Babylon's Ashes (Expanse 6)

“My friend in comms?” Salis said. “You know what they say? Found a hidden dump in the data core. Walled off. Think it was what they used to coordinate with the colonies. Confirmations came in from all the gates just before the attack hit. Only funny thing? Two ships didn’t come through.”

Salis cranked his eyebrows up toward his hairline.

Vandercaust grunted. “Were asking me about how many ships came through. Like they wanted a number.”

“Probably why. See if you knew how many came through or how many were supposed to, yeah? Trip you up if you were in on.”

“But didn’t have nothing,” Vandercaust said, tapping his forehead with two fingers. “Bon besse for me.”

Salis put a hand on his arm. The young man looked pained. Aching, but not in the muscles and joints. Not the way he was. “You should let me buy you a drink, coyo. You had a shit week.”

Vandercaust shrugged. He didn’t know how to explain himself to Salis or Roberts. They were young. They hadn’t seen the things he’d seen. Hadn’t done the thing he’d done. Being picked up by security, locked away, beaten, interrogated. They didn’t scare him in themselves. They scared him for what they said about how it came next. They scared him because they meant that Medina Station wasn’t a new beginning in history. It was and would be as red in the gutter as everyplace else humanity had set its flags.

Roberts sat up, her eyes going wide. “They got!”

Salis let his hand drop, turned to her. “Que?”

“The mole? The coordinator. They got.”

She turned her hand terminal toward them. On it, station security in Free Navy uniforms were walking, eight of them, around a broad-shouldered, squat man with dark hair and a scruff of beard. Vandercaust thought he looked familiar, but couldn’t place him. The image jumped to Captain Samuels, with Jon Amash standing behind her on one side. Political power and security service, one beside the other, and no light between them.

Samuels’ lips began to move.

“Turn it up,” Salis said. Roberts fumbled with her terminal, then shifted around between them so they could all see the screen.

“—ties not only to the settlements that chose aggression against us but also with regressive forces back in Sol system. He will be questioned fully before execution. While we have to keep eyes open and alert, I am convinced, given all I have seen, that the immediate threat to Medina Station is under control.”

“Execution,” Roberts said.

Salis shrugged. “You put the ship at risk, that’s what happens. Those colony bastards weren’t coming to play dice and make happy.”

“Least it’s over,” Vandercaust said.

“Is why they let you go,” Roberts said, shaking her hand terminal. “Found him. Saw you weren’t involved.”

Or picked someone to play the goat, Vandercaust thought. Only I got lucky enough it wasn’t me. It wasn’t the sort of thing you said out loud. Not at times like these.

Chapter Thirty-Three: Holden

The room they were using as an anteroom was larger than the Rocinante’s galley. Wide tables with built-in monitors and tall metal stools. Soft, indirect lighting in a manipulated spectrum that reminded Holden of early mornings in his childhood. He didn’t have a rank or a uniform, but the ship jumpsuit had seemed wrong for the occasion. He’d decided on a dark, collarless shirt and pants that echoed the sense of a military uniform without making any specific claims.

Naomi, pacing now along the wall by the yellow double doors, had matched him, but he had the creeping sense that they looked better on her. So of the three of them, only Bobbie was in uniform, and hers had the insignia left off. The cut and the fitting all screamed Martian Marine Corps. And the people they were going to meet with—the ones gathering right now down the hall—knew who she was anyway.

“You keep pulling at that sleeve,” Bobbie said. “It bothering you?”

“It? No, it’s fine,” Holden said. “I’m bothering me. Do you know how many times I’ve done this kind of diplomatic work? I’ve been in battles and I’ve put together video feeds, but to walk in, look down the table at a bunch of OPA operatives, and tell them how they all need to listen to me? I’ve done that exactly no times. Never.”

“Ilus,” Naomi said.

“You mean when that one guy killed the other guy in the street and then burned a bunch of people alive?”

Naomi sighed. “Yeah. Then.”

Bobbie flexed her hands, put them palm down on the table display. The monitor glowed for a moment, waiting for a command, then dimmed again when nothing came. Muffled voices came through the doorway. A woman with a Belter’s accent asking something about chairs. A man replying, his voice too low to make out. “I’ve been in rooms like this before,” Bobbie said. “Political work. A lot of different agendas and no one saying out loud what they were actually thinking.”

“Yeah?” Holden said.

“It sucked.”