“Do you really think we’re so bad? Look at what we’ve done, how we’ve done it. We haven’t opened fire on a single ship that didn’t attack us first. In all of history, when has a conqueror been able to say that? We have embraced local rule. Any of the colony worlds that submits can make their own local government, keep their own local customs—”
“Unless they conflict with your rules.”
“Of course.”
Holden sipped his coffee. “That’s the thing. The people you’re controlling don’t have a voice in how you control them. As long as everyone’s on the same page, things may be great, but when there’s a question, you win. Right?”
“There has to be a way to come to a final decision.”
“No, there doesn’t. Every time someone starts talking about final anythings in politics, that means the atrocities are warming up. Humanity has done amazing things by just muddling through, arguing and complaining and fighting and negotiating. It’s messy and undignified, but it’s when we’re at our best, because everyone gets to have a voice in it. Even if everyone else is trying to shout it down. Whenever there’s just one voice that matters, something terrible comes out of it.”
“And yet, I understand from Ms. Fisk that the Transport Union was condemning whole colonies that didn’t follow its rule.”
“Right?” Holden said. “And so I disobeyed that order and I quit working for them. I was all set to go retire in Sol system. Can you do that?”
“Can I do what?”
“If you are given an immoral order, can you resign and walk away? Because everything I’ve seen about how you’re running this place tells me that isn’t an option for you.”
Singh crossed his arms. He had the sense that the interrogation was getting away from him.
“The high consul is a very wise, very thoughtful man,” he said. “I have perfect faith that—”
“No. Stop. ‘Perfect faith’ really tells me everything I need to know,” Holden said. “You think this is a gentle, bloodless conquest, don’t you?”
“It is, to the degree that you allow it to be.”
“I was there for the war Duarte started to cover his tracks. I was there for the starving years afterward. Your empire’s hands look a lot cleaner when you get to dictate where history begins and what parts of it don’t count.”
“So you and your friends decide instead?” Singh said, trying to keep his tone light. “You know that sooner or later, you’re going to tell us who they are.”
Holden took a long drink from the coffee cup and set it down gently on the floor beside his feet. “I’m hoping for later,” he said. “But I see we’re already done with the part where we make friendly with each other.”
Singh felt the warmth he’d cultivated toward Holden slipping away into frustration. He’d started in too quickly. He should have spent more time building up the relationship, and now they’d both fallen into adversarial stances with each other. It was time to change tack.
“Tell me what you can,” Singh said, “about Ilus.”
Holden frowned, but not angrily. “What do you want to know?”
Singh waited without answering.
Holden shrugged. “All right. It was the first contested colony. I went out there to try to mediate between the different claimants, and it all pretty much turned to shit. People shooting each other. Old artifacts coming to life and blowing up the ocean. Local ecosystem trying to mine us for fresh water. And there were death slugs. It wasn’t great.”
“Artifacts coming to life?”
“Yeah,” Holden said, shifting on his little stool. “We had a trace of active protomolecule on the ship. We didn’t know about it. It was trying to report in about the Sol gate being complete, but everything it wanted to report to was dead or turned off. So it started turning things on. Only part of it was this guy I used to know, and … It’s kind of a weird story. Why do you want to know about Ilus?”
“What about the other artifact?”
Holden shook his head, opened his hands. What other artifact?
Singh pulled up the image from the Tempest on his monitor. A bright-black nothingness. He enlarged it and held it out for Holden to see.
“Yeah, the bullet,” Holden said. “It was the thing that turned everything off again. Deactivated the protomolecule.”
Singh felt a chill in his heart. The calmness and innocence of the way Holden said the words was deeper than any threat.
“It did what?”