Babylon’s Ashes

Chapter Fifty-Two: Pa

“Here we are. Back again,” Michio said as she stepped onto the docks of Ceres Station.

“Hup,” Josep, walking beside her, agreed.

When she’d left, she had been rebelling against a rebellion. Now she had come, whether anyone admitted it or not, to beg the powers of Earth and Mars for her freedom. She felt like the docks themselves should have changed too. Grown older and more worn the way her soul had. But the echoing music built from the clanking of mechs and power tools, the gabble of voices, was what it had been before. The smells of carbon lubricants and ozone was still as sharp.

A new coat of paint even left the old station looking brighter and younger and more full of hope than when she’d left. The signs had been replaced. The same corridors and lifts, but in bright, clean new fonts and half a dozen alphabets. She knew it was designed for the colonists and refugees fleeing Earth, but it seemed pointed that, of the languages listed, none was Belter Creole. Earth ran Ceres again, the way it had before Eros, and they were turning the station into a theme-park version of itself. The guard was for the most part ceremonial, but Michio was more than willing to bet their sidearms were loaded. It was awkward work, welcoming someone who was equal parts ally and enemy. She didn’t envy them.

It had been six months now since the remarkable death of Marco Inaros and the great remnant of the Free Navy. Half a year just to bring the remaining players together to talk. She wondered how long it would take to actually do something that mattered. And what would happen when they all ran out of time. She felt like she had a tiny Nico Sanjrani in the back of her head counting down the hours until the Belt—no, until all humanity—needed the farms and medical centers and mines and processing facilities that they hadn’t built because they’d been too busy fighting. Some nights it kept her awake. Some nights other things did.

She was half expecting them to take her to the same quarters Marco Inaros had assigned the last time she’d been here hammering out a plan for the Belt, but while it was in the same section of the station, the particular rooms were different. Their escort finished welcoming them, assured them that if they needed anything, someone from the hospitality service would be there to help. They bowed their way out the door, closing it as they left. Michio lowered herself to the couch in the suite’s main room while Josep made his way through each of the rooms, taking stock and looking for surveillance equipment that was both certainly there and certainly too professionally installed to find.

Nadia, Bertold, and Laura were back on the new ship—a converted cargo hauler on loan from one of Bertold’s cousins as long as they found ways to make the payments on it. After the sleekness and power of the Connaught, it felt cheap and flimsy. But her family was on it, so it was home in the same way that the couch her cheek rested against was raw-silk upholstery in a jail cell.

Josep’s laugh was hard. He walked back into the room with a rectangle of something the color of cream and held it out to her. Not paper, but heavy card stock smooth as the couch. The writing on it was neat and precise.

It was signed Chrisjen Avasarala. Michio looked up at Josep, her brow knit.

“En serio? That doesn’t even sound like her.”

“I know,” he said. “And come see! There’s a fruit basket.”

If wars began with rage, they ended with exhaustion.

In the aftermath of the system-wide battle and its unsettling aftermath at the ring, the partisans of the Free Navy had felt an overwhelming sense of injustice. It was as if the disappearance of the Pella and its battle force had been a bad call in a football match, and they were trying to find a referee to shout down. Then, slowly, the understanding seemed to spread through all the stations—Pallas, Ganymede, Ceres, Tycho, and dozens more besides—that the war was ended. That they’d lost. A group on Pallas had issued a declaration that they were the New Free Navy and had set off a few bombs when the consolidated fleet arrived to take control of the station. The Jovian system—Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, and all the lesser bases there—had been the Free Navy’s strongest ground and the one least touched by the fighting. A few patches of resistance there meant the violence would drag on for a few more weeks or months, but the outcome wasn’t in doubt.

The specter of the Laconia gate and Winston Duarte hung over Mars more than anyone else. Martian identity—proud cogs in the glorious terraforming machine—didn’t square with military coups and mass defection. Mars wanted answers, and Laconia ignored them all magnificently. The only communication since the death of the Free Navy was a looped statement broadcast through the gate. A man’s voice, inflected like a newsreader’s, saying, Laconia is under its own sovereign authority. This message serves as notice that any ships passing through the Laconia gate will be in violation of that authority and will be denied passage. Laconia is under its own sovereign authority …

The message had caused no end of debate in the Martian parliament while Earth drove two of its three remaining battleships out to the slow zone and parked them and their ancient but effective rail guns and nuclear torpedoes at the edges of the Laconia gate, ready to reduce anything that came out to gas and scrap. Avasarala called it a containment policy, and Michio supposed it was the sanest thing to do. Earth was in no condition to pick another fight.

By the time Rosenfeld Guoliang took the stand in The Hague, the first high-profile prosecution for the murder of billions on Earth, the vast and complex human zeitgeist was ready for it to be over. There would be other trials coming. Anderson Dawes had been captured. Nico Sanjrani turned himself in at Tycho. Of Inaros’ original inner circle, Michio Pa was the only one not in a cell or dead. And she was at a cocktail party.

