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Four es waited for her in the queue The first tere autoreement and fee structure for their present stay on Medina, the other showing the withdrawal froroup account of Holden and Nao her the things it used to route to Holden The third was from Medina traffic control, but the fourth was from the man himself James Holden She opened that one first
His face appeared on the screen, floating in the same roo, and she felt herself s back
“Hey, Bobbie,” he said, and his voice seemed loud in the quiet “I just wanted to leave this here for you as a note I’ve spent a lot of time on the Roci My best moments are part of this boat And a bunch of the worst ones And most of the people I love I can’t think of anyone else in thirteen hundred worlds I’d trust with it the way I trust you Thank you for taking this cup fro I can do to help out down the line, just say so I may not be part of the crew anymore, but we’re still family”
The ed it to be saved She opened the one fro man with deeply black skin and close-cropped hair nodded into his camera at her
“Captain Holden, I a this to inform you that, in accordance with union policy, the Rocinante is being called to a mandatory security contract Your presence is required at a briefing on the inco ambassadorial contact froe Please confir”
Bobbie tapped the reply, considered herself in the screen for a moment before she pulled her hair back into a bun, and scowled her reply
“This is Captain Draper of the Rocinante,” she said “I’ll be there”
Ten ht, Oh This is why he didn’t want the job anymore
The room was in the dru command decks The desks were lined up in rows like the worst kind of classroom, with hard seats and built-in drink holders that didn’t quite fit the cheap ceraiven out There were around forty people in the uncomfortable seats with her—representatives of all the ships presently in the slow zone—but she and the executive officer of the Tori Byron had places of honor Front row, center Where the smart kids sat The Rocinante and the Tori Byron were, after all, the only gunships around Medina at the o haulers
The man at the front of the roostiver was the head of the security forces and so, for the length of her mandatory temporary contract, technically her boss He wore a Medina Station uniform like it was a mech driver’s undersuit Dandruff dotted his shoulders
“The biggest thing is we don’t want to seestiver said, “but we don’t want to look passive either”
In her peripheral vision, the others nodded Bobbie tried to crack her knuckles, but she’d already done it twice since she sat down and her joints were silent Langstiver went on
“We’ve got the rail-gun emplacements on the hub station, sa, we spark those up and—” The director of station security for the Transport Union cocked his fingers into little gun shapes and h like any ambassador Dock, talk, and los politicos do their dance But if they co, but not a clean shot too, yeah?”
A general murmur of assent
“You have to protect the guns,” Bobbie said “The rail-gun eet a force onto the surface—”