She nodded. Another fucking battle like trying to grab water in her fist. The cart turned, dipped into an access tunnel. Two security guards saluted as she passed. The cart turned down another ramp, slotted itself into the highspeed toward the government and administration centers at Aldrin, and turned again so that she could look back down the throat of the passageway. Gray walls with white archways retreating back and up. The air like an eternal exhalation. The architecture seemed small in context. Insignificant against the tremendous scope of Luna and Earth. She clung to it like a lifeline. “Reports from Ceres are that the Rocinante was ambushed, but escaped. It’s on course toward Tycho Station.”
“Small favors,” she said.
“You also have a personal meeting on the schedule, ma’am.”
Personal meeting? For a long moment, she couldn’t remember what it was, but as the highspeed line lurched, pulled her cart in, and began its acceleration run, she remembered that Ashanti had been asking to see her. Somehow, her daughter had wheedled Said into putting her on the calendar.
“Cancel that,” Avasarala said.
“Are you certain, ma’am?”
“I don’t want to spend half an hour listening to a girl whose diapers I changed lecture me about taking care of myself. Tell her I’m tired and napping.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do you have something you want to say, Mr. Said?”
Said coughed. “She’s your daughter, ma’am.”
Avasarala smiled. It was the first time Said had pushed back at her. Maybe there was hope for the little fucker yet. “Fine. Give her the first dinner slot that’s still open.”
“That’s three days.”
“Three days, then,” Avasarala said. The highspeed stopped accelerating, leaving her rocketing through the evacuated tunnel at however many hundreds of kilometers per hour it went. Enough to take her halfway across the face of the moon in half an hour. A body in motion remained in motion. It was a metaphor as much as anything. Stay in motion, because once she rested, she didn’t know how she would bring herself to ever start again.
She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d meditated. It used to be that when things were bad at work, she spent more time sitting, not less. Listening to her own breath rattle through the complex spaces at the back of her nose, being with her body in a deep and connected way that let all the shit settle. If she’d been keeping up, she’d have remembered to encourage Gorman Le, for instance. She hated to guess how many other little fuckups she’d passed by without even noticing.
The highspeed tunnel curved, pushing her gently against the cart’s door. She told herself that between the war and the recovery, there was just too much to do. That was accurate as far as it went, but she’d spent too many years becoming familiar with her own mind to entirely ignore the fact that she was bullshitting herself. Meditation was there so that she could be with herself, experience what it meant to be Chrisjen Avasarala more deeply. And since she was fairly certain Chrisjen Avasarala was a bag of sorrow and glass right now, fuck that. Meditating deeply so that she could really, clearly experience being angry and lonesome and hurt and horror-struck never seemed as good as a strong gin and tonic and another hour of work.
She could be a basket case later. When things were under control.
The highspeed had just started slowing down when her hand terminal chimed. Said looked contrite, but not so much that he’d left her alone.
“Priority message for you from the Rocinante, ma’am.”
“The fuck does Johnson want now?”
“It’s not from Colonel Johnson. Captain Holden sent it.”
She hesitated. In his window, Said waited. “Send it to me,” she said.
Said nodded as she closed his window. She threw the readout to the cart’s screen. Whatever was going on, she wanted to be able to see it without squinting. The message appeared, flagged with red. As soon as she opened it, she knew. Death was on Holden’s face as clearly as if it had been written there. When he spoke, his voice was careful and controlled. Hospital tones. Funeral.
He laid out what had happened briefly, not giving any details she didn’t need. The Pella had led the attack. They’d managed to fend off the Free Navy. Fred Johnson was dead. And then, as if Holden were having a stroke of his own, he stared for a long moment into the camera. Into her eyes, without seeing her.
“All the OPA groups Fred called together at Tycho are waiting there. We’re on course and starting our deceleration burn. But I’m not sure if we should still be going there or if there’s someone you want to send. Or how long they’ll wait. I don’t know what to do next.”
He shook his head. He looked young. Holden always looked young, but usually it was young and impulsive. The lost expression around his eyes was new. If it was even there. Maybe she was only seeing it because she felt it in her own heart, her own belly.
The message ended. The terminal prompted her for a response, but she only sat with it in her hand as the highspeed came to a halt, the cart pouring itself into more familiar corridors. She looked at her hands, and they seemed to belong to some other woman. She tried sobbing, but it seemed forced and inauthentic. More like playacting than grief. If she’d been in control of the cart, she might have let it drift into the wall or down any random corridor, all unaware. But it knew where to go, and she didn’t think to take it to manual.
Fred Johnson. Butcher of Anderson Station. Hero of the UN Navy and traitorous voice of the OPA. She’d known him in person and by reputation for decades. He’d been her enemy and opposite and occasional untrusted ally. The part of her that was still thinking noticed how odd it was—how implausible—that his death should be the drop that made her cup overflow. She’d lost her world. Her home. Her husband. If she’d kept any of those, maybe this wouldn’t have destroyed her.
Her sternum ached. Actually ached. Like there was a physical bruise there, and not only emotion left too long pressing at her flesh. She probed it with her fingertips, tracing the boundaries of the pain like a child fascinated by a dying insect. She didn’t notice the cart had stopped until Said opened the door.
“Ma’am?” he said.
She stood. The lunar gravity seemed less like a force of nature and more like a suggestion. As if she could rise against it through simple force of will or the beating of her heart. She noticed Said again, noticed that she’d forgotten he was there. He looked distressed in an officious, too-pretty way.
“Please cancel everything,” she said. “I’ll be in my rooms.”
“Do you need anything, ma’am? Should I get a doctor?”
She frowned at him, the muscles in her cheeks seeming to exist at a distance. She was piloting her body like it was a mech with failing controls. “What would that help?”
In her rooms, she sat on the divan, her hands cupped in her lap, palms up. Like she was holding something. The air recycler’s fan had a little noise to it, resonant and unsteady. Wind passing over a bottle’s mouth. Mindless, idiot music. She wondered if she’d ever noticed it before, and then forgot it. Her mind was empty. She wondered if there was something coming. Some overwhelming flood that would carry her away. Or if this was simply who she was now. An empty woman.
She ignored the knock at her door. Whoever they were, they’d go away. Only they didn’t. Her door slid a few centimeters open. And then a few more. She thought it would be Said. Or one of the admirals. Some functionary of governance come, like Gorman Le, to ask her to carry the weight of loss and uncertainty for them. It wasn’t.
Kiki wasn’t a little girl anymore. Her granddaughter was a woman in her own right, though a young one. Her skin was deep brown like her father’s, but she had Ashanti’s eyes and nose. A glimmer of Arjun in the color of her eyes. As much as Avasarala tried to hide it, Kiki wasn’t her favorite granddaughter. The girl always had an air of observing judgment that made being with her difficult. Kiki cleared her throat. For a long moment, they looked at each other.