Babylon’s Ashes

Chapter Eleven: Pa

Seven decades before Michio Pa was born, Earth and Mars rewrote the tariff regulations on raw ore from the Belt. The stated reason was that it would encourage the establishment and expansion of refineries in the Belt and around Jupiter and Saturn. It might even have worked. In the short term, it meant that a wave of Belter prospectors and asteroid miners who’d been living at the edge of survival slipped over into the abyss. Ships were impounded or run illegally or lost from not having the scrip to pay for maintenance and repair. Back then, Earth and Mars had walked in each other’s footsteps, and the only option that seemed to have any promise of justice was for the Belt to build a military of its own.

It was never official. The Outer Planets Alliance survived since then by being diffuse and deniable. But the beginnings were there. Choose a faction, find a place in the chain of command, build the thin but resilient structure that would have muscle one day. That would eventually become an answer to the inner planets projecting their power out to where the sun was hardly more than the brightest star.

When Michio Pa turned twenty-two, Fred Johnson—the Butcher of Anderson Station—had seemed like her brightest hope. He was an Earther fighting for the Belt. Fighting against his own natural self-interest. It gave a sense of authenticity to someone young enough and still easily swayed. She’d taken a position on Tycho Station, made her contacts first and then her commitment. Trained in the quasi-military that Johnson was hauling up. Put in her years.

She’d been a true believer, then. She’d been a naïve little prig. But that was before the Behemoth.

Getting the XO assignment on the Belt’s first genuine warship had been a dream come true for her. The generation ship hadn’t been designed for war, but all of her crew had been. That was what she told herself.

Captain Ashford had the command. She had been his second. And slotted in beneath them as head of security, Fred Johnson’s personal friend. Carlos C de Baca. Bull. Her babysitter, and the man positioned to step in and take over when she made her first mistake. Her hatred for Bull had been incandescent. Every chance she had to belittle him, she’d taken it. Every misstep he made, she drove a wedge into, prying it open. The Behemoth had gone to the ring to face down Earth and Mars. To show that the Belt was a force to be reckoned with. And as above, so below. She’d made it her personal mission to show Bull that she was better than he was.

Which was why it had hurt her so badly when Sam sided with him.

They’d talked about it, her and Sam. How important it was to keep their affair quiet. How not to let anyone—especially anyone in command—guess about them. Sam had agreed, maybe because she actually did agree. Or maybe in order to placate Michio’s insecurities. And then Bull and Sam had fucked around with the budget allocations. It had felt like the deepest betrayal possible. Sam—her Sam—making common cause with an Earther. With the Earther who’d been sent by Fred Johnson to mind the untrustworthy Belters.

It had been only her first mistake among many. Michio had let her emotions blind her to the wisdom and experience that Bull had offered her until things were badly out of hand. Despite all the casualties after the catastrophe, she hadn’t recognized Ashford’s volatility and violence as symptoms of brain injury. She hadn’t put aside her faith in the chain of command.

And she hadn’t made peace with Sam before Ashford killed her.

Fred Johnson had sent her out into the whirlwind because she was a Belter, and he needed a Belter as a figurehead. She hadn’t been ready, but she had been convenient. And because of it, people had died.

The Behemoth never came back through the gate. They’d stripped her down, spun up the drum, and rechristened her again as Medina Station. Michio Pa, they’d sent back to Tycho on a Martian naval vessel. After the dead had been removed, there’d been plenty of extra space. As soon as she’d gotten back to her quarters, she’d resigned. She didn’t even shower first. She quit her official job on Tycho, her militia rank in the OPA, everything. Fred Johnson had sent her personal messages. She didn’t know what was in them. She’d deleted them without listening.

And she’d gotten lost, taking one job and another. Trying to keep her nightmares and crying jags to herself. She ran a ship for a salvaging company that sometimes verged over into piracy. She oversaw a trading co-op that didn’t announce itself to the tariff boards, which was technically smuggling. She was managing a supply warehouse complex on Rhea for a half-criminal labor union based out of Titan when Nadia and Bertold found her. It had taken six months before she’d realized that she was in love with them and four more before she understood what it meant that they loved her too. The day they first made a home together in a thin, inexpensive hole half a klick below the moon’s surface was one of the best she’d ever had.

The others had come in their own way. Laura and Oksana together. And then Josep. Evans. Each new person folded into the marriage had felt like an expansion of her tribe. Her people. Not the politicians, not the war leaders, not the men who loved to wield power. There was a difference between, on the one hand, the Belt and its fight to exist in the face of the gate she’d helped open and, on the other, the voices and bodies of her family.

But the dream didn’t die. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the idea of a Belter navy that could stand toe-to-toe with Earth and Mars and demand to be respected lay dormant but alive.

And so when Marco Inaros came with his proposal in hand, she’d heard him out. She was still remembered in Belter circles as the captain who’d stepped up in the slow zone. People respected her name. When the time came, he needed someone who would coordinate rounding up the colony ships he was keeping out of the slow zone and see that the supplies made it to Belters in need. Take from the rich inners and give to the poor of the Belt until things were even. Until they reached the utopia of the void.

But not yet. Now he just needed small favors. Moving some contraband through to Ganymede. Overseeing a prisoner transfer. Helping set up a band of hidden relays outside Jupiter. He had cultivated her with a grand vision and small steps.

And by cultivated, she might have meant seduced.

“How many ships do we have coming to Ceres?” he asked, walking beside her. The administrative levels of Ceres Station had the smell of living plants, the polished floors and walls that were meant as a boast. Michio felt a little out of place there, but Marco didn’t. He managed to make wherever he was feel like his natural habitat.

