That was odd. Bobbie seemed to grow tenser at the words, gather herself, sit up straighter. When she spoke again, her tone was almost exactly the same as it had been before—no louder, no rougher—but something about it had grown fierce. “I have experience in combat. I’ve led teams in battle. It is my professional opinion that the proposal Fred Johnson put together is the best hope for the long-term stability and safety of the Belt.”
“Find that hard to believe,” Aimee Ostman said. “Looks to me like the captain here’s been getting all the women and Inaros has been taking all the stations.”
Before Holden could answer, Micah al-Dujaili snapped back. “Looks to me like Inaros is as bad at keeping territory as he is at keeping women.”
“Stop it with the ‘women’ bullshit,” Carlos Walker said. His voice was surprising. Reedy and musical. A singer’s voice. The accents of Belter cant were almost absent from it. “It’s juvenile. He lost Dawes too. He lost everyone in this room before he even began, or none of us would be here. Inaros has an open sore where his heart should be, and we all know it. What I want to hear is how you intend to change the dynamic. Every time you move toward him, he’s pulled you into overreach. Your consolidated fleet is going to be stretched too thin soon. Is that what you want us for? Cannon fodder?”
“I’m not ready to discuss the details,” Holden said. “There are security issues we all have to address first.”
“Why did you bring us here if it wasn’t to tell us what you intended?” Aimee Ostman said.
Liang Goodfortune ignored her. “Medina. You’re going for Medina.”
Something will go wrong. Something always does. They’ll see something you didn’t mean them to see; they’ll have a trap set you didn’t know to expect. These are intelligent people, and all of them have their own agendas. When it happens—not if, when—the worst thing you can do is panic. The second worst thing you can do is engage. Holden leaned forward.
“I’d like to give all of you the opportunity to consult about this before we talk about any of the tactical options,” Holden said. “I’ve spoken to the security chief. You are all welcome to stay here on the station or else return to your ships. Feel free to talk among yourselves or with anyone you think might be useful. You can have access to the station comms unmonitored, or if you’d rather use the systems on your own ships, you won’t be recorded or jammed. If you are interested in being involved with this, we’ll reconvene here in twenty hours. I’ll be ready to go through all the details then, but I will expect your loyalty and commitment in return. If you aren’t comfortable with that, you have safe passage away from Tycho anytime within that window.”
“And after that?” Carlos Walker asked.
“After that’s a different country,” Holden said. “We’ll be doing things differently there.”
Holden, Naomi, and Bobbie all stood. The other four rose a moment later. Holden watched how each of them said their goodbyes or else didn’t. When the doors closed behind the four emissaries, leaving him alone with Naomi and Bobbie, he slumped down in his chair.
“God damn,” he said. “How does she do this all day, every day? That was maybe twenty minutes start to finish, and I already feel like I should dip my brain in bleach.”
“Told you it sucked,” Bobbie said, leaning against the table. “Are you sure it’s a good idea giving them free rein of the station? We don’t know who they’re talking to.”
“We couldn’t stop them,” Naomi said. “This way it looks like a gesture on our part.”
“So theater and palace intrigue,” Bobbie said.
“Just for now,” Holden said. “Just until they buy in. Once they commit, we can get down to our plan.”
“Johnson’s plan,” Bobbie said. Then a moment later, “So, just between us. Did Fred Johnson really have a plan?”
“I’m pretty sure he did,” Holden said, sagging into himself. “Don’t know what it was.”
“So this one we’re selling?”
“I’m kind of making it up.”
Chapter Thirty-Four: Dawes
There was no viewing of the body. Fred Johnson—the Butcher of Anderson Station—had requested that his body be recycled into the system of Tycho Station. Water that had been his blood was likely already coming through the taps and faucets throughout the station. His chalk bones would reenter the food cycle in the hydroponics pools. The more complex lipids and proteins would take longer to become humus for the mushroom farms. Fred Johnson, like all the dead before him, fell to his component parts, scattered, and entered the world again, changed and unrecognized.
Instead, there were printed images of him on the chapel wall. A portrait of the man as a colonel in the service of Earth. A picture of him as an older man, still strong in his features but with a weariness creeping in at his eyes. Another of a ridiculously young boy—not more than ten years old—holding a book in one hand and waving with the other, his face split by a massive and childlike grin. They were the right ears, the right spacing of the eyes, but Dawes still had to work to believe that happy child had grown into the complex man he’d known and called friend and betrayed.
The memorial was in a small chapel so aggressively nondenominational that it was hard to tell the difference between it and a waiting room. Instead of religious icons, there were sober, abstract shapes. A circle in gold, a square in forest green. Intentionally empty symbols meant as placeholders for where something with significance might have been. The Tycho Manufacturing logo in the hallway outside held more meaning.
The pews were bamboo textured to look like some sort of wood—ash or oak or pine. Dawes had only ever seen pictures of live trees. He wouldn’t have known one from another, but it gave the little room some sense of gravitas. Still he didn’t sit. He walked past the pictures of Fred Johnson, looking into the eyes that didn’t look back. The thing in his chest, the one making it hard to breathe, felt thick and complicated.
“I had a speech ready,” he said. His voice echoed a little, the emptiness giving it depth. “Well practiced. You’d have liked it. All about the nature of politics and the finest of humanity being our ability to change to match our environment. We are how the universe consciously remakes itself. The inevitability of failure and the glory of standing back up after it.” He coughed out a chuckle. It sounded like a sob. “What I really meant was I’m sorry. Not just sorry I backed the wrong horse. Am sorry about that. But I’m sorry I compromised you while I did it.”
He paused as if Fred might answer, then shook his head.
“I think the speech would have worked. You and I have so much history behind us. Seems strange. I was a mentor to you once. Well. Feet of clay. You know how it is. Still, I really think you’d have seen the value in having me back. But this Holden prick?” Dawes shook his head. “You picked a shit time to die, my friend.”
The doors opened behind him. A young woman in an oil-stained Tycho Station jumpsuit and a deep-green hijab stepped in, nodded to him, and took a place in the pew, her head bowed. Dawes stepped back from the pictures of the dead man. There was more he wanted to say. Apparently there always would be.
He took a seat across the aisle from the woman, folded his hands in his lap, lowered his head. There was a profound mundanity in shared grief. A set of rules as strong as any human etiquette, and they didn’t allow for him to keep up his one-sided conversation. Not aloud, anyway.
The Free Navy could have been—ought to have been—a glorious moment for the Belt. Inaros had conjured up a full military for them out of nothing. Dawes had told himself at the time that Inaros’ failings as a political animal weren’t a problem. Were an opportunity, even. As a member of the Free Navy’s inner circle, Dawes could exert his influence. Be kingmaker. The cost was high, yes, but the rewards were nothing short of visionary. An independent Belt, cut free of the inner planets. The threat of the gate network under their control. Yes, Inaros was a peacock who made his way through life on charisma and violence. Yes, Rosenfeld had always had a whiff of brimstone about him. But Sanjrani was smart, and Pa was capable and dedicated. And if he’d said no, it would all have gone ahead without him anyway.