The Free Navy was not the OPA, and it was not meant to be. The Free Navy was the strongest of the old order, forged together into a force that didn’t need an enemy to define it. It was a promise of a future in which the yoke of the past was not only shrugged off but broken.
That didn’t mean it was free from the past.
Rosenfeld was a thin man who managed to slouch even on the float. His skin was dark and weirdly pebbled, his eyes sunk deep in their sockets. He had tattoos of the OPA’s split circle and the knifelike V of the Voltaire Collective, a bright and ready smile, and a sense of barely contained violence. And he was the reason Filip’s father had come to Pallas.
“Marco Inaros,” Rosenfeld said, spreading his arms. “Look what you’ve done, coyo mis!”
Marco launched himself forward into the man’s embrace, spinning with him as they held close and slowing when they pulled back. Any distrust Marco held toward Rosenfeld was gone. Or no, not gone, but shifted away for Filip and Karal to feel so that his own pleasure at the reunion could be pure.
“You look good, old friend,” Marco said.
“I don’t,” Rosenfeld said, “but I appreciate the lie.”
“Do we need to transfer your men over?”
“Already done,” Rosenfeld said, and Filip glanced to Karal, catching the little scowl at the corner of the older man’s mouth. Rosenfeld was a friend, an ally, one of the inner circle of the Free Navy, but he shouldn’t have been able to bring his private guard on the ship when Marco wasn’t there. The Pella was the flagship of the Free Navy, after all, and temptation was temptation. Marco and Rosenfeld reached out together, slowed their two-body rotation with a handhold jutting off the lockers, and still arm in arm, pushed out to the corridor and into the ship. Filip and Karal followed after.
“Going to be a hard burn getting to Ceres in time for the meeting,” Marco said.
“Your fault. I could have taken my own ship.”
“You don’t have a gunship.”
“I’ve lived my whole life in rock hoppers—”
Even with only the back of his father’s head to see, Filip could hear the smile in Marco’s voice. “That was your whole life until now. We’ve changed the game. Can’t have the high command moving unprotected. Even out here, not everyone’s with us. Not yet.”
They reached the lift that ran the length of the ship, shifted around it, and swam headfirst through the air, down toward the crew decks. Karal looked behind, toward the operations and flight decks, as if to be sure none of Rosenfeld’s guard were at their six.
“Why I waited,” Rosenfeld said. “The good little soldier, mé. Too bad about Johnson and Smith making it safe to Luna. Only took down one out of three?”
“Earth was the one that mattered,” Marco said. Ahead of them, Sárta appeared, floating up past them toward ops. She nodded her greeting as they passed. “Earth was always the prime target.”
“Well, Secretary-General Gao’s with her gods now, and I hope she died screaming”—Rosenfeld mimed spitting to the side after he said it—“but this Avasarala who’s taken her place—”
“A bureaucrat,” Marco said as they hauled themselves around the corner and into the mess. The tables and benches bolted to the floor, the smell of Martian military food, the colors that had until recently been the banner of the enemy. They all stood in contrast to the men and women in the space. Belters all, and still Filip could pick out the Free Navy he served with from Rosenfeld’s guard. Self from not-self. They could pretend the division wasn’t there, but they all knew better. A dozen people, all told, like it was the change of shift. One of the Pella’s crew for each of Rosenfeld’s, so Karal wasn’t the only one to think a little vigilance between friends was a good thing.
One of the guards tossed Rosenfeld a bulb. Coffee, tea, whiskey, or water, there was no way to know. Rosenfeld caught it without missing a beat in the conversation. “Seems like a bureaucrat with a hate on. You think you can handle her? Nothing personal, coyo, but you’ve got a blind spot underestimating women.”
Marco went still. Even as Filip saw it, his mouth flooded with a coppery taste. Karal grunted softly, and when Filip looked to him, his jaw had slid forward and his hands were fists at his sides.
Rosenfeld took a place against a wall, his expression a mask of empathy and apology. “But maybe this isn’t the place to say it. Sorry for the sore spot.”
“Nothing hurt,” Marco said. “We’ll chew it all through on Ceres.”
“Gathering of the tribes,” Rosenfeld said. “Looking forward to it. Next phase should be interesting.”
“Will be,” Marco said. “Karal can put you and yours in the right cabins. Should plan to keep there. It’s going to be a hard burn.”
“Will do, Admiral.”
Marco pulled himself out of the room, floating down toward the machine shop and engineering without so much as meeting Filip’s eye.
Filip waited for a moment, uncertain whether to follow or stay here, whether he’d been dismissed from duty or was still at his post. Rosenfeld smiled and winked a bumpy eyelid at him before turning to his men. Something had happened there; he could feel it in the air and in the way Karal held himself. Something important. And from the way his father acted, he had to think it was something to do with him.
He put his hand on Karal’s wrist. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” Karal said, lying badly. “Nothing to worry over.”
“Karal?”
The older man pressed his lips together, stretched his neck. He didn’t look at Filip.
“Karal. Something I should ask them?”
Slowly, Karal shook his head. He shouldn’t ask. Karal licked his lips nervously, shook his head again, sighed, and spoke low and calm. “Was a report back a while. Observation data from the… ah… from the Chetzemoka. About how the ships with Johnson and Smith didn’t die?”
“And?”
“And,” Karal said, the word as dense as lead.
Then he went on, which was how Filip Inaros, in front of Rosenfeld and his half dozen smirking guards, learned that his mother was still alive. And that everyone on the Pella knew it but him.
Under burn, he dreamed.
He was standing at the same door as before. Even though it would change what it looked like, it was always the same door. He was screaming, beating his hands against it, trying to get in. Before, there had been the sense of fear, the oceanic sorrow of impending loss, the dread. Now there was only humiliation. Rage lit him like a fire, and he pushed to get through the door, into whatever chamber lay beyond it, not to save something precious but to end it.
And shouting, he woke. The weight of a full g pressed him into the gel. The Pella murmured around him, the vibration of the drive and the hushing of the air recyclers like a voice whispering something just too softly to make out. It was an effort to wipe away the tears. They weren’t tears of sorrow. For that he’d have to be sad. He was only certain.
There was someone he hated more than James Holden.
Chapter Three: Holden
There was something to be said for living a life that didn’t involve lengthy interrogations. By that standard, at least, Holden had not lived his well. When he and the rest of the Rocinante’s crew had agreed to be debriefed, he’d guessed that it would be more than just the events surrounding the attack on Earth by the Free Navy. There was more than enough to talk about, after all. The chief engineer on Tycho Station who’d been exposed as a mole for Marco Inaros, the abduction and rescue of Monica Stuart, the loss of the protomolecule sample, the attack that had nearly killed Fred Johnson. And that was just for him. Naomi and Alex and even Amos would have whole volumes of their own to contribute.