Caliban;s war e-2

by James S. A. Corey

  “You guys can take credit for it,” Holden said with a laugh. “I had a Martian Marine gunnery sergeant doing the shooting.”

  There was a pause; then Tseng said, “When this is over, I’d like to buy you a drink and talk about how a dishonorably discharged UN naval officer winds up flying a stolen MCRN torpedo bomber crewed by Martian military personnel and a senior UN politician.”

  “It’s a damn good story,” Holden replied. “Say, speaking of Martians, I’d like to get one of mine a present. Do you carry a Marine detachment on the Cydonia?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Got any Force Recon Marines in that group?”

  “Yes. Again, why?”

  “There’s some equipment we’ll need that you’ve probably got in storage.”

  He told Captain Tseng what he was looking for, and Tseng said, “I’ll have the Ride give you one when we do the transfer.”

  The MCRN Sally Ride looked like she’d come through the fight without a scratch. When she pulled up next to the Rocinante, her dark flank looked as smooth and unmarred as a pool of black water. After Alex and the Ride’s pilot had perfectly matched course, a large hatch in her side opened up, dim red emergency lighting spilling out. Two magnetic grapples were fired across, connecting the ships with ten meters of cable.

  “This is Lieutenant Graves,” a girlish voice said. “Prepared to begin cargo transfer on your order.”

  Lieutenant Graves sounded like she should still be in high school, but Holden said, “Go ahead. We’re ready on this end.”

  Switching channels to Naomi, he said, “Pop the hatches, new fish coming aboard.”

  A few meters from where he was standing, a large hatch that was normally flush with the hull opened up into a meter-wide and eight-meter-long gap in the skin of the ship. A complicated-looking system of rails and gears ran down the sides of the opening. At the bottom sat three of the Rocinante’s remaining ship-to-ship torpedoes.

  “Seven in here,” Holden said, pointing at the open torpedo rack. “And seven on the other side.”

  “Roger,” said Graves. The long, narrow white shape of a plasma torpedo appeared in the Ride’s open hatch, with sailors wearing EVA packs flanking it. With gentle puffs of compressed nitrogen, they flew the torpedo down along the two guidelines to the Roci; then, with the help of Bobbie’s suit-augmented strength, they maneuvered it into position at the top of the rack.

  “First one in position,” Bobbie said.

  “Got it,” Naomi replied, and a second later the motorized rails came to life and grabbed the torpedo, pulling it down into the magazine.

  Holden glanced at the elapsed time on his HUD. Getting all fourteen torpedoes transferred and loaded would take hours.

  “Amos,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “Just finishing that last patch down by the machine shop,” the mechanic replied. “You need something?”

  “When you’re done with that, grab a couple EVA packs. You and I will go get the other supplies. Should be three crates of PDC rounds and some sundries.”

  “I’m done now. Naomi, pop the cargo door for me, wouldja?”

  Holden watched Bobbie and the Ride’s sailors work, and they had two more torpedoes loaded by the time Amos arrived with two EVA packs.

  “Lieutenant Graves, two crew from the Rocinante requesting permission to board and pick up the rest of the supplies.”

  “Granted, Rocinante.”

  The PDC rounds came in crates of twenty thousand and at full gravity would have weighed more than five hundred kilos. In the microgravity of the coasting ships, two people with EVA packs could move one if they were willing to take their time and recharge their compressed nitrogen after every trip. Without a salvage mech or a small work shuttle available, there wasn’t any other choice.

  Each crate had to be pushed slowly toward the aft of the Rocinante through a twenty-second-long “burn” from Amos’ EVA pack. When it got to the aft of the ship next to the cargo bay door, Holden would do an equally long thrust from his pack to bring the crate to a stop. Then the two of them would maneuver it inside and lock it to a bulkhead. The process was long, and at least for Holden, each trip had one heart-racing moment when he was firing the brakes to stop the crate. Every time, he had a brief, panicky vision of his EVA pack failing and him and the crate of ammo drifting off into space while Amos watched. It was ridiculous, of course. Amos could easily grab a fresh EVA pack and come get him, or the ship could drop back, or the Ride could send a rescue shuttle, or any other of a huge number of ways he’d be quickly saved.

  But humans hadn’t been living and working in space nearly long enough for the primitive part of the brain not to say, I’ll fall. I’ll fall forever.

  The people from the Ride finished bringing over torpedoes about the time Holden and Amos had locked the last crate of PDC ammo into the cargo bay.

  “Naomi,” Holden called on the open channel. “We all green?”

  “Everything looks good from here. All of the new torpedoes are talking to the Roci and reporting operational.”

  “Outstanding. Amos and I are coming in through the cargo bay airlock. Go ahead and seal the bay up. Alex, as soon as Naomi gives the all clear, let the Cydonia know we can do a fast burn to Io at the captain’s earliest pleasure.”

  While the crew prepped the ship for the trip to Io, Holden and Amos stripped off their gear and stowed it in the machine shop. Six gray disks, three on each bulkhead across the compartment from each other, showed where the rounds had ripped through this part of the ship.

  “What’s in that other box the Martians gave you?” Amos asked, pulling off one oversized magnetic boot.

