Fred nodded once, a short, hard motion. “Do you think Draper will be able to speak for Mars?”

Holden laughed. “Like speak for ambassador speak for? Negotiate with the OPA? Because I was pretty sure that was up to Mars.”

“We may not be in a position to wait for them to get their ducks in a row. Smith’s out, and Richards is in, but an opposition coalition’s formed that want to put investigating the remaining military ahead of anything else.”

“You mean like ahead of fighting the war?”

“For example. Richards and Avasarala are working on it, but I need a Martian face with me if I’m going to make this combined navy hold together. With my background, I can represent the best of Earth to the Belt. I’ve been doing that for years, and I’ve built up a lot of trust. But unless I have a representative of Mars, I won’t be bringing anything new to the table. Especially with the Free Navy flying Martian ships. Inaros’ stock is very high right now.”

“Seriously? Because it looks a lot like he just walked away from the biggest port in the Belt.”

Fred shrugged eloquently. “His apologists are good at their jobs. And everything is in the shadow of what he did to Earth. Sorrento-Gillis, Gao, all of them. They underestimated the anger in the Belt. And the desperation. People want Inaros to be a hero, and so what he does, they interpret as heroism.”

“Even running away?”

“He won’t only run away. Don’t know what he’s got in mind, but he isn’t about to retire. And Ceres Station … it’s a white elephant now. Just keeping the environmental systems running isn’t going to be trivial. We may have to consolidate. Concentrate people physically and abandon parts of the station. Which will be interpreted as Earth and Mars kicking Belters out of their homes by Inaros and his cabal.”

Holden ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, that’s messed up.”

“It’s politics. And it’s why we need the OPA. There is support for us in the Belt, but it needs cultivation. And we have a few things going for us. They can call themselves a navy, but they’re amateurs. The kind of roughshod that thinks discipline is the same as punishment. Rumor is there’s already some dissent in Marco’s leadership. Probably, it’s over his tactics with Ceres. I still don’t understand why Dawes would let him walk away from the station, but … well, clearly he did. And Avasarala’s keeping a lid on Earth. If the UN had crumbled the way Mars has, I don’t know what we’d do.”

“This,” Holden said. “Try to gather some allies. Pretty much the same thing you’re going to do anyway. Only with less hope that it would work.”

Fred stretched, his joints popping, then sighed back down into the gel of the couch. The diagnostics on the comm panel flickered, and Patel tapped the run results. As far as she was concerned, the two of them might as well not have been there.

“You’re probably right,” Fred said. “Still, I’m glad it’s not worse. Not yet, anyway.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and Inaros will get himself killed without us.”

“It wouldn’t be enough,” Fred said. “Earth’s broken. It will be for generations. Mars may or may not collapse, but there’s still the gates. Still the colony worlds. Still all the pressures that keep the Belt on the edge of starvation and even less of what makes it valuable. There’s no getting back to status quo ante. We’ve got to move forward. Which brings us back to Draper. You’ve worked with her. Can she do the job?”

“Honestly, I think the best person to ask is her. We all know her. We all like her. I’d trust her with my ship, and I wouldn’t trust you with that. If she thinks she can, then I think she can.”

“And if she thinks she can’t?”

“Then ask Avasarala,” Holden said.

“I already know her opinion. All right, thank you. And … I’m going to regret asking. Do I want to know what you were doing with those two women in the galley?”

Maura Patel shifted in her chair. The first sign that she was listening to them at all.

“Filming them. That thing with clapping and marbles? It was really visually interesting, and Monica said that was something to be looking for. I’m doing these interviews, and she’s helping me edit and distribute them.”

“And why are you doing that?”

“It’s what’s missing in all of this,” Holden said. “It’s what let things get this bad. We don’t see each other as people. Even the feeds are always about weird things. Aberrations. All the times that a Belt station doesn’t have a riot? Those days aren’t news. It has to be an uprising or a protest or a system failure. Just being here, living a normal life? That’s not part of what the people on Earth or Mars hear about.”

“So you—” Fred closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re reaching for more unapproved press releases? You remember starting a war that way once?”

“Exa

ctly. That was talking about an aberration, because I thought that was what people needed to know. But they need all the context too. What it’s like to be a teenager with his first crush on Ceres. Or to worry about your dad getting old on Pallas Station. The things that make people here the same as people everywhere.”

“Belters rain hell down on Earth,” Fred said slowly, “and you respond by trying to humanize Belters? You know there’s going to be a raft of people who call you a traitor for that.”

“I’d be doing the same thing on Earth, but I’m not there right now. If people call me names, they do. I’m just trying to make it a little harder for people to feel comfortable killing each other.”

Fred’s screen put up an alert. He glanced at it, dismissed it. “You know if anyone else came up with the idea that they ought to put themselves in the middle of a war so they could sing songs and hold hands and sow peace for all mankind, I’d call it narcissistic opportunism. Maybe megalomania.”

Tags: James S.A. Corey Expanse Horror
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