A dozen possibilities shifted in her mind—redeploy forces to Tycho Station and embolden Ganymede, or blockade Pallas and try to cut off the Free Navy’s resupply capabilities, or set up a protected zone for the colony ships out there and running dark. There were a thousand different paths, and she couldn’t be sure where any of them would lead. If she guessed wrong, it could mean the collapse of all that was left.
But Marco Inaros and his captains were together in one place, and her ships weren’t pinned.
“Fortune favors the bold, yes?” she said. “Fuck it. Let’s take back Ceres.”
Chapter Eleven: Pa
Seven decades before Michio Pa was born, Earth and Mars rewrote the tariff regulations on raw ore from the Belt. The stated reason was that it would encourage the establishment and expansion of refineries in the Belt and around Jupiter and Saturn. It might even have worked. In the short term, it meant that a wave of Belter prospectors and asteroid miners who’d been living at the edge of survival slipped over into the abyss. Ships were impounded or run illegally or lost from not having the scrip to pay for maintenance and repair. Back then, Earth and Mars had walked in each other’s footsteps, and the only option that seemed to have any promise of justice was for the Belt to build a military of its own.
It was never official. The Outer Planets Alliance survived since then by being diffuse and deniable. But the beginnings were there. Choose a faction, find a place in the chain of command, build the thin but resilient structure that would have muscle one day. That would eventually become an answer to the inner planets projecting their power out to where the sun was hardly more than the brightest star.
When Michio Pa turned twenty-two, Fred Johnson—the Butcher of Anderson Station—had seemed like her brightest hope. He was an Earther fighting for the Belt. Fighting against his own natural self-interest. It gave a sense of authenticity to someone young enough and still easily swayed. She’d taken a position on Tycho Station, made her contacts first and then her commitment. Trained in the quasi-military that Johnson was hauling up. Put in her years.
She’d been a true believer, then. She’d been a naïve little prig. But that was before the Behemoth.
Getting the XO assignment on the Belt’s first genuine warship had been a dream come true for her. The generation ship hadn’t been designed for war, but all of her crew had been. That was what she told herself.
Captain Ashford had the command. She had been his second. And slotted in beneath them as head of security, Fred Johnson’s personal friend. Carlos C de Baca. Bull. Her babysitter, and the man positioned to step in and take over when she made her first mistake. Her hatred for Bull had been incandescent. Every chance she had to belittle him, she’d taken it. Every misstep he made, she drove a wedge into, prying it open. The Behemoth had gone to the ring to face down Earth and Mars. To show that the Belt was a force to be reckoned with. And as above, so below. She’d made it her personal mission to show Bull that she was better than he was.
Which was why it had hurt her so badly when Sam sided with him.
They’d talked about it, her and Sam. How important it was to keep their affair quiet. How not to let anyone—especially anyone in command—guess about them. Sam had agreed, maybe because she actually did agree. Or maybe in order to placate Michio’s insecurities. And then Bull and Sam had fucked around with the budget allocations. It had felt like the deepest betrayal possible. Sam—her Sam—making common cause with an Earther. With the Earther who’d been sent by Fred Johnson to mind the untrustworthy Belters.
It had been only her first mistake among many. Michio had let her emotions blind her to the wisdom and experience that Bull had offered her until things were badly out of hand. Despite all the casualties after the catastrophe, she hadn’t recognized Ashford’s volatility and violence as symptoms of brain injury. She hadn’t put aside her faith in the chain of command.
And she hadn’t made peace with Sam before Ashford killed her.
Fred Johnson had sent her out into the whirlwind because she was a Belter, and he needed a Belter as a figurehead. She hadn’t been ready, but she had been convenient. And because of it, people had died.
The Behemoth never came back through the gate. They’d stripped her down, spun up the drum, and rechristened her again as Medina Station. Michio Pa, they’d sent back to Tycho on a Martian naval vessel. After the dead had been removed, there’d been plenty of extra space. As soon as she’d gotten back to her quarters, she’d resigned. She didn’t even shower first. She quit her official job on Tycho, her militia rank in the OPA, everything. Fred Johnson had sent her personal messages. She didn’t know what was in them. She’d deleted them without listening.
And she’d gotten lost, taking one job and another. Trying to keep her nightmares and crying jags to herself. She ran a ship for a salvaging company that sometimes verged over into piracy. She oversaw a trading co-op that didn’t announce itself to the tariff boards, which was technically smuggling. She was managing a supply warehouse complex on Rhea for a half-criminal labor union based out of Titan when Nadia and Bertold found her. It had taken six months before she’d realized that she was in love with them and four more before she understood what it meant that they loved her too. The day they first made a home together in a thin, inexpensive hole half a klick below the moon’s surface was one of the best she’d ever had.
The others had come in their own way. Laura and Oksana together. And then Josep. Evans. Each new person folded into the marriage had felt like an expansion of her tribe. Her people. Not the politicians, not the war leaders, not the men who loved to wield power. There was a difference between, on the one hand, the Belt and its fight to exist in the face of the gate she’d helped open and, on the other, the voices and bodies of her family.
But the dream didn’t die. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the idea of a Belter navy that could stand toe-to-toe with Earth and Mars and demand to be respected lay dormant but alive.
And so when Marco Inaros came with his proposal in hand, she’d heard him out. She was still remembered in Belter circles as the captain who’d stepped up in the slow zone. People respected her name. When the time came, he needed someone who would coordinate rounding up the colony ships he was keeping out of the slow zone and see that the supplies made it to Belters in need. Take from the rich inners and give to the poor of the Belt until things were even. Until they reached the utopia of the void.
But not yet. Now he just needed small favors. Moving some contraband through to Ganymede. Overseeing a prisoner transfer. Helping set up a band of hidden relays outside Jupiter. He had cultivated her with a grand vision and small steps.
And by cultivated, she might have meant seduced.
“How many ships do we have coming to Ceres?” he asked, walking beside her. The administrative levels of Ceres Station had the smell of living plants, the polished floors and walls that were meant as a boast. Michio felt a little out of place there, but Marco didn’t. He managed to make wherever he was feel like his natural habitat.
“Seven,” she said. “The closest’s the Alastair Rauch. It’s been braking for a while. Should hit dock in three days. The Hornblower’s the farthest, but Carmondy can up the burn if we need him to. I’m trying to have the fleet conserve reaction mass.”