Caliban's War

  For the first time perhaps in his life, Prax felt like an outsider. He looked at his hometown and saw what Holden would see: a huge hallway with paints and dyes worked into the ice up high on the wall; the lower half, where people might accidentally touch it, covered in thick insulation. Ganymede’s raw ice would strip the flesh from bone with even the briefest contact. The hallway was too dark now, the floodlights beginning to fail. A wide corridor Prax had walked through every day he was at school was a dim chamber filled with the sounds of dripping water as the climate regulation failed. The plants that weren’t dead were dying, and the air was getting the stale taste at the back of his throat that meant the emergency recyclers would be coming on soon. Should be coming on soon. Had better.

  Holden was right, though. The thin-faced, desperate people they passed had been food scientists and soil technicians, gas exchange experts and agricultural support staff. If Ganymede Station died, the cascade wouldn’t stop here. Once the last load of food lifted off, the Belt, the Jovian system, and the myriad long-term bases in their own orbits around the sun would have to find a different way to get vitamins and micronutrients for their kids. Prax started wondering whether the bases on the far planets would be able to sustain themselves. If they had full hydroponics rigs and yeast farms and nothing went wrong …

  It was a distraction. It was grasping anything other than the fear of what would be waiting behind that door. He embraced it.

  “Hold up! All y’all.”

  The voice was low and rough and wet, like the man’s vocal cords had been taken out and dragged through mud. He stood in the center of the ice tunnels intersecting before them, military-police body armor two sizes too small straining to keep his bulk in. His accent and build said he was Martian.

  Amos and Holden paused, turned, looking everywhere but at the man before them. Prax followed their gazes. Other men lurked, half hidden, around them. The sudden panic tasted like copper.

  “I make six,” Holden said.

  “What about the guy with the gray pants?” Amos asked.

  “Okay, maybe seven. He’s been with us since we left the ship, though. He might be something else.”

  “Six is still more than three,” Naomi said in their ears. “You want me to send backup?”

  “Hot damn. We’ve got backup?” Amos asked. “Gonna have Supitayaporn come down and talk ’em all to death?”

  “We can take them,” Prax said, reaching for the pistol in his pocket. “We can’t let anyone—”

  Amos’ wide hand closed over his own, keeping the gun in his pocket and out of sight.

  “These aren’t the ones you shoot,” Amos said. “These are the ones you talk to.”

  Holden stepped toward the Martian. The ease with which he held himself made the assault rifle on his shoulder seem almost innocuous. Even the expensive body armor he wore didn’t seem at odds with his casual smile.

  “Hey,” Holden said. “There a problem, sir?”

  “Might be,” the Martian drawled. “Might not. That’s your call.”

  “I’ll take not,” Holden said. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’ll be on—”

  “Slow down,” the Martian said, sidling forward. His face was vaguely like someone Prax had seen before on the tube and never particularly remarked. “You’re not from around here.”

  “I am,” Prax said. “I’m Dr. Praxidike Meng. Chief botanist on the RMD-Southern soy farm project. Who are you?”

  “Let the cap’n do this,” Amos said.

  “But—”

  “He’s pretty good at it.”

  “I’m thinking you’re part of the relief work,” the Martian said. “Long way from the docks. Looks like you lost your way. Maybe you need an escort back to where it’s safe.”

  Holden shifted his weight. The assault rifle just happened to slide forward a few inches, not at all provocatively.

  “I don’t know,” Holden said. “We’re pretty well protected. I think we can probably take care of ourselves. What kind of fee are you … um, escorts asking?”

  “Well now. I count three of you. Call it a hundred in Martian scrip. Five, local.”

  “How about you follow us down, and I arrange passage for all of you off this ice ball?”

  The Martian’s jaw dropped.

  “That’s not funny,” he said, but the mask of power and confidence had slipped. Prax had seen the hunger and desperation behind it.

  “I’m going to an old tunnel system,” Holden said. “Someone abducted a bunch of kids right before everything went to hell. They took them there. Doc’s kid was one of the ones that got snatched. We’re going to get her back and politely ask how they knew all this was coming down. Might be resistance. I could use a few people who know what end of the gun points forward.”

  “You’re fucking with me,” the Martian said. From the corner of his eye, Prax saw one of the others step forward. A thin woman in cheap protective weave.

  “We’re OPA,” Amos said, then nodded at Holden. “He’s James Holden of the Rocinante.”

  “Holy shit,” the Martian said. “You are. You’re Holden.”

  “It’s the beard,” Holden said.

  “My name’s Wendell. Used to work for Pinkwater Security before the bastards took off, left us here. Way I figure, that voids the contract. You want to pick up some professional firepower, you ain’t gonna find better than us.”

  “How many you got?”

  “Six, counting me.”

  Holden looked over at Amos. Prax felt Amos shrug as much as saw it. The other man they’d been talking about was unrelated after all.

  “All right,” Holden said. “We tried to talk to local security, but they didn’t give us the time of day. Follow me, back us up, and I give you my word you’ll get off Ganymede.”

  Wendell grinned. He’d had one of his incisors dyed red with a small black-and-white design on it.

