“Okay, that is a little weird. Any other news I should know about?”
Fred glanced over at Gor, scowled, then leaned over and tapped the man’s shoulder. Gor took off the headphones.
“Take a break,” Fred said. “We’ll make sure she’s solid.”
“Yes, sir,” Gor said. “Be aware that this close to the corona, we’re building up a little heat.”
“We’ll keep an eye on it.”
Gor unstrapped and slid down the ladder. Fred watched him go with a wistful smile. “I remember when I could take a ladder that way. Been a few years, though.”
“I don’t anymore either.”
“Thus does age make cowards of us all. Or maybe that’s conscience,” Fred said, and heaved a sigh. “Inaros and his ships haven’t made it as far as Saturn’s orbit yet, and piracy in the outer planets is spiking. The colony ships are well supplied, under-armed, and there are a lot of them.”
“They weren’t expecting a civil war.”
“Is that what this is?”
“Isn’t it?”
“Well. Maybe. I’ve been talking to Smith. I don’t suppose Alex and Bobbie overheard much of what he was doing on the Razorback?”
Holden leaned forward. “I don’t think they were spying on him, no. Were you thinking they would?”
“I was hoping your man might have. This Draper woman’s too much the patriot. So, without outside confirmation, Smith’s story is that there’s a breakdown in the naval command. Might just be that someone’s been selling a great chunk of their ordnance to Inaros. Might be there was another actor who was willing to swap out.”
“For the protomolecule,” Holden said. “That was the price of all this, wasn’t it?”
“No one knows it’s missing aside from you, me, Drummer’s men, and whoever took it. I’ll keep it quiet as long as I can, but when we get to Luna, I think I have to tell Smith and Avasarala.”
“Of course you do,” Holden said. “Why wouldn’t you tell them?”
Fred blinked. His laugh, when it came, was deep and rolling. It came up from his belly and filled the air. “Just when I think you’ve changed, you come out with something that is uniquely James Holden. I don’t know what to think about you. I really don’t.”
“Thanks?”
“Welcome,” Fred said. And a moment later, “There are ships burning for the gates. Martian military ships. It would help me a great deal to know if they answered to Inaros or to someone else.”
“Like the one who got the protomolecule sample?”
“Anyone, really. I want to talk to Nagata.”
The atmosphere between them went cool. “You want to interrogate her.”
“I do.”
“And you’re asking my permission?”
“It seemed polite.”
“I’ll talk to her about it when she’s recovered a little more,” Holden said.
“Couldn’t ask for anything more,” Fred said, heaving himself to his feet. At the edge of the ladder, he paused. Holden watched him consider sliding down the sides the way Gor had. He watched Fred decide not to. Rung by rung, Fred climbed down out of the ops deck, shutting the hatch behind him. Holden turned the feed back on, and then off again. His head felt filled with cotton.
He’d been so focused for so long on distracting himself from Naomi’s absence, now she was back, he felt almost overwhelmed. Monica was right. Things had changed, and he didn’t know anymore what his place was in them. Even if he turned away from Fred and Avasarala and the politics of his own minor celebrity, what could an independent ship do in this new, remade solar system? Were there banks that would be able to pay him if he took a job flying cargo to the Jovian moons? And the colonists that had already gone through the rings to new, alien worlds? Would the Free Navy really stop resupply from getting out to them, and the raw materials and discoveries they made from getting back?
More than anything, the attacks seemed inevitable and petty. If the inner planets hadn’t spent generations showing the Belters that they were disposable, there might have been some way… some way to adapt their skills and lifestyles into this larger human expansion. A way to draw all humanity forward, and not just part of it.