They walked away together, heads bent in conference. Behind a spray of ivy, Michio saw a tall, dark-skinned woman bent a degree forward as she laughed with the Martian prime minister. Naomi Nagata. She looked … normal? Unremarkable. Michio knew her from before, and still might not have known her if they’d passed in a common corridor or shared a tube ride. But this was the woman Marco had abducted before his attack on Earth, just so he could watch her look upon his power. The woman who’d turned away from him when they’d both been little more than children themselves. Michio would never know how much of the decision to take the last remnant of the Free Navy to Medina had been for cold tactical reasons and how much was because Naomi Nagata had been there. It was so petty and so small, and she had no trouble believing it. When you play at our level, grudges cost lives.
Carlos Walker strolled through an archway, caught her eye, and smiled. She’d known him mostly by reputation back when she’d been part of Fred fucking Johnson’s OPA. Carlos Walker, with his playboy’s manners and the weird religious streak, the sincerity of which no one seemed able to determine. He plucked two fresh flutes of champagne from a passing tray and made his way toward her.
“You look thoughtful, Captain Pa.”
“Do I?” she said, taking the glass. “Well, then I suppose it must be true. And you? How does it feel being the unelected representative of the Belt?”
Walker smiled. “I could ask you the same.”
She laughed. “I’m not representing anyone but myself.”
“Really? Then what are you doing here?”
Michio blinked, but didn’t know how to respond.
A little less than an hour later, a soft chiming and a discrete rush of personal assistants and aides announced the actual meeting. Pa let herself be carried along with a growing sense of displacement. The meeting room was smaller than she’d expected, and arranged in a rough triangle. Avasarala, a thin-faced man in a formal jacket, and two men in military uniforms sat at one corner. The Martian prime minister—Emily Richards—sat at another with half a dozen people in suits fluttering around her like they were moths and she was an open flame. And at the third, Carlos Walker, Naomi Nagata, James Holden, and Michio herself.
A second rank of chairs held dozens of people whose roles Michio didn’t know. Senators. Businessmen. Bankers. Soldiers. It occurred to her that if she’d had a bomb, she could probably have crippled what was left of humanity’s major governments by taking out this one room.
“Well,” Avasarala said, her voice clear as a Klaxon, “I’d like to start by thanking all of you again for being here. I’m not fond of this shit, but the optics are good. And we do have some things to discuss. I have a proposal …” She paused to tap a command into her hand terminal, and Michio’s chimed in response, as did everyone else’s in the room. “ … a proposal about the architecture by which we try to unfuck ourselves. It’s preliminary, but we have to start somewhere.”
Michio opened the document. It was over a thousand pages long, with the first ten a tightly written table of contents with notations and subsections for every chapter. She felt a little wave of vertigo.
“The overview looks like this,” Avasarala said. “We have a list of problems as long as our arms, but Captain Holden here thinks he’s come up with a way to use some of them to solve the others. Captain?”
Holden, beside her, stood up, seemed to realize no one else was going to stand up to talk, and then shrugged and bulled forward with it. “The thing is the Free Navy wasn’t wrong. With all the new systems opened up, the economic niche that Belters have filled is going to go away. There are so many reserves on these planets that don’t require we bring our own air or generate our own gravity that the Belt is going to be outcompeted. And, no offense, the plan up to now has been versions of ‘sucks to be you.’
“There’s a significant population of the Belt that’s not going to be able to move down a gravity well. They’re just going to be forgotten. Left to die off. And since that’s not all that different from how Belters got treated before, it was easy for Inaros to find political backing.”
“I wouldn’t say that was the only thing that got him there,” Prime Minister Richards drawled. “Having a bunch of my ships helped him out.”
The room chuckled.
“But the thing is,” Holden said, “we’ve been going out there wrong. There’s a traffic problem we didn’t know about. Under the wrong conditions, it’s not safe to go through the gates. Which we found out because a bunch of ships went missing. And if the plan is that just anyone who wants to go through the gates does so anytime they want to, more will go missing. There has to be someone regulating that. And, thanks to Naomi Nagata, we now know the load limit of the gate network.”
He paused and looked around, almost as if he was expecting applause before he went on.
“So that’s two problems. No niche for the Belt. The need for traffic control through the gates. Now add to that the fact that Earth, Mars—all of us really—have taken enough damage in the last few years that our infrastructure won’t carry us. We have maybe a year or two to really find ways to generate the food and clean water and clean air that we’re all going to need. And we probably can’t do that in our solar system unless just a lot more people die. We need a fast, efficient way to trade with the colony worlds for raw materials. So that’s why I’m proposing an independent union with the sole and specific task of coordinating shipments through the gates. Most people who want to live on planets will just do that. But the Belt has a huge population of people who are specifically suited to life outside a gravity well. Moving supplies and people safely between solar systems is a new niche. And it’s one we need filled quickly and efficiently. In the proposal, I called it the spacing guild, but I’m not married to that name.”
A gray-haired man sitting two rows behind Emily Richards cleared his throat and spoke. “You’re proposing to turn the entire population of the Belt into a single transport company?”
“Yes, into a network of ships, support stations, and other services necessary to move people and cargo between the gates,” Holden said. “Keep in mind, they’ve got thirteen hundred and seventy-three solar systems to manage. There’s going to be work. Well, thirteen hundred and seventy-two, really. Because of Laconia.”
“And what do you propose to do about Laconia?” a woman behind Avasarala asked.
“I don’t know,” Holden said. “I was just starting with this.”
Avasarala waved him to sit down, and reluctantly he did. Naomi shifted, murmured something in his ear, and Holden nodded.
“The proposed structure of the union,” Avasarala said, “is fairly standard. Limited sovereignty in exchange for regulatory input from the major governing bodies, meaning Emily and whoever they elect once I’m out of this.”
“Limited sovereignty?” Carlos Walker said.
“Limited,” Avasarala said. “Don’t ask me to put out on the first date, Walker. I’m not that kind of girl. The union will, of course, need to have support from the Belt. The first union president will be taking on a huge job, but I think we can all agree that we have a unique opportunity for that. Someone well-known both among Belters and on the inner planets.”
Holden nodded. Michio looked over at him. His bright eyes and firm chin.
“Someone,” Avasarala continued, “above—or at least apart from—factions and politics. Trustworthy, well-tested moral compass, and with a long résumé of doing the right thing even when it’s unpopular.”
Holden smiled, nodded to himself. He looked so pleased. Michio hadn’t come to a meeting. This was an anointing. She was suddenly profoundly disheartened. It would probably improve her chances for getting amnesty, but—
“That is why,” Avasarala said, “we need to draft James Holden.”
Holden yelped like he’d been bitten. “What? Wait. No, that’s all wrong. It’s a terrible idea.”
Avasarala frowned. “Then—”
“Look,” Holden said, standing up again. “This is exactly the problem. This is what we keep doing. Forcing rules and leadership on the Belters rather than letting them pick for themselves.”
A grumble passed through the room, but Holden just kept talking.
“If I can use this moment to nominate someone else instead. Someone with all the qualities Madam Secretary Avasarala just listed, and more. Someone with honor and integrity and leadership, and with the added bonus of actually belonging to the community they’d be leading.”
And somehow—Michio wasn’t sure how this had happened—Holden was pointing at her.
“Then I would nominate Michio Pa.”