Caliban;s war e-2

by James S. A. Corey

  She also thought it made Mao himself very dangerous. Everything he did was an announcement of his freedom from constraint. He was a man without boundaries. Killing a senior politician of the UN government might be bad business. It might wind up being expensive. But it would never actually be risky to a man with this much wealth and power.

  Avasarala didn’t see it.

  “I hate spin gravity,” Avasarala said, sipping at a cup of steaming tea. They’d be on the station for only three hours, while cargo was transferred from the shuttle to Mao’s yacht, but they’d been assigned a suite of four full-sized bedrooms, each with its own shower, and a massive lounge area. A huge screen pretended to be a window, the crescent Earth with her continent-veiling clouds hung on the black. They had a private kitchen staffed by three people, whose biggest task so far had been making the assistant undersecretary’s tea. Bobbie considered ordering a large meal just to give them something to do.

  “I can’t believe we’re about to climb on a ship owned by this man. Have you ever known anyone this wealthy to go to jail? Or even be prosecuted? This guy could probably walk in here and shoot you in the face on a live newsfeed and get away with it.”

  Avasarala laughed at her. Bobbie suppressed a surge of anger. It was just fear looking for an outlet.

  “That’s not the game,” Avasarala said. “No one gets shot. They get marginalized. It’s worse.”

  “No, it’s not. I’ve seen people shot. I’ve seen my friends shot. When you say, ‘That’s not the game,’ you mean for people like you. Not like me.”

  Avasarala’s expression cooled.

  “Yes, that’s what I mean,” the old woman said. “The level we’re playing at has different rules. It’s like playing go. It’s all about exerting influence. Controlling the board without occupying it.”

  “Poker is a game too,” Bobbie said. “But sometimes the stakes get so high that one player decides it’s easier to kill the other guy and walk away with the money. It happens all the time.”

  Avasarala nodded at her, not replying right away, visibly thinking over what Bobbie had said. Bobbie felt her anger replaced with a sudden rush of affection for the grumpy and arrogant old lady.

  “Okay,” Avasarala said, putting her teacup down and placing her hands in her lap. “I hear what you’re saying, Sergeant. I think it’s unlikely, but I’m glad you’re here to say it.”

  But you aren’t taking it seriously, Bobbie wanted to shout at her. Instead, she asked the servant who hovered nearby for a mushroom and onion sandwich. While she ate it, Avasarala sipped tea, nibbled on a cookie, and made small talk about the war and her grandchildren. Bobbie tried to be sure to make concerned noises during the war parts and awww, cute noises when the kids were the topic. But all she could think about was the tactical nightmare defending Avasarala on an enemy-controlled spacecraft would be.

  Her recon suit was in a large crate marked FORMAL WEAR and being loaded onto the Mao yacht even as they waited. Bobbie wanted to sneak off and put it on. She didn’t notice when Avasarala stopped speaking for several minutes.

  “Bobbie,” Avasarala said, her face not quite a frown. “Are my stories about my beloved grandchildren boring you?”

  “Yeah,” Bobbie replied. “They really are.”

  Bobbie had thought that Mao Station was the most ludicrous display of conspicuous wealth she’d ever seen right up until they boarded the yacht.

  While the station was extravagant, it at least served a function. It was Jules Mao’s personal orbital garage, where he could store and service his fleet of private spacecraft. Underneath the glitz there was a working station, with mechanics and support staff doing actual jobs.

  The yacht, the Guanshiyin, was the size of a standard cheapjack people-mover that would have transported two hundred customers, but it only had a dozen staterooms. Its cargo area was just large enough to contain the supplies they’d need for a lengthy voyage. It wasn’t particularly fast. It was, by any reasonable measurement, a miserable failure as a useful spacecraft.

  But its job was not to be useful.

  The Guanshiyin’s job was to be comfortable. Extravagantly comfortable.

  It was like a hotel lobby. The carpet was plush and soft underfoot, and actual crystal chandeliers caught the light. Everyplace that should have had a sharp corner was rounded. Softened. The walls were papered with raw bamboo and natural fiber. The first thing Bobbie thought was how hard it would be to clean, and the second thing was that the difficulty was intentional.

