Babylon's Ashes (Expanse 6)

The impulse to snap at him fought with the impulse to hug him. She closed her eyes, and damn it but they felt good closed. This morning, it had been a coordination meeting with the Lagrange stations talking about refugee loads, then security and resources talking about policing guidelines for the people still coming up the well. Over lunch, reports of an armed uprising in what was left of Sevastopol—people panicking as food and water ran low. It was all bleeding together in her mind, one long, ongoing, weary sense of urgency.

She wanted to be angry with Le, but either she understood his frozen panic too well or else she just didn’t have the energy anymore. “Is it a good bet?”

“I think so,” he said, almost at once. “The data looks—”

“Then implement it. If it doesn’t work, you can blame me.”

“That’s not what I was … I mean … If a larger scale production run works here, we should really look at sending this down the well.” Down to Earth. Where they were even hungrier.

She opened her eyes. Something in them made Gorman look away.

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll see that it’s done.”

She rose. The meeting was over. Only when she was out the door and shuffling across the yellow-gray paving toward her cart did she think about giving Le some kind of encouragement. A pat on the shoulder. A gentle word. She’d backed him down out of habit, not because he needed to be brought into line. She used to be better at this.

As the cart lurched forward, she pulled up a connection to Said. He appeared in a half-sized window that left room for her calendar and notes, almost too small to make out more than his V-shaped face and high, curly hair floating above a collarless blue shirt. “Ma’am?”

“Where do we stand?”

“You have a report from Admiral Pycior on the Enceladus situation waiting for review.”

“Is it going to say anything besides ‘The Free Navy fucked off before we got there and now we have more people we need to feed,’ or do I already have the gist of it?”

“That’s the gist. There were some casualties on our side. The Edward Carr is also going to need extensive repairs.”

She nodded. Another fucking battle like trying to grab water in her fist. The cart turned, dipped into an access tunnel. Two security guards saluted as she passed. The cart turned down another ramp, slotted itself into the highspeed toward the government and administration centers at Aldrin, and turned again so that she could look back down the throat of the passageway. Gray walls with white archways retreating back and up. The air like an eternal exhalation. The architecture seemed small in context. Insignificant against the tremendous scope of Luna and Earth. She clung to it like a lifeline. “Reports from Ceres are that the Rocinante was ambushed, but escaped. It’s on course toward Tycho Station.”

“Small favors,” she said.

“You also have a personal meeting on the schedule, ma’am.”

Personal meeting? For a long moment, she couldn’t remember what it was, but as the highspeed line lurched, pulled her cart in, and began its acceleration run, she remembered that Ashanti had been asking to see her. Somehow, her daughter had wheedled Said into putting her on the calendar.

“Cancel that,” Avasarala said.

“Are you certain, ma’am?”

“I don’t want to spend half an hour listening to a girl whose diapers I changed lecture me about taking care of myself. Tell her I’m tired and napping.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you have something you want to say, Mr. Said?”

Said coughed. “She’s your daughter, ma’am.”

Avasarala smiled. It was the first time Said had pushed back at her. Maybe there was hope for the little fucker yet. “Fine. Give her the first dinner slot that’s still open.”

“That’s three days.”

“Three days, then,” Avasarala said. The highspeed stopped accelerating, leaving her rocketing through the evacuated tunnel at however many hundreds of kilometers per hour it went. Enough to take her halfway across the face of the moon in half an hour. A body in motion remained in motion. It was a metaphor as much as anything. Stay in motion, because once she rested, she didn’t know how she would bring herself to ever start again.

She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d meditated. It used to be that when things were bad at work, she spent more time sitting, not less. Listening to her own breath rattle through the complex spaces at the back of her nose, being with her body in a deep and connected way that let all the shit settle. If she’d been keeping up, she’d have remembered to encourage Gorman Le, for instance. She hated to guess how many other little fuckups she’d passed by without even noticing.

The highspeed tunnel curved, pushing her gently against the cart’s door. She told herself that between the war and the recovery, there was just too much to do. That was accurate as far as it went, but she’d spent too many years becoming familiar with her own mind to entirely ignore the fact that she was bullshitting herself. Meditation was there so that she could be with herself, experience what it meant to be Chrisjen Avasarala more deeply. And since she was fairly certain Chrisjen Avasarala was a bag of sorrow and glass right now, fuck that. Meditating deeply so that she could really, clearly experience being angry and lonesome and hurt and horror-struck never seemed as good as a strong gin and tonic and another hour of work.

She could be a basket case later. When things were under control.

The highspeed had just started slowing down when her hand terminal chimed. Said looked contrite, but not so much that he’d left her alone.