Babylon's Ashes

by James S. A. Corey

  “Not too much, Alex,” Holden said. “We don’t want our braking burn to slag anybody. At least I don’t think we do.”

  “Not a problem,” Alex said. “We’ll just tap back down to a good coasting speed until we’re right up alongside them. Final braking won’t catch anyone in the plume.”

  “And keep the torpedoes and PDCs hot,” Holden said. “Just in case.”

  “On it,” Bobbie said. “We’re getting painted by ranging lasers.”

  “Whose?” Holden asked, dropping the exterior camera and going back to tactical. The scattering of fleet ships. The surface defenses of Ceres. The slowly approaching captured ship and its Free Navy escort.

  “Oh,” Naomi said, tapping through a list of connection reports longer than her screen. “Pretty much everyone.”

  “The escort ship?”

  “They’re painting us too.”

  On his screen, the incoming ships stuttered, the data around them updating as they killed their braking burns, appearing from behind clouds of superheated gas. The Roci’s sensor arrays checked contour and heat signatures, confirming almost instantly. The larger ship matched the Minsky—large, blocky, and awkward with communications satellites meant to bootstrap a network around an alien planet covering its sides like warts. The smaller was a Martian corvette, a generation newer than the Roci, a little lighter, streamlined for atmosphere and probably loaded with similar ordnance. Its transponder wasn’t answering.

  “Hate seeing this,” Alex said. “Two good Martian-built ships squaring off? It ain’t right.”

  “Well,” Holden said. “Who knows? Maybe we’re on the same side.”

  “If it is a fight,” Bobbie said, “let’s win it. Permission to lock target?”

  “Has it locked on us?” Holden asked.

  “Not yet,” Naomi said.

  “Hold off, then,” Holden said. “I don’t want to go first.”

  An incoming comm request appeared on his screen from Fred Johnson, and for a confused half second, he wondered what Fred was doing on the gunship, then saw the tightbeam was coming from Ceres. When this was over, he was really going to need to sleep. He accepted the connection, and Fred appeared in a separate window on the side of his screen.

  “Regretting this yet?” Fred asked.

  “Only a little,” Holden said. “You?”

  “I want to make something clear. If—if—you take possession of that colony ship, under no circumstances does it come within three thousand klicks of my dock. If there are people who need medical assistance on board, they stay on board and we’ll send help out to them. Nothing comes off that ship until it’s been examined, scanned, reloaded, disinfected, and sprinkled with holy water by whatever flavor of priest I can put my hands on. I’m not running Troy here.”

  “Understood.”

  “The only reason I’m letting you do this at all is the chance of recovering prisoners of the Free Navy alive.”

  “That’s the only reason?” Holden said. “So you’ll hand all the supplies on the ship back over to the former owners instead of using them to keep Ceres alive?”

  Fred’s smile was gentle and warm. “Don’t be an asshole.”

  “Okay,” Bobbie said. “Now they’re painting us. Permission to return the favor?”

  “Granted,” Holden said.

  Bobbie said something under her breath that he couldn’t make out, but it sounded happy.

  “Be careful, Holden,” Fred said again. “I don’t like anything about this.”

  “Well, if it’s a trap, you can say I told you so to whatever scraps of us are left.”

  “I’ve got thirty ships that’ll make sure you have a nuclear funeral pyre big enough they’d see it on Proxima Centauri in four years. You know. If anyone’s there.”

  “That’s not comforting,” Holden said.

  “We should open comms,” Naomi said.

  “Fred? I’ve gotta go do this thing. I’ll let you know how it went when it’s done.”

  Fred nodded. The connection dropped. Holden swallowed past the tightness in his throat. “How are we for range?”

  “Inside effective torpedo range,” Bobbie said. “And we’ll be good for PDCs in eight minutes and ten seconds.”

  “Rail gun all warmed up?”

  “Oh hell yes.”

  “All right,” Holden said. “Naomi, get me a channel.”

  A moment later, a new frame appeared on his screen. Dark but with the yellow border of an open connection. They were so close, there was effectively no light delay. That alone made him nervous.

