Babylon's Ashes, Page 33

  The fifth person had the white hair of an old man, pocked cheeks, and a deferential smile that was almost an apology, but not quite. Holden recognized him, but wasn’t sure from where. He tried to keep his poker face, but the fifth man saw through the effort without seeming to realize it was there.

  “Anderson Dawes,” the man said. “I don’t think we’ve ever met person to person, but Fred talked about you often. And, of course, your reputation.”

  Holden shook hands with the former governor of Ceres Station and master of Marco Inaros’ inner circle, his mind racing. “I was wondering if you’d be here,” he lied.

  “I hadn’t announced myself,” Dawes said. “Tycho’s a risky place for a man in my position. I was relying on Fred to vouch for me. We worked together for many years. I was sorry to hear about him.”

  “It’s a loss,” Holden said. “Fred was a good man. I’ll miss him.”

  “As will we all,” Dawes said. “I hope you don’t mind my arriving unannounced. Aimee reached out to me when she knew she was coming, and I asked her to let me follow along.”

  Good, great, the more the merrier, Holden thought, but the little version of Avasarala in his imagination frowned. “I’m glad you’re here, but you can’t be in this meeting.”

  “I can vouch for him,” Aimee Ostman said.

  Holden nodded, tried to imagine what Avasarala would say, but it was the old, almost-forgotten voice of Miller that came to him. “There’s a way we do things. This isn’t it. I hope you don’t mind waiting outside, Mr. Dawes. Naomi, could you see that our friend here finds someplace comfortable?”

  Naomi stepped forward. Dawes shifted his weight to the back of his feet, surprised. This is your house, Avasarala said in Holden’s mind. If they don’t respect you here, they won’t respect you anywhere. Dawes gathered up his hand terminal and a white ceramic cup, nodding to Holden with a tight smile as he left. Holden took his seat, grateful for the solid and looming presence of Bobbie at his side. Aimee Ostman’s lips were pressed thin. If you’re looking for mutual respect, you can start by asking before you invite people to my secret meetings. It seemed like a rude thing to say out loud.

  “If you’re looking for mutual respect, you can start by asking before you invite people to my secret meetings.”

  Aimee Ostman cleared her throat and looked away.

  “All right,” Holden said. “This was supposed to be Fred Johnson’s presentation, but he’s gone. I know you all came here on the strength of his word and his reputation. And I know you’re all concerned about Marco Inaros and the Free Navy. But I also know this is the first time any of you have met me, and I may not have your full confidence.”

  “You’re James Holden,” Liang Goodfortune said in a tone that meant Of course you don’t have our full confidence.

  “I took the liberty of arranging an introduction,” he said, shifting the message from his hand terminal to the monitors on the table.

  Michio Pa looked out at each of them. The command deck of the Connaught glowed behind her. “Friends,” she said. “As you know, I was not long ago in the inner circle of the Free Navy, and what I saw there convinced me and many of those in my command that Marco Inaros is not the leader that the Belt needs. As the Free Navy has abandoned its original purpose of supporting and rebuilding the Belt and keeping the industry that feeds Belters from shifting out to the new colony worlds, I have stayed true. You all know this. I have lost friends to this effort. I have risked my life and the lives of those I care most deeply for. I serve with the true heroes of the Belt. My credentials are beyond reproach.”

  Bobbie nudged him and nodded toward Micah al-Dujaili. Tears were shining in the man’s eyes. Holden nodded. He saw it too.

  “Since my parting of ways with the Free Navy, I have been working with Fred Johnson toward a comprehensive plan that will guarantee the safety and well-being of the Belt.” Pa paused, took a deep breath. Holden wondered whether she did that every time she lied, or just when it was a whopper. “This meeting was intended to be an introduction of that plan and of Captain Holden as integral to it. Unfortunately, while Fred Johnson was able to see the path forward, he isn’t able to make that journey with us. As a dedicated citizen of the Belt and a servant of our people, I’m asking you to hear Captain Holden out and then to join with us for a living future. Thank you.”

