Babylon's Ashes

  Sárta pointed to the screen with her chin. “Esá es some shit, que?” Fishing for information, looking to know what Marco hadn’t seen fit to tell her. Or anyone else.

  “He saw it coming,” Filip said. He wasn’t even lying. Marco might not have said as much, but it was still true. Filip tapped his temple. “Knew to expect it. Everything going to be just fine.”

  Three more days on the float, and Filip knew it wasn’t only the crew of the Pella who were feeling anxious. Every hour, it seemed, brought another round of contact requests. Encrypted tightbeam messages flooded into the Pella’s queue and waited there for Marco’s response. Rosenfeld, as part of the inner circle, stepped in where he could. He went so far as to appropriate the command deck as a kind of private office. The war center in absentia until Marco “came back out of his tent”— whatever that meant.

  For Filip, it was all an exercise in projecting confidence. His father had a plan. He’d gotten them all this far, and there was no reason to doubt he would get them the rest of the way. The others agreed with him, or at least seemed to when he was in the room. He wondered what they said when he was elsewhere. They’d all been through battle together. They’d shared their victories and the long, patient hours waiting for their traps to spring. This was different. The waiting was the same, but not being sure what they were waiting for made it feel like maybe they were waiting for nothing. Even for him.

  Near the end of the third day, Rosenfeld asked Filip to join him in the command center. The older man looked tired, but his cyst-ridden skin made reading his expressions difficult. Rosenfeld had turned all the screens off. The command center felt smaller without their displays to give the illusion of depth and light. Rosenfeld floated beside one of the crash couches, his body canted a few degrees from the ship in a way that made him seem both taller and subtly threatening.

  “So, young Master Inaros,” Rosenfeld said, “it seems we have a problem.”

  “Don’t see it,” Filip said, but the amusement in the older man’s eyes was enough to show how weak his words sounded. Rosenfeld pretended Filip hadn’t spoken.

  “The longer we go without responding to … call them ‘changes in the situation’? The longer we go, the more doubt starts to grow, yeah? Father Inaros is the face and voice of the Free Navy. Has been since the beginning. His skill, yeah? His peculiar gift. But—” Rosenfeld spread his hands. But he isn’t here.

  “He has a plan,” Filip said.

  “We have a problem. We can’t wait for him much longer. Haven’t told anyone. Hasn’t found its way to the grapevine. But the problem’s now, not tomorrow. Even the light lag may make us too late now.”

  “What is it?” Filip asked.

  “Witch of Endor. It’s at Pallas. All the cache-safes we threw out into the void? Captain al-Dujaili has started gathering them back up. Says it’s under orders from his commander, and he doesn’t mean us. That’s the fifth ship broken for Pa. Meantime, the Butcher’s on Ceres, his ass keeping Dawes’ chair warm. Calling for a meeting of the OPA clans, yeah? Black Sky. Carlos Walker. Administration on Rhea is looking to send a delegation. Free Navy made a statement when we broke Earth’s chains. Statement was, The revolution is already over. That we’d won. Inevitable. Already happened, us. Only now, maybe not.”

  Filip’s gut was tight. Anger warmed his throat and shoved his jaw forward like a tumor at the base of his jaw. He didn’t know who he was angry with, but the rage was deep and powerful. Maybe Rosenfeld saw it, because his voice changed, became softer.

  “Your father, he’s a great man. Great men, they’re not like you or me. They have other needs. Other rhythms. It’s what sets them apart. But sometimes they go so far into the void we lose sight of them. They lose sight of us. That’s where little people like me come through, yeah? Keep the engines running. Keep the filters clean. Do the needful things until the great man comes back to us.”

  “Yeah,” Filip said. The rage still shoving its way up his neck, filling his head.

  “Worst thing we can do is wait,” Rosenfeld said. “Better that we point all our ships the wrong direction than that we leave them too long floating. Change it later, bring them back, they think the situation shifted. Put them on the burn, they know they’re going somewhere.”

  “Yeah,” Filip said. “See that.”

