Portraits revealed through your current reading position.
On Mars, Fred Johnson trades constrained realpolitik with Avasarala — the OPA holding the Ring choke point at Medina but riding a Belter tide he can't fully control.
Fred Johnson, military head of the OPA, meets Avasarala in the buried government houses of Mars, embracing her as a rival he half-likes. He apologizes for not backing her harder in session — with 'a lot of Belters in those ships,' too hard a line would cost him more than a soft one. They swap the state of their factions: Anderson Dawes still herds the OPA's political 'kittens with guns and neo-Libertarian property theory,' while Avasarala manages her figurehead secretary-general.
Johnson believes his choke point at Medina Station lets the OPA control the flood of ships toward the Ring and the thousand new worlds — a confidence Avasarala privately judges already obsolete, the migration past anyone's control. Constrained like her by his own people, he parts with 'we'll be in touch,' both of them aware they went 'over the edge a long time back.'
A large Earth-born man with skin several shades darker than Avasarala's and hair only a little whiter than her steel gray; here genial and weathered in Mars's buried halls.
OPA military leader; the rival power broker banking on Medina Station to control a migration that may already be beyond control.
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