  “A present for Bobbie,” Holden said. “I’d like to keep it quiet until I give it to her, okay?”

  “Sure, no problem, Cap’n. If it turns out to be a dozen long-stemmed roses, I don’t want to be there when Naomi finds out. Plus, you know, Alex…”

  “No, it’s a lot more practical than roses-” Holden started, then rewound the conversation in his head. “Alex? What about Alex?”

  Amos shrugged with his hands, like a Belter. “I think he might have a wee bit of a thing for our ample marine.”

  “You’re kidding.” Holden couldn’t picture it. It wasn’t as though Bobbie were unattractive. Far from it. But she was also very big, and quite intimidating. And Alex was such a quiet and mild guy. Sure, they were both Martians, and no matter how cosmopolitan a person got, there was something comforting in reminders of home. Maybe just being the only two Martians on the ship was enough. But Alex was pushing fifty, balding without complaint, and wore his love handles with the quiet resignation of a middle-aged man. Sergeant Draper couldn’t be more than thirty and looked like a comic book illustration, complete with muscles on her muscles. Unable to stop himself, his mind began trying to figure out how the two of them would fit together. It didn’t work.

  “Wow,” was all he could say. “Is it mutual?”

  “No idea,” Amos replied with another shrug. “The sergeant ain’t easy to read. But I don’t think she’d do him any deliberate harm, if that’s what you’re asking. Not that, you know, we could stop her.”

  “Scares you too, does she?”

  “Look,” Amos said with a grin. “When it comes to scrapes, I’m what you might call a talented amateur. But I’ve gotten a good look at that woman in and out of that fancy mechanical shell she wears. She’s a pro. We’re not playing the same sport.”

  Gravity began to return in the Rocinante. Alex was bringing up the drive, which meant they were beginning their run to Io. Holden stood up and took a moment to let his joints adjust to the sensation of weight again. He clapped Amos on the back and said, “Well, you’ve got a full load of torpedoes and bullets, three Martian warships trailing you, one angry old lady in tea withdrawal, and a Martian Marine who could probably kill you with your own teeth. What do you do?”

  “You tell me, Captain.”

  “You find someone else for them to fig
ht.”

  Chapter Forty-Five: Avasarala

  As I see it, sir,” Avasarala said, “the die is already cast. We effectively have two courses of policy already in play. The question now is how we move forward. So far I’ve been able to keep the information from getting out, but once it does, it will be devastating. And since it is all but certain that the artifact is able to communicate, the chances of an effective military usage of these protomolecule-human hybrids is essentially nil. If we use this weapon, we will be creating a second Venus, committing genocide, and removing any moral argument against using weapons like accelerated asteroids against the Earth itself.

  “I hope you will excuse the language, sir, but this was a cock-up from the start. The damage done to human security is literally unimaginable. It seems clear at this point that the protomolecule project under way on Venus is aware of events in the Jovian system. It’s plausible that the samples out here have the information gained from the destruction of the Arboghast. To say that makes our position problematic is to radically understate the case.

  “If it had gone through the appropriate channels, we would not be in this position. As it stands, I have done all that is presently within my capabilities, given my situation. The coalition I have built between Mars, elements of the Belt, and the legitimate government of Earth are ready to take action. But the United Nations must distance itself from this plan and move immediately to isolate and defang the faction within the government that has been doing this weasel shit. Again, excuse the language.

  “I have sent copies of the data included here to Admirals Souther and Leniki as well as to my team on the Venus problem. They are, of course, at your disposal to answer any questions if I am not available.

  “I’m very sorry to put you in the position, sir, but you are going to have to choose sides in this. And quickly. Events out here have developed a momentum of their own. If you’re going to be on the right side of history on this, you must move now.”

  If there’s any history to be on the right side of, she thought. She tried to come up with something else that she could say, some other argument that would penetrate the layers of old-growth wood that surrounded the secretary-general’s brain. There weren’t any, and repeating herself in simple storybook rhyme would probably come off as condescending. She stopped the recording, cut off the last few seconds of her looking into the camera in despair, and sent it off with every high-priority flag there was and diplomatic encryption.

  So this was what it came to. All of human civilization, everything it had managed, from the first cave painting to crawling up the gravity well and pressing out into the antechamber of the stars, came down to whether a man whose greatest claim to fame was that he’d been thrown in prison for writing bad poetry had the balls to back down Errinwright. The ship corrected under her, shifting like an elevator suddenly slipping its tracks. She tried to sit up, but the gimbaled couch moved. God, but she hated space travel.

  “Is it going to work?”

  The botanist stood in her doorway. He was stick-thin, with a slightly larger head than looked right. He wasn’t built as awkwardly as a Belter, but he couldn’t be mistaken for someone who’d grown to maturity living at a full gravity. Standing in her doorway, trying to find something to do with his hands, he looked awkward and lost and slightly otherworldly.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “If I were there, it would happen the way I want it to happen. I could go squeeze a few testicles until they saw it my way. From here? Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “You can talk to anyone from here, though, can’t you?”

  “It isn’t the same.”