  Each suite of rooms took up nearly an entire deck of the ship. Each room had its own private bath, media center, game room, and lounge with a full bar. The lounge had a gigantic screen showing the view outside, which would not have been higher definition had it been an actual glass window. Near the bar was a dumbwaiter next to an intercom, which could deliver food prepared by Cordon Bleu chefs any hour of the day or night.

  The carpet was so thick Bobbie was pretty sure mag boots wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t matter. A ship like this would never break down, never have to stop the engines during flight. The kind of people who flew on the Guanshiyin had probably never actually worn an environment suit in their lives.

  All the fixtures in her bathroom were gold plated.

  Bobbie and Avasarala were sitting in the lounge with the head of her UN security team, a pleasant-looking gray-haired man of Kurdish descent named Cotyar. Bobbie had been worried when she first met him. He looked like a friendly high school teacher, not a soldier. But then she’d watched him go through Avasarala’s rooms with practiced efficiency, laying out their security plan and directing his team, and her worries eased.

  “Well, impressions?” Avasarala asked, leaning back in a plush armchair with her eyes closed.

  “This room is not secure,” Cotyar said, his accent exotic to Bobbie’s ears. “We should not discuss sensitive matters here. Your private room has been secured for such discussions.”

  “This is a trap,” Bobbie said.

  “Aren’t we finished with that shit yet?” Avasarala said, then leaned forward to give Bobbie a glare.

  “She is right,” Cotyar said quietly, clearly unhappy to be discussing such matters in an unsecured room. “I’ve counted fourteen crew on this ship already, and I would estimate that is less than one-third of the total crew of this vessel. I have a team of six for your protection-”

  “Seven,” Bobbie interrupted, raising her hand.

  “As you say,” Cotyar continued with a nod. “Seven. We do not control any of the ship’s systems. Assassination would be as simple as sealing the deck we are on and pumping out the air.”

  Bobbie pointed at Cotyar and said, “See?”

  Avasarala waved a hand as if she were shooing flies. “What’s communications look like?”

  “Robust,” Cotyar said. “We’ve set up a private network and have been given the backup tightbeam and radio array for your personal use. Bandwidth is significant, though light delay will be an increasing factor as we move away from Earth.”

  “Good,” Avasarala said, smiling for the first time since they’d come on the ship. She’d stopped looking tired a while ago and had moved on to whatever tired turns into when it became a lifestyle.

  “None of this is secure,” Cotyar said. “We can secure our private internal network, but if they are monitoring outbound and inbound traffic through the array we’re using, there will be no way to detect that. We have no access to ship operations.”

  “And,” Avasarala said, “that is exactly why I’m here. Bottle me up, send me on a long trip, and read all my fucking mail.”

  “We’re lucky if that’s all they do,” Bobbie said. Thinking about how tired Avasarala looked had reminded her how tired she was too. She felt herself drift away for a moment.

  Avasarala finished saying something, and Cotyar nodded and said yes to her. She turned to Bobbie and said, “Do you agree?”

  “Uh,” Bobbie said, trying to rewind the conversation in her head and failing. �
�I’m-”

  “You’re practically falling out of your fucking chair. When’s the last time you got a full night’s sleep?”

  “Probably about the last time you did,” Bobbie said. The last time all my squaddies were alive, and you weren’t trying to keep the solar system from catching on fire. She waited for the next scathing comment, the next observation that she couldn’t do her job if she was that compromised. That weak.

  “Fair enough,” Avasarala said. Bobbie felt another little surge of affection for her. “Mao’s throwing a big dinner tonight to welcome us aboard. I want you and Cotyar to come with. Cotyar will be security, so he’ll stand at the back of the room and look menacing.”

  Bobbie laughed before she could stop herself. Cotyar smiled and winked at her.

  “And,” Avasarala continued, “you’ll be there as my social secretary, so you can chat people up. Try to get a feel for the crew and the mood of the ship. Okay?”

  “Roger that.”

