Babylon's Ashes

by James S. A. Corey

  “Might be sleeping. He was up late going over footage for his broadcast thing with Monica.”

  “Could you go wake him up for me?” Bobbie asked. The wall behind her was sculpted stone with recessed lighting. Naomi thought it was the governor’s palace. Fred Johnson’s distant voice, low and graveled by annoyance, confirmed that.

  Naomi rose, taking the terminal with her. “On my way,” she said. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t understand why you’re part of this,” Fred Johnson said.

  Across the desk from him, Jim still looked sleepy. Puffy-eyed and his hair still a little mashed from the crash couch. Bobbie, her arms crossed, sat off to one side. Before Jim could come up with an answer, she stepped in.

  “He knew this Captain Pa,” Bobbie said. “Worked with her on Medina before it was Medina.”

  “When she was in my chain of command,” he said. “She isn’t an unknown quantity. She was one of mine. I assigned her to that ship. I don’t need anyone telling me about who she is or what they think of her.”

  Bobbie’s face darkened. “Fair enough. I got Holden here because maybe you’d listen to him.”

  Jim raised a finger. “I don’t actually know what’s going on here,” he said. “So. You know. What’s going on here?”

  “Michio Pa is one of Inaros’ inner circle,” Bobbie said. “Only it seems like she figured out that he’s a great big asshole, because she broke ranks. Started sending relief supplies places without the Free Navy’s say so. And now Inaros is shooting at her and she wants us to help her out.”

  “Relief supplies?” Fred said, his voice hard as stone. “That’s what you’re calling them?”

  “That’s what she’s calling them,” Bobbie bit back.

  Jim glanced at Naomi. His expression said, This is not going well.

  Naomi smiled back. I know, right?

  “Michio Pa is stealing colony ships for the Free Navy,” Fred said. “Even if she isn’t complicit in the destruction of Earth, she has the blood of every colonist lost to her piracy on her hands. Those aren’t relief supplies. They’re the spoils of war. A war against us.”

  “Marco’s shooting at her?” Jim said, trying to catch the conversation’s reins. But Fred was locked on Bobbie and he wouldn’t disengage.

  “This is my best-case scenario, Draper. Inaros’ coalition is falling apart. They’re shooting at each other, not at us. If Pa degrades Inaros’ fleet, that means they’re that much easier for us to face. Every ship of Pa’s that Inaros turns to slag is one less that’s hunting down innocent people and stealing their property. There is no advantage to me or to Earth or to Mars that comes of getting involved in it, and I personally resent you calling in your friends here to try to bully me into thinking anything different.”

  “You aren’t the only one here with military training,” Bobbie said. “You aren’t the only one who’s had to weigh taking on problematic allies. You aren’t the only one with command experience. But you are the one in this room who’s fucking wrong.”

  Fred rose to his feet, and Naomi pushed back into the cushions of her chair. Bobbie stepped toward the man, her hands in fists, her chin jutting. Fred narrowed his eyes.

  “I am not interested—” he began.

  “If you want me to come here and wear a Martian uniform and puppet back whatever you say, you got the wrong girl,” Bobbie half said, half shouted. “You think your magic OPA coalition pajama party is going to step in here and fix this? It’s failing. They aren’t coming to you anymore. You got Ceres and you got a fleet and you got me as your goddamn window dressing, and it’s not enough. Stop acting like it is!”

  The words hit Fred like a blow. He rocked back a little on his heels, his lips pressed together. Was it like this when Marco’s coalition fell apart? Naomi wondered.

  When Fred spoke, his voice was quieter, but cold. “I see why Avasarala likes you so much.”

  “Is that true?” Holden said. This time they heard him. “The OPA isn’t coming?”

  “It’s taking a little longer to arrange than I’d hoped. I may need to change venue for it. Find a place that’s neutral territory.”

  “Neutral territory,” Jim said, skepticism in his voice.

  “Some of these people are lifelong enemies of the inner planets,” Fred said. “The combined fleet makes them nervous. They need to be reassured that our whole focus is on the Free Navy and not them. That’s all.”

