Tiamat's Wrath (The Expanse, #8)

by James S.A. Corey

In a fight like this, unless you’re willing to lose everything to win, you lose it all by losing.”

“That’s the difference between exploration and negotiating,” Colonel Ilich said, pointing at her. She felt the bloom of pleasure that she always got when she’d answered a knotty problem well, but something nagged at her.

He was a goofball, but she liked what made him happy: knowing things, and her.

Anything that’s stored in a single node is lost forever when that node is destroyed. So what if what we’re looking at is the backup drive for their entire civilization? Everything they ever knew, packed into a carbon lattice the size of Jupiter?”

“Something like that,” Alex replied. “She’ll always be Gunny to me.”

There are people I love. There are people who have loved me. I fought for what I believed, protected those I could, and stood my ground against the encroaching darkness. Good enough.

“Easy peas—” he started to say and then blew apart.

When Holden called back after her, there was a buzz in his voice. Like he was trying to fit more meaning into the words than the syllables could hold.

“More than three stellar masses stuffed into a ball half the size of Rhode Island,” Jen said. “What’s a road island?” Travon asked. He’d been a Martian, back before they were all Laconians.

It made Elvi want to throw her coffee bulb at his face. Fortunately, it had drifted several meters away, saving her from a court-martial.

He spread his hands. What can be done? As if Duarte’s word were a force of nature, inescapable and unquestionable. It was like talking to a recording.

There would be a thousand homes, and if history was a guide, in a generation or two, everyone would think wherever they were was the most important one.

Amos used to say that everywhere was Baltimore. That wasn’t true anymore. Now everywhere was Medina.

“I’m hearing you ask whether authoritarianism is necessarily bad,” she said. “Did I get that right? Because yeah, it is.”

“Well, for me, it looks like dying with the knowledge that humanity’s a little bit better off than it would have been if I’d never been born. A little freer. A little kinder. A little smarter. That the bullies and bastards and sadists got their teeth into a few less people because of me. That’s got to be enough.”

“There’s no way,” Bobbie said. “There’s just pushing back with everything we’ve got and hoping we can outlast the bastards.”

It was a private message, then, between Jim and her and every high-end government censor on Laconia. She had a vague memory about nobility on old Earth having witnesses on important wedding nights to watch the newlyweds fuck. This felt about as dignified. And still, there was nothing under any sun that would keep her from playing it.

I know we haven’t met, but everything Holden has told me says you’re more than some old-fashioned anti-government extremist. He believes in you, and he has convinced me to believe in you too. Accept my offer, and you and Holden can be eating breakfast together before you know it. He’ll tell you himself I’m a decent host.”

Whether Duarte said it or not, the offer included trading all she knew of Saba and the underground. In return, she would be waking up next to Jim, living in a prison a thousand times larger than the one she’d imposed on herself. That was all obvious.

“You’re not a stranger,” the chief engineer said. “You’re the reason I’m an engineer. My dad was a kid on Ceres when the Free Navy stripped it. You and your crew? You put your hands out in peace in the middle of a civil war. You built the Transport Union. As far as I’m concerned, we should kick the captain out of his quarters and give them to you. You more than earned them.”

Fayez touched Elvi’s shoulder and said, almost too softly to hear, “Do you think we just got away with—” The universe exploded.

Something was moving through the clouds, dark and sinuous as a dancer slipping between raindrops. And then another. And then more. They were everywhere, sliding through the gas and liquid and solid, scattering the clouds with their passage. They were solid. Real in a way the clouds of matter were not. They were more real than anything she’d ever seen. Tendrils of darkness that had never known light. That could never know light. You’ve seen this absence of light before. A darkness like the eye of an angry god… You said that to someone.

Duarte was a thoughtful, educated, civilized man and a murderer. He was charming and funny and a little melancholy and, as far as Holden could tell, completely unaware of his own monstrous ambition. Like a religious fanatic, the man really believed that everything he’d done was justified by his goal in doing it. Even when it was the push for his own personal immortality—and then his daughter’s—before slamming the door behind them, Duarte managed to cast it as a necessary burden for the good of the species. He was above all else a charming little ratfuck. As Holden grew to respect the man, even to like him, he was careful never to lose sight of the fact that Duarte was a monster.

Every person in the State Building who saw humanity in Holden, who shared a joke with him, or who had a pattern in their day that he could be a part of, made him that tiny bit harder to kill.

There was no better way to seem trustworthy than to be liked by a dog, and there was no better way to convince a dog to like you than bribery.

This was the problem with thousand-year Reichs. They came and they went like fireflies.

The dark things that moved between the spaces hadn’t been targeting the crew. They’d meant to take everything. The human parts they’d removed were just points along a path. It almost made them worse. At least murderers had motives.

