Babylon's Ashes

by James S. A. Corey

  Not that Marco would beat him. Better that he laugh a little and muss the boy’s hair. Humiliation was always better than violence. To beat a man—even to beat a man to death—was at least proof that you took him seriously as a man. Though, looking back, Filip had really been starting to push as far back as when he’d shot the security coyo on Ceres. And God, Marco’s jaw ached.

  He shifted his fingers, pulled up the timer. The ring gate was only minutes away now. The Pella was shedding momentum with every second, making certain that when they passed through the gate, they wouldn’t fly into a trap. Holden would be waiting. Watching the fire of their drive plumes. They weren’t close enough yet for that to be a danger. Even if Holden fired his rail gun right now, the Pella would be able to react in time to dodge it. That wouldn’t be true much longer. His compressed heart beat a little faster. His aching mouth twitched a little smile.

  But discomfort was the home of the warrior, now as it had always been. He told himself that he embraced it. Welcomed it. And still, he was going to be glad when this part was done.

  He typed in orders for the full force, gathering them in close enough that their drive plumes overlapped, using the vast, energetic cloud as cover to hide behind. Between that and the sensor interference of the ring, Holden would be firing as good as blind. Or at least that was the hope. The worst case was that Holden might take out two or three of his ships before they passed through the ring. But once they came close enough to target the Rocinante, crippling the ship would be nothing. Not destroying it, not unless they got unlucky. Trotting out James Holden’s famed ship as part of the new Free Navy was too good an opportunity to miss. That was what Sanjrani and Dawes—all the others—missed. Leadership required a clear sense of appearance. Of style.

  Fifteen minutes. Billions of people were watching him right now. As fast as the photons could travel back, the Pella and its fourteen fighting ships would be on every newsfeed, every hand terminal, every monitor in the system. He was fifteen minutes from the hinge point in history. Fourteen.

  He checked their common vector. Coming into enemy territory, it was critical that they be neither so close together that a lucky hit by Holden could damage more than one ship nor staggered to give him time to take more shots. They looked good. They would be all right.

  He wished now that he’d thought to make a recording to broadcast. It was the perfect moment. Even better than his initial call to arms. He thought of all the Belters in the system—those who’d stood by the Free Navy and those who’d been too cowardly or misguided and even the traitorous fragments of the OPA who’d taken arms with Pa against their own self-interest. He had to believe they all felt a sense of pride. Before him, they’d been slaves in all but name, and now they were a force equal to and stronger than the most powerful states humanity had ever conceived. How could they not feel awe at this? How could they not feel the joy in this?

  The ring was close enough to see without magnification now. As wide as Ceres Station and still tiny in the vast darkness out here where even the sun wasn’t more than a peculiarly bright star. His ships would start evasive maneuvers as they drew close. Shifting places in their formation like shells on the table of a dockside hustler. He checked their vectors again, typed out an angry command to one of the ships that was drifting behind. The ring slowly grew larger. He increased the magnification and added false light. The material that made up the ring itself still defied the best minds in the human sphere. He wasn’t really seeing it, of course. The image on his monitor was filtered through the brightness of their plumes. In truth, he was falling backward toward the ring, his face toward the faint and unimportant sun. His crash couch held him like he was resting in the palm of God.

  A message appeared on his monitor from Karal: ALL SYSTEMS CHECK. BOA CAÇADA.

  Marco typed back, not just to Karal, but to all of the Pella’s crew. GOOD HUNTING.

  Five minutes until they passed through the gate and the battle for Medina began. The brief, decisive, ugly battle that would redefine what the Free Navy was. He willed them forward, pushing against brute physics with his mind. Smelling victory. Feeling it in his blood. Minutes slid by like hours, and also gone too fast. Two minutes. One.

  Another message from Karal. WIR HAT POSSIBLE.

  Beside it was deeper magnification of the ring filtered through the ship’s system. A tiny blue dot that had to be the rail gun station, and there beside it, almost too subtle to see, a fleck of lighter darkness that could have been a ship on the float. The Rocinante.

