Caliban’s War

Chapter Forty-Seven: Holden

Holden sat at the combat control console on the operations deck and watched Ragnarok gather. Admiral Souther, who Avasarala had assured everyone was one of the good guys, had joined his ships with their small but growing fleet of Martians as they sped toward Io. Waiting for them in orbit around that moon were the dozen ships in Admiral Nguyen’s fleet. More Martian and UN ships sped toward that location from Saturn and the Belt. By the time everyone got there, there would be something like thirty-five capital ships in the kill zone, and dozens of smaller interceptors and corvettes, like the Rocinante.

Three dozen capital ships. Holden tried to remember if there had ever been a fleet action of this size, and couldn’t think of one. Including Admiral Nguyen’s and Admiral Souther’s flagships, there would be four Truman-class UN dreadnoughts in the final tally, and the Martians would have three Donnager-class battleships of their own, any one of which could depopulate a planet. The rest would be a mix of cruisers and destroyers. Not quite the heavy hitters the battleships were, but plenty powerful enough to vaporize the Rocinante. Which, if he was being honest, was the part Holden was most worried about.

On paper, his team had the most ships. With Souther and the Martians joining forces, they outnumbered the Nguyen contingent two to one. But how many Earth ships would be willing to fire on their own, just because one admiral and a banished politician said so? It was entirely possible that if actual shooting started, a lot of UN ships might have unexplained comm failures and wait to see how it all came out. And that wasn’t the worst case. The worst case was that a number of Souther’s ships would switch sides once Martians starting killing Earthers. The fight could turn into a whole lot of people pointing guns at each other, with no one knowing whom to trust.

It could turn into a bloodbath.

“We have twice as many ships,” Avasarala said from her constant perch at the comm station. Holden almost objected but changed his mind. In the end, it wouldn’t matter. Avasarala would believe what she wanted to believe. She needed to think all her efforts had been worthwhile, that they were about to pay off when the fleet arrived and this Nguyen clown surrendered to her obviously superior force. The truth was her version wasn’t any more or less a fantasy than his. No one would know for sure until everyone knew for sure.

“How long now?” Avasarala said, then sipped at the bulb of weak coffee she’d started making for herself in place of tea.

Holden considered pointing out the navigation information the Roci made available at every console, and then didn’t. Avasarala didn’t want him to show her how to find it herself. She wanted him to tell her. She wasn’t accustomed to pressing her own buttons. In her mind, she outranked him. Holden wondered what the chain of command actually looked like in this situation. How many illegal captains of stolen ships did it take to equal one disgraced UN official? That could tie a courtroom up for a few decades.

He also wasn’t being fair to Avasarala. It wasn’t about making him take her orders, not really. It was about being in a situation that she was utterly untrained for, where she was the least useful person in the room and trying to assert some control. Trying to reshape the space around her to fit with her mental image of herself.

Or maybe she just needed to hear a voice.

“Eighteen hours now,” Holden said. “Most of the other ships that aren’t part of our fleet will beat us there. And the ones that don’t won’t show up until it’s over, so we can ignore them.”

“Eighteen hours,” Avasarala said. There was something like awe in her voice. “Space is too fucking big. It’s the same old story.”

He’d guessed right. She just wanted to talk, so he let her. “What story?”

“Empire. Every empire grows until its reach exceeds its grasp. We started out fighting over who got the best branches in one tree. Then we climb down and fight over a few kilometers’ worth of trees. Then someone starts riding horses, and you get empires of hundreds or thousands of kilometers. Ships open up empire expansion across the oceans. The Epstein drive gave us the outer planets…”

She trailed off and tapped out something on the comm panel. She didn’t volunteer who she was sending messages to, and Holden didn’t ask. When she was done, she said, “But the story is always the same. No matter how good your technology is, at some point you’ll conquer territory that you can’t hold on to.”

“You’re talking about the outer planets?”

“Not specifically,” she said, her voice growing soft and thoughtful. “I’m talking about the entire fucking concept of empire. The Brits couldn’t hold on to India or North America because why should people listen to a king who’s six thousand kilometers away?”

Holden tinkered with the air-circulation nozzle on his panel, aiming it at his face. The cool air smelled faintly of ozone and oil. “Logistics is always a problem.”

“No kidding. Taking a dangerous trip six thousand kilometers across the Atlantic so you can fight with colonists gives the enemy one hell of a home-court advantage.”

“At least,” Holden said, “we Earthers figured that out before we picked a fight with Mars. It’s even further. And sometimes the sun is in the way.”

“Some people have never forgiven us for not humbling Mars when we had the chance,” Avasarala said. “I work for a few of them. Fucking idiots.”

“I thought the point of your story was that those people always lose in the end.”

“Those people,” she said, pushing herself to her feet and slowly heading toward the crew ladder, “are not the real problem. Venus might be housing the advance party of the first empire whose grasp is as long as its reach. And this fucking protomolecule has exposed us for the petty, small-town bosses we are. We’re getting ready to trade our solar system away because we thought we could build airports out of bamboo and summon the cargo.”