  Everything about her statement had been negotiated. He’d lost track of the number of times they’d traded back and forth, Pa asking for something, Avasarala explaining what it really meant, him running between the two of them like a messenger, but learning a little more with every pass. Pa would agree to say they’d been working toward a plan, but not that they’d been working on a plan. She would say that Holden was integral to it, but not that he was central. The whole process had been everything he hated—niggling on details and nuances, fighting over turns of phrase and the order information was presented in, fashioning something that, even where it wasn’t outright false, was tailored to be misunderstood. Politics at its most political.

  He looked at the four faces sitting around the table and tried to judge whether it had worked. Aimee Ostman looked thoughtful and sour. Micah al-Dujaili was still composing himself, moved by the reminder that his brother had already sacrificed himself in the cause. Carlos Walker, still and silent and unreadable as language in an unknown alphabet. Liang Goodfortune cleared their throat.

  “Looks like Inaros has a habit of losing women to you, Captain,” Goodfortune said. Walker chuckled. They’ll try embarrassing you a little to see how you react. Don’t try to one-up them, or they’ll try to escalate out of conflicts later. Stay on point. Naomi stepped back in, came to sit at his side.

  “Losing Fred is hard because it’s sad,” Holden said. “He was a friend. But it doesn’t change the situation. He formed a plan, and my intention is to follow it. Fred called on each of you because he felt you had something to offer this and also something to gain by it.”

  Carlos Walker’s eyes shifted, as if he’d heard something interesting for the first time. Holden nodded to him, an intentionally ambiguous gesture. Then he turned to Bobbie. Her turn to take the floor.

  “There will be a military aspect to this,” she said. “We’re not getting through any of this without some risk, but we’re confident that it is more than outweighed by the rewards.”

  “You say that as a representative of Mars?” Aimee Ostman asked.

  “Sergeant Draper has worked as a liaison between Earth and Mars on several occasions,” Holden said. “She’s here today as a member of my crew.”

  That was odd. Bobbie seemed to grow tenser at the words, gather herself, sit up straighter. When she spoke again, her tone was almost exactly the same as it had been before—no louder, no rougher—but something about it had grown fierce. “I have experience in combat. I’ve led teams in battle. It is my professional opinion that the proposal Fred Johnson put together is the best hope for the long-term stability and safety of the Belt.”

  “Find that hard to believe,” Aimee Ostman said. “Looks to me like the captain here’s been getting all the women and Inaros has been taking all the stations.”

  Before Holden could answer, Micah al-Dujaili snapped back. “Looks to me like Inaros is as bad at keeping territory as he is at keeping women.”

  “Stop it with the ‘women’ bullshit,” Carlos Walker said. His voice was surprising. Reedy and musical. A singer’s voice. The accents of Belter cant were almost absent from it. “It’s juvenile. He lost Dawes too. He lost everyone in this room before he even began, or none of us would be here. Inaros has an open sore where his heart should be, and we all know it. What I want to hear is how you intend to change the dynamic. Every time you move toward him, he’s pulled you into overreach. Your consolidated fleet is going to be stretched too thin soon. Is that what you want us for? Cannon fodder?”

  “I’m not ready to discuss the details,” Holden said. “There are security issues we all have to address first.”

/>   “Why did you bring us here if it wasn’t to tell us what you intended?” Aimee Ostman said.

  Liang Goodfortune ignored her. “Medina. You’re going for Medina.”

  Something will go wrong. Something always does. They’ll see something you didn’t mean them to see; they’ll have a trap set you didn’t know to expect. These are intelligent people, and all of them have their own agendas. When it happens—not if, when—the worst thing you can do is panic. The second worst thing you can do is engage. Holden leaned forward.