The meeting center in the governor’s palace was built on three levels with stairways between them and a lot of plants. People in uniform and formal dress stood in pairs or small groups or alone with their hand terminals while servants carried trays of hors d’oeuvres and drinks. If anything specific was wanted—food or drink or a fresh pair of shoes, probably—they had only to ask. The lap of luxury. The highest circles of power and influence.

This was the real thing, something that Marco Inaros had only been able to play at. The stone walks were polished and the pillars were made of striped sedimentary rock pulled all the way from Earth as a kind of boast. We’re so rich, we don’t even use our own stone. She’d never noticed it before, and she didn’t know whether it left her amused or angry or sad.

“Michio,” a woman’s voice said. “Here you are. How is Laura?”

The old lady in the orange sari took Michio’s elbow and led her along almost three full steps before she realized it was Avasarala. The old Earther looked different in person. Smaller, her skin a deeper brown, her pale hair taking up more of her face.

“Much better,” Michio said. “Back on the ship.”

“With Nadia and Bertold? And Josep stayed back in your rooms? Just so long as they know they’re welcome. God damn, this is an ugly piece of architecture, isn’t it?” Avasarala said. “I saw you looking at the pillars.”

“I was,” Michio said.

Avasarala leaned in close, her eyes bright as a schoolgirl’s. “They’re fake. The rock? Made it with a centrifuge and colored sand. I knew the builder. He was a fake too. Pretty, though. God save us all from good-looking men.”

Michio surprised herself by laughing. The old woman was charming. Michio knew that this show of hospitality was just that. A show. And yet it worked; she felt more at ease. The time was going to come, and soon, when Michio was going to have to come to this woman and ask for amnesty. Ask this Earther to let her and her family go free for Marco’s crimes. This moment made it seem like maybe the answer would be yes. Hope was a terrible thing. She didn’t want to feel, and yet there it was.

She didn’t know she was going to speak until she said it. “I’m sorry.” What she meant was I’m sorry I didn’t stop the attack that killed your husband and I’m sorry I didn’t see Inaros for what he was sooner and I would do it all differently if I could live my life backward and try again.

Avasarala paused, looked deeply into Michio’s eyes, and it was like seeing someone through a mask. The deepness there startled her. When she spoke, it was as if she’d heard every nuance.

“Politics is the art of the possible, Captain Pa. When you play at our level, grudges cost lives.”

Across a narrow courtyard, James Holden turned and then came trotting over. He, at least, was the same height she remembered. He looked a little older than when they’d fought against Ashford on the Behemoth. Back in the God-who-could-have-known-they-were-the-good-old-days. She saw the surprise and pleasure as he recognized her.

“Captain Holden,” she said. “Still weird to see you.”

“Right?” he said with a boyish smile that seemed totally unaffected. He turned to Avasarala. “Can I pull you away for a minute? There’s a thing.”

Avasarala squeezed Michio’s arm, then let it go. “Forgive me,” she said. “Holden can’t find his cock with both hands unless there’s someone there to point him at it.”

They walked away together, heads bent in conference. Behind a spray of ivy, Michio saw a tall, dark-skinned woman bent a degree forward as she laughed with the Martian prime minister. Naomi Nagata. She looked … normal? Unremarkable. Michio knew her from before, and still might not have known her if they’d passed in a common corridor or shared a tube ride. But this was the woman Marco had abducted before his attack on Earth, just so he could watch her look upon his power. The woman who’d turned away from him when they’d both been little more than children themselves. Michio would never know how much of the decision to take the last remnant of the Free Navy to Medina had been for cold tactical reasons and how much was because Naomi Nagata had been there. It was so petty and so small, and she had no trouble believing it. When you play at our level, grudges cost lives.

Carlos Walker strolled through an archway, caught her eye, and smiled. She’d known him mostly by reputation back when she’d been part of Fred fucking Johnson’s OPA. Carlos Walker, with his playboy’s manners and the weird religious streak, the sincerity of which no one seemed able to determine. He plucked two fresh flutes of champagne from a passing tray and made his way toward her.

“You look thoughtful, Captain Pa.”

“Do I?” she said, taking the glass. “Well, then I suppose it must be true. And you? How does it feel being the unelected representative of the Belt?”

Walker smiled. “I could ask you the same.”

She laughed. “I’m not representing anyone but myself.”

“Really? Then what are you doing here?”

Michio blinked, but didn’t know how to respond.

A little less than an hour later, a soft chiming and a discrete rush of personal assistants and aides announced the actual meeting. Pa let herself be carried along with a growing sense of displacement. The meeting room was smaller than she’d expected, and arranged in a rough triangle. Avasarala, a thin-faced man in a formal jacket, and two men in military uniforms sat at one corner. The Martian prime minister—Emily Richards—sat at another with half a dozen people in suits fluttering around her like they were moths and she was an open flame. And at the third, Carlos Walker, Naomi Nagata, James Holden, and Michio herself.

A second rank of chairs held dozens of people whose roles Michio didn’t know. Senators. Businessmen. Bankers. Soldiers. It occurred to her that if she’d had a bomb, she could probably have crippled what was left of humanity’s major governments by taking out this one room.