“Get some sleep,” Holden said to her while she called up the ladder-lift. “We’ll defeat one empire at a time.”

“Maybe,” she said as she dropped out of sight, and the deck hatch banged shut behind her.

“Why isn’t anyone shooting?” Prax said. He’d come up to the operations deck trailing after Naomi like a lost child. Now he was sitting at one of the many unused crash couches. He stared up at the main screen, his face a mix of fear and fascination.

The big tactical display showed a muddled mass of red and green dots representing the three dozen capital ships parked in orbit around Io. The Roci had marked all the Earth ships green and the Martian ships red. It created a confusing simplicity out of what was in actuality a far more complex situation. Holden knew that friend-or-foe identification was going to be a problem if anyone started shooting.

For now, the various ships drifted quietly above Io, their enormous threat merely implied. They made Holden think of the crocodiles he’d seen at the zoo as a child. Huge, armored, filled with teeth, but drifting on the surface of the water like statues. Not even their eyes blinking. When food had been thrown into the pen, they’d exploded out of the water with frightening speed.

We’re just waiting for some blood to hit the water.

“Why isn’t anyone shooting?” Prax repeated.

“Hey, Doc,” Amos said. He was lounging in one of the crash couches next to Prax. He projected a calm laziness that Holden wished he himself felt. “Remember how on Ganymede we were facing down those guys with guns and no one was shooting right up until you decided to cock your gun?”

Prax blanched. Holden guessed he was remembering the bloody aftermath of that fight. “Yes,” Prax said. “I remember.”

“This is like that,” Amos said. “Only no one’s cocked their gun just yet.”

Prax nodded. “Okay.”

If someone finally did break the whole situation loose, Holden knew that figuring out who was shooting at whom would be their first problem. “Avasarala, any word yet on the political landscape? There’s a whole lot of green on that board. How many of those dots belong to us?”

Avasarala shrugged and went on listening to the ship-to-ship cross talk.

“Naomi?” Holden said. “Any ideas?”

“So far Nguyen’s fleet is targeting only Martian ships,” she replied, marking ships on the main tactical board for everyone to see. “The Martian ships are targeting back. Souther’s ships aren’t targeting anyone, and Souther hasn’t even opened his tubes. I’m guessing he’s still hoping for a peaceful resolution.”

“Please send the intel officer on Souther’s ship my compliments,” Holden said to Naomi. “And ask him to get us some new IFF data so this doesn’t turn into the solar system’s biggest clusterfuck.”

“Done,” Naomi said, and made the call.

“Get everyone buttoned up in their suits, Amos,” Holden continued. “Do a hat check here before you go below. I hope we don’t start shooting, but what I hope will happen and what actually happens are almost never the same.”

“Roger,” Amos said, then climbed out of his couch and began clumping around the deck on magnetic boots, checking the seals on everyone’s helmets.

“Test test test,” Holden said over the crew radio. One by one everyone on the ship responded with the affirmative. Until someone with a higher pay grade than his decided which way things were going to go, there wasn’t much else he could do.

“Wait,” Avasarala said, then hit a button on her console, and an outside channel started playing on their suit radios.

“—launch immediately against targets on Mars. We have a battery of missiles carrying a lethal biological weapon ready to fire. You have one hour to leave Io orbit or we will launch immediately against targets on Mars. We have a—”

Avasarala turned the channel off again.

“It seems a third party has joined the circle jerk,” Amos said.

“No,” Avasarala replied. “It’s Nguyen. He’s outnumbered, so he’s ordered his Mao cronies on the surface to make the threat to back us off. He’ll—Oh, shit.”

She hit her panel again and a new voice spoke over the radio. This one was a woman’s voice with a cultured Martian accent.

“Io, this is Admiral Muhan of the Martian Congressional Republic Navy. You fire anything bigger than a bottle rocket and we will glass the whole fucking moon. Do you read me?”

Amos leaned over to Prax. “Now, you see, all this is them cocking their guns.”

Prax nodded. “Got it.”

“This,” Holden said, listening to the barely restrained fury in the Martian admiral’s voice, “is about to get seriously out of hand.”

“This is Admiral Nguyen aboard the UNN Agatha King,” a new voice said. “Admiral Souther is here illegally, at the behest of a civilian UN official with no military authority. I hereby order all ships under Admiral Souther’s command to immediately stand down. I further order that the captain of Souther’s flagship place the admiral under arrest for treason and—”

“Oh, do shut up,” Souther replied over the same channel. “I’m here as part of a legal fact-finding mission regarding improper use of UN funds and material for a secret biological weapon project on Io. A project which Admiral Nguyen is directly responsible for in contravention of UN directives—”

Avasarala cut the link.

“Oh, this ain’t good,” Alex said.

“Well,” Avasarala said, then opened the faceplate on her helmet and let out a long sigh. She opened her purse and pulled a pistachio out of it. She cracked it and thoughtfully ate the meat, then put the shell in the nearby recycling chute. A tiny bit of the skin floated away in the microgravity. “No, actually, it should be fine. This is all posturing. As long as they keep comparing dicks, no one will shoot.”