  “I’d like to give all of you the opportunity to consult about this before we talk about any of the tactical options,” Holden said. “I’ve spoken to the security chief. You are all welcome to stay here on the station or else return to your ships. Feel free to talk among yourselves or with anyone you think might be useful. You can have access to the station comms unmonitored, or if you’d rather use the systems on your own ships, you won’t be recorded or jammed. If you are interested in being involved with this, we’ll reconvene here in twenty hours. I’ll be ready to go through all the details then, but I will expect your loyalty and commitment in return. If you aren’t comfortable with that, you have safe passage away from Tycho anytime within that window.”

  “And after that?” Carlos Walker asked.

  “After that’s a different country,” Holden said. “We’ll be doing things differently there.”

  Holden, Naomi, and Bobbie all stood. The other four rose a moment later. Holden watched how each of them said their goodbyes or else didn’t. When the doors closed behind the four emissaries, leaving him alone with Naomi and Bobbie, he slumped down in his chair.

  “God damn,” he said. “How does she do this all day, every day? That was maybe twenty minutes start to finish, and I already feel like I should dip my brain in bleach.”

  “Told you it sucked,” Bobbie said, leaning against the table. “Are you sure it’s a good idea giving them free rein of the station? We don’t know who they’re talking to.”

  “We couldn’t stop them,” Naomi said. “This way it looks like a gesture on our part.”

  “So theater and palace intrigue,” Bobbie said.

  “Just for now,” Holden said. “Just until they buy in. Once they commit, we can get down to our plan.”

  “Johnson’s plan,” Bobbie said. Then a moment later, “So, just between us. Did Fred Johnson really have a plan?”

  “I’m pretty sure he did,” Holden said, sagging into himself. “Don’t know what it was.”

  “So this one we’re selling?”

  “I’m kind of making it up.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Dawes

  There was no viewing of the body. Fred Johnson—the Butcher of Anderson Station—had requested that his body be recycled into the system of Tycho Station. Water that had been his blood was likely already coming through the taps and faucets throughout the station. His chalk bones would reenter the food cycle in the hydroponics pools. The more complex lipids and proteins would take longer to become humus for the mushroom farms. Fred Johnson, like all the dead before him, fell to his component parts, scattered, and entered the world again, changed and unrecognized.

  Instead, there were printed images of him on the chapel wall. A portrait of the man as a colonel in the service of Earth. A picture of him as an older man, still strong in his features but with a weariness creeping in at his eyes. Another of a ridiculously young boy—not more than ten years old—holding a book in one hand and waving with the other, his face split by a massive and childlike grin. They were the right ears, the right spacing of the eyes, but Dawes still had to work to believe that happy child had grown into the complex man he’d known and called friend and betrayed.

  The memorial was in a small chapel so aggressively nondenominational that it was hard to tell the difference between it and a waiting room. Instead of religious icons, there were sober, abstract shapes. A circle in gold, a square in forest green. Intentionally empty symbols meant as placeholders for where something with significance might have been. The Tycho Manufacturing logo in the hallway outside held more meaning.

  The pews were bamboo textured to look like some sort of wood—ash or oak or pine. Dawes had only ever seen pictures of live trees. He wouldn’t have known one from another, but it gave the little room some sense of gravitas. Still he didn’t sit. He walked past the pictures of Fred Johnson, looking into the eyes that didn’t look back. The thing in his chest, the one making it hard to breathe, felt thick and complicated.

  “I had a speech ready,” he said. His voice echoed a little, the emptiness giving it depth. “Well practiced. You’d have liked it. All about the nature of politics and the finest of humanity being our ability to change to match our environment. We are how the universe consciously remakes itself. The inevitability of failure and the glory of standing back up after it.” He coughed out a chuckle. It sounded like a sob. “What I really meant was I’m sorry. Not just sorry I backed the wrong horse. Am sorry about that. But I’m sorry I compromised you while I did it.”

  He paused as if Fred might answer, then shook his head.