“Well,” Avasarala said, her voice clear as a Klaxon, “I’d like to start by thanking all of you again for being here. I’m not fond of this shit, but the optics are good. And we do have some things to discuss. I have a proposal …” She paused to tap a command into her hand terminal, and Michio’s chimed in response, as did everyone else’s in the room. “… a proposal about the architecture by which we try to unfuck ourselves. It’s preliminary, but we have to start somewhere.”

Michio opened the document. It was over a thousand pages long, with the first ten a tightly written table of contents with notations and subsections for every chapter. She felt a little wave of vertigo.

“The overview looks like this,” Avasarala said. “We have a list of problems as long as our arms, but Captain Holden here thinks he’s come up with a way to use some of them to solve the others. Captain?”

Holden, beside her, stood up, seemed to realize no one else was going to stand up to talk, and then shrugged and bulled forward with it. “The thing is the Free Navy wasn’t wrong. With all the new systems opened up, the economic niche that Belters have filled is going to go away. There are so many reserves on these planets that don’t require we bring our own air or generate our own gravity that the Belt is going to be outcompeted. And, no offense, the plan up to now has been versions of ‘sucks to be you.’

“There’s a significant population of the Belt that’s not going to be able to move down a gravity well. They’re just going to be forgotten. Left to die off. And since that’s not all that different from how Belters got treated before, it was easy for Inaros to find political backing.”

“I wouldn’t say that was the only thing that got him there,” Prime Minister Richards drawled. “Having a bunch of my ships helped him out.”

The room chuckled.

“But the thing is,” Holden said, “we’ve been going out there wrong. There’s a traffic problem we didn’t know about. Under the wrong conditions, it’s not safe to go through the gates. Which we found out because a bunch of ships went missing. And if the plan is that just anyone who wants to go through the gates does so anytime they want to, more will go missing. There has to be someone regulating that. And, thanks to Naomi Nagata, we now know the load limit of the gate network.”

He paused and looked around, almost as if he was expecting applause before he went on.

“So that’s two problems. No niche for the Belt. The need for traffic control through the gates. Now add to that the fact that Earth, Mars—all of us really—have taken enough damage in the last few years that our infrastructure won’t carry us. We have maybe a year or two to really find ways to generate the food and clean water and clean air that we’re all going to need. And we probably can’t do that in our solar system unless just a lot more people die. We need a fast, efficient way to trade with the colony worlds for raw materials. So that’s why I’m proposing an independent union with the sole and specific task of coordinating shipments through the gates. Most people who want to live on planets will just do that. But the Belt has a huge population of people who are specifically suited to life outside a gravity well. Moving supplies and people safely between solar systems is a new niche. And it’s one we need filled quickly and efficiently. In the proposal, I called it the spacing guild, but I’m not married to that name.”

A gray-haired man sitting two rows behind Emily Richards cleared his throat and spoke. “You’re proposing to turn the entire population of the Belt into a single transport company?”

“Yes, into a network of ships, support stations, and other services necessary to move people and cargo between the gates,” Holden said. “Keep in mind, they’ve got thirteen hundred and seventy-three solar systems to manage. There’s going to be work. Well, thirteen hundred and seventy-two, really. Because of Laconia.”

“And what do you propose to do about Laconia?” a woman behind Avasarala asked.

“I don’t know,” Holden said. “I was just starting with this.”

Avasarala waved him to sit down, and reluctantly he did. Naomi shifted, murmured something in his ear, and Holden nodded.

“The proposed structure of the union,” Avasarala said, “is fairly standard. Limited sovereignty in exchange for regulatory input from the major governing bodies, meaning Emily and whoever they elect once I’m out of this.”

“Limited sovereignty?” Carlos Walker said.

“Limited,” Avasarala said. “Don’t ask me to put out on the first date, Walker. I’m not that kind of girl. The union will, of course, need to have support from the Belt. The first union president will be taking on a huge job, but I think we can all agree that we have a unique opportunity for that. Someone well-known both among Belters and on the inner planets.”

Holden nodded. Michio looked over at him. His bright eyes and firm chin.

“Someone,” Avasarala continued, “above—or at least apart from—factions and politics. Trustworthy, well-tested moral compass, and with a long résumé of doing the right thing even when it’s unpopular.”

Holden smiled, nodded to himself. He looked so pleased. Michio hadn’t come to a meeting. This was an anointing. She was suddenly profoundly disheartened. It would probably improve her chances for getting amnesty, but—

“That is why,” Avasarala said, “we need to draft James Holden.”

Holden yelped like he’d been bitten. “What? Wait. No, that’s all wrong. It’s a terrible idea.”

Avasarala frowned. “Then—”

“Look,” Holden said, standing up again. “This is exactly the problem. This is what we keep doing. Forcing rules and leadership on the Belters rather than letting them pick for themselves.”

A grumble passed through the room, but Holden just kept talking.

“If I can use this moment to nominate someone else instead. Someone with all the qualities Madam Secretary Avasarala just listed, and more. Someone with honor and integrity and leadership, and with the added bonus of actually belonging to the community they’d be leading.”

And somehow—Michio wasn’t sure how this had happened—Holden was pointing at her.

“Then I would nominate Michio Pa.”