  Marco felt his whole consciousness narrow into that one tiny gray dot. Naomi. That dot was Naomi. She’d run out of the solar system to get away from him, and here he was. He could see her face in his mind. The empty expression she wore when she was trying not to feel. His grin hurt. His body hurt. But the little dot forgave it all. Except—

  Something was wrong with his monitor. He thought at first that the image had gotten grainy, the resolution rougher, but that wasn’t right. It was the same size, only he could see the parts that made it up. He wasn’t looking at the Rocinante. He was looking at photons streaming off a sheet of electrically excited plastic. The polymer chains glowed dark and light and dark. It was like seeing a woman’s body in painting across the room and then, without warning, only the brushstrokes that made it up. Naomi was nowhere in it.

  He shouted, and could sense the pressure waves going out from his throat. The clouds of molecules that made his fingers slapped against the ones that were the control pad. He meant to type that they should fire, that they should kill while the chance was still with them, but he couldn’t make out the letters in the splash of photons that spilled off his screen. There was too much detail.

  Where the air began and the crash couch ended was lost. The boundary between his body and his environment blurred. He had known since he was too young to remember learning that atoms were made from more space than material, and that at the lowest levels, the things that made atoms could bounce in and out of being. He’d never seen it before. He’d never been so aware that he was a vapor of energy. A vibration in a guitar string that didn’t exist.

  Something dark and sudden moved through the cloud toward him.

  On the Rocinante, the ring gate grew brighter with the braking burns of the enemy, until it looked like the negative image of an eye—black, star-specked sclera and intensely white, burning iris. The timer reached zero. The lights grew brighter. Then flickered and went out.

  Holden checked the sensors. Where fifteen warships on the burn had been seconds before, there was just nothing.

  “Huh,” Amos said over the ship system. “That is super creepy.”

  Chapter Fifty-Two: Pa

  Here we are. Back again,” Michio said as she stepped onto the docks of Ceres Station.

  “Hup,” Josep, walking beside her, agreed.

  When she’d left, she had been rebelling against a rebellion. Now she had come, whether anyone admitted it or not, to beg the powers of Earth and Mars for her freedom. She felt like the docks themselves should have changed too. Grown older and more worn the way her soul had. But the echoing music built from the clanking of mechs and power tools, the gabble of voices, was what it had been before. The smells of carbon lubricants and ozone was still as sharp.

  A new coat of paint even left the old station looking brighter and younger and more full of hope than when she’d left. The signs had been replaced. The same corridors and lifts, but in bright, clean new fonts and half a dozen alphabets. She knew it was designed for the colonists and refugees fleeing Earth, but it seemed pointed that, of the languages listed, none was Belter Creole. Earth ran Ceres again, the way it had before Eros, and they were turning the station into a theme-park version of itself. The guard was for the most part ceremonial, but Michio was more than willing to bet their sidearms were loaded. It was awkward work, welcoming someone who was equal parts ally and enemy. She didn’t envy them.

  It had been six months now since the remarkable death of Ma
rco Inaros and the great remnant of the Free Navy. Half a year just to bring the remaining players together to talk. She wondered how long it would take to actually do something that mattered. And what would happen when they all ran out of time. She felt like she had a tiny Nico Sanjrani in the back of her head counting down the hours until the Belt—no, until all humanity—needed the farms and medical centers and mines and processing facilities that they hadn’t built because they’d been too busy fighting. Some nights it kept her awake. Some nights other things did.

  She was half expecting them to take her to the same quarters Marco Inaros had assigned the last time she’d been here hammering out a plan for the Belt, but while it was in the same section of the station, the particular rooms were different. Their escort finished welcoming them, assured them that if they needed anything, someone from the hospitality service would be there to help. They bowed their way out the door, closing it as they left. Michio lowered herself to the couch in the suite’s main room while Josep made his way through each of the rooms, taking stock and looking for surveillance equipment that was both certainly there and certainly too professionally installed to find.

