Her expression was intense, focused. She could have been thinking her way through a hard problem or restraining herself from a killing rage. The two looked similar with her.
“Hey,” Holden said. “What’s on your mind?”
Her focus shifted to him, and she nodded like he’d said something worth agreeing to. “So are you here to help this or hinder it?”
“Well,” Holden said. “I would have said help until you asked me that, but now it’s feeling like a trick question. Am I missing something?”
Bobbie put out her hand palm first, like she was telling someone to slow down, but it seemed intended as much for herself as for him. “I’m thinking this through while I’m saying it, so just …”
“Got it,” Holden said. “Whatever it is, take a swing at it. We’ll work it out.”
“Other people? People like me? We can show up and maybe not have an effect. That’s not how it is with you. Either you’re helping or you’re holding things back. There’s no middle setting.”
A little discomfort tugged at him, and he crossed his arms. “Is this … Bobbie, is this about you being the captain of the Roci? Because that hasn’t changed. Naomi and I—”
“Yes,” Bobbie said. “It’s exactly like that. Look, you’ve seen all those people who keep interrupting the meetings, right? They’re all just swinging by to be in the room for a minute, even if it’s something they could have done on hand terminals. Or not done at all.”
“I know the ones you mean,” Holden said. “But that’s not me.”
“That’s absolutely you. James Holden, who led the fight against the Free Navy. And stopped Protogen from killing Mars. And captained the first ship through the ring gates. Brought people together on Ilus in the face of fifty different kinds of shit falling apart. You’re in the center of everything just by walking into the room.”
“Not because I like it,” Holden said.
“When you showed up, Amos and I were getting ready to fight our way into all this. But then there you were, and you got recognized, and now we’re all sitting in the absolute center of the conspiracy. Even if I’d pushed my way into this, there would have been days, maybe weeks, of proving to Saba and his people that they could trust me. You got that for free, and the rest of us drafted off you. I came in as the captain of the Rocinante, and it wasn’t enough to be taken as seriously as you got for free.”
Holden wanted to object. He could feel the denials welling up in his chest, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to say them out loud. Bobbie was right.
“I have an idea how we gather intelligence on the Laconians,” Bobbie said. “It’s the first step that we need. But we have to move quickly. Saba and his people? They think this is like going back to before there were gates. No matter what they say, they think this is going to sustain and become a way of life for them the way it used to be. Did you notice how they’ve started calling the Laconians ‘inners’?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“But you were right in there. We’re looking at a really small window. So if we’re going to do what I think we really need to do? It has to be your idea.”
“Okay, little lost here. Which idea of mine are we talking about?”
“I’m talking about you taking the operation I have in mind, waltzing back in there, and presenting it like you just came up with it yourself.”
Holden didn’t know whether to laugh or scowl, so he did a little bit of both.
“No, I’m not going to do that,” Holden said. “You say what you need to say, and I’ll back you. But I’m not going to start taking credit for your proposals.”
“If it’s my idea, it’ll be like when we showed up,” Bobbie said. “I’ll have to fight to prove it. If you do it, they’ll just listen. Coming from you will give it weight that just being the right damn thing won’t.”
A clank came from behind them, a hatch being opened or a tool being dropped. He didn’t turn to look. The unease he’d felt before shifted, changed its nature, but it didn’t go away.
“I don’t like that,” Holden said. “I hate the idea that you’re being treated as anything less than me. It’s bullshit. I’ll tell Saba that—”
“You remember the last time we went out to karaoke with Giselle? Right before Alex and she called it quits?”
Holden blinked at the non sequitur. “Yeah, of course. That was a terrible night.”
“You remember the song she sang? ‘Rapid Heartbeats’?”
“Sure,” Holden said.
“Who was the singer? On the original, I mean. Who sings that one?”
“Um,” Holden said. “The band is Kurtadam. The singer’s Peter something? The guy with the one steel eye.”
