Babylon's Ashes

“Savvy you he’s loyal to the Belt because he’s sleeping with Naomi Nagata? Or you think maybe she’s disloyal à the Belt because she’s with a squat? That knife cuts from the grip.”

“Holden has been making a one-man propaganda campaign on behalf of the Belt,” Dawes said, raising his voice over the ambient musical shout of the nightclub.

“His amateur anthropology feed? It’s insulting y patronizing y shit,” Liang Goodfortune said.

“It’s well meant. And it’s more than other people in his position have done. Holden’s a man of action.”

They came into the larger room, lights swirling around the bar, music thudding hard enough to press his lungs. Dawes had to lean in until his lips were almost brushing Goodfortune’s ear. “I think if there’s anyone in the system better prepared to stand against Inaros, you can’t find them and neither can I. Either you make cause with him, or you go hat in hand to the Free Navy and say you’re ready to take their table scraps. But do it soon, because I will wager everything I have that even if he has to go to war by himself, James Holden will destroy Marco Inaros before this is done.”

“He can’t do it alone,” Dawes said, spreading his hands wide.

The Desiderata of Bhagavathi had been Carlos Walker’s ship for thirty years, and it bore the stamp of his peculiar aesthetic sense in every detail. The anti-spalling covers on the walls were gray, but textured to catch the light in smooth curves that rose and fell like the hills of a vast desert or the not-quite-identifiable skin of nude bodies. The crash couches on the command deck weren’t simple, utilitarian gray but a sculpted bronze that had nothing to do with the actual metal and ceramic that made them up. Music played on the speakers so softly it might almost have been Dawes’ imagination: harp and flute and a dry, hissing drum. It felt less like a pirate ship than a temple. Maybe there was room for both.

“That isn’t an argument that I should do it with him,” Carlos Walker said, handing over a drinking bulb. The whiskey that flooded Dawes’ mouth when he sipped was rich and deep and complicated. Carlos Walker smiled, watching him appreciate it. “I came out of respect for Johnson. I am staying out of respect. That respect doesn’t extend to dying on Holden’s errands. You say yourself that Medina is too well defended.”

“I say it’s well defended,” Dawes said.

“The rail guns will kill any ship that comes through the ring.”

“Perhaps,” Dawes said. “But keep in mind, this is Fred Johnson’s plan. And that Fred had access to Michio Pa and all that she knows about the station defense.”

Carlos Walker hesitated, though with him it expressed itself only as a slightly longer silence. He shook his head. “There’s risk in leaving Marco Inaros and his Free Navy to play themselves out. There’s danger in taking them on. But only one requires that I drive my ship into rail gun fire. I can’t agree to it.”

“Not every battle is won on the battleground,” Dawes said. “I respect your caution, but Holden hasn’t asked you to be vanguard. Hasn’t even asked you to go through the ring gate. Don’t assume he’s going to demand heroism and sacrifice. I know his reputation, but no one survives the things he’s survived without having a deep capacity for thoughtfulness and foresight. And more than that, strategy. Holden comes across feckless sometimes, truth, but he’s a thinker. What he’s doing? It’s all from the head.”

“You think he’s not angry?” Dawes said. “Holden is here as much for vengeance as you are. This is a man who acts from the gut, from the heart, before his head gets in the way.”

They were alone in the chapel, except for the images of Fred Johnson. It felt wrong to bring talk of violence and revenge into even as milquetoast a holy place as this, but grief came in all kinds of clothing. And this had begun as a moment to show respect for the dead. Micah al-Dujaili hunched forward, his arms resting on the back of the pew in front of him. His eyes were bloodshot.

“Carl talked to me,” he said. “Said he couldn’t stand by while the Belt starved. And Inaros killed him for it.”

“Tried to kill Holden’s wife too,” Dawes said. He knew that wasn’t quite true, but this was a moment for broad strokes. “Not because she was a threat. Not because she was of any sort of strategic value. Just because she’d embarrassed him, and he could.”

“Inaros isn’t who we thought he was. Everyone, they still call him a hero. They look at Earth and they look at Mars, and they cheer. They still cheer.”

“Some still do,” Dawes said. It was true. All through the system, Inaros had as many that loved him as had turned away. More, maybe. “It’s not him, though. It’s the idea of him. The man who stood up for the Belt. Only that man hasn’t risen up yet. They only think he has.”

“Will this Holden hurt him?”

“Every time Holden takes a breath, Marco Inaros suffers,” Dawes said. And that was probably as close to truth as anything he’d said in the last two days.