Babylon's Ashes

“Turn it up,” Salis said. Roberts fumbled with her terminal, then shifted around between them so they could all see the screen.

“—ties not only to the settlements that chose aggression against us but also with regressive forces back in Sol system. He will be questioned fully before execution. While we have to keep eyes open and alert, I am convinced, given all I have seen, that the immediate threat to Medina Station is under control.”

“Execution,” Roberts said.

Salis shrugged. “You put the ship at risk, that’s what happens. Those colony bastards weren’t coming to play dice and make happy.”

“Least it’s over,” Vandercaust said.

“Is why they let you go,” Roberts said, shaking her hand terminal. “Found him. Saw you weren’t involved.”

Or picked someone to play the goat, Vandercaust thought. Only I got lucky enough it wasn’t me. It wasn’t the sort of thing you said out loud. Not at times like these.

Chapter Thirty-Three: Holden

The room they were using as an anteroom was larger than the Rocinante’s galley. Wide tables with built-in monitors and tall metal stools. Soft, indirect lighting in a manipulated spectrum that reminded Holden of early mornings in his childhood. He didn’t have a rank or a uniform, but the ship jumpsuit had seemed wrong for the occasion. He’d decided on a dark, collarless shirt and pants that echoed the sense of a military uniform without making any specific claims.

Naomi, pacing now along the wall by the yellow double doors, had matched him, but he had the creeping sense that they looked better on her. So of the three of them, only Bobbie was in uniform, and hers had the insignia left off. The cut and the fitting all screamed Martian Marine Corps. And the people they were going to meet with—the ones gathering right now down the hall—knew who she was anyway.

“You keep pulling at that sleeve,” Bobbie said. “It bothering you?”

“It? No, it’s fine,” Holden said. “I’m bothering me. Do you know how many times I’ve done this kind of diplomatic work? I’ve been in battles and I’ve put together video feeds, but to walk in, look down the table at a bunch of OPA operatives, and tell them how they all need to listen to me? I’ve done that exactly no times. Never.”

“Ilus,” Naomi said.

“You mean when that one guy killed the other guy in the street and then burned a bunch of people alive?”

Naomi sighed. “Yeah. Then.”

Bobbie flexed her hands, put them palm down on the table display. The monitor glowed for a moment, waiting for a command, then dimmed again when nothing came. Muffled voices came through the doorway. A woman with a Belter’s accent asking something about chairs. A man replying, his voice too low to make out. “I’ve been in rooms like this before,” Bobbie said. “Political work. A lot of different agendas and no one saying out loud what they were actually thinking.”

“Yeah?” Holden said.

“It sucked.”

The Rocinante had decelerated toward Tycho harder than they’d planned, burning off the speed they’d poured on during the battle and pressing them all down a little more than usual, like an illness or a regret. Holden held a little ceremony in the galley where each of them shared some memory of Fred Johnson and they let their various griefs blur together. The only ones not to speak were Amos, smiling his amiable and meaningless smile, and Clarissa, her brow furrowed in concentration like it was all a puzzle she was trying to solve.

When they broke up, Holden noticed that Alex and Sandra Ip went off together, but he didn’t have time or enough moral high ground to worry about fraternization. Every hour that passed had taken them a few thousand klicks closer to Tycho and the meeting there. All of his spare time was in his cabin with the door closed trading messages across the emptiness of the system. Michio Pa. Drummer on Tycho. A man named Damian Short, who’d taken the reins on Ceres. But mostly Chrisjen Avasarala.

Every long, heavy day, he traded messages with Luna. Long lectures from Avasarala on how to conduct a meeting, how to present himself and his arguments. More importantly, how to listen to what the others said and didn’t say. She sent him dossiers on all the major OPA players who would be there: Aimee Ostman, Micah al-Dujaili, Liang Goodfortune, Carlos Walker. Everything Avasarala knew about them—who their families were, what their factions within the OPA had done and what she only suspected they’d done. The depth of background was overwhelming, group loyalties intersecting and drawing apart, personal insults affecting political agreements, and political agreements shaping relationships. And along with it, Avasarala pouring the distilled insights of a lifetime of political life into his ears until he was drunk with it to the edge of nausea.