“Thank you, Admiral,” Singh said, his heart pounding in his chest. “It will be my honor to carry those orders out to the letter.”
Duarte turned to look out at the girl playing with her dog. “We’ve been hidden away from the rest of humanity long enough. Time we showed them what we’ve been doing.”
Chapter Four: Holden
Holden had been in his twenties when the Earth Navy kicked him out. He looked back at that version of himself with the kind of fondness and indulgence that people usually extended to puppies that were overly proud of themselves for scaring off a squirrel. He’d signed up to work ice-hauling runs with a sense of turning his back on the whole corrupt, authoritarian, cynical history of his species. Even the name of the company he’d signed on with—Pur ’n’ Kleen—had seemed rich with meaning. A promise of integrity and purity. If it was also a little cartoonish, it hadn’t felt like that at the time.
Back then, the Belt had been the rugged frontier. The UN and the Martian Congressional Republic, the political gods of a solar system more isolated than an ancient island in the middle of the ocean. Belters had been a structural underclass fighting to have people on the inner planets even notice when they were dying.
Now humanity was scattered to more than thirteen hundred new solar systems, and Earth might not even be the most hospitable planet for human life. Anytime a few like-minded people could put together the resources for a colony and the fees for passage through the ring gates, the seeds of a new society could be sown out there among the stars. Even the most populous of the new systems only had eight or ten cities on a whole planet. It was a massive parallel experiment in the possible forms of human collective, a chance to remake the structure of culture itself. But somehow, it all wound up seeming very familiar.
“What makes you people believe you have the right to dictate trade between sovereign states?” Governor Payne Houston of Freehold demanded. “We are a free people. And despite what your masters on Medina may think, we do not answer to you.”
When Houston had come into the meeting, he’d already been pretty worked up, and Holden hadn’t had much opportunity to talk him back down to a meaningful, productive level of raising hell just yet. Instead, he watched and listened and tried to decide whether the governor’s anger was based more in fear, frustration, or narcissism. Fear, Holden could understand. Frustration would have made sense too. All the planets connected by the ring gate had their own biomes, their own biologies, their own unexpected obstacles for someone trying to carve out an environmental niche for humans. Being able to trade for what they needed was quite often the difference between life and death. Anyone who thought they and the people they cared about were being arbitrarily blocked from the things they needed would be scared down to their bones.
The more the governor went on, though, the more it seemed like the guy was just an asshole.
“Freehold is an independent sovereign state,” Houston said, slapping his table with an open palm. “We will engage in trade with willing partners, and we will not pay tribute to parasites like you, sir. We will not.”
The council chamber was built like a courtroom, with Holden and Bobbie sitting at a low table and the governor and his eleven cabinet members above them looking down like a panel of judges. Their table was a dark-stained wood analog. Windows behind Houston and his cohort silhouetted them. Interior design as a political tool. The sidearms that all the Freeholders wore underscored it.
He glanced over at Bobbie. Her expression was calm, but her gaze shifted between the people looking down at them, then to the guards at the door. Calculating who she’d take out first, how she’d disarm them, where to take cover, how to escape. It was something Bobbie did the way other people knitted.
“So here’s the thing,” Holden said as Houston took a breath. “You think I’m here to negotiate with you. I’m not.”
Houston scowled. “There is a right given by God to all free men, and we will have no tyrants or kings—”
“I understand why you’re confused,” Holden said, his voice louder, but still friendly. “You see a gunship coming out. Takes weeks to get here. You think this must be something where we’re expecting a lot of give and take. Light delay would make back and forth awkward, so it makes sense to have someone right here breathing your air, right? You say something, we say something. No lag. But the thing is, the Transport Union has already decided what’s going to happen. We aren’t mediators. We’re not looking for an amicable solution.”
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The woman to Houston’s left put a hand on his arm. Houston leaned back. That was interesting. Holden shifted a little, speaking to the space between the two of them to include her in the conversation.
“We’re all adults here,” Holden said. “We don’t need to pretend with each other. The union sent us here in person because they don’t want to have to do this kind of thing over and over with a bunch of other colonies. They wanted to make sure that everyone else was watching this situation. Especially your friends and trading partners on Auberon.”
“Political theater,” Houston said with contempt in his voice. Which was kind of funny coming from a guy sitting a meter and a half higher than he needed to.
“Sure,” Holden said. “Anyway, here’s the thing. You sent a ship through the gates without authorization. You endangered the other ships using the gates—”
Houston huffed and waved a dismissive hand.
“—and there are consequences for that kind of thing,” Holden went on. “We’re just here to tell you what they are.”
Bobbie shifted her chair, turning it out so her legs were free. It might have been a casual gesture, except that it wasn’t. Holden ran his hands over the top of the table. Whatever it was made from wasn’t wood, but it had the same hardness and subtle texture. Houston and his cabinet were quiet. He had their attention now.
Holden needed to decide what to do with it. Follow instructions or fudge it a little.
“There are two ways this can go,” he said, fudging a little. “The first one is the union cuts off gate access to Freehold for three years.”
“We aren’t self-sustaining yet,” one of the other cabinet members said. “You’re talking about a death sentence for three hundred people.”
“That’s a decision you folks made when you sent your unauthorized ship through the gates,” Holden said. “Or maybe you can find some way to up the timetable. Get a way to feed people sooner. That’s up to you. But for three years, any ship going in or out of the Freehold gate gets killed without warning. No exceptions. Communications in and out of the gate are jammed. You’re on your own. Or, option two is Governor Houston comes with us for trial and probably just a whole lot of jail time.”
Houston snorted. His expression looked like he’d taken a bite of something rotten. The other people on the bench were less demonstrative. Freehold was a colony of pretty good poker faces.
“You forget the third option,” Houston said. “Being the ambassador of tyranny is a job with risks, Captain Holden. Very. Real. Risks.”
“Okay, so let’s do the math on that,” Holden said. “We’re here, and there are a dozen of you up there and four guards at the doors—”