“Well,” she said. “We could have done things Marco’s way.”
“Don’t think we could have,” Bertold said.
“Don’t either.”
“What about the stations and ships we’re giving to? Some of them going to have guns. Have guards.”
“Withhold aid unless they agree to fight and die for us?” Michio said. “Let them starve if they won’t? No, don’t. I’m not saying no to that. I’m asking. Which is worse? Extort people into being soldiers for us, or negotiate with Fred fucking Johnson?”
Bertold pressed a palm to his forehead. “No third side to that coin?”
“Die noble?” Michio said.
Bertold laughed, and then he didn’t. “Depends on what the Butcher wants.”
“It does,” Michio said. “So we should ask him.”
“Yeah, fuck,” Bertold said. She saw her own dread and anger and humiliation reflected in his eyes. He knew what even considering this was costing her. And the ruthlessness she treated herself with that made it necessary. “I love you. You know that. Always.”
“You too,” she said.
“Doesn’t take much before we have to compromise ourselves, does it?”
“Get born,” Michio said, pulling the comm controls and setting the tightbeam for Ceres.
Chapter Twenty: Naomi
The danger is
overreach,” Bobbie said, hunching over the table and making it seem small. “They sucker-punched us. We got a couple easy wins coming back. It’s tempting to drive it as far as we can, and try to break them. Seems like we’ve got them on the back foot. But the truth is, we’re still sizing his forces up. He’s still seeing what we do.”
“And what are we doing?” Naomi asked, handing across a bowl of scrambled egg and tofu with hot sauce.
Bobbie scooped up a bite and chewed thoughtfully. Naomi sat across from her and tried a bite from her own bowl. Ever since Maura Patel had upgraded the food systems, the Roci’s hot sauce tasted a little different, but Naomi was coming to like it. There was a pleasure in the novelty. And also a sense of nostalgia for what had changed. That wasn’t only food. That was everything.
“I don’t think anyone knows,” Bobbie said. “My tactics teacher back in bootcamp? Sergeant Kapoor. He was an entomologist—”
“Your sergeant in bootcamp was an entomologist?”
“It’s Mars,” Bobbie said, shrugging. “That isn’t weird there. Anyway, he talked about shifting strategies like they were the middle part of metamorphosis. Apparently when a caterpillar makes a cocoon, the next thing it does is melt. Completely liquefies. And then all the little bits of what used to be caterpillar come back together as a moth or a butterfly or something. Finds a different way to assemble all the same pieces and make it something else.”
“Sounds like the protomolecule.”
“Huh. Yeah. Guess it kind of does.” Bobbie took another bite of her eggs, her gaze on the far wall. She was quiet for long enough that Naomi didn’t know if she’d come back.
“But he meant something tactical?” Naomi said.
“Yes. That pivoting your strategy was like that too. You go into a situation thinking about it a particular way, and then something changes. Then either you stick with the ideas you had before or you look at everything you have to work with and find a new shape. We’re in the find-a-new-shape part. Avasarala’s busy trying to keep what’s left of Earth out of environmental collapse, but once that’s stabilized, she’s going to try to capture Inaros and everyone else who ever breathed his air and put them all on trial. She wants it to be crime.”
Sandra Ip came in from the lift, nodded at the two of them, and pulled a bulb of tea from the dispenser.
“Why, do you think?” Naomi asked. “I mean, why treat it like a criminal act and not war?”
“I think it’s a statement of contempt. But in the meantime, Mars is … I don’t know. I think it’s finding out that for all our strength, we were brittle. I’m not sure how we come back from that, but we’ll never be what we were. Not any more than Earth will. And Fred? He’s trying to build consensus and coalitions, because that’s what he’s been doing for decades.”
“But you don’t think he can.” It wasn’t a question. Ip left the galley, her footsteps retreating as Bobbie thought.
“I think putting people together’s a good thing. Generally useful. But … I probably shouldn’t be talking about this. I’m supposed to be his representative for Mars. Junior league ambassador or something.”