“Yinvisa Merrel isme dorasil. Yi ie dovra?” the pod asked him in its carefully neutral voice.
“Caan Ingliz,” Marrel said. “Ta-Connia atze a en-callase, per.” Common English. Post-Laconian expansion, pre-collapse, please.
“Are you well?” the pod repeated.
“I am well.”
“The transit from Dobridomov was successful,” the pod informed him. “Welcome to Sol. The Musafir is currently twenty-four days from our destination at best speed.”
“If the transit was unsuccessful,” Marrel said, “would we exist?”
“It is theoretically possible for reintegration to occur at an unexpected destination, though it is statistically unlikely.”
“May I see the contact report, please?”
The Musafir set down on a small hill some distance from an ancient city. The emptiness of the space around Earth was eerie. Like walking into a tomb. This was the ancestral home of all the Thirty Worlds, and yet it had fewer structures around its system than any contact before. Not that there were none. The emplacements of weapons were disguised, but not so well that the Musafir hadn’t seen them. The hidden ships they had identified were almost certainly not the only ships that there were. Everywhere, there was a sense of threat.
The diplomatic team remained on the ship, but watched and listened as Marrel walked down the ramp to the grassy field that stretched off in every direction and took a deep breath of the air humanity had been born in. The ship had issued him prophylactics to ensure that the local pollen would not trigger an allergic reaction. If nothing else, Marrel could tell his future grandchildren this. He had stood on the grass of Earth. He had breathed its air.
The group that had come for him stood some distance off. Many of them carried obvious weapons. Marrel wasn’t sure if they were an honor guard waiting for him to approach, or a strike team waiting to charge him and try to take the ship. He fumbled with the target pointer in his hand. If need be, the ship could turn the field in front of him into a molten lake. He prayed that wouldn’t be the case.
A single figure detached from the knot and began walking in his direction with long, loping strides. It was tall, but Marrel had expected this. Dobridomov was of slightly heavier gravity than Earth, and the average height was a bit less. The figure was also broad, and thick limbed, with ebony skin and a wide, hairless head. As it approached, the color of its skin began to look less like a natural color and more like an artificial pigment. Marrel wondered if full-body tattooing or cosmetics were popular here. It might be some kind of caste mark.
The figure stopped a few meters away and waited. Up close, it appeared to be male.
“My name is Marrel Imvic, of the Dobridomov system,” he said in ancient Chinese. He was prepared to repeat the message in a dozen different old languages until one was recognized. “I am a linguist, here to establish communication protocols so that our diplomatic group can begin a dialog.”
“You got any English?” the man said with perfect pre-collapse intonation.
“Yes,” Marrel said, stunned. “Yes, I do.”
“Good, because my Chinese is pretty iffy. I’m okay in Belter, but I bet you guys forgot that one.”
“I know what Belter is,” Marrel said, thrilled at the idea that this man spoke a dialect considered dead for a thousand years.
“Cool,” the man replied. “So it’s been a rough millennium around here. We’re starting to get our shit together, and I’ve been doing what I can to help with that, but it’s slow going.”
“Are you a leader of these people?” Marrel asked.
“I’m not into job titles. Name’s Amos Burton. If we’re good, I’m just some asshole. If you’re here to start some shit, I’m the guy you’ll have to go through first. Tell ’em I said that.”
He gave Marrel a vague smile and waited. The diplomatic group listened as Marrel translated for them.
“Great,” Amos Burton said when he was done. “Now we got that shit out of the way, follow me. We’ll grab a few beers and get reacquainted.”
Acknowledgments
Usually, we start these by talking about how any book is, on some level, a collaboration. This time, we’re talking about more than a book. The first volume of The Expanse was written a little over a decade ago, and between there and here, it has been a long, wild ride with us racking up debts and reasons for gratitude all along the way.
This series and all that came with it would not exist without the hard work and dedication of Danny Baror and Heather Baror-Shapiro, the whole brilliant crew at Orbit including （but by no means limited to） Bradley Englert （and his predecessors, Darren Nash, DongWon Song, Will Hinton, and Tom Bouman）， Tim Holman, Anne Clarke, Ellen Wright, Alex Lencicki, and Lauren Panepinto. Special thanks are also due Carrie Vaughn, for her services as a beta reader, and the gang from Sakeriver: Tom, Sake Mike, Non-Sake Mike, Jim-me, Porter, Scott, Raja, Jeff, Mark, Dan, Joe, and Erik Slaine, who got the ball rolling.