The lights go out, the aliens let us go, and we get the fk out of this miserable stretch of space once and for all How’s that sound?”