“Pítr Vukcevich,” Bobbie said, nodding. “Now, who plays bass?”
Holden laughed, and then a moment later, sobered.
“Right?” Bobbie said.
“Yeah, okay. I got it. I don’t like it, though. I’m not more significant than anyone else. Acting like everything important has to go through me or else it’s not legitimate … I don’t know. It feels like I’m being an asshole.”
Bobbie put a hand on his shoulder. Her eyes were calm, and her smile was a straight line. “If it helps at all, I’m thinking about all of this as me using you as a tool to achieve my own ends. It makes me less angry that way.”
They talked for another twenty minutes, Bobbie laying out her plan in enough detail that he could introduce it. He asked a few questions, but he didn’t need many. The sense of working together with her had a weird nostalgia. As if the gap between arriving at Medina and now had been years instead of days.
Large, sudden events did that. They changed the way time passed. Not technically, maybe, but as a measure of who he and Bobbie were to each other. And to themselves. A month before, Laconia had been one background issue among thousands. Now it was the environment. A truth as profound as the EMC or the union. More, maybe.
Back in the meeting room, the food had arrived. Recycled wheatpaper bowls filled with rice noodles and chopped mushroom bacon and fish sauce. It smelled better than it should have. Bobbie went to sit by Alex and Clarissa, folding herself gracefully down beside them. Holden felt the impulse to go sit there too, to be part of the family again. And he could have, except he also sort of couldn’t. Would he be doing it to help or to hinder? Because he couldn’t do both. For the first time, he felt what stepping back from the Roci had cost him.
And still, he couldn’t regret it.
“All well?” Naomi asked, snaking her arm around his waist. “You look thoughtful. Are there thoughts?”
“There were a few, yeah,” he said. “Mostly that I’m a tool, but in a useful way.”
Naomi sat with that for a moment. Saba caught sight of them and waved them over. Two bowls with forks and bottles of beer were waiting on the low table for them.
“Should I be offended on your behalf?” Naomi said.
“Nope,” Holden said. “You should come eat.”
Saba leaned forward as Holden sat. “This is good. One thing we can say about Medina, the ingredients are always fresh.”
“True,” Holden said. “But they’re usually still fungus and yeast. Vat-grown bacon is … well, it’s just its own thing. So, Saba, I had an idea I want to talk to you about …”
Chapter Twenty-Two: Bobbie
We can’t place a physical monitor on the data connection to the Laconian ship,” Holden said, just the way she’d told him to. Saba had chosen the people to be briefed, selecting them by some means Bobbie didn’t know and didn’t care to guess. They were watching Holden intently. It felt weird that the role of the great James Holden, come to lead them to glory, was being played by the Holden she knew. Apart from the coincidence of naming, the two didn’t have much in common. “We need to passively monitor incoming and outgoing signal without detection. Mirror the data.”
“For for?” a tall, stick figure of a man said. His name was Ramez and he was in Medina Station’s technical support department. According to Saba, he had the run of the ship, their insider on this mission. Bobbie didn’t like him. “Alles la thick with encrypt. Better off reading their coffee grounds.”
“Decrypting it is a later problem,” Holden said, not giving too many details of the plan away to any one person. Bobbie had a decent idea, but she was still working out the details of how to get the decryption codes. The fewer people knew the details, the less likely it was to get out before she was ready. “Right now we just want to get as much as we can so that we can decrypt it when the time comes. The important aspect right now is that we get the signal without anyone knowing it’s happening.”
“Gotta look inside the pipe without touching the pipe. Que pensa?”
“I’ve brought along my team leader and technical expert to explain the how of the thing,” Holden said, nodding to Bobbie and Clarissa. “Captain Draper?”
Bobbie gave him a wink only he could see. Say what you would about the man, he did take to the role of meaningless figurehead with panache.
Bobbie walked to the front of the room and pulled up a volumetric map of Medina on the wall display behind her.
“The Nauvoo was intended as a generation ship,” she started.