  “I noticed,” Avasarala said, her tone shifting to the one she used when she was going to ask for an unpleasant favor, “the executive officer staring at you when we did the airlock meet and greet.”

  Bobbie nodded. She’d noticed it too. Some men had a large-woman fetish, and Bobbie had gotten the hair-raising sense that he might be a member of that tribe. They tended to have unresolved mommy issues, so she generally steered clear.

  “Any chance you could talk him up at dinner?” Avasarala finished.

  Bobbie laughed, expecting everyone else to laugh too. Even Cotyar was looking at her as though Avasarala had made a perfectly reasonable request.

  “Uh, no,” Bobbie said.

  “Did you say no?”

  “Yeah, no. Hell no. Fuck no. Nein und abermals nein. Nyet. La. Siei,” Bobbie said, stopping when she ran out of languages. “And I’m actually a little pissed now.”

  “I’m not asking you to sleep with him.”

  “Good, because I don’t use sex as a weapon,” Bobbie said. “I use weapons as weapons.”

  “Chrisjen!” Jules Mao said, enveloping Avasarala’s hand in his and shaking it.

  The lord of the Mao-Kwik empire towered over Avasarala. He had the kind of handsome face that made Bobbie instinctively want to like him, and medically untreated male-pattern hair loss that said he didn’t care whether she did. Choosing not to use his wealth to fix a problem as treatable as thinning hair actually made him seem even more in control. He wore a loose sweater and cotton pants that hung on him like a tailored suit. When Avasarala introduced Bobbie to him, he smiled and nodded while barely glancing in her direction.

  “Is your staff settled in?” he asked, letting Avasarala know that Bobbie’s presence reminded him of underlings. Bobbie gritted her teeth but kept her face blank.

  “Yes,” Avasarala replied with what Bobbie would have sworn was genuine warmth. “The accommodations are lovely, and your crew has been wonderful.”

  “Excellent,” Jules said, placing Avasarala’s hand on his arm and leading her to an enormous table. They were surrounded on all sides by men in white jackets with black bow ties. One of them darted forward and pulled a chair out. Jules placed Avasarala in it. “Chef Marco has promised something special tonight.”

  “How about straight answers? Are those on the menu?” Bobbie asked as a waiter pulled out a chair for her.

  Jules settled into his chair at the head of the table. “Answers?”

  “You guys won,” Bobbie said, ignoring the steaming soup one of the servers placed in front of her. Mao tapped salt onto his and began eating it as though they were just having casual dinner conversation. “The assistant undersecretary is on the ship. No reason to bullshit us now. What’s going on?”

  “Humanitarian aid,” he replied.

  “Bullshit,” Bobbie said. She glanced at Avasarala, but the old woman was just smiling. “You can’t tell me that you have time to spend a couple months doing the transit to Jupiter just to oversee handing out rice and juice boxes. And you couldn’t get enough relief supplies onto this ship to feed Ganymede lunch, much less make a long-term difference.”

  Mao settled back in his chair, and the white jackets bustled around the room, clearing the soup away. Bobbie’s was whisked away as well, even though she hadn’t eaten any of it.

  “Roberta,” Mao began.

  “Don’t call me Roberta.”

  “Sergeant, you should be questioning your superiors at the UN foreign office, not me.”

  “I’d love to, but apparently asking questions is against the rules in this game.”

  His smile was warm, condescending, and empty. “I made my ship available to provide Madam Undersecretary the most comfortable ride to her new assignment. And while you have not yet met them, there are personnel currently on this vessel whose expertise will be invaluable to the citizens of Ganymede once you arrive.”

  Bobbie had been around Avasarala long enough to see the game being played right in front of her. Mao was laughing at her. He knew this was all bullshit, and he knew she knew it as well. But as long as he remained calm and gave reasonable answers, no one could call him on it. He was too powerful to be called a liar to his face.

  “You’re a liar, and-” she started; then something he’d said made her stop. “Wait, ‘once you arrive’? You aren’t coming?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Mao said, smiling up at the white jacket who placed another plate in front of him. This one had what appeared to be a whole fish, complete with head and staring eyes.