“If you disapprove of my plan of action, it’s easy to stop me. Just get me my boss back.” “I’m going to try,” Elvi said.

think I must have lived my life wrong somehow,” she said. “I know the feeling,” he said. “But then I see you, and I think something must have gone right. Even if everything else treats me like my previous incarnation killed a priest.”

“Are you trying to make me feel better?” “No,” Chava said. “We’re too old for that. I’m trying to make you feel like you aren’t alone in it. That’s all I’ve got.”

Evolution was a paste-and-baling-wire process that came up with half-assed solutions like pushing teeth through babies’ gums and menstruation. Survival of the fittest was a technical term that covered a lot more close-enough-is-close-enough than actual design.

“So they’ve told me. He was a good… Well, he wasn’t really exactly a good person. He cared enough to try, anyway. But he was loyal as hell.” Holden paused. “He was my brother. I loved him.”

Alex didn’t hear her. He heard her, but he wouldn’t understand. Grief like an electrical shock ran through his body, humming and violent and damaging.

His controls flickered as Jillian locked him out. “Give me the fucking controls,” he shouted. “We have to get her!” “Alex,” Caspar said, and his gentleness was unbearable. The suit of powered armor drifted. It was still heading toward the Tempest. Inertia carrying her toward her destination even after it didn’t matter. Even after she was gone. He tapped at the controls the same way, like there was a way to roll time back just a little. “Fuck. Fuck,” Alex shouted. The lemony taste of vomit hit the back of his throat. He swallowed hard, forcing it back down. The plan had failed. Bobbie was gone.

The Heart of the Tempest had stood alone against the combined forces of Earth, Mars, and the Belt and won. It had put all humanity under Laconia’s yoke. It was the living symbol of why all resistance against High Consul Duarte would always be in vain. When their sensors finished their override reset, it was gone.

Alex didn’t know what to say. The truth was, he didn’t have a plan except to get back to the Rocinante. But she was right. There was going to be an after. An after Bobbie. An after Amos. An after Holden. Whatever he was doing, he wasn’t going out there to die. Just to recover.

He’d wondered more than once why Naomi had chosen to live in a hidden shipping container, but now, here, he thought he understood. The pleasure of being utterly alone made his mourning into something different and strange and humane.

“You’re never going to convince me that this whole ‘sky’ thing isn’t fucking creepy. I like my air held in by something I can see, thank you very much.”

She felt herself falling into a rhythm she hadn’t known existed, and recognized perfectly. Normalcy. This was how life just was, and everything else she’d done, however comfortable she’d been with it, had been the aberration.

“There’s no reason to believe that a brain is the only structure capable of having that combination of structure and energy. And in fact, there’s a fair amount of evidence that the gate builders had a conscious structure—a brain-like thing—where the material component wasn’t at all the same kind of thing we use. Anecdotally, we’ve found at least one brain-like structure that was a diamond the size of Jupiter.”

“It’ll be good to see you, old man,” the Storm said, and dropped the connection. “Jillian Houston,” Alex said. “She’s a good kid. She’ll make a fine captain.” “I remember her father being an asshole.” “She’s also kind of an asshole.”

One boy—Caspar, his name was—hadn’t even come over to join the Roci. Just to see Alex. The admiration in the boy’s face was impossible to miss. Watching them all together was like seeing an extended family that had come together for a wedding. Or a funeral. Alex hauled them all on a tour, showing them the Roci. He called it an orientation, but it was more like showing off a prized possession. Or no. Not that. A part of his life he’d only ever been able to tell stories about, and now could point to in the flesh.

This was what he’d done. Where Naomi had locked herself away, Alex had gone with Bobbie and made himself a new crew, a new family. It amazed her that he’d done it so naturally that he didn’t even notice. The only reason he didn’t have a place with them was that he chose not to. Even this brief contact told her that they would have welcomed him. He’d built another place for himself in the universe.

“Okay,” Holden said after a long, stunned moment. “That was weird.”

In all her long life, it was maybe the most beautiful moment she’d ever had.

They stood in silence for a moment, and then Jim stepped forward and cycled the exterior door. When it was open, the little chemical boosters on the coffin slid it to the edge of the lock. And then it was gone. Jim cycled the lock closed again, turned, and stepped in, putting his arms around her and Alex. A moment later, the solid mass of Amos’ arms looped around her too. The four of them held each other there with the hum and rumble of the Rocinante around them. They stayed there for a long time.

Teresa Duarte was an astounding beast of a human being.

“And then you brought her here.” “She brought herself,” he said. “Just like we all do. And it’s a pain in the ass for each and every one of us, every time it happens. Outgrowing your family? Hard work under the best of circumstances. Which these aren’t.”

She stroked her fingertips across his forehead and down his cheek. He turned his head, pressing into her hand like a cat that wanted petting.

If you want peace, lose gracefully. We have bigger problems.”