Caliban's War: Book Two of the Expanse series (48 page)

“Naomi’s staying with me right now,” Sam said as if they’d been talking about that all along. Holden felt his face go still and tried to fight against it, forcing himself to smile.

“Oh. Cool.”

“She won’t talk about it, but if I find out you did something shitty to her, I’m using this on your dick,” she said, holding up a torque wrench. Alex laughed nervously for a second, then trailed off and just looked uncomfortable.

“I consider myself fairly warned,” Holden said. “How is she?”

“Quiet,” Sam said. “Okay, got what I need. Gonna scoot now and get fabrication to work on cutting this bulkhead patch. See you boys around.”

“Bye, Sam,” Alex said, watching her ride the ladder-lift until the pressure door closed behind her. “I’m twenty years too old, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got the wrong plumbin’, but I like that gal.”

“You and Amos just trade this crush back and forth?” Holden said. “Or should I be worried about you two doing pistols at dawn over her?”

“My love is a pure love,” Alex said with a grin. “I wouldn’t sully it by actually, you know, doin’ anything about it.”

“The kind poets write about, then.”

“So,” Alex said, leaning against a wall and looking at his nails. “Let’s talk about the XO situation.”

“Let’s not.”

“Oh, let’s do,” Alex said, then took a step forward and crossed his arms like a man who was not going to give any ground. “I’ve been flyin’ this boat solo for over a year now. That only works because Naomi is a brilliant ops officer and takes up a whole lotta slack. If we lose her, we don’t fly. And that’s a fact.”

Holden dropped the hand terminal he’d been using into his pocket and slumped back against the reactor shielding.

“I know. I
know
. I never thought she’d actually do this.”

“Leave,” Alex said.

“Yeah.”

“We’ve never talked about pay,” Alex said. “We don’t get salaries.”

“Pay?” Holden frowned at Alex and banged out a quick drumbeat on the reactor behind him. It echoed like a metal tomb. “Every dime that Fred’s given us that hasn’t gone to pay for operating the ship is in the account I set up. If you need some of it, twenty-five percent of that money belongs to you.”

Alex shook his head and waved his hands. “No, don’t get me wrong. I don’t need money, and I don’t think you’re stealin’ from us. Just pointing out that we never talked about pay.”

“So?”

“So that means we aren’t a normal crew. We aren’t workin’ the ship for money, or because a government drafted us. We’re here because we want to be. That’s all you’ve got over us. We believe in the cause, and we want to be part of what you’re doing. The minute we lose that, we might as well take a real payin’ job.”

“But Naomi—” Holden started.

“Was your
girlfriend,”
Alex said with a laugh. “Damn, Jim, have you
seen
her? She can get another boyfriend. In fact, you mind if I—”

“I take your point. I hear you. I fucked it up, it’s my fault. I know that. All of it. I need to go see Fred and start thinking about how to put it all back together again.”

“Unless Fred actually
did
do it.”

“Yeah. Unless that.”

“I’ve been wondering when you’d finally drop by,” Fred Johnson said as Holden walked through his office door. Fred was looking both better and worse than when Holden had first met him a year earlier. Better because the Outer Planets Alliance, the quasi government that Fred was the titular head of, was no longer a terrorist organization, but a de facto government that could sit at the diplomatic table with the inner planets. And Fred had taken to the role of administrator with a relish he must not have felt for being a freedom fighter. It was visible in the relaxed set of his shoulders, and the half smile that had become his default expression.

And worse because the last year and all the pressures of governance had aged him. His hair was both thinner and whiter, his neck a confusion of loose flesh and old, ropy muscle. His eyes had permanent bags under them now. His coffee-colored skin didn’t show many wrinkles, but it had a tinge of gray to it.

But the smile he gave Holden was genuine, and he came around the desk to shake his hand and guide him to a chair.

“I read your report on Ganymede,” Fred said. “Talk to me about it. Impressions on the ground.”

“Fred,” Holden said. “There’s something else.”

Fred nodded to him as he moved back around his desk and sat down. “Go on.”

Holden started to speak, then stopped. Fred was staring at him. His expression hadn’t changed, but his eyes were sharper, more focused. Holden felt a sudden and irrational fear that Fred already knew everything he was about to say.

The truth was Holden had always been afraid of Fred. There was a duality to the man that left him on edge. Fred had reached
out to the crew of the
Rocinante
at the exact moment they’d needed help the most. He’d become their patron, their safe harbor against the myriad enemies they’d gathered over the last year. And yet Holden couldn’t forget that this was still Colonel Frederick Lucius Johnson, the Butcher of Anderson Station. A man who had spent the last decade helping to organize and run the Outer Planets Alliance, an organization that was capable of murder and terrorism to further its goals. Fred had almost certainly ordered some of those murders personally. It was entirely possible that the OPA leader version of Fred had killed more people than even the United Nations Marine colonel version of Fred had.

Would he really balk at using the protomolecule to further his agenda?

Maybe. Maybe that would be going too far. And he’d been a friend, and he deserved the chance to defend himself.

“Fred, I—” Holden started, then stopped.

Fred nodded again, the smile slipping off his face and being replaced by a slight frown. “I’m not going to like this.” It was a statement of fact.