  Nadia, Bertold, and Laura were back on the new ship—a converted cargo hauler on loan from one of Bertold’s cousins as long as they found ways to make the payments on it. After the sleekness and power of the Connaught, it felt cheap and flimsy. But her family was on it, so it was home in the same way that the couch her cheek rested against was raw-silk upholstery in a jail cell.

  Josep’s laugh was hard. He walked back into the room with a rectangle of something the color of cream and held it out to her. Not paper, but heavy card stock smooth as the couch. The writing on it was neat and precise.

  Captain Pa—

  Thank you for coming to the conference and for your courage in the struggles we have all endured together. With good faith and cooperation, we will forge the path still ahead.

  It was signed Chrisjen Avasarala. Michio looked up at Josep, her brow knit.

  “En serio? That doesn’t even sound like her.”

  “I know,” he said. “And come see! There’s a fruit basket.”

  If wars began with rage, they ended with exhaustion.

  In the aftermath of the system-wide battle and its unsettling aftermath at the ring, the partisans of the Free Navy had felt an overwhelming sense of injustice. It was as if the disappearance of the Pella and its battle force had been a bad call in a football match, and they were trying to find a referee to shout down. Then, slowly, the understanding seemed to spread through all the stations—Pallas, Ganymede, Ceres, Tycho, and dozens more besides—that the war was ended. That they’d lost. A group on Pallas had issued a declaration that they were the New Free Navy and had set off a few bombs when the consolidated fleet arrived to take control of the station. The Jovian system—Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, and all the lesser bases there—had been the Free Navy’s strongest ground and the one least touched by the fighting. A few patches of resistance there meant the violence would drag on for a few more weeks or months, but the outcome wasn’t in doubt.

  The specter of the Laconia gate and Winston Duarte hung over Mars more than anyone else. Martian identity—proud cogs in the glorious terraforming machine—didn’t square with military coups and mass defection. Mars wanted answers, and Laconia ignored them all magnificently. The only communication since the death of the Free Navy was a looped statement broadcast through the gate. A man’s voice, inflected like a newsreader’s, saying, Laconia is under its own sovereign authority. This message serves as notice that any ships passing through the Laconia gate will be in violation of that authority and will be denied passage. Laconia is under its own sovereign authority …

  The message had caused no end of debate in the Martian parliament while Earth drove two of its three remaining battleships out to the slow zone and parked them and their ancient but effective rail guns and nuclear torpedoes at the edges of the Laconia gate, ready to reduce anything that came out to gas and scrap. Avasarala called it a containment policy, and Michio supposed it was the sanest thing to do. Earth was in no condition to pick another fight.

  By the time Rosenfeld Guoliang took the stand in The Hague, the first high-profile prosecution for the murder of billions on Earth, the vast and complex human zeitgeist was ready for it to be over. There would be other trials coming. Anderson Dawes had been captured. Nico Sanjrani turned himself in at Tycho. Of Inaros’ original inner circle, Michio Pa was the only one not in a cell or dead. And she was at a cocktail party.

  The meeting center in the governor’s palace was built on three levels with stairways between them and a lot of plants. People in uniform and formal dress stood in pairs or small groups or alone with their hand terminals while servants carried trays of hors d’oeuvres and drinks. If anything specific was wanted—food or drink or a fresh pair of shoes, probably—they had only to ask. The lap of luxury. The highest circles of power and influence.

  This was the real thing, something that Marco Inaros had only been able to play at. The stone walks were polished and the pillars were made of striped sedimentary rock pulled all the way from Earth as a kind of boast. We’re so rich, we don’t even use our own stone. She’d never noticed it before, and she didn’t know whether it left her amused or angry or sad.

  “Michio,” a woman’s voice said. “Here you are. How is Laura?”

  The old lady in the orange sari took Michio’s elbow and led her along almost three full steps before she realized it was Avasarala. The old Earther looked different in person. Smaller, her skin a deeper brown, her pale hair taking up more of her face.

  “Much better,” Michio said. “Back on the ship.”