“But we can’t just wait here,” Prax said, shaking his head. Amos was floating in front of him, checking his helmet. Prax shoved him away and tried to get to his feet. He drifted away from his crash couch but didn’t think to turn on his boot mags. “If Mei is down there, we have to go. They’re talking about glassing the moon. We have to get there before they do it.”

There was a high violin-string whine at the back of Prax’s voice. The tension was getting to him. It was getting to all of them, but Prax was the one who was going to show it worst and first. Holden shot a look at Amos, but the big man just looked surprised at having been pushed away by the much smaller scientist.

“They’re talking about destroying the base. We have to go down there!” Prax continued, the panic in his voice starting to shine through.

“We’re not doing anything,” Holden said. “Not until we have a better idea how this is going to shake out.”

“We came all this way so that we can not do anything?” Prax demanded.

“Doc, we don’t want to be the ones to move first,” Amos said, and put a hand on Prax’s shoulder, pulling him back down to the deck. The little botanist violently shrugged it off without turning around, then shoved off his couch toward Avasarala.

“Give me the channel. Let me talk to them,” Prax said, reaching for her comm panel. “I can—”

Holden launched himself out of his crash couch, catching the scientist mid-flight and hurling them both across the deck and into the bulkhead. The thick layer of anti-spalling padding absorbed their impact, but Holden felt the air go out of Prax when his hip slammed into the smaller man’s belly.

“Gah,” Prax said, and curled up into a floating fetal ball.

Holden kicked on his boot mags and pushed himself down to the deck. He grabbed Prax and pushed him across the compartment to Amos. “Take him below, stuff him in his bunk, and sedate the shit out of him. Then get to engineering and get us ready for a fight.”

Amos nodded and grabbed the floating Prax. “Okay.” A moment later the two of them disappeared down the deck hatch.

Holden looked around the room, seeing the shocked looks from Avasarala and Naomi but ignoring them. Prax’s need for his daughter to take precedence over everything else had almost put them all in danger again. And while Holden intellectually understood the man’s drive, having to stop him from killing them all every time Mei’s name came up was stress he didn’t need right then. It left him angry and needing to snap at someone.

“Where the hell is Bobbie?” he said to no one in particular. He hadn’t seen her since they had put in to orbit around Io.

“Just saw her in the machine shop,” Amos replied over the radio. “She was fieldstripping my shotgun. I think she’s doing all the guns and armor.”

“That’s—” Holden started, ready to yell about something. “That’s actually really helpful. Tell her to button up her suit and turn her radio on. Things might be going south in a hurry here.”

He took a few seconds to breathe and calm himself down, then returned to the combat operations station.

“You okay?” Naomi asked over their private channel.

“No,” he said, chinning the button to make sure only she heard his reply. “No, I’m actually scared to death.”

“I thought we were past that.”

“Past being scared?”

“No,” she said, the smile audible in her voice. “Past blaming yourself for it. I’m scared too.”

“I love you,” Holden said, feeling that same electric thrill he always got when he told her, part fear, part boast.

“You should probably keep your eye on your station,” she said, her tone teasing. She never told him she loved him when he said it first. She’d said that when people did it too often, it made the word lose all its power. He understood the argument, but he’d kind of hoped she’d break her rule this once. He needed to hear it.

Avasarala was hunched over the comm station like an ancient mystic peering into a murky crystal ball. The space suit hung on her like a scarecrow’s oversized coveralls. Holden considered ordering her to button up her helmet, then shrugged. She was old enough to decide for herself the relative risks and rewards of eating during a battle.

Periodically she reached into her purse and pulled out another nut. The air around her was a growing cloud of tiny pieces of pistachio skin. It was annoying to watch her cluttering up his ship, but no warship was built so fragile that a little airborne waste would break anything. Either the tiny pieces of shell would be sucked into the air recycling system and trapped by the filters, or they’d go under thrust and all the garbage would fall to the floor, where they could sweep it up. Holden wondered if Avasarala had ever had to clean anything in her life.

While he watched her, the old lady cocked her head to one side, listening with sudden interest to something only she could hear. Her hand darted forward, bird quick, to tap at the screen. A new voice came over the ship’s radios, this one with the faint hiss transmissions picked up when traveling for millions of kilometers through space.

“—eneral Esteban Sorrento-Gillis. Some time ago, I announced the formation of an exploratory committee to look into possible misuse of UN resources for illegal biological weapon research. While that investigation is ongoing, and the committee is not prepared to bring charges at this time, in the interests of public safety and to better facilitate a thorough and comprehensive investigation, certain UN personnel in key positions are to be recalled to Earth for questioning. First, Admiral Augusto Nguyen, of the United Nations Navy. Second—”

Avasarala hit the panel to shut off the feed and stared at the console with her mouth open for several seconds. “Oh, fuck me.”

All over the ship, alarms started blaring.