Expanse 03 - Abaddon’s Gate Read Online Free PDF Page A

vessels. And Earth and Mars blew the crap out of each other over Ganymede.”
    “Be there,” Fred said. “If Earth and Mars send their ships, we send ours. If they put out a statement, we put out one of our own. If they lay a claim on the Ring, we counterclaim. What we’ve done to make the outer planets into a viable political force has reaped real benefits, but if we start letting them lead, it could all evaporate.”
    “We planning to shoot anybody?” Bull asked.
    “Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Fred said.
    The gantry’s gentle upward slope brought them to a platform arch. In the star-strewn blackness, a great plain of steel and ceramic curved away above them, lit by a thousand lights. Looking out at it was like seeing a landscape—this was too big to be something humans had made. It was like a canyon or a mountain. The meadow-filled caldera of some dead volcano. The scale alone made it impossible to see her as a ship. But she was. The construction mechs crawling along her side were bigger than the house Bull had lived in as a boy, but they looked like football players on a distant field. The long, thin line of the keel elevator stretched along the body of the drum to shuttle personnel from engineering at one end to ops at the other. The secondary car, stored on the exterior, could hold a dozen people. It looked like a grain of salt. The soft curve was studded with turreted rail guns and the rough, angry extrusions of torpedo tubes.
    Once, she’d been the
Nauvoo
. A generation ship headed to the stars carrying a load of devout Mormons with only an engineered ecosystem and an unshakable faith in God’s grace to see them through. Now she was the
Behemoth
. The biggest, baddest weapons platform in the solar system. Four
Donnager
-class battleships would fit in her belly and not touch the walls. She could accelerate magnetic rounds to a measurable fraction of
c
. She could hold more nuclear torpedoes than the Outer Planets Alliance actually had. Her communications laser was powerful enough to burn through steel if they gave it enough time. Apart from painting teeth on her and welding on an apartment building–sized sharkfin, nothing could have been more clearly or effectively built to intimidate.
    Which was good, because she was a retrofitted piece of crap, and if they ever got in a real fight, they were boned. Bull slid a glance at Ashford. The captain’s chin was tilted high and his eyes were bright with pride. Bull sucked his teeth.
    The last threads of weight let go as the platform and gantry matched to the stillness of the
Behemoth
. One of the distant construction mechs burst into a sun-white flare as the welding started.
    “How long before we take her out?” Ashford asked.
    “Three days,” Fred said.
    “Engineering report said the ship’ll be ready in about ten,” Bull said. “We planning to work on her while we’re flying?”
    “That was the intention,” Fred said.
    “Because we could wait another few days here, do the work in dock, and burn a little harder going out, get the same arrival.”
    The silence was uncomfortable. Bull had known it would be, but it had to be said.
    “The crew’s comfort and morale need as much support as the ship,” Fred said, diplomacy changing the shapes of the words. Bull had known him long enough to hear it.
The Belters don’t want a hard burn.
“Besides which, it’s easier to get the in-transit work done in lower g. It’s all been min-maxed, Bull. You ship out in three.”
    “Is that a problem?” Ashford said.
    Bull pulled the goofy grin he used when he wanted to tell the truth and not get in trouble for it.
    “We’re heading out to throw gang signs at Earth and Mars while the Ring does a bunch of scary alien mystery stuff. We’ve got a crew that’s never worked together, a ship that’s half salvage, and not enough time to shake it all down. Sure it’s a problem, but it’s not one we can fix, so we’ll do it anyway. Worst can happen is