  “Time comes to say it, if it’s not him, it’s going to be me. For him, yeah, but me. Not a bad thing if you stood with. Make everyone know it’s me for him, not another Pa.”

  “You want to give orders to the Navy?”

  “I want orders given,” Rosenfeld said. “Don’t care who does it. Barely care what the orders are. Just there are some.”

  “No one but him,” Filip said. There was a buzz in his voice. His hands ached, and he didn’t know why until he looked and saw them in fists. “My father made the Free Navy. He makes the calls.”

  “Then he has to make them now. And he won’t listen to me.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Filip said. Rosenfeld lifted a hand in thanks and blinked his thick, pebbled eyes.

  “He’s lucky to have you,” Rosenfeld said. Filip didn’t answer, just took one of the handholds, turned himself, and launched down the throat of the ship where the lift would have risen and fallen if there were any up and down to guide it. His mind was a clutter of different emotions. Anger at Michio Pa. Distrust of Rosenfeld. Guilt for something he couldn’t put a name to. Fear. Even a kind of desperate elation, like pleasure without being pleasure. The walls of the lift tube skinned past him as he drifted almost imperceptibly to the port. If I reach the crew deck without touching the wall, everything will be all right. An irrational thought.

  And still, when he grabbed a handhold and swung into the corridor that led to Marco’s quarters without having to correct his path, he felt a little relief. And when he reached his father’s door, it was even justified. The fear he’d carried with him of his father wrecked by betrayal—glass-eyed, unshaven, maybe even weeping—were nothing like the man who opened the cabin door. Yes, the sockets of his eyes were a little darker than usual. Yes, there was a scent in his room of sweat and metal. But his smile was bright and his focus clear.

  Filip found himself wondering what had kept him locked up so long. If he felt a twinge of annoyance, it was overwhelmed by the warmth of seeing his father back again. Behind Marco, tucked in at the edge of one of the cabinets, a strip of fabric spoke of something light and feminine. Filip wondered which of the crew had been here to comfort his father and for how long.

  Marco listened to Filip’s report with a gentle attention, nodding with his hands at each point of importance, letting Filip cover everything—Fred Johnson, the Witch of Endor, Rosenfeld’s half-spoken threat to take the reins—without interrupting him. Filip felt the anger slip away as he spoke, his gut relaxing as the anxiety faded, until by the end he wiped away a tear that had nothing to do with sorrow and everything to do with relief. Marco put a hand on Filip’s shoulder, a soft grip that held the two of them together.

  “We pause when it’s time to pause, and we strike when it’s time to strike,” Marco said.

  “I know,” Filip said. “It’s only …” He didn’t know how to end the thought, but his father smiled anyway, as if he understood.

  Marco gestured at the cabin’s system, opening a connection request for Rosenfeld. The pebble-skinned man appeared on the screen almost at once. “Marco,” he said. “Good to have you back among the living.”

  “To the underworld and returned with wisdom,” Marco said, a sharpness in his voice. “Didn’t frighten you with my absence, did I?”

  “Not as long as you came back,” Rosenfeld said through a rough laugh. “We have a full plate, old friend. Too much needs doing.” Filip had the sense that a second conversation was happening between the men he couldn’t quite parse, but he kept quiet and watched.

  “Less soon,” Marco said. “Send me the tracking data for all of the ships still answering to Pa’s commands. You tell your guard
ships at Pallas Witch of Endor’s gone rogue. Jam it, kill it, and send the battle data to us. No mercy for traitors.”

  Rosenfeld nodded. “And Fred Johnson?”

  “Butcher will bleed in his turn,” Marco said. “Never fear. This war’s just beginning.”

  Chapter Nineteen: Pa

  Iapetus Station wasn’t on the moon itself, but in locked orbit around it. The station’s design was old: two long counter-rotating arms supporting habitation rings, a central docking station on the axis. Lights glittered on the surface of the moon, marking automated stations where the ice was quarried and split. On their approach, there was a point where the station and moon and the ringed bulk of Saturn behind it were all the same size on the screen. An illusion of perspective.

