One of his professors at the military academy had once said, When there’s no cover, the only sensible thing to do is move through the field of fire as quickly as possible. Singh sat up straight in his chair, doing his best version of standing at attention from the sitting position.
“Sir, yes sir. Captain Iwasa failed to enforce the newly delivered naval code of military conduct, and then when asked a direct question about those guidelines, he lied to Admiral Goyer, his commanding officer, in my presence. I sent a memo to Admiral Goyer that disputed Captain Iwasa’s statements.”
Duarte eyed him speculatively, no hint of anger on his face. That didn’t mean anything. From all accounts, the high consul was not a demonstrative man.
“The revised code that made dereliction of duty an offense punishable by being sent to the Pen?” Admiral Duarte said.
“Yes, sir. Captain Iwasa felt this punishment to be excessive, and spoke openly about it. When two Marines were found sleeping on duty, he gave them administrative punishments instead.”
“So you went over his head to Admiral Goyer.”
“Sir, no sir,” Singh said. He lowered his eyes to look directly into the high consul’s. “I witnessed an officer lying to his superior in response to a direct question about his chain of command. I notified that officer, as was my duty.”
Singh stopped, but Duarte said nothing. Just kept looking at him like he was a particularly interesting bug pinned to a corkboard. Then, as if it were a casual question, “Did you dislike Iwasa?”
“If I may speak frankly, sir,” Singh asked. When Duarte nodded, he continued. “Operating within the code of military conduct is the sworn duty of every officer and enlisted man. It is the instrument by which we are a military and not just a lot of people with spaceships and guns. When an officer shows a disregard for it, they are no longer an officer. When Iwasa demonstrated a repeated and deliberate failure to uphold that code, he was no longer my commanding officer. I merely informed the next person up the chain of command of this fact.”
“Do you feel now, knowing what the consequences to Iwasa were, that you did the right thing?” the admiral asked. His face and voice betrayed no opinion on the topic. He might as well have been asking if Singh wanted sugar.
“Yes, Admiral,” Singh said. “Duty isn’t a buffet where you pick what you want and ignore the rest. Provisional loyalty isn’t loyalty. Captain Iwasa’s duty was to enforce the code of conduct on those in his command. When he lied about failing to do so, it was my duty to notify his commanding officer.”
The high consul nodded. It could have meant anything. “Do you miss him?”
“I do. He was my first commanding officer when I left the academy. He taught me everything I needed to know. I miss him every day,” Singh replied, and realized he wasn’t exaggerating. Iwasa’s fatal flaw had turned out to be his affection for those in his command. It made him an easy man to love.
“Captain,” Duarte said. “I have a new assignment for you.”
Singh stood up, nearly knocking his chair over, and saluted. “Captain Santiago Singh, reporting for duty, High Consul.” He knew it was ridiculous, but something about the entire conversation was surreal and ridiculous, and in the moment it just felt like the right thing to do. Duarte had the grace to treat it with respect.
“The first phase of our project is coming to an end. We are now moving on to phase two. I am giving you command of the Gathering Storm. The details of your orders are in the captain’s safe on that vessel.”
“Thank you, Admiral,” Singh said, his heart pounding in his chest. “It will be my honor to carry those orders out to the letter.”
Duarte turned to look out at the girl playing with her dog. “We’ve been hidden away from the rest of humanity long enough. Time we showed them what we’ve been doing.”
Chapter Four: Holden
Holden had been in his twenties when the Earth Navy kicked him out. He looked back at that version of himself with the kind of fondness and indulgence that people usually extended to puppies that were overly proud of themselves for scaring off a squirrel. He’d signed up to work ice-hauling runs with a sense of turning his back on the whole corrupt, authoritarian, cynical history of his species. Even the name of the company he’d signed on with—Pur ’n’ Kleen—had seemed rich with meaning. A promise of integrity and purity. If it was also a little cartoonish, it hadn’t felt like that at the time.
Back then, the Belt had been the rugged frontier. The UN and the Martian Congressional Republic, the political gods of a solar system more isolated than an ancient island in the middle of the ocean. Belters had been a structural underclass fighting to have people on the inner planets even notice when they were dying.
Now humanity was scattered to more than thirteen hundred new solar systems, and Earth might not even be the most hospitable planet for human life. Anytime a few like-minded people could put together the resources for a colony and the fees for passage through the ring gates, the seeds of a new society could be sown out there among the stars. Even the most populous of the new systems only had eight or ten cities on a whole planet. It was a massive parallel experiment in the possible forms of human collective, a chance to remake the structure of culture itself. But somehow, it all wound up seeming very familiar.
“What makes you people believe you have the right to dictate trade between sovereign states?” Governor Payne Houston of Freehold demanded. “We are a free people. And despite what your masters on Medina may think, we do not answer to you.”