  “Anything you say, boss,” he said. Then, lifting his gun: “Form up! We got us a new contract, people. Let’s get it done!”

  The whoops came from all around them. Prax found the thin woman beside him, grinning and shaking his hand like she was running for office. Prax blinked and smiled back, and Amos put his hand on Prax’s shoulder.

  “See? Told you. Now let’s get moving.”

  The hallway was darker than it had seemed in the video. The ice had thin melt channels, like pale veins, but the frost covering them was fresh. The door looked like any other of a hundred they’d passed on the way in. Prax swallowed. His stomach ached. He wanted to scream for Mei, to call her name and hear her call back.

  “Okay,” Naomi said in his ear. “I’ve got the lock disabled. Whenever you guys are ready.”

  “No time like the present,” Holden said. “Open it up.”

  The seal around the door hissed.

  The door opened.

  Chapter Fifteen: Bobbie

  Three hours into the first big meeting between the Martian and UN diplomats and they’d only just got past introducing everyone and on to reading the agenda. A squat Earther in a charcoal-gray suit that probably cost more than Bobbie’s recon armor droned on about Section 14, Subsection D, Items 1-11, in which they would discuss the effect of past hostilities on commodity pricing pursuant to existing trade agreements. Bobbie looked around, noticed that everyone else at the long oak table was staring with rapt attention at the agenda reader, and stifled the truly epic yawn that was struggling to get out.

  She distracted herself by trying to figure out who people were. They’d all been introduced by name and title at some point, but that didn’t mean much. Everyone here was an assistant secretary, or undersecretary, or director of something. There were even a few generals, but Bobbie knew enough about how politics worked to know that the military people in the room would be the least important. The people with real power would be the quiet ones with unassuming titles. There were several of those, including a moonfaced man with a skinny tie who’d been introduced as the secretary of somethi
ng or other. Sitting next to him was someone’s grandmother in a bright sari, a splash of yellow in the middle of all the dark brown and dark blue and charcoal gray. She sat and munched pistachios and wore an enigmatic half smile. Bobbie entertained herself for a few minutes by trying to guess if Moonface or Grandma was the boss.

  She considered pouring a glass of water from one of the crystal decanters evenly distributed across the table. She wasn’t thirsty, but turning her glass over, pouring water into it, and drinking it would burn a minute, maybe two. She glanced down the table and noticed that no one else was drinking the water. Maybe everyone was waiting for someone else to be first.

  “Let’s take a short break,” charcoal-suit man said. “Ten minutes, then we can move on to Section fifteen of the agenda.”

  People got up and began dispersing toward restrooms and smoking areas. Grandma carried her handbag to a recycling chute and dumped pistachio shells into it. Moonface pulled out his terminal and called someone.

  “Jesus,” Bobbie said, rubbing her eyes with her palms until she saw stars.

  “Problem, Sergeant?” Thorsson said, leaning back in his chair and grinning. “The gravity wearing on you?”

  “No,” Bobbie said. Then, “Well, yes, but mostly I’m ready to jab a stylus into my eye, just for a change of pace.”

  Thorsson nodded and patted her hand, a move he was using more often now. It hadn’t gotten any less irritating and paternalistic, but now Bobbie was worried that it might mean Thorsson was working up to hitting on her. That would be an uncomfortable moment.

  She pulled her hand away and leaned toward Thorsson until he turned and looked her in the eye.

  “Why,” she whispered, “is no one talking about the goddamned monster? Isn’t that why I’m—why we’re here?”

  “You have to understand how these things work,” Thorsson said, turning away from her and fiddling with his terminal. “Politics moves slow because the stakes are very high, and no one wants to be the person that screwed it up.”

  He put his terminal down and gave her a wink. “Careers are at stake here.”

  “Careers …”

  Thorsson just nodded and tapped on his terminal some more.

  Careers?

  For a moment, she was on her back, staring up into the star-filled void above Ganymede. Her men were dead or dying. Her suit radio dead, her armor a frozen coffin. She saw the thing’s face. Without a suit in the radiation and hard vacuum, the red snowfall of flash-frozen blood around its claws. And no one at this table wanted to talk about it because it might affect their careers?

  To hell with that.

  When the meeting’s attendees had shuffled back into the room and taken their places around the table, Bobbie raised her hand. She felt faintly ridiculous, like a fifth-grade student in a room full of adults, but she had no idea what the actual protocol for asking a question was. The agenda reader shot her one annoyed glance, then ignored her. Thorsson reached under the table and sharply squeezed her leg.

  She kept her hand up.

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  People around the table took turns giving her increasingly unfriendly looks and then pointedly turning away. Thorsson upped the pressure on her leg until she’d had enough of him and grabbed his wrist with her other hand. She squeezed until the bones creaked and he snatched his hand away with a surprised gasp. He turned his chair to look at her, his eyes wide and his mouth a flat, lipless line.

  Yellow-sari placed a hand on the agenda reader’s arm, and he instantly stopped talking. Okay, that one is the boss, Bobbie decided.

  “I, for one,” Grandma said, smiling a mild apology at the room, “would like to hear what Sergeant Draper has to say.”