  The docks were almost filled with ancient water haulers that the tariffs had kept from harvesting the moon. No one was enforcing the fees anymore, and all the ships that could were taking advantage of the opportunity. Tugs flying teakettle rose up from the surface or dropped down toward it. Shipping containers filled with ice studded the hulls of the haulers like a crust of salt. The administration of Iapetus hadn’t sided with Marco and the Free Navy or against them, but they weren’t losing the chance to shrug off the strictures of Earth and Mars either. Michio watched the traffic control data and tried to see it more as liberty and freedom, less as grabbing what there was to take and getting away while the getting was good.

  The comm channel opened. A request from Iapetus control. She could have let Oksana answer it, but impatience won out. “This is the Connaught,” she said.

  “Bien, Connaught. Iapetus bei hier. We’re slotting the Hornblower into berth sixteen. Good to go in half an hour, yeah?”

  “That’ll do.”

  “Hear tús have prisoners, yeah?”

  “Do. Refugees too. Hornblower’s original crew.”

  “Pissed off, them?”

  “Not happy,” Michio said. “Think they’ll be grateful to be in rooms that aren’t welded shut, though. Your supply officer said you’d be able to take them.”

  “Can take contract here, can book passage to Earth or Mars. Or refugees, can etwas. Prisoners are their own thing.”

  “Won’t have them hurt,” Michio said. “Don’t want them let free either.”

  “Guests of the station,” Iapetus control said. “All marked. Good and good. And … not official, yeah? ’Gato for the load. Hydroponics were getting mighty strained with the shipments from Earth dead.”

  “Glad we could help,” Michio said before she dropped the connection.

  It was true too. There was something in her chest—a soft, golden feeling—that came from knowing that the people who would have suffered without her would at least suffer less. She’d spent more time on Rhea than on Iapetus, but she’d had enough experience to know what shortages of hydroponic equipment meant to a station like this. At the least, her shipments would mean the difference between uncertainty and stability. At most, between death and life.

  It wouldn’t have been this way if the Belt had been allowed to grow and become independent. But Earth and Mars had kept the labor here on a leash made of soil analogues and complex organics. Now, thanks to Marco, the Belt would have a chance to bootstrap itself up into a sustainable future. Unless, thanks to Marco, it starved and collapsed in the attempt.

  She hadn’t heard back from him one way or the other since she’d called her ships to refuse his orders. Statements of allegiance had come from eight of her sixteen ships. Acknowledgment from four more. Only the Ando and the Dagny Taggart had rejected her outright, and even they hadn’t taken action yet. Everyone was waiting for Marco to make an announcement. Even her. And every hour he didn’t made it seem more possible that he wouldn’t.

  Other voices, though. Oh, there were others. A collective of independent prospecting vessels out of Titania needed replacement parts for their drives. A cargo ship that was also home to a family crew of twenty people suffered a catastrophic failure of their Epstein drive’s power systems and were on the drift. Vesta was putting its population on protein rationing until the food relief Michio had promised them actually arrived. Kelso Station, in an irrational fit of altruism, had sent relief supplies to Earth and was now facing shortages of water and helium-3 for the reactors.

  Centuries of technology and progress had allowed humanity to create a place for itself in the vacuum and radiation of space, but nothing had overcome entropy or ideology or bad judgment. The millions of skin-bound complications of salt water and minerals that were human bodies scattered throughout the Belt still needed food and air and clean water, energy and shelter. Ways to keep from drowning in their own shit or cooking in their waste heat. And through accidents of Marco’s charisma and her own idealism, she’d become responsible for it all.

  But here was her start. The supplies of the Hornblower, instead of flying through gates and away forever, would feed Iapetus and give the station there the reserves to help others. The Connaught and her sister ships didn’t need to solve every distribution issue. Only get the supplies, make them available, and let market forces and the communal nature of the Belt take over from there.

  She hoped it was enough.

  Oksana, at her station, laughed. It wasn’t mirth, so much as a kind of amazed disbelief.

  “Que?” Evans asked.

