Persepolis Rising (Expanse 7)

“Thank you for not attempting to torpedo my career,” she said, not sounding grateful at all. The fact that she didn’t say, Fuck you, little man, you couldn’t have hurt me even if you wanted to was as polite as this was likely to get.

“I want you to know that I recognize that in my heightened emotional state following the attack, I made some poor decisions, not least of which was removing you from your command.”

There was a pause. A fraction of a fraction of a second, but it was there.

“Really,” she said. The large eyebrows moved up a millimeter.

“Yes. And if I could take that back without compounding my error, I would. But the most important thing now, to both my staff and to the citizens of Medina, is the appearance of calm authority at the top. To make so drastic a move as relieving you only to rescind it would make us … make me appear weak and indecisive. So your transfer will be recorded as a move to put additional combat experience on Admiral Trejo’s staff, now that we’ve secured the station and he’s moving into the attack on Sol. It will not put a blemish on your outstanding record. Unfortunately, my apologies and regrets will have to remain unofficial for now.”

Tanaka frowned, though it looked more like surprise than anger. “I appreciate that, Governor.”

“Good luck and godspeed in Sol, Colonel. We will all be waiting for word of your mission’s success. Singh out.”

He closed the connection and drank off the last of the terrible Belter whiskey. He wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol, but he felt like a weight he’d been carrying ever since landing on Medina was lifting. This was his station now. His command, to fail or succeed at entirely on his own merits. And now he felt that the worst mistake he was likely to make was behind him, and it hadn’t actually been all that bad.

Things could only get better from here.

Chapter Twenty-One: Holden

Rather than leave them sneaking into and out of the refugee camps in the drum or Laconian-assigned quarters, Saba gave Holden and the crew access to a smuggler’s cabin: a six-rack berth his people had carved out of a service tunnel where the station records were out of date and missing. It was a tight fit, and Alex snored a little, but it was better than the alternatives.

The room where they spent most of their time had been meant for midlevel storage. Not the deep pockets of the generation ship traveling through the vast abyss between the stars. Not the immediate, day-to-day pantry of the men and women whose lives would begin and end in the journey without seeing either end. Built-in yellow guides marked where crates of tools and imperishable rations would have been stacked along the deck and walls. History hadn’t taken the room that way.

Cushions of gel and fabric covered the floor around a half-dismantled holographic display that acted as a low table. The air recyclers were set to minimum to keep the usage footprint of the space as low as it could be, and a battery-driven fan moved the thick air. Lengths of printed textile—Holden couldn’t tell if it was cloth or plastic or carbon mesh—draped the walls and rustled in the little breeze. He didn’t know if those were functional somehow, or if the impulse to decorate interiors just outlived all political circumstances. Mostly, it reminded Holden of a Moroccan restaurant he used to go to on Iapetus, back when he’d been hauling ice for Pur ’n’ Kleen.

Saba and four people Holden assumed were his lieutenants sat across from him and the crew and refilled their cups with a smoky tea whenever they got low. In addition to being captain of a supply ship called the Malaclypse that was stuck in dock just like the Roci, Saba was married to Drummer. At first, Holden had been worried that what he’d done with Freehold was going to haunt him, but when he brought it up, Saba had waved it away. It happened in a dream, Saba said, which was a little confusing until Naomi told him it was an old-timey Belter idiom for Don’t worry about it.

Even after a long life spent outside Earth’s gravity well, Holden was impressed by all the things he didn’t know.

“Perdón,” a Belter woman said, squeezing her way past the guard at the door. “Saba? Are you ready for food yet?”

Saba mostly managed to keep his smile polite. “No, Karo. Bist bien.”

The woman bobbed her hands, nodding like a Belter. She swept her gaze over the rest of them, but paused a little bit at the Rocinante’s crew—Holden, Naomi, Bobbie, Alex, Amos, and Clarissa. “Any of you? We’ve got mushroom bacon.”

Bobbie cracked her knuckles meditatively. Holden was pretty sure that was a sign of annoyance.

“That’s fine,” he said. “We’re good. Thank you.”

The woman bobbed her hands again and squeezed back out. It was the third interruption of the morning. That was a little strange, but Holden put it down to a level of general anxiety for everyone. With the occupying force settled in, the freedom Saba’s underground had to operate was thin as a razor blade, but everyone still wanted to be doing something.

“I’m sorry,” Holden said, shifting which leg was folded under him. If he was always going to have one leg asleep, better to alternate them, he figured. “You were saying?”

Saba leaned forward. It didn’t seem like sitting on the cushions made his legs go to sleep, but he was younger than Holden by a decade or two. “We need to find the balance, sa sa? The more of our own that we build, the more there is for us to use. But the more there is for them to find.”

One of Saba’s lieutenants, who’d spent the morning arguing for building a fully separate comm system by threading hair-thin cables through the water system, cleared her throat.

“The way I see it, we serve three masters: making space for ourselves, making tools for ourselves, and keeping space and tools from the inners. We have three percent of Medina now set where security can’t see it. We have support from the crew. We have transmission out to and back from Sol gate. Have to look at the margin of what we risk against what we’d get from it. All I’m saying.”

“Well, sure,” Holden said, and Saba tilted his head. In his peripheral vision, Bobbie leaned in. When he looked over at her, her expression was empty, but he had years of experience to tell him she was evaluating something. A threat, maybe, except that she was looking at him.

Holden shifted his legs again. “It’s just that anything we do, we have to assume it’s temporary, right?”

“Can’t build on stone out here,” Saba said with a grin, but Holden was pretty sure he hadn’t understood the point he was getting at.

“Medina is our station,” Holden said. “We know it better. All the niches and passages, all the undocumented features. All the tricks and doors and corners. And that’s going to be true right up until it isn’t. These people aren’t dumb. They’re busy right now, and maybe they’ll stay that way for a while.

But sooner or later, they are going to get to know the station. Our advantage only lasts for as long as it takes them to learn. So whatever we do here, it shouldn’t be planning for the long term. We don’t have a long term. We’ve got a short term, and maybe a medium term. Like, maybe?”