Holden grabbed the arms of the office chair and pushed himself to his feet. He shoved more violently than he wanted to and, in the low .3 g of station spin, flew off his feet for a second. Fred chuckled and the frown shifted back into a grin.

And that was it. The grin and the laugh broke the fear and turned it into anger. When Holden settled back to his feet, he leaned forward and slammed both palms onto Fred’s desk.

“You,” he said, “don’t get to laugh. Not until I know for sure it wasn’t all your fault. If you can do what I think you might have done and still laugh, I will shoot you right here and now.”

Fred’s smile didn’t change, but something in his eyes did. He wasn’t used to being threatened, but it wasn’t new territory either.

“What I might have done,” Fred said, not turning it into a question, just repeating it back.

“It’s the protomolecule, Fred. That’s what’s happening on Ganymede. A lab with kids as experiments and that black webbing shit
and a monster that almost killed my ship. That’s my fucking
impression on the ground
. Someone has been playing with the bug, and it might be loose, and the inner planets are shooting each other to shit in orbit around it.”

“You think I did this,” Fred said. Again, just a flat statement of fact.

“We
threw this shit into Venus,”
Holden yelled.
“I gave
you
the only sample
. And suddenly Ganymede, breadbasket of your future empire, the one place the inner navies won’t cede control of, gets a fucking outbreak?”

Fred let the silence answer for a beat.

“Are you asking me if I’m using the protomolecule to drive the inner planets troops off Ganymede, and strengthen my control of the outer planets?”

Fred’s quiet tone made Holden realize how loud he’d gotten, and he took a moment to take several deep breaths. When his pulse had slowed a bit, he said, “Yes. Pretty much exactly that.”

“You,” Fred said with a broad smile that did not extend to his eyes, “do not get to ask me that.”

“What?”

“In case you’ve forgotten, you are an employee of this organization.” Fred stood up, stretching to his full height, a dozen centimeters taller than Holden. His smile didn’t change, but his body shifted and sort of spread out. Suddenly he looked very large. Holden took a step back before he could stop himself.

“I,” Fred continued, “owe you nothing but the terms of our latest contract. Have you completely lost your mind, boy? Charging in here? Shouting at me?
Demanding
answers?”

“No one else could have—” Holden started, but Fred ignored him.

“You gave me the only sample we knew of. But you assume that if you don’t know about it, it doesn’t exist. I’ve been putting up with your bullshit for over a year now,” Fred said. “This idea you have that the universe owes you answers. This righteous indignation you wield like a club at everyone around you. But I don’t
have
to put up with your shit.

“Do you know why that is?”

Holden shook his head, afraid if he spoke, it might come out as a squeak.

“It’s because,” Fred said, “I’m
the fucking boss
. I run this outfit. You’ve been pretty useful, and you might be again in the future. But I have enough shit to deal with right now without you starting another one of your crusades at my expense.”

“So,” Holden said, letting the word drag to two syllables.

“So you’re fired. This was your last contract with me. I’ll finish fixing the
Roci
and I’ll pay you, because I don’t break a deal. But I think we’ve finally built enough ships to start policing our own sky without your help, and even if we haven’t, I’m just about done with you.”

“Fired,” Holden said.

“Now get the hell out of my office before I decide to take the
Roci
too. She’s got more Tycho parts on her now than originals. I think I might be able to make a good argument I own that ship.”

Holden backed up toward the door, wondering how serious that threat might actually be. Fred watched him go but didn’t move. When he reached the door, Fred said, “It wasn’t me.”

Their gazes met for a long, breathless moment.

“It wasn’t me,” Fred repeated.

Holden said, “Okay,” and backed out the door.

When the door slid shut and blocked Fred from view, Holden let out a long sigh and collapsed against the corridor wall. Fred was right about one thing: He’d been excusing himself with his fear for far too long.
This righteous indignation you wield like a club at everyone around you
. He’d seen humanity almost end due to its own stupidity. It had left him shaken to the core. He’d been running on fear and adrenaline ever since Eros.

But it wasn’t an excuse. Not anymore.

He started to pull out his terminal to call Naomi when it hit him like a light turning on.
I’m fired
.

He’d been on an exclusive contract with Fred for over a year. Tycho Station was their home base. Sam had spent almost as much
time tuning and patching the
Roci
as Amos had. That was all gone. They’d have to find their own jobs, find their own ports, buy their own repairs. No more patron to hold his hand. For the first time in a very long time, Holden was a real independent captain. He’d need to earn his way by keeping the ship in the air and the crew fed. He paused for a moment, letting that sink in.

It felt great.

A
mos sat forward in his chair. The sheer physical mass of the man made the room seem smaller, and the smell of alcohol and old smoke came off him like heat from a fire. His expression couldn’t have been more gentle.

“I don’t know what to do,” Prax said. “I just don’t know what to do. This is all my fault. Nicola was just … she was so lost and so angry. Every day, I woke up and I looked over at her, and all I saw was how trapped she was. And I knew Mei was going to grow up with that. With trying to get her mommy to love her when all Nici wanted to do was be somewhere else. And I thought it would be better. When she started talking about going, I was ready for her to do it, you know? And when Mei … when I had to tell Mei that …”

Prax dropped his head into his hands, rocking slowly back and forth.

“You gonna sick up again, Doc?”

“No. I’m fine. If I’d been a better father to her, she’d still be here.”