Cibola Burn (Expanse 4)

“The problem,” she said, pointing her fork at Bobbie for emphasis, “is that I trusted James Holden. Not to do anything I told him to. I’m not an idiot. But I thought he would be himself.”

“Himself, how?”

Avasarala took a bite of the lettuce. “Do you know how many ships are on track to the Ring? Right now, right now, we have sixteen hundred ships, and every one of them has been watching New Terra like they were reading fucking tea leaves. Johnson and I sent Holden to mediate because he was the perfect person to show what a clusterfuck it was out there. How ugly it could be. I was expecting press releases every time someone sneezed. The man starts wars all the fucking time, only this time, when I needed a little conflict? Now he’s the fucking peacemaker.”

“I don’t understand,” Bobbie said. “Why did you want conflict?”

“To put the brakes on,” Avasarala said. “To save Mars. Only I couldn’t.”

Bobbie put down her fork. The beautiful young man had vanished. He was good at this job. It was time for them to be truly alone.

“A thousand suns, Bobbie. Three orders of magnitude more than we have ever had before. Can you even imagine that, because most days, I can’t. And some – maybe all – have at least one planet with a breathable atmosphere. A place that can sustain life. It’s what they were selected for. Whatever those fucking boojums were that made the protomolecule, they were looking for places like Earth. And places like Earth are what they found. Places a lot more like Earth than Mars is. New Terra was the precedent, and the precedent is a fucking feel-good story about how we all come together in a pinch. We have an example of how, if you just get out to one of these planets fast enough and squat hard enough, you get to keep it. Welcome to the greatest migration in the history of human civilization. Fred Johnson thinks he can keep control of it because he’s got the choke point at Medina Station, but he’s also got the OPA. It’s already too late.”

“Why try to control it at all? Why not let people settle where they want?”

“Because Mars,” Avasarala said.

“I don’t understand.”

“Mars has the second largest fleet in the system. Something like fifteen thousand nuclear warheads. Sixteen battlecruisers. Who the fuck knows how many other fighting vessels. The ships are newer than Earth’s. The designs are better. They’re faster. They have heat signature masking and fast water cycling and high-energy proton cannons.”

“The proton cannons are a myth.”

“They aren’t. So here you have the second most powerful navy that there is. What’s going to happen to it?”

“It’s going to protect Mars.”

“Mars is dead, Bobbie. Holden and this Havelock sonofabitch and Elvi Okoye, whoever the fuck she is? They killed it. Half the Martian government understands, and they’re shitting themselves so hard, they won’t have bones left. Who the fuck’s going to stay on Mars? A thousand new worlds where you don’t have to live in caves and wear environment suits to walk under the sky. No one’s going to be here. Do you know what would happen if half the population of Earth left for the worlds beyond the Ring?”

“What?”

“We’d knock down some walls and make bigger apartments. That’s how many people we have on basic. Do you know what happens to Mars if twenty percent of the population leaves?”

“The terraforming project shuts down?”

“The terraforming project shuts down. And upkeep on the basic infrastructure becomes harder. The tax base collapses. The economy craters. The Martian state fails. That is going to happen, and the one chance we had to keep it in check is gone. You will have a shell of a government with a planet nobody wants because nobody needs. The raw materials they have to put on the market are now abundant in a thousand new systems where the mining is simple and you don’t choke to death on vacuum if the rig fails out. And the one thing – the one thing – you have left you can sell? Your one resource?”

“Is fifteen thousand nuclear weapons,” Bobbie said.

“And the ships to use them. Who’s going to have those ships when Mars is a ghost town, Bobbie? Where are they going to go? Who are they going to kill? We’re all moving out our pawns for the first interstellar military conflict. And James Holden, who could have made New Terra a poster for why you might rather stay home and give us a little breathing room, instead found a bright new way to fuck things up.”

“By succeeding?”

“By some definition of that word.”

“The planet blew up on him,” Bobbie said.

“Small favors,” Avasarala replied with a snort.

“Well,” Bobbie said. “Shit.”

“Yes.”

They were quiet for a long moment. Bobbie looked at her salad without seeing it. Avasarala finished her wine. She could see the former marine tracking though the lines of implication and consequence. Bobbie’s eyes went hard.

“This dinner. We’re at a recruitment meeting, aren’t we?”

Avasarala folded her hands.

“Bobbie, as long as we’re all pushing out our pieces…”

“Yes?”

“I need to put you back on the board, soldier.”