Babylon's Ashes (Expanse 6)

“Excuse me?”

“You’re a political animal. Use this opportunity. I’m giving you an excuse to drop out of the fighting. You can tell Marco that I pinned you down. You won’t even be lying. Even if he beats us all, you know he can’t govern the system. And your plan?”

“My plan? What plan?”

“The one where you’re the man behind the throne. The real power while Marco’s the public face and figurehead. That won’t work either. He can’t be controlled. He can barely be predicted. I’m not blaming you. I made the same mistake. I saw what I wanted to see in him. But I was wrong, and you are too.” Rosenfeld’s face was unreadable and still. Michio nodded. “Do you know the magic word?”

“No,” he said, his voice rich with disdain. “What’s the magic word?”

“Oops. You should say oops, Rosenfeld. Own it that you made a mistake. That ship I have with its ass pointed at you? It’s your chance to do something about the fact that you picked the wrong side.”

“You want me to thank you for that?”

“I want you to make sure all the people in there get food and water, and I want you to keep them safe until this is over.”

“And when’s that going to be?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and dropped the connection.

For a long moment, she rested in her couch, held in place by the straps and the familiarity of the voices and sounds around her. Her jaw ached where she’d been clenching it. She had a bruise across her collarbone, and she couldn’t remember which maneuver might have caused it. She closed her eyes, letting it all wash over her. Laura talking through the headset with Bertold about how many PDC rounds they had left. Oksana and Evans laughing over nothing, releasing tension, quietly celebrating that—on some level, by some measure—they’d won. The smell of the portable welding rig burning off the emergency sealant and closing the punctures in the hull. Her home. Her people. She filled her lungs with them all.

The comm display chirped. A request from the Serrio Mal. She accepted it. Susanna Foyle appeared on her monitor.

“Captain Pa,” she said.

“Captain Foyle.”

“Rodriguez tells me we’re not taking three ships to Titan after all.”

“That’s right.”

“Used up a lot of ordnance on this mission that wasn’t in the specs,” Foyle said.

“Also true,” Pa agreed.

“Going to leave us outnumbered and outgunned.” It wasn’t an accusation. Just an observation.

“We won’t be the only ships there,” Pa said. “We’ll have backup.”

For the first time, Foyle’s face lowered its dignity to have an expression. “Squats and Dusters. No one we can count on.”

“We’re all in this together,” Pa said, and Foyle coughed out a single laugh.

“As long as you’re going first, we’ll follow. Didn’t get this far by taking the easy way. We’ve got our patches in place and our bandages on. You’re ready to burn, then so are we.”

“Thank you.”

Foyle nodded, dropped the connection. Pa pulled up a system-wide tactical map with all the fighting that was going on throughout the system. A cluster of updates from Vesta. A chase between Free Navy fighters and a dozen Martian warships as Marco’s forces tried to loop around toward Mars itself. The guard force left behind at Ceres tracking four Free Navy ships. The orbital defense of Earth on high alert, most of its patrol ships away from their posts and on the attack. The sum of all of humanity’s presence in the solar system, bent on violence and spectacle. And at the edge of the display, almost off it, almost forgotten, the Giambattista and the Rocinante, already decelerating toward the ring gate, and two fast-attack ships burning hard to intercept.

Good luck, you bastard, she thought, putting her hand over the tiny gold dot marked Rocinante. Don’t make me sorry I trusted you.

And then, over the ship-wide system, “All stations report. We’ve got another fight to get to. Don’t want to be late.”

Chapter Forty-Two: Marco

Son coyo, son tod!” Micah al-Dujaili shouted out from the screen. “You and all your ti-ti soldat! I am here for you, Inaros. What you did to my family.”

Marco muted the broadcast. Somewhere nearby, someone else was watching it. Al-Dujaili’s rant still nattering in the distance as the Pella rose off Callisto, a half dozen ships arrayed behind her. “Do we have target lock?”