  “With Nadia and Bertold? And Josep stayed back in your rooms? Just so long as they know they’re welcome. God damn, this is an ugly piece of architecture, isn’t it?” Avasarala said. “I saw you looking at the pillars.”

  “I was,” Michio said.

  Avasarala leaned in close, her eyes bright as a schoolgirl’s. “They’re fake. The rock? Made it with a centrifuge and colored sand. I knew the builder. He was a fake too. Pretty, though. God save us all from good-looking men.”

  Michio surprised herself by laughing. The old woman was charming. Michio knew that this show of hospitality was just that. A show. And yet it worked; she felt more at ease. The time was going to come, and soon, when Michio was going to have to come to this woman and ask for amnesty. Ask this Earther to let her and her family go free for Marco’s crimes. This moment made it seem like maybe the answer would be yes. Hope was a terrible thing. She didn’t want to feel, and yet there it was.

  She didn’t know she was going to speak until she said it. “I’m sorry.” What she meant was I’m sorry I didn’t stop the attack that killed your husband and I’m sorry I didn’t see Inaros for what he was sooner and I would do it all differently if I could live my life backward and try again.

  Avasarala paused, looked deeply into Michio’s eyes, and it was like seeing someone through a mask. The deepness there startled her. When she spoke, it was as if she’d heard every nuance.

  “Politics is the art of the possible, Captain Pa. When you play at our level, grudges cost lives.”

  Across a narrow courtyard, James Holden turned and then came trotting over. He, at least, was the same height she remembered. He looked a little older than when they’d fought against Ashford on the Behemoth. Back in the God-who-could-have-known-they-were-the-good-old-days. She saw the surprise and pleasure as he recognized her.

  “Captain Holden,” she said. “Still weird to see you.”

  “Right?” he said with a boyish smile that seemed totally unaffected. He turned to Avasarala. “Can I pull you away for a minute? There’s a thing.”

  Avasarala squeezed Michio’s arm, then let it go. “Forgive me,” she said. “Holden can’t find his cock with both hands unless there’s someone there to point him at it.”

  They walked away together, heads bent in conferenc
e. Behind a spray of ivy, Michio saw a tall, dark-skinned woman bent a degree forward as she laughed with the Martian prime minister. Naomi Nagata. She looked … normal? Unremarkable. Michio knew her from before, and still might not have known her if they’d passed in a common corridor or shared a tube ride. But this was the woman Marco had abducted before his attack on Earth, just so he could watch her look upon his power. The woman who’d turned away from him when they’d both been little more than children themselves. Michio would never know how much of the decision to take the last remnant of the Free Navy to Medina had been for cold tactical reasons and how much was because Naomi Nagata had been there. It was so petty and so small, and she had no trouble believing it. When you play at our level, grudges cost lives.

  Carlos Walker strolled through an archway, caught her eye, and smiled. She’d known him mostly by reputation back when she’d been part of Fred fucking Johnson’s OPA. Carlos Walker, with his playboy’s manners and the weird religious streak, the sincerity of which no one seemed able to determine. He plucked two fresh flutes of champagne from a passing tray and made his way toward her.

  “You look thoughtful, Captain Pa.”

  “Do I?” she said, taking the glass. “Well, then I suppose it must be true. And you? How does it feel being the unelected representative of the Belt?”

  Walker smiled. “I could ask you the same.”

  She laughed. “I’m not representing anyone but myself.”

  “Really? Then what are you doing here?”

  Michio blinked, but didn’t know how to respond.

  A little less than an hour later, a soft chiming and a discrete rush of personal assistants and aides announced the actual meeting. Pa let herself be carried along with a growing sense of displacement. The meeting room was smaller than she’d expected, and arranged in a rough triangle. Avasarala, a thin-faced man in a formal jacket, and two men in military uniforms sat at one corner. The Martian prime minister—Emily Richards—sat at another with half a dozen people in suits fluttering around her like they were moths and she was an open flame. And at the third, Carlos Walker, Naomi Nagata, James Holden, and Michio herself.