Babylon's Ashes (Expanse 6)

The data feed chimed. The batch sent off, and waiting for Naomi to pick something else. More messages, more bottles. “All right. What are they?”

“The classics. Fight or flight. We’ve got the Roci and the boats that still work as boarding craft. One option is that we fill up the boats with troops, place them around the edge of the ring, and try to get people onto the Free Navy ships. It won’t matter that they have ten times as many torpedoes as us if all the fighting’s corridor to corridor. The Roci and Medina’s defenses go after the ships we can’t take control of. Massive slugfest, and hopefully we come out on top.”

“And the chances that’ll work?”

“Terrible, terrible chances. Very low. Dumb plan on every level. Much more likely that the boats will all get turned into metal shavings by Marco’s PDCs before they even get close to boarding. And even if they do, those ships are going to have full crews to fight our people back.”

“And flight?”

“Stock up the Roci, pick a gate, and get the hell out of Dodge before the bad guys show up in the first place.”

“And leave Medina?”

“Medina. The Giambattista. Everything. Just turn tail and run like hell. Let the Free Navy hole back up in the slow zone and hope that the next wave the consolidated fleet sends can take it all back again and hold it next time.”

“Where’s the Pella?”

Jim sighed. “Oh, leading the howling pack.”

Naomi turned back to her screen. “Then we’re staying here.”

“I haven’t decided,” Holden said.

“No, you haven’t talked yourself into it yet,” she said. “You know if we go, Marco’s going to follow us. Maybe if we were a different ship or Marco was a different man, things wouldn’t play out this way. We’ve got the choice of fighting here, with a few allies and insufficient supplies, or fighting on the far side of a ring gate with even less. That’s the only distinction.”

“I … well …” Jim took a deep breath, blew out. “Shit.”

“How much of the debris from the wave of decoys can we police up?”

“Anything that hasn’t drifted out past the rings,” Holden said. “You’re thinking put it all just inside the Sol ring and hope the Free Navy runs into it?”

“The gate’s not that big,” Naomi said.

“Three-quarters of a million square klicks,” Holden said. “And fifteen ships coming through it. Even if we turned all our scrap metal into sand, the Free Navy’s more likely to miss them and not even know they were there.”

“I know,” Naomi said. “But maybe one will get a lucky hit. And then there’ll be one less. If we aren’t playing the long shots, we’re giving up. Long shots are all we’ve got left. And even if we lose—”

“I’m not looking at—”

“Even if we lose,” Naomi said, “how we lose matters. You didn’t set yourself to be a symbol of anything. I know that. It’s just something that happened. But after it happened, you used it. All those video essays you put out, trying to show everyone that the people on Ceres were just people?”

“Those weren’t about me,” Jim said, but the guilt in his voice said he didn’t believe it.

“They were you using the famous Captain James Holden to make people look at what you needed them to see. Don’t be ashamed of that. It was the right thing to do. But everyone out there who saw them? Who made their own versions of them and added to the project of trying to remind each other that war isn’t all ships and torpedoes and battle lines? If we’re going to …” Her throat was tight now. The words stuck there. “If we’re going to die, we should make it mean at least as much as your video pieces did.”

“I don’t know that those mattered,” Jim said. “Did they do anything?”

“You don’t get to know that,” Naomi said. “They did or they didn’t. You didn’t put them out so that someone would send you a message about how important and influential you are. You tried to change some minds. Inspire some actions. Even if it didn’t work, it was a good thing to try. And maybe it did. Maybe those saved someone, and if they did, that’s more important than making sure you get to know about it.”

Jim sank down into himself. The mask of himself that he’d worn since Tycho slipped a little. She saw the despair under it.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” he said.

“You took this on because it was the risky job,” she said. “You did it because it needed doing, and you don’t ask people to take things on you wouldn’t do yourself. Just like when you ran onto the Agatha King. You don’t change, Jim. And I knew that coming in. We all did. We thought we’d make it, but we knew we might be wrong. We were wrong. Now we have to do this next part well too.”

“Ge

tting killed. This next part is getting killed.”