  “Attention, unidentified warship. This is James Holden of the independent freighter Rocinante. We’re here to transfer possession of the Minsky. Hope that’s what brought you here too. I’d appreciate it if you’d identify.”

  The screen stayed dark. Anxiety crept up his back. The seconds stretched without a reply. Something was wrong. Without moving, he rehearsed what he’d say to Alex. Get us out of here. Something’s about to blow up. What he’d say to Bobbie. Protect the Roci first. Disable the gunship if you can. Kill it if you have to.

  The frame flickered. For a fraction of a second, an unfamiliar blond woman with sharp features appeared, and then immediately the image shifted to a woman with dark hair tied back. A small, cynical smile on her lips. Holden realized he’d been holding his breath and exhaled.

  “Rocinante,” she said, “this is Michio Pa of the Connaught. Weird to see you again, Captain Holden.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Pa

  The Munroe died second. Marco’s forces caught it near a cloud of machining equipment and medical supplies that had been buried in the void. As best Michio could reconstruct it, a plea for help had come from a mining ship called the Corvid. They had five families on the ship, and an outbreak of complex meningitis that had the children in medical comas. The Munroe, charging to the rescue, was intercepted by two Free Navy corvettes, and fled from them into two others. Marco had recorded the captain—a middle-aged man named Levi Watts who Michio had hardly known before he was placed under her command—begging for the life of his crew before his ship was overwhelmed.

  It hadn’t been dignified, and it ended in fire. Copies of it went on a dozen anonymous feeds with an attached listing of all the other vessels that had chosen to follow her.

  The Corvid’s transponder vanished. The discussions of whether it had also been destroyed or invented as bait for the ambush came to nothing. The message was the same either way: No one could betray the Free Navy, and the Free Navy was Marco Inaros. Evans and Nadia had taken the responsibility of remaking the communication protocols for Michio’s remaining fleet. She could see the concern in their eyes and hear it in the timbre of their voices. She loved them for caring, but there was a distance in that love for now. A coldness. She couldn’t say how long her rage and grief would stay cold, but for now ruthless analysis was the only way she could mourn.

  Maybe that was what worried them.

  The Minsky had been flying dark outside the ecliptic in an orbit that, given several months, would have taken it near enough to the ring gate that it could have made a break for it, dodged into the slow zone before any of the Free Navy ships could intercept it. So when Foyle and the Serrio Mal captured it, she’d also saved the lives of everyone aboard. It would have been a matter of minutes between the ship passing through the gate and rail gun defenses ripping it to pieces. Not that the colonists knew that. Not that Michio had told them.

  Even when Foyle learned that the prize ship was being routed to Ceres and into the arms of the enemy, she’d been willing to escort it. Michio had been tempted to let her, but it was the wrong move. Reaching out to Fred Johnson had been her decision. If it was going to go pear-shaped, she should be the one to deal with it.

  The transfer had been furtive and quick—high-g, short-burst burns that brought the Minsky and the Connaught together on an intercept with Ceres that kept away from the bulk of Marco’s forces.

  When, a lifetime ago, Marc
o had chosen her to head the conscription arm of the Free Navy, he’d given her the smaller, lighter ships. Armed, certainly, but not built for heavy fighting. She was meant to outrun the vast, bulky ice haulers, converted now to colony ships: massive and easy to overwhelm. Marco and Rosenfeld, the war leaders against the inner planets, had more need of the capital ships. They were the sledgehammer, and she was the scalpel.

  And now she was going to find out whether her plan to cut a path where the great Marco Inaros couldn’t reach her had worked, or if her rebellion was going to be short-lived and tragic.

  The universe has plans for you, Josep said in her imagination. You couldn’t have come this far through so many dangers if there weren’t a reason for you to be here.

  The same beautiful bullshit that everyone told themselves. That they were special. That they mattered. That some vast intelligence behind the curtains of reality cared what happened to them. And in all the history of the species, they’d all died anyway.

  “Attention, unidentified warship. This is James Holden of the independent corvette Rocinante. We’re here to transfer possession of the Minsky. Hope that’s what brought you here too. I’d appreciate it if you’d identify.”

  “Well, fuck,” Michio said.

  “Captain?” Oksana said.

