“New plan?” Corin asked.

“Shoot back, I guess,” he said, then leaned partway around the corner and fired off three quick shots. He ducked back in time to avoid a fusillade that tore up the bulkhead behind him. When the shooting slowed, Cass launched herself across the opening to the other side. A risky move, but she made it without taking a hit, and started leaning out to lay down fire with her assault rifle. When they drove her back with return fire, Corin leaned around Holden and fired off a few shots.

Before she could pull back out of the line of fire, a round went through the arm of her environment suit, blowing white padding and black sealing gel into the air.

“Not hit, not hit,” she yelled, and Cass leaned out to fire again to keep the defenders off balance.

Holden looked back down the corridor, and Naomi was stripping Juarez out of his suit, spraying bandages on his open wounds as she went.

Another wave of fire drove Cass and Corin into cover. When it let up for a second, Holden leaned out and fired a few more shots.

It was what people like them did, even when there was no chance.

Chapter Fifty-One: Clarissa

“What the hell did you do?” Ashford shouted. His face was thick and purple. The rage pulled his lips back like a dog baring his teeth. Clarissa knew she should feel fear. Should feel something. Instead, she shrugged the way she had when she was fourteen, and said it again.

“I opened the doors.”

A man appeared in the hallway for a fraction of a second, and Ashford’s men opened fire, driving him back.

“I’ve got five in the corridor,” one of Ashford’s people said. He was looking at the security camera feed. “Three women, two men. One of them’s Corin. I think Jim Holden’s one of them.”

Ashford shook his head in disgust.

“Why the fuck did you let them in here?” he said. His tone dripped acid.

“I didn’t kill them,” Clarissa said. “So you don’t get to.”

“She was in distress,” Cortez said, moving himself between her and Ashford. Shielding her with his body. “She misunderstood something I said. It wasn’t an act of malice, Captain. The girl only—”

“Someone shoot her,” Ashford said.

“No!” Cortez cried out. He sounded like someone was about to shoot him.

The guard nearest them turned. The barrel of his gun seemed suddenly enormous, but when the sound of gunfire came, it wasn’t from him. A shape—maybe a woman, maybe a man—flickered at the edge of the corridor to the bridge, and the staccato sound of gunfire filled the room. Clarissa, forgotten, pushed herself back through the doorway into the security office. Cortez followed her, his hands up around his ears to block the noise or a bullet or both. He put his hand on her shoulder as if to comfort her, but it only pushed her a little lower to the floor, him a little nearer the ceiling.

“Oh,” Cortez murmured, “I wish you hadn’t done that. I wish you hadn’t done that.”

Anna was still speaking on the security station monitor. Radio Free Slow Zone, soldiering on. There was a fresh crackle of gunfire from the bridge. Ashford shouted, “Take them out! Take them all out!” But as far as she could tell, the guards hadn’t rushed the corridor. They didn’t need to. Sooner or later, Holden and Naomi and whoever they had with them would run out of bullets, and then they’d die. Or Ashford and all his men would, and then Holden would kill them. Either way, she didn’t see how it looked good for her. And that was fine. That was what she’d come here for.

Except.

“You heard what she said? What Anna said?”

“Anna Volovodov is seriously mistaken about what is happening here,” Cortez said. “It was a mistake letting her into the project in the first place. I knew I should have asked for Muhammed al Mubi instead.”

“Did you hear what she said?”

“What are you talking about, child?”

“She said if we attack the Ring, it’ll take action against the people on the other side. Against everyone.”

“She can’t know that,” Cortez said. “It’s just the sort of thing the enemy would say to trick us.”

“It wasn’t her,” Clarissa said. “Holden told her.”

“The same James Holden who started a war by ‘telling’ people things?”

Clarissa nodded. He’d started at least one war. He’d destroyed Protogen, and by doing so set up the dominoes that would eventually topple Mao-Kwik and her father. He’d done all of that.

But.

“He didn’t lie. All those other things he did. He never lied once.”

Cortez opened his mouth to reply, his face already in a sneer. Before he could, the gunfire boomed again. She could feel Cortez flinch from it. The air was filling with the smell of spent gunpowder, and the air recyclers were moving into high-particulate mode. She could hear the difference in the fans. Probably no one else on the bridge would have any idea what that meant. It would just be a slightly higher whirring to them. If it was anything.

Cortez ran his fingers through his hair.

“Stay out the way,” he said. “When it’s over, when he’s done this, I can speak with Ashford. Explain that you didn’t mean to undermine him. It was a mistake. He’ll forgive you.”

Clarissa bowed her head. Her mind was a mass of confusion, and the hunger and gunfire weren’t doing anything to help. Jim Holden was out there in the corridor. The man she’d come so far to disgrace and destroy, and now she didn’t want him dead. Her father was back on Earth and she was about to save him and everyone else or possibly destroy them all. She’d killed Ren, and there was nothing she could ever do that would make that right. Not even die for him.

She had been so certain. She’d given so much of herself. She’d given everything, and in the end all she’d felt was empty. And soiled. The money and the time and all of the people she could have been if she hadn’t been worshiping at the altar of her family name had already been sacrificed. Now she had offered her life, except that after speaking to Anna, she wasn’t sure that wouldn’t be an empty sacrifice too.

Her confusion and despair were like a buzzing in her ears and the voice that rose out of it was peculiarly her own: contempt and rage and the one certainty she could hold to.

“Who is Ashfordto forgive me for anything?” she said.

Cortez blinked at her, as if seeing her for the first time.

“For that matter,” she said, “who the hell are you?”

She turned and kicked gently for the doorframe, leaving Cortez behind. Ashford and his men were all armed, all waiting for the next round of gunfire. Ashford, stretched out behind his control panel, pistol before him, slammed his palm against the controls.

“Ruiz!” he shouted. His voice was hoarse. How many hours had they been waiting for this apocalypse to come? She could hear the strain in him. “Are we ready to fire? Tell me we’re ready to fire!”

The woman’s voice came, shrill with fear.

“Ready, sir. The grid is back online. The diagnostics are all green. It should work. Please don’t kill me. Please.”

This was it, then. And with an almost physical click, she knew how to fix it, if there was time.

She put her tongue to the roof of her mouth and pressed, swirling in two gentle counterclockwise circles. The extra glands in her body leapt into life as if they’d been waiting for her, and the world went white for a moment. She thought that she might have cried out in the first rush, but when she was back to herself—to better than herself—no one had reacted to her. They were all pointing their guns at the corridor. All drawn to the threat of James Holden the way she had been herself. All except Ashford. He was letting go of his weapon, leaving the pistol to hang in the air while he keyed in the firing instructions. That was how long she had. It wasn’t enough. Even high as a kite on battle drugs, she couldn’t do what needed to be done before Ashford fired the laser.