Babylon's Ashes (Expanse 6)

A new coat of paint even left the old station looking brighter and younger and more full of hope than when she’d left. The signs had been replaced. The same corridors and lifts, but in bright, clean new fonts and half a dozen alphabets. She knew it was designed for the colonists and refugees fleeing Earth, but it seemed pointed that, of the languages listed, none was Belter Creole. Earth ran Ceres again, the way it had before Eros, and they were turning the station into a theme-park version of itself. The guard was for the most part ceremonial, but Michio was more than willing to bet their sidearms were loaded. It was awkward work, welcoming someone who was equal parts ally and enemy. She didn’t envy them.

It had been six months now since the remarkable death of Ma

rco Inaros and the great remnant of the Free Navy. Half a year just to bring the remaining players together to talk. She wondered how long it would take to actually do something that mattered. And what would happen when they all ran out of time. She felt like she had a tiny Nico Sanjrani in the back of her head counting down the hours until the Belt—no, until all humanity—needed the farms and medical centers and mines and processing facilities that they hadn’t built because they’d been too busy fighting. Some nights it kept her awake. Some nights other things did.

She was half expecting them to take her to the same quarters Marco Inaros had assigned the last time she’d been here hammering out a plan for the Belt, but while it was in the same section of the station, the particular rooms were different. Their escort finished welcoming them, assured them that if they needed anything, someone from the hospitality service would be there to help. They bowed their way out the door, closing it as they left. Michio lowered herself to the couch in the suite’s main room while Josep made his way through each of the rooms, taking stock and looking for surveillance equipment that was both certainly there and certainly too professionally installed to find.

Nadia, Bertold, and Laura were back on the new ship—a converted cargo hauler on loan from one of Bertold’s cousins as long as they found ways to make the payments on it. After the sleekness and power of the Connaught, it felt cheap and flimsy. But her family was on it, so it was home in the same way that the couch her cheek rested against was raw-silk upholstery in a jail cell.

Josep’s laugh was hard. He walked back into the room with a rectangle of something the color of cream and held it out to her. Not paper, but heavy card stock smooth as the couch. The writing on it was neat and precise.

Captain Pa—

Thank you for coming to the conference and for your courage in the struggles we have all endured together. With good faith and cooperation, we will forge the path still ahead.

It was signed Chrisjen Avasarala. Michio looked up at Josep, her brow knit.

“En serio? That doesn’t even sound like her.”

“I know,” he said. “And come see! There’s a fruit basket.”

If wars began with rage, they ended with exhaustion.

In the aftermath of the system-wide battle and its unsettling aftermath at the ring, the partisans of the Free Navy had felt an overwhelming sense of injustice. It was as if the disappearance of the Pella and its battle force had been a bad call in a football match, and they were trying to find a referee to shout down. Then, slowly, the understanding seemed to spread through all the stations—Pallas, Ganymede, Ceres, Tycho, and dozens more besides—that the war was ended. That they’d lost. A group on Pallas had issued a declaration that they were the New Free Navy and had set off a few bombs when the consolidated fleet arrived to take control of the station. The Jovian system—Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, and all the lesser bases there—had been the Free Navy’s strongest ground and the one least touched by the fighting. A few patches of resistance there meant the violence would drag on for a few more weeks or months, but the outcome wasn’t in doubt.

The specter of the Laconia gate and Winston Duarte hung over Mars more than anyone else. Martian identity—proud cogs in the glorious terraforming machine—didn’t square with military coups and mass defection. Mars wanted answers, and Laconia ignored them all magnificently. The only communication since the death of the Free Navy was a looped statement broadcast through the gate. A man’s voice, inflected like a newsreader’s, saying, Laconia is under its own sovereign authority. This message serves as notice that any ships passing through the Laconia gate will be in violation of that authority and will be denied passage. Laconia is under its own sovereign authority …

The message had caused no end of debate in the Martian parliament while Earth drove two of its three remaining battleships out to the slow zone and parked them and their ancient but effective rail guns and nuclear torpedoes at the edges of the Laconia gate, ready to reduce anything that came out to gas and scrap. Avasarala called it a containment policy, and Michio supposed it was the sanest thing to do. Earth was in no condition to pick another fight.

By the time Rosenfeld Guoliang took the stand in The Hague, the first high-profile prosecution for the murder of billions on Earth, the vast and complex human zeitgeist was ready for it to be over. There would be other trials coming. Anderson Dawes had been captured. Nico Sanjrani turned himself in at Tycho. Of Inaros’ original inner circle, Michio Pa was the only one not in a cell or dead. And she was at a cocktail party.

The meeting center in the governor’s palace was built on three levels with stairways between them and a lot of plants. People in uniform and formal dress stood in pairs or small groups or alone with their hand terminals while servants carried trays of hors d’oeuvres and drinks. If anything specific was wanted—food or drink or a fresh pair of shoes, probably—they had only to ask. The lap of luxury. The highest circles of power and influence.

This was the real thing, something that Marco Inaros had only been able to play at. The stone walks were polished and the pillars were made of striped sedimentary rock pulled all the way from Earth as a kind of boast. We’re so rich, we don’t even use our own stone. She’d never noticed it before, and she didn’t know whether it left her amused or angry or sad.

“Michio,” a woman’s voice said. “Here you are. How is Laura?”

The old lady in the orange sari took Michio’s elbow and led her along almost three full steps before she realized it was Avasarala. The old Earther looked different in person. Smaller, her skin a deeper brown, her pale hair taking up more of her face.

“Much better,” Michio said. “Back on the ship.”

“With Nadia and Bertold? And Josep stayed back in your rooms? Just so long as they know they’re welcome. God damn, this is an ugly piece of architecture, isn’t it?” Avasarala said. “I saw you looking at the pillars.”

“I was,” Michio said.

Avasarala leaned in close, her eyes bright as a schoolgirl’s. “They’re fake. The rock? Made it with a centrifuge and colored sand. I knew the builder. He was a fake too. Pretty, though. God save us all from good-looking men.”

Michio surprised herself by laughing. The old woman was charming. Michio knew that this show of hospitality was just that. A show. And yet it worked; she felt more at ease. The time was going to come, and soon, when Michio was going to have to come to this woman and ask for amnesty. Ask this Earther to let her and her family go free for Marco’s crimes. This moment made it seem like maybe the answer would be yes. Hope was a terrible thing. She didn’t want to feel, and yet there it was.

She didn’t know she was going to speak until she said it. “I’m sorry.” What she meant was I’m sorry I didn’t stop the attack that killed your husband and I’m sorry I didn’t see Inaros for what he was sooner and I would do it all differently if I could live my life backward and try again.

Avasarala paused, looked deeply into Michio’s eyes, and it was like seeing someone through a mask. The deepness there startled her. When she spoke, it was as if she’d heard every nuance.

“Politics is the art of the possible, Captain Pa. When you play at our level, grudges cost lives.”

Across a narrow courtyard, James Holden turned and then came trotting over. He, at least, was the same height she remembered. He looked a little older than when they’d fought against Ashford on the Behemoth. Back in the God-who-could-have-known-they-were-the-good-old-days. She saw the surprise and pleasure as he recognized her.

“Captain Holden,” she said. “Still weird to see you.”