  He nodded, his attention shifting inward. Despite the differences in skin color and build, the man suddenly reminded her of Michael-Jon. He had the same sense of being a half step back from everything. Only, Michael-Jon’s detachment verged on autism, and Praxidike Meng was a little more visibly interested in the people around him.

  “They got to Nicola,” he said. “They made her say those things about me. About Mei.”

  “Of course they did. That’s what they do. And if they wanted to, they’d have papers and police reports to back it all up, backdated and put in the databases of everywhere you ever lived.”

  “I hate it that people think I did that.”

  Avasarala nodded, then shrugged.

  “Reputation never has very much to do with reality,” she said. “I could name half a dozen paragons of virtue that are horrible, small-souled, evil people. And some of the best men I know, you’d walk out of the room if you heard their names. No one on the screen is who they are when you breathe their air.”

  “Holden,” Prax said.

  “Well. He’s the exception,” she said.

  The botanist looked down and then up again. His expression was almost apologetic.

  “Mei’s probably dead,” he said.

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “It’s been a long time. Even if they had her medicine, they’ve probably turned her into one of these… things.”

  “You still don’t believe that,” she said. The botanist leaned forward, frowning like she’d given him a problem he couldn’t immediately solve. “Tell me it’s all right to bomb Io. I can have thirty nuclear warheads fired now. Turn off the engines, let them fly ballistic. They won’t all get through, but some will. Say the word now, and I can have Io reduced to slag before we even get there.”

  “You’re right,” Prax said. And then, a moment later: “Why aren’t you doing that?”

  “Do you want the real reason, or my justification?”

  “Both?”

  “I justify it this way,” she said. “I don’t know what is in that lab. I can’t assume that the monsters are only there, and if I destroy the place, I might be slagging the records that will let me find the missing ones. I don’t know everyone involved in this, and I don’t have proof against some of the ones I do know. It may be down there. I’ll go, I’ll find out, and then I will reduce the lab to radioactive glass afterward.”

  “Those are good reasons.”

  “They’re good justifications. I find them very convincing.”

  “But the reason is that Mei might still be alive.”

  “I don’t kill children,” she said. “Not even when it’s the right thing to do. You would be surprised how often it’s hurt my political career. People used to think I was weak until I found the trick.”

  “The trick.”

  “If you can make them blush, they think you’re a hard-ass,” she said. “My husband calls it the mask.”

  “Oh,” Prax said. “Thank you.”

  Waiting was worse than the fear of battle. Her body wanted to move, to get away from her chair and walk through the familiar halls. The back of her mind shouted for action, movement, confrontation. She paced the ship top to bottom and back again. Her mind went through trivia about all the people she met in the halls, the small detritus from the intelligence reports she’d read. The mechanic, Amos Burton. Implicated in several murders, indicted, never tried. Took an elective vasectomy the day he was legally old enough to do so. Naomi Nagata, the engineer. Two master’s degrees. Offered full-ride scholarship for a PhD on Ceres Station and turned it down. Alex Kamal, pilot. Seven drunk and disorderlies when he was in his early twenties. Had a son on Mars he still didn’t know about. James Holden, the man without secrets. The holy fool who’d dragged the solar system into war and seemed utterly blind to the damage he caused. An idealist. The most dangerous kind of man there was. And a good man too.

  She wondered whether any of it mattered.

  The only real player near enough to talk to without lag turning the conversation utterly epistolary was Souther, and as he was still putatively on the same side as Nguyen and preparing to face battle with the ships protecting her, the opportunities were few and far between.

  “Have you heard anything?” he asked from her terminal.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t know what’s taking the fucking b
obble-head so long.”

  “You’re asking him to turn his back on the man he’s trusted the most.”

  “And how fucking long does that take? When I did it, it was over in maybe five minutes. ‘Soren,’ I said. ‘You’re a douche bag. Get out of my sight.’ It isn’t harder than that.”

  “And if he doesn’t come through?” Souther asked.

  She sighed.

  “Then I call you back and try talking you into going rogue.”

  “Ah,” Souther said with a half smile. “And how do you see that going?”

  “I don’t like my chances, but you never know. I can be damned persuasive.”

  An alert popped up. A new message. From Arjun.

  “I have to go,” she said. “Keep an ear to the ground or whatever the hell you do out here where the ground doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Be safe, Chrisjen,” Souther said, and vanished into the green background of a dead connection.

  Around her, the galley was empty. Still, someone might come in. She lifted the hem of her sari and walked to her little room, sliding her door closed before she gave her terminal permission to open the file.

  Arjun was at his desk, his formal clothes on but undone at the neck and sleeves. He looked like a man just returned from a bad party. The sunlight streamed in behind him. Afternoon, then. It had been afternoon when he’d sent it. And it might still be. She touched the screen, her fingertips tracing the line of his shoulder.

  “So I understand from your message that you may not come home,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to the screen.

  “As you imagine, I find the thought… distressing,” he said, and then a smile split his face, dancing in eyes she now saw were red with tears. “But what can I do about it? I teach poetry to graduate students. I have no power in this world. That has always been you. And so I want to offer you this. Don’t think about me. Don’t take your mind from what you’re doing on my account. And if you don’t…”