The way that inners fled their own ships when they came to a station fed a certain species of jokes among Belters. How can a Belter choose a ship’s dinner menu? Dock. How can you tell an Inner’s been away from port too long? They go outside to shit. If you give an Earther the choice of staying on board ship and saving her sweetheart’s life or heading out to the docks and never loving again, how do you dispose of the body? It was the way they looked at everything: The ship wasn’t real, the planet was. Or the moon. Or the asteroid. They couldn’t let go of the idea that life involved rock and soil. It was what made them smaller.
Michio’s people weren’t all on the Connaught when she passed through the docking tube and into her ship’s lock, but most were. The ones who were out would likely come back to sleep in their bunks. No one would think it was odd that her whole marriage group was there. Or if it was a little odd, not implausible at least.
She headed down the lift with the weird sense of seeing the ship for the first time. Like stepping into a new station, everything was in sharp focus. Unfamiliar. The green and red indicators of the lift control. The thin, white text printed on every panel to show what was housed behind it and when it had been installed. The subtle MCRN logo still visible on the floor despite their best efforts to buff it away. The smell of black noodles came from the galley, but she didn’t pause. If she tried to eat now, she’d only vomit anyway.
They were in the cabins set aside for the family. One of the first things Bertold had done when they got the Connaught was take the walls off three of the cabins to make a wider space with crash couches enough that they could all sit together. The Martian designers had made the ship so that people could be alone or else together. It took a Belter to make space to be alone together. Oksana and Laura were sitting on the deck, their harps almost touching as they played through an old Celtic melody. Oksana’s paleness and Laura’s dark made them seem like something from a fairy tale. Josep lounged in one of the couches, his hand terminal set to some text or another, reading and swaying his foot to the music. Evans sat beside him, trying not to seem nervous. Nadia, looking like the however-many-greats-granddaughter of Marco’s Afghan soldier, stood behind one of the other couches, gently massaging Bertold’s thinning black hair.
Michio sat in the couch they’d left for her and listened until the melody came to an end in a series of ambiguous fourths and fifths. They put down their harps and hand terminal. Bertold opened his one good eye.
“Thank you for coming,” Michio said.
“Always,” Laura said.
“Just to ask,” Josep said. “Are you our captain or our wife right now?”
“I’m your wife. I think … I think that I …”
And then she was weeping. She leaned forward, hands over her eyes. The tight monkey’s-fist knot that was her heart blocked her throat. She tried to cough it out of the way, but it sounded like a sob. Laura’s hand touched her foot. And then Bertold’s arm was across her back and he folded her in against him. She heard Oksana murmuring, “It’s okay, baby. It’s all right,” from what might have been half a world away. It was too much. It was all too much.
“I did it,” Michio managed at last. “I did it again. I put us in Marco’s control, and he’s … He’s another Ashford. He’s another Fred fucking Johnson. I tried so hard not to do it again, and I did it. And I brought you all along. And I’m so … I’m so sorry.”
Her family descended on her gently, a hand or an arm, all of them touching her. Offering her comfort. Saying wordlessly that they were there. Evans wept with her, not even knowing why. The tears got worse for a while, confused for a while. And then better. Clearer. The worst of it passed. And when she was herself again, it was Josep that spoke.
“Tell us the story. It’ll have less power then.”
“He’s abandoning Ceres. Getting all the Free Navy out and leave the people for the inners. The colony ships we took? He wants to drive them dark out of the ecliptic for storage instead of delivering the supplies.”
“Ah,” Nadia said. “That kind, is he?”
“It’s hard, changing,” Josep said. “Tell yourself you’re a warrior long enough, you start believing it. Then peace looks like death. An annihilation of self.”
“Little abstract, honey,” Nadia said.
Josep blinked wide eyes at her, then smiled ruefully. “More concrete. You’re right. You always are.”
“I’m so sorry,” Michio said. “I did it wrong again. I trusted someone. I put myself in his command, and … I’m stupid. I’m just stupid.”
“We all agreed,” Oksana said through a scowl. “We all believed.”
“You believed because I asked you to,” Michio said. “This is my fault.”
“Now,” Laura said, “Michi? What’s the magic word?”
Against her will, Michio laughed. It was an old joke. A part of what made her family her family.
“The magic word is oops,” she said. And then a moment later, “Oops.”
Bertold took a moment to noisily blow his nose and wipe the last of the tears from his eyes. “All right. So what do we do?”
“We can’t keep working with the bastard,” Oksana said.
Nadia nodded with her hand. “And we can’t stay here and wait for the Earthers.”
Together, without meaning to, they all looked to her. Michio, their wife. But also their captain. She took a long, shuddering breath. “The thing he asked us for? Gather up the colony ships and spread the food and supplies to the Belters that need them? It still needs doing. And we still have a gunship to do it with. Some of the other ships might see things our way. So either we stick to the mission or else we try to find someplace quiet and sink out of sight before Inaros figures that we’re gone.”
Her family was silent for what felt like a long time, though it wasn’t more than a few breaths set end to end. Bertold scratched at his bad eye. Nadia and Oksana traded a look that seemed to mean something. Laura cleared her throat.
“Being small isn’t being safe. Not now.”
“Vrai,” Bertold said. “I’m for doing what we said we’d do, and fuck the rest. Changed sides before and it didn’t kill us.”
“Did we?” Josep said. “Would we be changing sides now?”
“Yes,” Evans said. “We would.”
Josep turned to look Michio full in the eyes. The humor and love in his face was like warmth radiating from a heater. “Fought the oppressor before. Still fighting the oppressor now. Followed your heart then. Still following your heart now. The situation changes, that doesn’t mean you do.”
“That’s sweet,” Michio said, taking his hand.
“Abstract, though,” Nadia said, and there was love in her voice too.
“Everything you’ve done,” Josep said, “every mistake, every loss, every scar. They all brought you here, so that as soon as you saw Big Himself for what he is, you’d be ready to act. Incapable of not acting, even. Everything then was preparation for now.”
“That’s bullshit,” Michio said. “But thank you.”
“If the universe needs a knife, it makes a knife,” Josep said with a shrug. “If it needs a pirate queen, it makes Michio Pa.”
Chapter Twelve: Holden