  Fred and Bobbie stood awkwardly, the momentum of their anger spent but both resisting being the first one to step back from it. Naomi coughed, though she didn’t need to, then rose and went to the sideboard to pour herself a glass of water. It was enough. Bobbie took her seat, and then a moment later, Fred did as well. Jim hunched in his chair. She poured a glass for him too and brought it to him when she sat back down.

  “This Captain Pa?” Bobbie said, speaking now to Jim directly. “She’s an in. If we can get her to where she’s willing to provide intelligence for protection, she might be able to give us something we need to crack Inaros.”

  Fred shook his head. The anger was gone from his voice, but not the resolve. “Pa is a loose cannon. She has a history of mutiny and defection.”

  “The last time she mutinied, she saved my life,” Holden said. “And just maybe every human in existence. A little context here.”

  “She isn’t coming to us as an ally. She isn’t offering to stop her piracy or even slow it down. Cooperating with her means every ship she hijacks from now on will be our fault too!” Fred punctuated the end of his tirade by slapping his thick hand on the table.

  “She’s offering to give supplies to Ceres,” Bobbie said.

  “That she stole—maybe killed—to get.”

  Fred spread his hands, but Jim wasn’t looking at him. Naomi sipped her water. It was cold with the bite of minerals, and it did nothing to loosen the lump in her throat. She had to resist the urge to pluck her hair down over her eyes. Bobbie had brought him here as someone to fight beside her. Someone Fred Johnson knew and respected. But the Martian didn’t know Jim the way she did. Even loyalty—even love—wouldn’t let him compromise his sense of right and wrong. She wondered if Bobbie would stay on the Rocinante after this. She hoped so.

  Anyone who didn’t know him better would have said he looked thoughtful. Naomi could see the grief in the corners of his mouth and the angle of his eyebrows. The sense of loss. She put down her glass. Took his hand. He glanced up at her like he was remembering she was there. She was looking into his eyes, and imagined that she saw a light within them go out. Or no, not out. Not extinguished. Only wrapped in something. Armor. Or regret.

  “Okay,” he said. “How do we get in touch with Pa?”

  Naomi blinked. Fred mirrored her surprise and confusion.

  “You’re going to try to force my hand?” Fred said. “We aren’t going to do it.”

  “You can pull your people off the Roci if you need to,” Jim said, nodding as if he were agreeing with something. Fred scowled in a way that said he thought talking to Pa himself might only be the second-worst plan on the table. “If we have to do this alone, we’ll be less effective. But we’ll do what we can.”

  “We will?” Naomi asked.

  He squeezed her fingers. “We’re going to need someone like her,” he said so gently it was like someone whispering a love song.

  She wasn’t sure what he meant, and it didn’t make her feel better.

  Chapter Twenty-One: Jakulski

  Favór,” Shului said. “Won’t ask you nada alles. Only do this for me, sa sa?”

  Jakulski shook his open hands, waving the younger man off. With Kelsey visiting the head, they were alone in Medina’s technical command center. Because it was outside the drum, it was one of the only places on Medina that was always on the float. The couches were bolted to what would be the floor if the station ever went under thrust again. Angels wearing blue and gold pushed archways toward a God who, with them on the float, seemed like He was lookin
g at them sideways. The only part that made any sense to Jakulski was the stars.

  Shului was a picture of despair: mouth twisted in distress, hands out before him, eyes imploring Jakulski. The thick, crusty sty on the upper lid of his left eye looked like something out of the Book of Job.

  “Can’t,” Jakulski said. “Promised my team I’d buy tonight.”

  “Will instead. Clear sus tab, y alles la,” Shului said. “Favór.”

  It had been a long shift already, and the truth was, Jakulski was looking forward to sitting down someplace with just a little gravity and a decent scotch. And the white kibble at the café that Salis and Vandercaust usually went to reminded him of his childhood. The prospect of staying another half shift—and worse, another half shift wearing the pinché Free Navy formal uniform—so he could be part of the greeting ceremony in Shului’s place had no charm to it.

