Part 37 (1/2)
Fred sipped the coffee. ”Ever heard of the Battle of Gaugamela?”
”No,” Holden said.
”Darius the third, emperor of Persia, had two hundred thousand soldiers under his command. Bactrians, Arachosians, Scythians. Some Greek mercenaries. On the other side, thirty-five thousand soldiers, and Alexander of Macedon. Alexander the Great. Five Persians to every Macedonian. It should have been a slaughter. But Alexander pulled so much of the enemy out to the flank that a gap opened in the middle of the Persian lines. Alexander called his men to form a wedge, and leading with his own cavalry, he pushed through and headed straight for the emperor. There were vast forces to either side, surrounding him. But it didn't matter, because he saw how to reach Darius. Alexander saw something no one else had seen.
”These people? This little faction of the OPA? Between Earth and Mars and me, we outnumber them. We outgun them. All this has happened because someone saw an opportunity that no one else did. They had the audacity to strike where no one else would even have considered an attack. That's the power of audacity, and if a general is lucky and strong-minded, they can take that advantage and keep the enemy on their back foot forever.”
”You think that's their plan?”
”It would be mine,” Fred said. ”This isn't someone making a play to control the Belt or the Jovian moons. This is someone trying to grab all of it. Everything. It takes a certain kind of mind to succeed in something like that. Charisma, brilliance, discipline. It takes an Alexander.”
”That sounds a little discouraging,” Holden said.
Fred held up the coffee cup. The name TACHI hadn't quite worn off the side, red and black letters half-erased by use. But not gone. Not yet. ”I understand better now how Darius felt,” Fred said. ”Having power, position, advantage. Especially when you think you know how wars work. It blinds you to other things. And by the time you see them, there's a Macedonian cavalry with spears set coming right at you. But that wasn't how Darius lost.”
”It's not? Because the story you just told me sounded a lot like that's how he lost.”
”No. He ran.”
Holden drank. From the crew quarters, the murmur of unfamiliar voices was a reminder that things were wrong. That the patterns of the past were broken, and might never be put right. ”He was going to get killed if he didn't, though. Alexander would have killed him.”
”Maybe. Or maybe Darius would have withstood the charge. Or maybe he would have fallen and his army would have crushed Alexander's in rage and grief. The end of an emperor isn't always the end of an empire. I look at Earth and what happened there. I look at Mars. At what happened on Tycho, and what I'm afraid happened on Medina. I'm seeing Alexander's wedge bursting through the line at me. The same shock as Darius, the same dismay. The fear. But I'm not Darius. And I think Chrisjen Avasarala isn't either.”
”So you don't think we're screwed?”
Fred smiled. ”I don't know what to think yet. I won't until I know more about the enemy. But looking back through history, there are a lot more men who thought they were Alexander the Great than men who actually were.”
Chapter Thirty-seven: Alex.
They burned across the emptiness, and the enemy came hard behind them. Four Martian military s.h.i.+ps with target locks on Alex's drive burned toward him as they all dropped toward the sun. The other two had stayed behind to continue the attack on the main force. More than half the attackers had peeled off to come for him. Alex hoped it was enough to let Captain Choudhary get a toehold. Nothing he could do about that from here, though, but watch and hope.
For the first few hours, it had all been hard burn and dodging. Once he'd opened up some distance between the Razorback and the attackers, the nature of the chase altered. It wasn't about catching or being caught anymore. Alex had the lead, had seventy-two missiles left flying around him in a cloud, a path to Luna, and reinforcements burning out to join him. If nothing went wrong, he'd be safe in less than two days.
The enemy's job now was to make something go wrong.
”You've got another couple PDC arcs coming in,” Bobbie said.
”That's cute,” Alex said. ”I'm moving to avoid. You want to let the missiles know?”
”Already done.”
The tungsten slugs of the enemy point defense cannons were meant to chew through missiles at close range. At the distances they were holding now, they were something between an invitation for the crew of the Razorback to blunder into them by mistake and an uplifted middle finger. Alex tracked the incoming fire and braced as the maneuvering thrusters pushed them down and to the left to avoid the gently curving arcs of enemy fire, then up and right to correct to the original course. Around him the cloud of missiles parted to let the slugs pa.s.s through their flock of exhaust cones and warheads.
”Any enemy missiles following that up?” he asked.
A moment later Bobbie said, ”Nope.”
”Keep an eye out. Our friends there are gettin' antsy.”
”Happens when you're losing,” Bobbie said. Even without turning, Alex could hear the smile in her voice.
From the cabin in the back, Smith's voice came in staccato gasps. Even the relatively modest one-g flight was three times what the man was used to. He'd been burning up the tightbeam for hours. Sometimes, Alex caught Chrisjen Avasarala's recorded voice, other times a man's warm drawl. Someone on Mars, he figured.
The Razorback had been a toy once, and while the screens were decades out of date, they still had some bells and whistles. He set the wall screens to match external cameras, and the wide starscape bloomed around them. The sun was bigger and brighter here than it would have been on Earth, but constrained by the limits of the screen to a burning whiteness. The curves of the Milky Way glowed all along the plane of the ecliptic, the billions of stars made soft by distance. Being surrounded by missiles was like floating in a cloud of fireflies, and behind them, bright as seven Venuses in an Earth twilight, the drive plumes of the attackers who wanted them dead.
And also Naomi.
Bobbie sighed. ”You know, a thousand of those stars out there are ours now. That's like, what? Three ten-thousandths of a percent of our galaxy? That's what we're fighting over.”
”You think?”
”You don't?”
”Nah,” Alex said. ”I figure we're fighting over who gets the most meat from the hunt and first access to the water hole. Mating rights. Who believes in which G.o.ds. Who has the most money. The usual primate issues.”
”Kids,” Bobbie said.
”Kids?”
”Yeah. Everyone wanting to make sure their kids have a better shot than they did. Or than everyone else's kids. Something like that.”
”Yeah, probably,” Alex said. He s.h.i.+fted his personal screen back to tactical, pulling up the latest data on the Pella. It still had the strange, cheap-looking civilian craft tethered to it. Alex couldn't tell if they were taking something off it or putting something on. So far, it was the only craft in the little force that wasn't clearly military design. There hadn't been any more contacts from Naomi. He didn't know whether that was a good thing or a problem, but he couldn't help checking on the s.h.i.+p every five minutes like he was picking at a scab.
”You ever worry about your kid?” Bobbie asked.
”Don't have one,” Alex said.
”You don't? I thought you did.”
”Nope,” Alex said. ”Never really had the situation for one, you know? Or I guess I did, and it didn't fit. What about you?”
”Never had the urge,” Bobbie said. ”The family I've got has been more than enough.”
”Yeah. Family.”
Bobbie was silent for a moment. Then, ”You're thinking about her.”
”Naomi, you mean?”
”Yeah.”
Alex turned in his couch. Bobbie's armor reached against both walls, servomotors locked in place to brace her. She looked crucified. The wound in the deck where she'd pulled out the crash couch made it seem like she'd burst through the bottom of the s.h.i.+p. Her expression managed to be both sympathetic and hard.
”Of course, I'm thinking about her,” Alex said. ”She's right there. And probably she's in trouble. And I can't figure out how the h.e.l.l she got there in the first place. It's not going to be too long before the cavalry gets here to save us, and when they do, I don't know if I should be helping to attack the Pella or protect her.”
”That's hard,” Bobbie agreed. ”But you know we've got our mission. Get Smith to Luna. We've got to stand our watch.”