  Bobbie gaped at Avasarala, who was frowning at Mao now.

  “I was told you were personally leading this relief effort,” Avasarala said.

  “That was my intention. But I’m afraid other business has removed that option. Once we finish with this excellent dinner, I’ll be taking the shuttle back to the station. This ship, and its crew, are at your disposal until your vital work on Ganymede is complete.”

  Avasarala just stared at Mao. For the first time in Bobbie’s experience, the old lady was struck speechless.

  A white jacket brought Bobbie a fish while her lush prison flew at a leisurely quarter g toward Jupiter.

  Avasarala hadn’t said a word on the ride down the lift to their suite. In the lounge, she stopped long enough to grab a bottle of gin off the bar, and waggled a finger at Bobbie. Bobbie followed her into the master bedroom, Cotyar close behind.

  Once the door was closed and Cotyar had used his handheld security terminal to scan the room for bugs, Avasarala said, “Bobbie, start thinking of a way to either get control of this ship or get us off of it.”

  “Forget that,” Bobbie said. “Let’s go grab that shuttle Mao’s leaving on right now. It’s within range of his station or he wouldn’t be taking it.”

  To her surprise, Cotyar nodded. “I agree with the sergeant. If we plan to leave, the shuttle will be easier to commandeer and control against a hostile crew.”

  Avasarala sat down on her bed with a long exhale that turned into a heavy sigh. “I can’t leave yet. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “The fucking game!” Bobbie yelled.

  “Yes,” Avasarala snapped. “Yes, the fucking game. I’ve been ordered by my superiors to make this trip. If I leave now, I’m out. They’ll be polite and call it a sudden illness or exhaustion, but the excuse they give me will also be the reason I’m not allowed to keep doing my job. I’ll be safe, and I’ll be powerless. As long as I pretend I’m doing what they asked me to, I can keep working. I’m still the assistant undersecretary of executive administration. I still have connections. Influence. If I run now, I lose them. If I lose them, these fuckers might as well shoot me.”

  “But,” Bobbie said.

  “But,” Avasarala repeated. “If I continue to be effective, they’ll find a way to cut me off. Unexplained comm failure, something. Something to keep me off the network. When that happens, I will demand that the captain reroute to the closest station for repairs. If I’m right, he won’t do it.”

  “
Ah,” Bobbie said.

  “Oh,” Cotyar said a moment later.

  “Yes,” Avasarala said. “When that happens, I will declare this an illegal seizure of my person, and you will get me this ship.”

  Chapter Thirty-One: Prax

  With every day that passed, the question came closer: What was the next step? It didn’t feel all that different from those first, terrible days on Ganymede, making lists as a way of telling himself what to do. Only now he wasn’t only looking for Mei. He was looking for Strickland. Or the mysterious woman in the video. Or whoever had built the secret lab. In that sense, he was much better off than he had been before.

  On the other hand, he had been searching Ganymede. Now the field had expanded to include everywhere.

  The lag time to Earth-or Luna, actually, since Persis-Strokes Security Consultants was based in orbit rather than down the planet’s gravity well-was a little over twenty minutes. It made actual conversation essentially impossible, so in practice, the hatchet-faced woman on his screen was making a series of promotional videos more and more specifically targeted to what Prax wanted to hear.

  “We have an intelligence-sharing relationship with Pinkwater, which is presently the security company with the largest physical and operational presence in the outer planets,” she said. “We also have joint-action contracts with Al Abbiq and Star Helix. With those, we can take immediate action either directly or through our partners, on literally any station or planet in the system.”

  Prax nodded to himself. That was exactly what he needed. Someone with eyes everywhere, with contacts everywhere. Someone who could help.

  “I’m attaching a release,” the woman said. “We will need payment for the processing fee, but we won’t be charging your accounts for anything more than that until we’ve agreed on the scope of the investigation you’re willing to be liable for. Once we have that in hand, I will send you a detailed proposal with an itemized spreadsheet and we can decide the scope of work that works best for you.”