  But the distress in the young man’s expression was hard to look at. If he was smart, he’d just keep saying no, and hold to it until Kelsey got back. It’d be easier if there were someone else there. Keep Shului from debasing himself. Can’t. Sorry. Be done.

  “For for?” Jakulski said. “Just a greeting ceremony, yeah?”

  Shului looked embarrassed and pointed to his infected eye. “Rindai gonna be there. She sees this? Favór, brother.”

  “Che! You still tasting her air? She’s not gonna bite you. Talk to her.”

  “Will, will,” Shului said. “Only after esá bastard heals up, yeah?”

  “Bist bien,” Jakulski said, shaking his head. Then, with a sigh, “Favór.”

  He thought for a moment Shului was going to embrace him, but thankfully the young man only took him by the shoulders and nodded in a curt way he probably thought was manly. Being young was undignified. Being young and in love was worse. He’d been a pup himself once, filled with all the same lusts and fears that every generation suffered. That he’d grown out of them now didn’t mean he couldn’t remember what it had been like. And fuck, but that pus-caked eye was hard to look at.

  He sent a message to the technical team—Vandercaust, Salis, Roberts—that he’d been called on for extra duty and that he’d meet them after it was done if he could. Vandercaust sent back a generic acknowledgment. That was probably all he’d get from them. But maybe he could sneak away from the ceremony quick enough to catch the team. Cover for Shului and not have the tech team feel like he was putting himself above them. Eat his cake and still have it after. It would be a tired night if he could get it all done, but some nights were tired.

  People. No matter where he went, no matter what he did, it was all still people.

  Kelsey came back from the head and took her place at the main crash couch with the angels looking beneficently down over her shoulder. When Jakulski said he needed to get off shift a few minutes early so he could get back to his cabin and change, Shului jumped in to say how it was all okay and he’d take care of anything that needed doing.

  The transition from the command center at the top of the ship into the drum was a long, curving ramp, and Jakulski rode down it in a cart with wheels that gripped the decking at any g, all the way down to the inner surface of the drum, and then down from there, going under the false ground like a caveman driving down into the underworld. His own cabin was back toward engineering. If he’d known he was going to have to go meet the Proteus and the grandees from Laconia, he could have brought his good uniform at the start of shift and taken the lift that ran the length of the ship outside the drum, but leaving early was almost as good.

  The body of the drum had been built spacious, more like a station than a ship even from the start. Like it knew what it was destined to become. Long corridors with high ceilings and full-spectrum light like what used to fall on Earth before Marco threw a bunch of their mountains into their sky. He caught one of the diagonal halls, curving off toward his cabin on the hypotenuse of the drum’s traffic grid, and let himself feel a little philosophical about the way the lights of Medina were like the memory of the species—an idea of brightness that had outlived the light that inspired it. The way Belters had. Belt-light. It was a pretty idea, and a little melancholy too, which made it even better in his mind. All beautiful things should have just a little sorrow about them. Made them seem real.

  His cabin had been built for a single young Mormon living alone before marriage, but it was plenty enough for him. He stripped off his jumpsuit, tossed it in the recycler, combed his hair, and took his Free Navy uniform out of storage. He threw his image up on the wall screen to see how he looked. Fucking uncomfortable piece of cloth, the damned thing was. But for all that, he had to admit he did come over suave in it. Distinguished man, elder of his people, him.

  To his surprise, he discovered that he was almost looking forward to this.

  Medina had been on edge ever since word came through that Pa and her ships were rogue. But only a little. Everyone here had been OPA before they were Free Navy. And along with OPA, they’d been Voltaire Collective. Or Black Sky. Or Golden Bough. Or Union. Factions within factions within factions, sometimes with very different groups laying claim to a single name, was as Belt as red kibble and mushroom whiskey.