  She remembers my name, Bobbie thought. That’s interesting.

  “Sergeant?” Grandma said.

  Bobbie, unsure of what to do, stood up.

  “I’m just wondering why no one is talking about the monster.”

  Grandma’s enigmatic smile returned. No one spoke. The silence slid adrenaline into Bobbie’s blood. She felt her legs starting to tremble. More than anything in the world, she wanted to sit down, to make them all forget her and look away.

  She scowled and locked her knees.

  “You know,” Bobbie said, her voice rising, but she was unable to stop it. “The monster that killed fifty soldiers on Ganymede? The reason we’re all here?”

  The room was silent. Thorsson stared at her like she had lost her mind. Maybe she had. Grandma tugged once at her yellow sari and smiled encouragement.

  “I mean,” Bobbie said, holding up the agenda, “I’m sure trade agreements and water rights and who gets to screw who on the second Thursday after the winter solstice is all very important!”

  She stopped to suck in a long breath, the gravity and her tirade seeming to have robbed her of air. She could see it in their eyes. She could see that if she just stopped now, she’d be an odd thing that happened and everyone could go back to work and quickly forget her. She could see her career not crashing off a cliff in flames.

  She discovered that she didn’t care.

  “But,” she said, throwing the agenda across the table, where a surprised man in a brown suit dodged it as though its touch might infect him with whatever Bobbie had, “what about the fucking monster?”

  Before she could continue, Thorsson popped up from his seat.

  “Excuse me for a moment, ladies and gentlemen. Sergeant Draper is suffering from some post-combat-related stress and needs attention.”

  He grabbed her elbow and drove her from the room, a rising wave of murmurs pushing at their backs. Thorsson stopped in the conference room’s lobby and waited for the door to shut behind him.

  “You,” Thorsson said, shoving her toward a chair. Normally the skinny intelligence officer couldn’t have pushed her anywhere, but all the strength seemed to have run out of her legs, and she collapsed into the seat.

  “You,” he repeated. Then, to someone on his terminal, he said, “Get down here, now.”

  “You,” he said a third time, pointing at Bobbie, then paced back and forth in front of her chair.

  A few minutes later, Captain Martens came trotting into the conference room lobby. He pulled up short when he saw Bobbie slouched in her chair and Thorsson’s angry face.

  “What—” he started, but Thorsson cut him off.

  “This is your fault,” he said to Martens, then spun to face Bobbie. “And you, Sergeant, have just proven that it was a monumental mistake to bring you along. Any benefit that might have been gained from having the only eyewitness has now been squandered by your … your idiotic tirade.”

  “She—” Martens tried again, but Thorsson poked a finger into his chest and said, “You said you could control her.”

  Martens gave Thorsson a sad smile.

  “No, I never said that. I said I could help her given enough time.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Thorsson said, waving a hand at them. “You’re both on the next ship to Mars, where you can explain yourselves to a disciplinary board. Now get out of my sight.”

  He spun on his heel and slipped back into the conference room, opening the door only wide enough for his narrow body to squeeze through.

  Martens sat down in the chair next to Bobbie and let out a long breath.

  “So,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “Did I just destroy my career?” she asked.

  “Maybe. How do you feel?”

  “I feel …” she said, realizing how badly she did want to talk with Martens, and becoming angered by the impulse. “I feel like I need some air.”

  Before Martens could protest, Bobbie stood up and headed for the elevators.

  The UN complex was a city in its own right. Just finding a way out took her the better part of an hour. Along the way, she moved through the chaos and energy of government like a ghost. People hurried past her in the long corridors, talking energetically in clumps or on their hand terminals. Bobbie had never been t
o Olympia, where the Martian congressional building was located. She’d caught a few minutes of congressional sessions on the government broadcast when an issue she cared about was being discussed, but compared to the activity here at the UN, it was pretty low-key. The people in this building complex governed thirty billion citizens and hundreds of millions of colonists. By comparison, Mars’ four billion suddenly seemed like a backwater.

  On Mars, it was a generally accepted fact that Earth was a civilization in decay. Lazy, coddled citizens who lived on the government dole. Fat, corrupt politicians who enriched themselves at the expense of the colonies. A degrading infrastructure that spent close to 30 percent of its total output on recycling systems to keep the population from drowning in its own filth. On Mars, there was virtually no unemployment. The entire population was engaged either directly or indirectly in the greatest engineering feat in human history: the terraforming of a planet. It gave everyone a sense of purpose, a shared vision of the future. Nothing like the Earthers, who lived only for their next government payout and their next visit to the drugstore or entertainment malls.

  Or at least, that was the story. Suddenly Bobbie wasn’t so sure.

  Repeated visits to the various information kiosks scattered through the complex eventually got her to an exit door. A bored guard nodded to her as she passed by, and then she was outside.

  Outside. Without a suit.

  Five seconds later she was clawing at the door, which she now realized was an exit only, trying to get back in. The guard took pity on her and pushed the door open. She ran back inside and collapsed on a nearby settee, gasping and hyperventilating.

  “First time?” the guard asked with a smile.