  James Holden. Probably the most ambiguous man in the system. The Earther who worked for Fred Johnson’s OPA. The leader of the coup against Ashford back in the slow zone. The man Marco Inaros hated more than anyone else. Chosen envoy of the Martian Republic and the United Nations to Ilus, and everybody’s favorite pawn. If she’d had a dream that his voice would be the one greeting her, Josep would have called it a sign. Of what, she couldn’t guess.

  Her display showed Ceres Station, the enemy ships arrayed around it like a cloud of insects waiting to attack. And all through the system, she was certain sensor arrays and optical telescopes were focused on her, on the Minsky, and on the ship coasting toward her.

  Somewhere, Marco was seeing her with the chance to open fire on James Holden. If God had wanted to give her a way to walk back her rebellion, He couldn’t have made a better one. She had her ranging laser on him. Even if she died, even if they all died, the other ships in her command would have a chance to sneak back into the Free Navy’s fold. No more Witch of Endors. No more Munroes.

  There are no coincidences, Josep said in her mind. Except of course there were.

  “Captain, what are your orders?” Oksana asked.

  “Open the connection.”

  Oksana opened the comms, grunted at some small error, and passed the feed to Michio’s station. Holden was looking anxiously into the camera. The years had been kind to him. His face had a more comfortable look, and a touch of sorrow and humor that he wore well. She wondered if the others of his crew were still on the Rocinante with him or if he’d left Naomi Nagata someplace safely out of Marco’s reach.

  “Rocinante, this is Michio Pa of the Connaught. Weird to see you again, Captain Holden.”

  His lips widened into a boyish grin, and to her surprise, she found herself smiling back. It wasn’t pleasure, but the giddiness of fear. Her heart tapped at her ribs like it was impatient. Trying to get her attention. I could kill him. He could kill me. Either decision would be justified. The Rocinante had a rail gun. By the time she knew he’d fired, she’d already be dead. But he probably wouldn’t. And she probably wouldn’t either.

  “Weird to see you too, Captain Pa. Strange times.”

  She laughed, and it sounded like someone else. Evans looked at her, concern in his eyes. She ignored him.

  “Couldn’t help noticing that you’ve got some ships pointing their guns at me,” she said lightly.

  “People are nervous,” Holden said.

  “Was sending you supposed to be symbolic of something?”

  “Nope. We just drew the short straw.”

  It was eerie, speaking to someone on the other side of the fight without so much as a stutter of light delay. She wanted to flip and burn hard, get out. Every second on the float brought her closer to Ceres and the consolidated fleet and Fred fucking Johnson. Every dot on the tactical display made her itch. They were the enemy as much as Marco. But the enemy of her enemy was at least playing nice right now.

  No sudden moves. Nothing without warning. They could do this.

  “We’re ready to transfer control of the Minsky to you,” she said. “Her passengers are all on board confined to their quarters. I’ll send along a manifest with what supplies she’s carrying.”

  Holden nodded. “So. Nothing’s going to blow up when we do this, is it? No booby traps? Because there are some smart people who think I’m pretty stupid for trusting you.”

  “Plenty on my side saying the same of me. Nothing either of us can say right now’s going to change their minds. We’ll just have to try this. See what happens.”

  Oksana’s voice cut through the air like a wire. “I’ve got fast-movers coming in from Ceres! Six torpedoes. Fifty seconds to impact.”

  The breath left Michio’s lungs, pushed out by fear so profound it felt like calm. Open fire, all guns. Get us out of here. Whatever they were going to do, she had to order it now.

  Except she was looking at Holden, and he was surprised too. Shocked, even.

  Angry.

  She had to give the order. She had to fire. Her family was going to die. If she fired, they’d all fire back. She had to run. Burn hard. Melt everything behind her to slag.

  Stop, she thought. If we die, we die, but right now, stop.

  Why was Holden angry?

  “Holden?” she said, her voice trembling. “Do we have a problem?”

  “Fuck yes, you have my permission,” Holden snapped, and it took her a fraction of a second to realize he wasn’t speaking to her.

  “The Rocinante’s firing its PDCs,” Oksana said, her voice high and sharp. Fear was a resonance tone, and the deck rang with it.