  There was even a way that the split in the Free Navy was comforting. Not because it meant things were going well, but they were going to shit in a familiar way. Pa made a play for status; Marco was going to knock her back. Humanity still worked the way it always had. All the shooting was happening inside the orbit of Jupiter anyway. No one wanted it to spill out to the slow zone. If Duarte got nervous about it all, it was because he wasn’t from here. Whatever he and his were doing on the far side of the Laconia ring, they’d been Martians when they went out and they were Martians still.

  So Duarte wanted to send more resources to Medina? Good. He wanted to put advisors on the station, make sure the locals were all trained with the equipment he was shipping in? Good. More for Medina and everyone happy. And plus all that, the Proteus was bringing it in. And everyone wanted to look at the Proteus. First ship to come in the gate that hadn’t gone out through it first. A peek at whatever Duarte and his people were building out there. Given the choice, Jakulski would still have been in the café with his tech team, drinking a little too much and flirting. But since that wasn’t happening, getting to see a little of the advisory force was okay for second place.

  The Proteus had come through the gate earlier in the day, fast enough to coast to Medina without its Epstein and slow enough that its maneuvering thrusters could bring it into docking position down by the engineering decks. Jakulski’d heard rumors that the Martians were keeping the Epstein at a minimum so that no one could get a good look at their drive signature, but he didn’t see how that made sense. Paranoia, rumor, and superstition was all. The Proteus might be one of the first ships built at a shipyard on the far side of the rings, but it was just a ship. Wasn’t like they were flying there on the back of a dragon.

  Captain Samuels—in charge of Medina because she was Rosenfeld Guoliang’s cousin, but a good administrator anyway—was at the lock in full Free Navy military dress. Jon Amash representing for security. And there, with her auburn hair in a braid and eyes the same soft brown as her skin, Shoshana Rindai for systems. Shului had a point, that one. If Jakulski had been thirty years younger, he could have seen developing intentions toward her too.

  Samuels scowled at him, but not in a way that meant anything. “You’re for technical?”

  Jakulski lifted an affirming fist and took his place in the line of floating grandees, ready to show the Marteños that the Free Navy was just as much a tight-assed military as the next coyo over. Medina had been meant for a generation ship once, and it still showed in the ship bones. Not much call for greeting visitors out in the wide nothing between stars, so the engineering lock opened onto a bare, functional decking with LED-white worklights and a rack of yellow-and-orange construction mechs on one wall. The air smelled of spent welding fuel and low-foam silicon lube.

  Rind
ai glanced at him, lifting her chin in greeting. “For for Shului not come?” she asked, but before he had to come up with an answer, the lock cycled, and the Martians came in. Jakulski’s first thought, quick as a reflex, was that they looked pretty unimpressive for great saviors.

  The captain of the Proteus was a dark-skinned man with wide-set eyes and broad, expressive lips. His uniform was Martian, except for its insignia. Not taller than Jakulski, probably, and comfortable moving in zero g. The six behind him were in civilian jumpsuits, but the broadness of their shoulders and the cut of their hair said they were as military as the captain no matter what they were wearing. Samuels nodded, but didn’t salute. The Proteus coyo caught his ankle in a floor hold and pulled himself to a stop as gracefully as a Belter.

  “Permission to come aboard, Captain?” he said.

  “Glad to have you here, Captain Montemayor,” Samuels said. “Esá es my department heads. Amash. Rindai. Jakulski. They’re to help you with constructing and arming the security base.”

  Security base? Jakulski sucked in a long breath. Not something Shului had mentioned. He wondered if not wanting Rindai to see his infected eye had been bullshit and he’d just wanted someone else to pick up the project. Just as likely Shului hadn’t even known …

  “Not at all, sir,” the Proteus man—Montemayor, she’d called him—said. “We’re here to help you. Admiral Duarte specifically told me to assure you that we have the utmost faith in your ability to address any instability that might come from Sol system. We just want to assist and support our allies in Medina as best we can.”

  “Appreciate that,” Samuels said, and it could just have been Jakulski’s imagination, but she did seem to relax a little. Like maybe she’d been expecting this to be less pleasant and was relieved that the Martian coyo had started by showing his belly. Jakulski looked over the other six, wondering which of them he’d be working with and what exactly they’d be working on.