  “I think the speech would have worked. You and I have so much history behind us. Seems strange. I was a mentor to you once. Well. Feet of clay. You know how it is. Still, I really think you’d have seen the value in having me back. But this Holden prick?” Dawes shook his head. “You picked a shit time to die, my friend.”

  The doors opened behind him. A young woman in an oil-stained Tycho Station jumpsuit and a deep-green hijab stepped in, nodded to him, and took a place in the pew, her head bowed. Dawes stepped back from the pictures of the dead man. There was more he wanted to say. Apparently there always would be.

  He took a seat across the aisle from the woman, folded his hands in his lap, lowered his head. There was a profound mundanity in shared grief. A set of rules as strong as any human etiquette, and they didn’t allow for him to keep up his one-sided conversation. Not aloud, anyway.

  The Free Navy could have been—ought to have been—a glorious moment for the Belt. Inaros had conjured up a full military for them out of nothing. Dawes had told himself at the time that Inaros’ failings as a political animal weren’t a problem. Were an opportunity, even. As a member of the Free Navy’s inner circle, Dawes could exert his influence. Be kingmaker. The cost was high, yes, but the rewards were nothing short of visionary. An independent Belt, cut free of the inner planets. The threat of the gate network under their control. Yes, Inaros was a peacock who made his way through life on charisma and violence. Yes, Rosenfeld had always had a whiff of brimstone about him. But Sanjrani was smart, and Pa was capable and dedicated. And if he’d said no, it would all have gone ahead without him anyway.

  It was what he’d told himself. How he’d justified it all. The best would have been that someone besides Inaros had acquired the ships. The second best was that Inaros’ circle of advisors and handlers include him. So what was third?

  After the abandonment of Ceres, Dawes had gone on playing the role of elder statesman for a while, even as Pa’s rebellion made it impossible to pretend things were on track. When Aimee Ostman had found him, told him that Fred Johnson was putting together a meeting on Tycho, it had looked like an opportunity to broker peace. If not between Earth and the Free Navy, at least with the remains of the OPA. It had been the perfect way to leverage his relationship with Fred into a place at the table.

  Another woman came in, sitting beside the one in the hijab. They exchanged soft words. Two men came in together, sat in the back. Change of shift was coming. Mourners would be stopping in on their way to work, or on their way back from it. Dawes felt a twinge of resentment that they should interrupt his time alone in the chapel. It was irrational and he knew it.

  And anyway, Fred Johnson had made his wishes clear, even if he hadn’t meant to. And Dawes still owed the colonel something.

  “Is fucking bullshit is what it is,” Aimee Ostman said. “James pinché Holden can fuck himself.”

&nbs
p; Dawes sipped his espresso and nodded. Holden’s first move had been to humiliate her. For reasons Dawes understood. But still, for her to begin by losing face was hard.

  “Forgive him for it,” Dawes said. “I have. You should too.”

  “For for?”

  Aimee Ostman scowled and scratched her chin. Her quarters in the station were wide and luxurious. One wall was taken entirely by a screen tied to an exterior camera, the resolution so fine it was indistinguishable from a window into space. The divan was spotless cream, the air scented with volatile molecules that mimicked sandalwood and vanilla. Dawes gestured at it all with his demitasse.

  “Look at this,” he said. “Room for an ambassador. For a president.”

  “And?”

  “And he gave it to you,” Dawes said and took another sip. “Thought it was doing you honor. Best suite in the station.”

  “He spat in your face,” Aimee Ostman said, pointing index and middle finger at him together like the barrel of a gun. “Kicked you out.”

  Dawes laughed, shrugged. Invited her to laugh and shrug with him. It bit at his soul, but it was the thing to do. “I showed up unannounced. It was rude of me. Holden was in the right. How would you have been if I’d brought him to the back room at the Apex without telling you first?”

  She scowled, her eyes tracking low and to the left. “Should have been more polite about it.”