Fred was quiet for a long time, a sense of mourning blooming in his chest, thick and aching. “Honestly, then? I don’t know how it ends. I don’t even know if it ends. I dedicated my life to this fight. First one side, and then the other. But now, I look at it? What’s happened with the gates. What’s happened to Earth. I don’t recognize this anymore. I keep doing what I can because I don’t know what else to do.”
Holden took a deep breath and let it out through his teeth. “When should we be ready to go?”
“I told Drummer I’d be wrapping things up here for two weeks. I’d like to leave four days from now. While any of Marco’s people who find out about it are still putting together their plans. Make them move before they’re ready.”
“All right,” Holden said. “We’ll take you.”
“I’ll have my people report whenever you need them. I’ll see myself out,” Fred said with a nod, and headed for the lift.
On the way back down, he closed his eyes and let the thin vibration of the mechanism rattle up through the soles of his feet, up his aching spine, to the crown of his head. There was still so much that needed doing before he left Ceres. He still had to meet with the crew of the Minsky, but he’d promised to consult with Avasarala’s solicitor general before he did, so that he didn’t accidentally obligate Earth to anything by saying the wrong phrase. And he wanted patrol rotations set for at least a month, so that his unexpected absence wouldn’t throw anything off. And he wanted sleep.
As he stepped out the airlock again, his hand terminal chirped. A new message had arrived from Earth. From Avasarala. He paused in the wide air of the docks. The roar of the air recyclers and the clang of the loading mechs. The smell of lubricant and dust. His security detail was already moving toward him, ready to usher him back into his fishbowl. He waved them back and started the message.
Avasarala was in a corridor, shuffling briskly in the lunar microgravity. She looked as tired as he did, but she had a thin, amused smile. He’d never known anyone in his life who could be so cheerfully disappointed in humanity.
“I’ve run your list past my relief coordinator,” she said—what would it be? Eight minutes ago? Ten? He used to be able to calculate light delay in his head. “It didn’t quite bring him to orgasm, but I think he may want to take you out for drinks when you’re in town. Be careful with him. He’s got busy hands.”
Someone off screen interrupted. Avasarala’s eyes flickered away from the camera and she shook her head. “Does he want me to wipe his ass for him too? His job is to make decisions, not ask me what decisions he ought to make.” A curt, deferential voice said yes, ma’am or something like it, and she started walking again.
Fred found himself smiling. When she’d been his enemy, she’d been a good one. Now that they were working as allies, the ways that they were the same almost humanized her.
“Where was I? Oh. Yes, the so-called relief supplies. I’m sending along a list of what we most need on the surface. If you get a chance to pass it on to Pa, please do. Apparently we’re all fucking pirates now.”
Chapter Twenty-Six: Filip
The night before the Pella left Pallas Station, Rosenfeld hosted a dinner for Marco and the other captains. The hall had been a vast open space designed as a construction compartment, but changed now into a kind of null-g throne room. A soft, chiming music played like flowing water with a melody. Serving platforms bristled with ceramic bulbs brightly colored as oil on water and filled with wine and water. Long ribbons of red and gold shifted in the breeze of the recyclers. Great lengths of gold fibered paper fluttered and bellied against the walls between the hand- and footholds. The crew of the Pella and the staff of Rosenfeld’s Pallas authority mixed, Free Navy uniforms standing out sharp and martial against the casual civilian clothes of the locals. Young men and women in flowing robes of crimson and blue floated through the air slowly enough to deliver tapas of bean-and-grain cake, curried shrimp fresh from the tanks, and garlic sausage with real meat stuffed in the skins.
No element of the design suggested a consensus up or down. No concession had been made to the architecture of Earth and Mars. The combination of a traditional Belter aesthetic with lushness and luxury left Filip a little intoxicated even before he started drinking.
“I don’t know what you could mean by purification,” his father said through laughter, “if not ‘getting rid of the impure parts.’”
Rosenfeld’s answering chuckle was dry. After weeks traveling with the man, Filip still wasn’t certain he could read his expressions. “You’re saying you planned for this?”
“Anticipated. A change in the system of the greater world always risks having people lose perspective. Get drunk on possibility. Pa rode the wave in; now she thinks she can command the tides. I didn’t know she would break, but I was ready if she did.”
Rosenfeld nodded. Across the great echoing chamber, two women sang together a few bars of a song that Filip knew, and then dissolved into hilarity. He looked across the open air, hoping that one of them might be looking back. That a girl would be watching him floating in conference with the great minds of the Free Navy. No one was.
When his father went on, his voice was lower. Still conversational, still friendly, but charged. “I had plans in place for anyone that broke. Pa, Sanjrani, Dawes. You. When I make my next strike, everyone will see how weak she is. Her support will burn off faster than breathing.”
“You’re sure,” Rosenfeld said, making the words a statement and a question at the same time. He drank from his bulb, coughed. Filip watched his father waiting for the pebble-skinned man to finish his thought. Rosenfeld sighed, nodded. Filip felt some deeper meaning swim just below his understanding, leaving him bobbing in its wake. “It’s only that she’s been feeding people. The laity find that sort of thing endearing, sí no?”
“Anyone can buy votes with free ganga,” Filip said.
Rosenfeld turned his head then, like he was noticing Filip for the first time. “True, true.”
“Johnson and his cobbled-up fleet,” Marco said, “have been squatting on Ceres with their eyes wide. Can’t move forward without exposing themselves. Can’t move back and leave Ceres to us again. They’re trapped. Just the way we said they’d be.”
“True,” Rosenfeld said, and left True, but…hanging in the air. All the criticisms trailed behind it like the ribbons in the breeze. True, but it’s been a long time since we left Ceres, and it’s left us looking weak… True, but one of your generals broke away and you haven’t brought her to heel… True, but Fred Johnson is issuing orders from the governor’s mansion at Ceres, and you aren’t. Filip felt every point like a blow to the gut, but because they were unspoken, he couldn’t answer them. Neither could his father. Rosenfeld took another drink, accepted a stick of vat-grown meat from a passing server, and steadied his drift with one hand as he ate. His expression was mild, but his gaze stayed locked on Marco.
“Waiting until the perfect moment is the mark of a great strategist,” Marco said. “For now, the outer planets are ours to pass through freely. Mars and Earth and Luna—even Ceres. They’re hiding behind their walls while we move through the wide plains of the vacuum, masters of the void. The more they realize they don’t matter, the more desperate they’ll become. All we have to do is watch for the opportunity that’s coming.”
“Fred Johnson,” Rosenfeld said. “He’s already reached out to Carlos Walker and Liang Goodfortune. Aimee Ostman.”