So petty, a voice muttered in her mind. An older man. His judgment stung, even though she didn’t know him. She stopped imagining Holden dead just to avoid any more unsolicited commentary.
Elvi Okoye paged through the list of medications Tanaka had given her, and her husband watched over her shoulder. The thin woman’s frown deepened, but Holden was the one who spoke.
“How bad is it?”
“It’s unpleasant,” Tanaka said, going for understatement. “The medication helps, but it doesn’t stop it.”
“We have to find a way into the ring station,” Nagata said.
“There isn’t one,” Fayez Sarkis said. “The sensor data shows a lot of activity. Constant restructuring. Vast magnetic and electrical charges building up and fading away. All kinds of things. But no doors.”
“I doubt we can force it open,” Holden said. “But—”
“It shrugged off the primary weapon of a Magnetar-class battleship, and then took a full broadside from a collapsing neutron star without getting a dent,” Tanaka said. “But sure, let’s get out the chisels and hacksaws and give it a try.”
“But,” Nagata said, talking over her, “it can open. It has opened. There’s a way.”
Of all of them, Nagata was the most surprising. She was nearly the same age as Tanaka, and while the Belter’s long, lanky frame was the result of too much time on the float when she was a child, they still looked like they might have been related. Distant cousins, maybe. There was a weariness about her too that spoke to Tanaka, and a sense that she kept herself to herself.
“We all agree that nothing will force it open,” Elvi said.
“Which is why we don’t force it,” Nagata said. “Last time it opened, there was a protomolecule sample hidden on the Rocinante. The Falcon has a sample now. Let’s use it.”
“Another dive,” Fayez said. “Only into the station this time instead of the library.”
Tanaka saw Elvi’s hesitation in the gnats before she spoke. “That might not be …easy. The Adro diamond was built to dispense information. We turned it on, and it did what it was created to do. When the station opened for Holden, the protomolecule sample was driving. It was using him to get inside, improvising in the way it was built to improvise. We don’t understand what the station was meant to do.”
“Power the gates and sterilize entire solar systems when needed, if memory serves,” Holden said. The gnats around his head swirled and darted for a moment.
“Either Duarte parked his ship here and took a stroll through space, or he got in,” Fayez said.
“Do we have anything more promising to try?” Tanaka asked.
Elvi’s silence was answer enough.
Tanaka didn’t roll her eyes. “We have a plausible approach to opening the station. So let’s try it. We have the high consul’s daughter, who is the only person with a strong enough emotional connection to bring him out of whatever fugue state he’s in. You open the way, I will escort her in.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Nagata said.
“Not going to happen?”
Holden answered. “We weren’t going to hand her over to you in New Egypt or Freehold. We aren’t going to do it now.”
Tanaka opened her hands, palms up. Floating as she was with legs crossed at the ankle, she felt like a painting of a saint being assumed into heaven. The patron saint of putting up with idiots, whoever that was.
“Admiral Trejo made it clear that we’re on the same side now,” Tanaka said. “He gave me the highest clearance in the empire to fulfill one mission. Finding the high consul is that mission, and has been since before New Egypt. And all of you are rebels who were still fighting a war with him when he disappeared. I’m open to counterarguments, but if the plan is to engage him in conversation, I’m not sure how you’re better ambassadors than I am.”
“There are hundreds of ships en route to us right now,” Elvi said. “The Science Directorate is sending everything we can spare. The underground is also . . .” She looked at Nagata, who nodded.
“We don’t need more ships,” Tanaka said. “At least let’s take it to the girl. If she won’t go with me, we can find someone else. But there isn’t anyone better.”
“She’s right,” Holden said bitterly. “Teresa needs to be okay with it, but any of us would be a distraction. Maybe a threat. The next best fit would be Elvi, and she’s—”