  Oksana shook her head. Michio had known her long enough to read the gesture and the ghost of shame that came with it. Not while I’m on duty. Keeping that division between being family during family time and crew during crew time had always been important to Oksana. Usually, it was important to Michio too, but between waiting for a berth and dreading news of Marco, any distraction was a gift.

  “What is it, Oksana?” Michio said.

  “Just something odd on the newsfeeds out of Ceres, sir,” she said.

  “Well, I don’t think it’s going to disrupt us. Put it on screen.”

  “Sir,” Oksana said, and Michio’s controls vanished, replaced by a professional-looking news video, crawl at the bottom and filtering options along the side. And looking out of her screen, the earnest, open face of James Holden. For a moment, Michio was on the Behemoth again, and then she was back. Like a long-forgotten smell or the taste of a food eaten only in childhood, James Holden carried an echo of the guilt and fear, a reminder of violence.

  Images flickered as Holden spoke: a terribly old Belter man with merry eyes, two women—one young and one older—clapping hands together in some game like batbat or pattycake or shin-sin, a professionally dressed woman with dark skin and a sober expression standing at a hydroponics tank so long it curved up in the distance with the body of the station. My name is James Holden, and I want to introduce you to some of the people I’ve met here on Ceres. I want you to hear their stories. Come to know them the way you do your shipmates and neighbors. I hope you’ll carry a little bit of these people with you the way I do now.

  “Fuck is this?” Evans asked, laughter in his voice. “Watch the trained Belter dancing for your fun?”

  “No, it’s Holden,” Oksana said. “He’s OPA.”

  “En serio?”

  “Johnson’s OPA,” Michio said. “He works for Earth too. And Mars.”

  On the screen, Holden was handing a bulb of beer to the ancient-looking man. The Belter’s cheeks were already a little flushed, but his voice wasn’t slurred at all. Were five men for every woman on the station, back then. Five to one.

  “You shipped with him, sí?” Oksana asked. “Back in the slow zone?”

  “Little bit,” Michio said. “He’s also waking up next to Filip Inaros’ mother. The one Marco didn’t manage to kill? That’s him.”

  “And he’s announcing to Big Himself y alles where he’s bunking?” Oksana said. “So. Brave o crazy, him?”

  “Not sure I get to criticize,” Michio said, just before the fear hit her system. For a fraction of a second, she didn’t know why, and then she realized what she was seeing. In the text crawl at the bottom of t
he screen, and just marching off the side. Witch of Endor. She grabbed the crawl, pulled it back. Ship destroyed by Free Navy identified as Witch of Endor.

  She selected the feed. Her screen flickered. Holden and the old Belter laughed about Ceres Station before it had been spun up, but she didn’t hear them. On her screen, the hyperreal image of an intelligence telescope showed a ship under high burn, streams of PDC fire seeming to bend as the ship accelerated away from the rounds. From the shape of the curve, she guessed it had been pulling almost ten gs. The picture didn’t show what she was fleeing from, and the torpedo that managed to penetrate the defenses was moving too fast to see. The ship shifted, spinning for a tenth of a second, and then blossomed into light. It is unclear, the announcer said, why the Free Navy forces appear to have attacked one of their own ships, but reports confirm drive plumes from several other known enemy locations on vectors inconsistent with an attack of consolidated fleet positions—

  “Sir?” Oksana said, and Michio realized she must have said something aloud.

  She considered Oksana’s eyes, respectful and hard. Evans’ soft and alarmed. Her crew and her family.

  “We have Marco’s answer,” she said.

  “Shift in language is shift in consciousness, yeah,” Josep said. He was dressed in his jumpsuit, as was she. But he was strapped into the crash couch. A complex schematic showed the state of the system as best she knew it. The ships loyal to the inners clustered around Earth and Mars and Ceres in red. The Free Navy loyal to Marco in blue. Her own handful of pirates and idealists in green. The independent stations and ships—Ganymede, Iapetus—were white. And a dusting of gold over it all showing where Marco had buried his treasure chests in the void.