“Perhaps,” Dawes said. “But keep in mind, this is Fred Johnson’s plan. And that Fred had access to Michio Pa and all that she knows about the station defense.”
Carlos Walker hesitated, though with him it expressed itself only as a slightly longer silence. He shook his head. “There’s risk in leaving Marco Inaros and his Free Navy to play themselves out. There’s danger in taking them on. But only one requires that I drive my ship into rail gun fire. I can’t agree to it.”
“Not every battle is won on the battleground,” Dawes said. “I respect your caution, but Holden hasn’t asked you to be vanguard. Hasn’t even asked you to go through the ring gate. Don’t assume he’s going to demand heroism and sacrifice. I know his reputation, but no one survives the things he’s survived without having a deep capacity for thoughtfulness and foresight. And more than that, strategy. Holden comes across feckless sometimes, truth, but he’s a thinker. What he’s doing? It’s all from the head.”
“You think he’s not angry?” Dawes said. “Holden is here as much for vengeance as you are. This is a man who acts from the gut, from the heart, before his head gets in the way.”
They were alone in the chapel, except for the images of Fred Johnson. It felt wrong to bring talk of violence and revenge into even as milquetoast a holy place as this, but grief came in all kinds of clothing. And this had begun as a moment to show respect for the dead. Micah al-Dujaili hunched forward, his arms resting on the back of the pew in front of him. His eyes were bloodshot.
“Carl talked to me,” he said. “Said he couldn’t stand by while the Belt starved. And Inaros killed him for it.”
“Tried to kill Holden’s wife too,” Dawes said. He knew that wasn’t quite true, but this was a moment for broad strokes. “Not because she was a threat. Not because she was of any sort of strategic value. Just because she’d embarrassed him, and he could.”
“Inaros isn’t who we thought he was. Everyone, they still call him a hero. They look at Earth and they look at Mars, and they cheer. They still cheer.”
“Some still do,” Dawes said. It was true. All through the system, Inaros had as many that loved him as had turned away. More, maybe. “It’s not him, though. It’s the idea of him. The man who stood up for the Belt. Only that man hasn’t risen up yet. They only think he has.”
“Will this Holden hurt him?”
“Every time Holden takes a breath, Marco Inaros suffers,” Dawes said. And that was probably as close to truth as anything he’d said in the last two days.
Micah nodded slowly, then stood, wavering drunkenly, and threw his arms around Dawes. The embrace went on longer than Dawes felt comfortable with. Just as he began to wonder if the other man was starting to black out, Micah stepped back, gave a sharp OPA salute, and walked out of the chapel, wiping his eye against the inside of his wrist. Dawes sat back down.
It was midshift, and almost midnight for him. The three Fred Johnsons still graced the front wall. The child, the adult, and the man who, all unknowingly, was at the end of his struggles. Fred Johnson as he had been. The way Dawes remembered him best was tied up and spitting angry the first time they’d met, and the flicker of disappointment in the man’s eye when he realized Dawes wasn’t going to kill him.
They’d fought a hell of a fight together, against each other and side by side. And then against each other again. The clash of empires, only he wasn’t sure what the empires were any longer. Everything they’d done had brought them here, one dead, the other living a life he barely recognized or understood.
Humanity hadn’t changed, but it had. The venality and the nobility, the cruelty and the grace. They were all still there. It was just the particulars he felt shifting away from under him. Everything he’d fought for seemed to belong to a different man in a different time. Well. It was in the nature of torches to be passed. Nothing to be sad about in that. Except that he was sad.
“Well, there you have it,” he said to the empty air. “The kingmaker’s last hurrah. I hope to hell you knew what you were doing. I hope James Holden is what you thought he could be.”
It was almost an hour later that the door opened and a young man came in. Tight dark curls, wide-set warm eyes, a thin apologetic mustache. Dawes nodded to him, and the man nodded back. For a moment, they were both silent.
“Perdón,” the man said. “Not rushing, me. It’s only I’m supposed to take this one down now. It’s … it’s on the schedule.”
Dawes nodded and waved him forward. The man moved hesitantly at first, then reached a point of commitment where the work was just the work. The corporal came down first, then the head of the OPA. The young boy with the book and the grin stayed until last.
There had been a moment when that child had waved into a camera, decades ago, not knowing the gesture was also his last. The boy and the Butcher were both gone now. The man took the picture down, rolled it together with the others, and slid them all into a sleeve of cheap green plastic.
He stopped on his way out. “You all right, you? Need something?”
“Fine,” Dawes said. “I’m just going to stay here a little longer. If that’s all right.”
Chapter Thirty-Five: Amos
Sex was one of those things where the way it was supposed to work and the way it worked for him didn’t always match up real well. He knew all the stuff about love and affection, and that just seemed like making shit up. He understood making shit up. He also understood how people talked about it, and he could talk about it that way, just to fit in.
In practice, he recognized there was power in being with another living body, and he respected it. The pressure built up over the weeks or months on the burn kind of like hunger or thirst, only slower and it wouldn’t kill you if you ignored it. He didn’t fight against it. For one thing, that was stupid. For another it didn’t help. He just noticed it, kept an eye on it. Acknowledged it was there the same way he would anything powerful and dangerous that was sharing his workspace.
When they got into port someplace big enough to have a licensed brothel, he’d go there. Not because it was safe so much as it was an environment where he knew what all the dangers looked like. Could recognize them and not be surprised. Then he’d take care of what needed to be taken care of, and afterward, it wouldn’t bother him for a while.
Maybe that was different from everyone else, but it worked for him.
The thing was, he’d usually be able to sleep afterward. Really sleep. Deep and dreamless and hard to pull up out of until he was done. And right now, he was mostly just looking at the ceiling. The last girl—the one called Maddie—was curled up next to him, the sheets draped around her legs, her arm under one pillow, snoring a little. One of the good things about getting a room for the whole night is they’d give you a quiet one away from the front. Maddie was someone he’d used and been used by before when the Roci’d been on Tycho, and he liked her as much as he liked anyone that wasn’t in his tribe. That she felt safe sleeping next to him warmed something in his stomach that usually stayed cold.
She had a little gap between her front teeth and skin as pale as anyone he’d ever met. She could blush on command, which was a pretty good trick, and she’d been in the life since she was a kid. Before she’d come to Tycho for the legal trade. His own childhood in the illegal trade meant they had context that made the talk before and after more comfortable for him, and she knew he wouldn’t pull any of that “you’re better than this” soul-saving bullshit. He also wouldn’t start calling her a bitch and being abusive out of shame the way some johns did. He liked shooting the shit with her afterward, and usually the way she snored just a little didn’t keep him from drifting off.