  “Lighting up our PDCs,” Evans said.

  “Don’t,” Michio shouted before she knew she was going to say it. Then, in the stunned silence, “Touch those fire controls, and you will kill us all. Do you understand, Mr. Evans? Everyone you love will die, and it will be your fault.” Her husband looked at her, confusion in his eyes. His fingers hovered over the controls, twitching toward them. If she’d shot him, he couldn’t have looked more betrayed. “Oksana, what is the Rocinante firing on?”

  “No no no,” Holden said. “We’re getting them. Not you. You don’t think we’re—”

  “They’re targeting the missiles from Ceres. Impact in … They’re done, sir. The Rocinante shot down the attack.”

  Michio nodded. Her blood rattled in her veins. Her hands shook. She was aware of the panic in her mind like listening to voices in a nearby room, but she didn’t feel it. She didn’t feel anything.

  “Evans,” she said. “Put your hands down.”

  Evans looked at his own fingers like he was surprised to see them there, then slowly lowered them to his sides. She watched the realization bloom in his eyes: If he’d started firing, the enemy fleet would have started firing. Maybe not the Rocinante, but everyone else. His instincts had come within a finger-tap of killing them all. He moaned the way he did when he was sick or drunk, unstrapped, and pushed off. His crash couch spun gently on its gimbals as he abandoned his post. She didn’t stop him.

  On her screen, Holden was bending in toward the camera. Not much, just the little unconscious curve of someone protecting their gut. She forced her own spine to relax. Long seconds passed as she waited for another attack. Heartbeat after heartbeat, nothing came.

  “Well,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Holden replied.

  Another moment passed. Michio heard another voice behind Holden. Naomi Nagata. The words themselves weren’t clear, but the tone of the woman’s voice could have stripped paint. So he hadn’t left her someplace safe. Fair enough. Safety might not exist now anywhere. The first hints of adrenaline crash haunted the edges o
f Michio’s consciousness: a faint nausea, a deepening weariness, sorrow. She ignored those too.

  “Was saying,” Michio said, her voice calmer than she’d expected. “We have the Minsky and what she’s carrying. Ready to pass control over to you. Then we’re backing away before anyone else starts shooting at us.”

  “That wasn’t Fred,” Holden said. “I don’t know who fired those torpedoes, but we’re going to find out.”

  Michio’s lips felt heavy, solid, like she’d been carved from stone. It didn’t matter who’d pulled the trigger on the attack from Ceres. Look far enough back, and Marco Inaros would be behind it.

  “I appreciate that,” she said. “You let us know when you’re ready for the remote command protocols.”

  Marco’s response didn’t take an hour. He shook his head sorrowfully, looked into the camera with wide, dark eyes. The raw charisma of his presence was banked by being on a screen, but it wasn’t extinguished. Proof that the traitor Michio Pa was working with Earth. Undermining the efforts of the Free Navy to protect and rebuild the Belt. Brazenly giving aid and comfort to the enemy. His voice vibrated with indignation on behalf of his people and disgust for her collaboration with the enemy. It didn’t matter that the “enemy” included millions of Belters he’d left behind. She wondered whether that would matter to the people who watched him.

  He included images of the Rocinante defending the Connaught. The final proof, if anyone needed it, that she was in bed with the people who most wanted the Free Navy and the Belt to fail.

  She watched it on the command deck, a dozen responses competing in her head. She even went as far as recording one, but the words got away from her, tugged along by her anger until the woman looking back at her from the screen seemed almost as crazed as the one Marco described.

  They burned away from Ceres, but not hard. The point of the exercise was to put themselves in range of the inners and not be killed. To show the other ships still loyal to her and the handful of independent ships that saw more hope in her path than Marco’s that zones of protection were possible. Fleeing her new little zone of safety as quickly as she could was what she wanted down to her marrow, but it wasn’t what she’d come here for. Wasn’t what she’d risked her ship and her family and her life to get. And so a third of a g, and then the float, reorienting, then another burn. The farther she got from Fred Johnson’s guns, the more she tried to make the Connaught hard for Marco to track.