“Coffee?” Fred asked. At Holden’s nod, he began puttering around the coffee station on a side table, fixing two cups. The one he held out to Holden had a faded insignia on it. The split circle of the OPA, worn almost to invisibility.
Holden took it, waved at the screen, and said, “How long?”
“Six months is our current projection,” Fred said, then sat in his chair with an old man’s grunt. “Might as well be forever. A year and a half from now human social structures in this galaxy will be unrecognizable.”
“The diaspora.”
“If that’s what you want to call it,” Fred said with a nod. “I call it the land rush. A whole lot of covered wagons heading for the promised land.”
Over a thousand worlds open for the taking. People from every planet and station and rock in the solar system rushing to grab a piece. And back in the home system, three governments racing to build enough warships to control it all.
A welding array flared to life on the skin of one of the ships so brightly that the monitor dimmed in response.
“If Ilus was anything, it was a warning that a lot of people are going to die,” Holden said. “Was anyone listening?”
“Not really. You familiar with the land rush in North America?”
“Yeah,” Holden said, then took a sip of Fred’s coffee. It was delicious. Earth grown, and rich. The privileges of rank. “I got your covered wagon reference. I grew up in Montana, you know. That frontier shit is still the story the people there tell about themselves.”
“So you know that the mythology of manifest destiny hides a lot of tragedy. Many of those covered wagons never made it. And more than a few of the people who did wound up as cheap labor for the railroads, mines, and rich farmers.”
Holden drank his coffee and watched the ship construction. “Not to mention all the people who were living there before the covered wagons showed up and gave everyone a nifty new plague. At least our version of galactic destiny doesn’t displace anything more advanced than a mimic lizard.”
Fred nodded. “Maybe. Seems that way so far. But not all thirteen hundred systems have good surveys yet. Who knows what we’ll find.”
“Killer robot things and continent-sized fusion reactors just waiting for someone to flip the switch so they can blow half the planet into space, if memory serves.”
“Based on our sample of one. It could get weirder.”
Holden shrugged and finished off his coffee. Fred was right. There was no way to know what might be waiting on all of those worlds. No telling what dangers lay in store for the would-be colonists rushing to claim them.
“Avasarala isn’t happy with me,” Holden said.
“No, she is not,” Fred agreed. “But I am.”
“Come again?”
“Look, the old lady wanted you to go out there and show everyone in the solar system how bad it all was. Scare them into waiting for the government to tell them it was okay. Put the control back in her hands.”