And that was fine. As long as they kept looking at the little stuff, she could work on the big things.
Secretary-General Li, a broad-faced man with a lush mustache and a workman’s callused hands, cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind,” he said. “There are always people who are wary of change. And that’s a good thing. Change should be watched, moderated, and questioned. But that conservative view shouldn’t rein in progress or put a damper on hope. Earth is humanity’s first and truest home. The soil from which all of us, whatever system we now inhabit, first grew. Earth will always, always, be central to the greater project of humanity in the universe.”
Whistling past the graveyard. Earth was celebrating a huge milestone in its history, and that was maybe the third most important thing on her agenda. But how do you tell a planet that history has passed it by? Better to nod and smile, enjoy the moment and the champagne. Once this was over, she’d have to get back to work.
They moved through the expected questions: would the renegotiation of the tariff agreements be overseen by Drummer or former president Sanjrani, would the Transport Union remain neutral in the contested elections on Nova Catalunya, would the Ganymede status talks be held on Luna or Medina. There was even one question about the dead systems—Charon, Adro, and Naraka—where ring gates led to things much stranger than goldilocks-zone planetary systems. Secretary-General Li fended that one off, which was just as well. Dead systems gave Drummer the creeps.
After the Q-and-A was done, Drummer did a dozen photo ops with the secretary-general, high-level administrators from the EMC, and celebrities from the planets—a dark-skinned woman in a bright-blue sari, a pale man in a formal suit, a pair of comically identical men in matching gold dinner jackets.
There was a part of her that enjoyed this too. She suspected that the pleasure she took in Earthers clamoring to get mementos of themselves with the head of the Belters spoke poorly of her in some vague spiritual way. She’d grown up in a universe where people like her were disposable, and she’d lived long enough for fortune’s wheel to lift her up higher than Earth’s sky. Everyone wanted the Belt for a friend, now that the term meant more than a cloud of half-mined-out chunks of debris trapped between Mars and Jupiter. For children born today, the Belt was the thing that tied all humanity together. Semantic drift and political change. If the worst that came out of it was a little schadenfreude on her part, she could live with that.
Vaughn waited in a small antechamber. His face was a network of crags that would have done credit to a mountain range, but he managed to make it work for him. His formal jacket was cut to echo old-style vac suits. The marks of their oppression remade as high fashion. Time healed all wounds, but it didn’t erase the scars so much as decorate them.
“You have an hour before the reception, ma’am,” he said as Drummer sat on the couch and rubbed her feet.
“Understood.”
“Can I get you anything?”
“Encrypted tightbeam and privacy.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said without missing a beat.
When the door slid closed behind him, she turned on the system camera and composed herself. The plan that had been forming in the back of her head all through the ceremonies was in place. All the bits and pieces she’d need to make it happen. And sooner was better than later. Punishment worked best when there wasn’t a gap between misbehavior and consequences, or at least that was what they told her. But there was also a real advantage in giving the offender time to savor their regret.
Best of all was when she could do both.
She hit Record.
“Captain Holden,” she said. “I’m linking you through to the data on an unauthorized transit from Freehold to Auberon that occurred today. I’m also giving you access to the security review of the Freehold system. It’s not much. One habitable planet a little smaller than Mars, another one that’s exploitable as long as you don’t mind too much nitrogen and cyanide in your air. The governor of Freehold is named ….”
She checked the records and coughed with contempt and laughter.
“Payne Houston. I’m assuming that’s his own choice and not what his mommy called him. Either way, I’m sending you under an executive mandate so that you can get going right now. I’ll get Emily Santos-Baca and the security committee to genuflect over this well before you get there, so we’ll be fine with that.
“Your official mission is to carry the message that Freehold’s repeated violations of Transportation Union guidelines have triggered punitive action, and that I’m banning all traffic in and out of Freehold for three years. When he asks whether it’s Earth years, the answer is yes. He’s going to make a point of that, because that’s the kind of idiot he is.
“Your unofficial mission is not to hurry. I want Freehold and all the systems like it to see a gunship moseying toward them for weeks without knowing what it’s going to do when it gets there. I’ll have my staff draw up the usual work agreement. If you can’t take the job, let me know as soon as possible. Otherwise, I’ll have you on the roster to fuel up and make transit in the next fifteen hours.”
She reviewed the message, then sent it out with a copy to Ahmed McCahill, the chair of the security committee. Then it was an executive request to push the Rocinante to the head of the resupply and transit authorization queues. And then Vaughn was knocking discreetly at her door.
He took her grunt as permission to come in, which it was.
“Secretary-General Li is asking whether you’re indisposed, ma’am,” he said. “He’s getting concerned.”
She checked the time. Her hour’s respite had ended twenty minutes ago.
“Tell him I’m on my way,” she said. “And do I have a change of clothes?”
“In the closet, ma’am,” Vaughn said as he slipped out the door again, quiet as a phantom. Drummer changed quickly, shedding the formal jacket and slacks for a bamboo-silk blouse and self-tailoring skirt with a neural net woven into it that was about as intelligent as an insect just to keep the drape right. She considered herself in the mirror with a certain satisfaction. She only wished Saba were here to accompany her. But he’d probably make too many consort-of-the-queen jokes. She shut down the mirror, its screen defaulting back to the image of Earth.
The planet was over half in darkness now, a crescent of white and blue. Belters had tried to kill the Earth, but here it was still spinning. They’d tried to burn the inner planets’ ships, and here was the EMC navy, scraped back together and flying.
And on the other hand, Earth had tried to choke the Belters under its boot for generations, and here was Drummer. Time had made them allies in the great expansion of civilization out to the stars.
At least until something else changed.
Chapter Two: Bobbie
The transit from the slow zone was behind them and Freehold was still weeks away, but an atmospheric landing in a ship as old as the Rocinante wasn’t the trivial thing it had once been. Age showed up in unexpected ways. Things that had always worked before failed. It was something you prepared for as much as you could.
Bobbie squinted at a wall panel on the engineering deck and watched as a long list of data scrolled by, ending with the ship’s reassurance that it could handle at least one more descent without burning up.
“All greens on the atmospheric braking thrusters,” Bobbie said.
“Hmmm?” Alex’s sleepy drawl replied from the panel.