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She hated low gravity Even if the acceleration was perfectly smooth and the yacht never had to shift orthings down She hadn’t digested anything well since she’d come on board, and she always felt short of breath

Her system chimed A new report from Venus She popped it open The prelihast was under way There was so in the metal that was apparently consistent with someone’s theory of how the protomolecule functioned It was the first time a prediction had been confir of as happening on Venus There was an exact tiy spikes There was a spectral analysis of the upper aten than expected Avasarala felt her eyes glazing over The truth was she didn’t care

She should It was i else that was happening But just like Errinwright and Nguyen and all the others, she was caught up in this sle of war and influence and the tribal division between Earth and Mars The outer planets too, if you took them seriously

Hell, at this point she was more worried about Bobbie and Cotyar than she was about Venus Cotyar was a gooddefensive and pissed off And Bobbie looked like she was about to crack And why not? The woman had watched her friends die around her, had been stripped of her context, and was noorking for her traditional ene soiance or ties to anyone on Earth was a real benefit Especially after fking Soren

She leaned back in her chair, unnerved by how different it felt when she weighed so little Soren still smarted Not the betrayal itself; betrayal was an occupational hazard If she started getting her feelings hurt by that, she really should retire No, it was that she hadn’t seen it She’d let herself have a blind spot, and Errinwright had kno to use it How to disenfranchise her She hated being outplayed Andto

That was the price for screwing up More dead children

So she wouldn’t screw up anyentle sorrow in his eyes It isn’t all your responsibility, he would say

“It’s everyone’s fking responsibility,” she said out loud “But I’ it seriously”

She smiled Let Mao’s ine the her roo to find who she’d been speaking to Or they’d just think the old lady was losing her beans

Let ’ee had arrived while she was in her reverie, flagged as an issue she’d requested follow-up on When she read the intelligence summary, her eyebrows rose

“I’m James Holden, and I’m here to ask for your help”

Avasarala watched Bobbie watching the screen She looked exhausted and restless both Her eyes weren’t bloodshot so rease If she’d needed an example to demonstrate the difference between sleepy and tired, it would have been the ot out, then,” Bobbie said

“Him and his pet botanist and the whole damned crew,” Avasarala said “So noe have one story about what they were doing on Ganyot your boys and ours so excited they started shooting each other”

Bobbie looked up at her

“Do you think it’s true?”

“What is truth?” Avasarala said “I think Holden has a long history of blabbing whatever he knows or thinks he knows all over creation True or not, he believes it”