When Houston had come into the meeting, he’d already been pretty worked up, and Holden hadn’t had much opportunity to talk him back down to a meaningful, productive level of raising hell just yet. Instead, he watched and listened and tried to decide whether the governor’s anger was based more in fear, frustration, or narcissism. Fear, Holden could understand. Frustration would have made sense too. All the planets connected by the ring gate had their own biomes, their own biologies, their own unexpected obstacles for someone trying to carve out an environmental niche for humans. Being able to trade for what they needed was quite often the difference between life and death. Anyone who thought they and the people they cared about were being arbitrarily blocked from the things they needed would be scared down to their bones.
The more the governor went on, though, the more it seemed like the guy was just an asshole.
“Freehold is an independent sovereign state,” Houston said, slapping his table with an open palm. “We will engage in trade with willing partners, and we will not pay tribute to parasites like you, sir. We will not.”
The council chamber was built like a courtroom, with Holden and Bobbie sitting at a low table and the governor and his eleven cabinet members above them looking down like a panel of judges. Their table was a dark-stained wood analog. Windows behind Houston and his cohort silhouetted them. Interior design as a political tool. The sidearms that all the Freeholders wore underscored it.
He glanced over at Bobbie. Her expression was calm, but her gaze shifted between the people looking down at them, then to the guards at the door. Calculating who she’d take out first, how she’d disarm them, where to take cover, how to escape. It was something Bobbie did the way other people knitted.
“So here’s the thing,” Holden said as Houston took a breath. “You think I’m here to negotiate with you. I’m not.”
Houston scowled. “There is a right given by God to all free men, and we will have no tyrants or kings—”
“I understand why you’re confused,” Holden said, his voice louder, but still friendly. “You see a gunship coming out. Takes weeks to get here. You think this must be something where we’re expecting a lot of give and take. Light delay would make back and forth awkward, so it makes sense to have someone right here breathing your air, right? You say something, we say something. No lag. But the thing is, the Transport Union has already decided what’s going to happen. We aren’t mediators. We’re not looking for an amicable solution.”
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The woman to Houston’s left put a hand on his arm. Houston leaned back. That was interesting. Holden shifted a little, speaking to the space between the two of them to include her in the conversation.
“We’re all adults here,” Holden said. “We don’t need to pretend with each other. The union sent us here in person because they don’t want to have to do this kind of thing over and over with a bunch of other colonies. They wanted to make sure that everyone else was watching this situation. Especially your friends and trading partners on Auberon.”
“Political theater,” Houston said with contempt in his voice. Which was kind of funny coming from a guy sitting a meter and a half higher than he needed to.
“Sure,” Holden said. “Anyway, here’s the thing. You sent a ship through the gates without authorization. You endangered the other ships using the gates—”
Houston huffed and waved a dismissive hand.
“—and there are consequences for that kind of thing,” Holden went on. “We’re just here to tell you what they are.”
Bobbie shifted her chair, turning it out so her legs were free. It might have been a casual gesture, except that it wasn’t. Holden ran his hands over the top of the table. Whatever it was made from wasn’t wood, but it had the same hardness and subtle texture. Houston and his cabinet were quiet. He had their attention now.
Holden needed to decide what to do with it. Follow instructions or fudge it a little.
“There are two ways this can go,” he said, fudging a little. “The first one is the union cuts off gate access to Freehold for three years.”
“We aren’t self-sustaining yet,” one of the other cabinet members said. “You’re talking about a death sentence for three hundred people.”
“That’s a decision you folks made when you sent your unauthorized ship through the gates,” Holden said. “Or maybe you can find some way to up the timetable. Get a way to feed people sooner. That’s up to you. But for three years, any ship going in or out of the Freehold gate gets killed without warning. No exceptions. Communications in and out of the gate are jammed. You’re on your own. Or, option two is Governor Houston comes with us for trial and probably just a whole lot of jail time.”
Houston snorted. His expression looked like he’d taken a bite of something rotten. The other people on the bench were less demonstrative. Freehold was a colony of pretty good poker faces.
“You forget the third option,” Houston said. “Being the ambassador of tyranny is a job with risks, Captain Holden. Very. Real. Risks.”
“Okay, so let’s do the math on that,” Holden said. “We’re here, and there are a dozen of you up there and four guards at the doors—”
“Six,” Bobbie said.
“Six guards at the doors,” Holden said, not missing a beat. “If you just look at the hundred or so meters around this building, we’re totally outnumbered and outgunned. But if you expand that to half a klick out, I have a gunship. My gunship has PDCs. It has a rail gun. It has twenty torpedoes. Hell, it’s got an Epstein drive that can put out a plume that would glass this whole settlement if we pointed it at the right angle.”
“So force,” Houston said, shaking his head. “Taxation always comes at the end of a gun.”
“I thought of it more as an argument against shooting ambassadors,” Holden said. “We’re leaving now and going back to our ship. Twelve hours after we get there, we’re taking off. If we have Governor Houston here on board, you can start scheduling ships with the union again. If not, we’ll send someone back in three years to check in.”
Holden stood up, Bobbie following his lead so closely that she was on her feet before him. Houston leaned forward, his left hand on the table and his right at his side like it was resting on the butt of a gun. Before the governor could say anything, Holden started for the door. The guards watched him step forward, their eyes cutting from him to Bobbie, then up to Houston. In Holden’s peripheral vision, Bobbie settled a little deeper into her legs, her center of gravity solidifying. She was humming softly, but he couldn’t quite pick out the melody.
