was sitting across the room, drinking tea and keeping one eye on the wall panel next to her. She'd routed ops to it.
As long as he kept his mind on his coffee, he didn't have to think about Ade giving one last gasp of fear and then turning into a glowing vapor.
Alex ruined it by speaking.
"At some point, we need to decide where we're goin'," he said.
Holden nodded, took a sip of his coffee, and closed his eyes. His muscles vibrated like plucked strings, and his peripheral vision was dappled with points of imaginary light. The first twinges of the post-juice crash were starting, and it was going to be a bad one. He wanted to enjoy these last few moments before the pain hit.
"He's right, Jim," Naomi said. "We can't just fly in a big circle at half a g forever."
Holden didn't open his eyes. The darkness behind his lids was bright and active and mildly nauseating.
"We aren't waiting forever," he said. "We're waiting fifty minutes for Saturn Station to call me back and tell me what to do with their ship. The Knight is still P and K property. We're still employees. You wanted me to call for help, I called for help. Now we are waiting to see what that looks like."
"Shouldn't we start flying toward Saturn Station, then, Boss?" Amos asked, directing his question at Naomi.
Alex snorted.
"Not on the Knight's engine. Even if we had the fuel for that trip, which we don't, I don't want to sit in this can for the next three months," he said. "Naw, if we're goin' somewhere, it's gotta be the Belt or Jupiter. We're as close to exactly between 'em as you can get."
"I vote we continue on to Ceres," Naomi said. "P and K has offices there. We don't know anyone in the Jupiter complex."
Without opening his eyes, Holden shook his head.
"No, we wait for them to call us back."
Naomi made an exasperated sound. It was funny, he thought, how you could make someone's voice out from the smallest sounds. A cough or a sigh. Or the little gasp right before she died.
Holden sat up and opened his eyes. He placed his coffee mug on the table carefully, with hands that were starting to palsy.
"I don't want to fly sunward to Ceres, because that's the direction the torpedo ship went, and your point about chasing them is well taken, Naomi. I don't want to fly out to Jupiter, because we only have the fuel for one trip, and once we fly that direction for a while, we're locked in. We are sitting here and drinking coffee because I need to make a decision, and P and K gets a say in that decision. So we wait for them to answer, and then I decide."
Holden got up slowly, carefully, and began moving toward the crew ladder. "I'm going to crash for a few minutes, let the worst of the shakes wear off. If P and K calls, let me know."
Holden popped sedative tabs - thin, bitter pills with an aftertaste like bread mold - but he didn't sleep. Over and over, McDowell placed a hand on his arm and called him Jim. Becca laughed and cursed like a sailor. Cameron bragged about his prowess on the ice.
Ade gasped.
Holden had flown the Ceres-to-Saturn circuit on the Canterbury nine times. Two round-trips a year, for almost five years. Most of the crew had been there the entire time. Flying on the Cant might be the bottom of the barrel, but that meant there was nowhere else to go. People stayed, made the ship their home. After the near-constant duty transfers of the navy, he appreciated stability. Made it his home too. McDowell said something he couldn't quite make out. The Cant groaned like she was under a hard burn.
Ade smiled and winked at him.
The worst leg cramp in history hit every muscle in his body at once. Holden bit down hard on his rubber mouth guard, screaming. The pain brought an oblivion that was almost a relief. His mind shut off, drowned out by the needs of his body. Fortunately or not, the drugs started to kick in. His muscles unknotted. His nerves stopped screaming, and consciousness returned like a reluctant schoolboy. His jaw ached as he pulled out the guard. He'd worn toothmarks in the rubber.
In the dim blue cabin light, he thought about the kind of man who followed an order to kill a civilian ship.
He'd done some things