As they reached the door, the guards stood aside, and Holden started breathing again. A short corridor to the anteroom, then out to the dirty street. He eased his hand terminal out of his pocket as they walked. Alex picked up the connection as soon as he put in the request.
“How’s it going out there?” Alex asked.
“We’re on our way back now,” Holden said. “Make sure the airlock’s open when we get there.”
“You coming in hot?” Alex asked.
“Maybe,” Holden said.
“Copy that. I’ll have the welcome mat out and the PDCs warmed up.”
“Thank you for that,” Holden said and dropped the connection.
“You really think they’ll be dumb enough to make a play?” Bobbie asked.
“I don’t want to bet my life on other people being smart,” Holden said.
“Voice of experience?”
“I’ve been hurt before.”
Freehold was the name of the town and the planet and the solar system. Holden couldn’t say which had come first. The town nestled in a valley between two ridge mountains. A soft breeze smelled faintly of acetate and mint, by-products of whatever chemistry the local biosphere had figured out for its life cycles.
The sunlight was subtly redder than Holden expected, making the shadows seem blue and giving the sense of permanent twilight. Or maybe dawn. A flock of local bird-analogs flew overhead in a V, their wide, transparent wings buzzing in an eerie harmony. It was a beautiful planet in its way. The gravity was a little less than half a g—more than Mars, less than Earth—and the planetary tilt and spin made the daylight just eight hours and change, the night a little over nine. Two minor moons were tide-locked to a big one almost a third the mass of the planet. The large moon even had a thin atmosphere, but nothing lived there. Not yet, anyway. If Freehold made it another few generations, someone would probably put another little town up there too, if only to get away from the locals. That seemed to be the human pattern—reach out to the unknown and then make it into the sort of thing you left in the first place. In Holden’s experience, humanity’s drive out into the universe was maybe one part hunger for adventure and exploration to two parts just wanting to get the hell away from each other.
It was always strange seeing the Rocinante on her belly. The ship had been designed to rest that way when it came down the gravity well. It didn’t do any damage. It just seemed wrong. The PDCs that studded her side shifted as they got closer, restless and active. The crew airlock stood open, a length of ladder leading down to the ground. Amos sat with his legs dangling over the lip of the open airlock door, a rifle resting across his thighs. Holden was a little surprised that Clarissa wasn’t there with him. Bobbie waved as they drew close, and Amos lifted his hand in response without taking his eyes off the trail behind them.
Holden went up first, then turned, standing between the ladder and Amos while Bobbie clambered up to them. Back toward the town, four people stood in a clump, not coming close, but clearly watching. At this distance, Holden wasn’t sure if they’d been at the meeting or if they were new. Bobbie hit the panel, and the ladder retracted into the ship.
“How’d it go?” Amos asked, levering himself to his feet and stepping back from the outer door.
Bobbie cycled the door closed, raising her voice over the sound of the servos. “Back with no shots fired. I count that as a win.”
The inner door opened, and Amos stowed the rifle in a locker that their weird orientation made look like a drawer. Holden walked along the wall, heading toward the ops deck. Which should have been up, but was, for the moment, to the left.
“I’m going to be glad when we’re out of here,” he said.
Amos smiled, the expression amiable and empty as ever, and followed after. Naomi and Alex were sitting in their crash couches, playing a complex combat-simulation game that they’d picked up in the last couple of years. Holden was
reassured to see an exterior feed of the path to the town on both of their screens. Whatever else they were doing to pass the time, everyone was keeping their eyes on the town. Just in case.
“Hey, there, Captain,” Alex said, his drawl a little thicker than usual. “We ready to pull up stakes and mosey on out of here?”
“We’re waiting twelve hours,” Holden said, sitting in his couch. The gimbals didn’t shift. The fixed gravity of the planet meant all the couches were locked in place, their workstations rotated to the correct orientation. Naomi twisted to look at him.
“Twelve hours? For what?”
“I may have renegotiated the deal a little,” he said. “I said if they turned over the governor to us for trial, there wouldn’t be a quarantine.”
Naomi lifted an eyebrow. “Does the union know about this?”
“I figured I’d send them a message when I got back here.”
“You think Drummer’ll be okay with it?”
“Cap changing the rules?” Amos said with a shrug. “That’s just a day that ends in y far as I can tell. If she didn’t leave some wiggle room for it, that’s her mistake.”
“I’m not going to hold the whole colony responsible for what a few administrators did,” Holden said. “It’s collective punishment, and it’s not the kind of thing that the good guys should do.”
“At least not without twelve hours’ warning?” Naomi said.
Holden shrugged. “This is the window they have to make a choice. If they have the chance to do something different and they still double down, I feel a little better about closing them off. At least we’ll have tried.”
“‘A little better’ meaning ‘not totally guilt-ridden.’”
“Not totally,” Holden said, lying back. The gel was cool against the back of his head and shoulders. “Still don’t love the whole cutting-people-off-from-supplies-they-need thing.”