“Seven,” she said. “The closest’s the Alastair Rauch. It’s been braking for a while. Should hit dock in three days. The Hornblower’s the farthest, but Carmondy can up the burn if we need him to. I’m trying to have the fleet conserve reaction mass.”

“Good. That’s good,” Marco said, putting his hand on her shoulder. His guards stopped at the door to the conference room, and Michio started past them. Marco held her back. “We’re going to need to shift them.”

“Shift them?”

“Route them to other ports. Or run them dark and just let them be for a while.”

Michio shook her head. It wasn’t actual rejection as much as her body expressing her confusion. Half a dozen responses came to her: They all need to refuel someplace and We have stations running low on food and fertilizer that are already coming here to get it and Are you kidding me?

“Why?” she asked.

Marco’s smile was warm and charming. Excited and bright. She found herself smiling along with him without knowing why.

“Situation’s changed,” he said, and then walked into the conference room ahead of her. His guards nodded to her as she passed them, and she wondered for a moment where Marco’s son was.

The others were around the conference table. The wall where Marco had spent days outlining his vision of the future Belt had been cleared, and in its place, a picture of an ancient warrior. The man was dark-skinned with an ornate mustache and beard, a turban, a long, flowing white robe, a crimson sash with three swords tucked in it, and an ancient rifle cradled in one arm.

“You’re late,” Dawes said to Marco mildly as Michio took her seat. Marco ignored them both.

“Consider the Afghan,” Marco said. “Lords of the Graveyard of Empires. Even Alexander the Great couldn’t conquer these people. Every great power who attempted it exhausted themselves and failed.”

“But they barely had a functioning economy,” Sanjrani said. Rosenfeld touched the other man’s arm and put a finger to his own lips.

Marco paced before the image. “How did they manage it? How did a technologically primitive, scattered people defy the greatest powers in the world for century after century?” He turned to the others. “Do you know?”

None of them answered. They weren’t meant to. This was a performance. Marco’s grin widened. He lifted a hand.

“They cared about different things,” he said. “To the enemy, war was about territory. Ownership. Occupation. To these geniuses, it was about controlling the spaces they did not occupy. When the English armies came to an Afghan city, ready to take the field of battle, they found … nothing. The enemy faded into the hills, lived in the spaces that the enemy discounted. For the English, the city was a thing to be owned. For the Afghan, it was no more sacred than the hills and the desert and the fields.”

“That’s a bit romantic, don’t you think?” Rosenfeld said, but Marco ignored him.

“These brave people. They were the Belters of their age and place. Our spiritual fathers. And the time has come for us to honor them. My friends, the Azure Dragon has fallen, as we knew it would eventually. Earth is preparing to lash out in its pain and ignorance.”

“You’ve heard something?” Dawes asked. His face was pale.

“Nothing new,” Marco said. “We always knew that Ceres was a target for them. They’ve been biding their time since the OPA’s takeover, but our cousin Anderson here was always careful to balance his power with appeasement. It was never their greatest concern. Not until now. The UN Navy is redeploying. They are heading for Ceres. But when they get here …?”

Marco lifted his two closed fists to his mouth, then blew on them and spread his fingers. It was an illusion, but Michio felt she could almost see the ashes blowing off his hands.

“You can’t mean …” Dawes choked.

“I’ve already started the evacuation,” Marco said. “All our soldiers and materiel will be off the station well before they arrive.”

“There are six million people on the station,” Rosenfeld said. “I don’t know that we can take them all.”

“Of course not,” Marco said. “This is a military action. We take the military ships and supplies that we need, and cede the territory to Earth. They won’t let Ceres starve and die. The only thing they have is the chance to play victim and wring sympathy out of the simpleminded. If they don’t take care of Ceres, they’ll lose even that. And us? We’ll be in the emptiness that is our natural home. Unassailable.”

“But,” Sanjrani said. Almost whined. “The economic base.”

“Don’t worry,” Marco said. “Everything we’ve discussed is coming. Only first, we have to let the enemy overextend itself and collapse. This was always part of the plan.”

Dawes rose to his feet. His face was gray as ash apart from two bright red smears on his cheeks. His hands shook. “This is about Filip. You’re getting back at me?”

“This isn’t about Filip Inaros,” Marco said, but the elation and excitement had vanished from his voice. “This is about Philip of Macedon. And about learning the lessons of history.” He was silent for a long, terrible moment. Dawes sank back into his chair. “Now. Michio and I have already discussed rerouting the incoming ships. Let’s talk about the logistics of emptying the station itself, yes?”

The way that inners fled their own ships when they came to a station fed a certain species of jokes among Belters. How can a Belter choose a ship’s dinner menu? Dock. How can you tell an Inner’s been away from port too long? They go outside to shit. If you give an Earther the choice of staying on board ship and saving her sweetheart’s life or heading out to the docks and never loving again, how do you dispose of the body? It was the way they looked at everything: The ship wasn’t real, the planet was. Or the moon. Or the asteroid. They couldn’t let go of the idea that life involved rock and soil. It was what made them smaller.

Michio’s people weren’t all on the Connaught when she passed through the docking tube and into her ship’s lock, but most were. The ones who were out would likely come back to sleep in their bunks. No one would think it was odd that her whole marriage group was there. Or if it was a little odd, not implausible at least.

She headed down the lift with the weird sense of seeing the ship for the first time. Like stepping into a new station, everything was in sharp focus. Unfamiliar. The green and red indicators of the lift control. The thin, white text printed on every panel to show what was housed behind it and when it had been installed. The subtle MCRN logo still visible on the floor despite their best efforts to buff it away. The smell of black noodles came from the galley, but she didn’t pause. If she tried to eat now, she’d only vomit anyway.

They were in the cabins set aside for the family. One of the first things Bertold had done when they got the Connaught was take the walls off three of the cabins to make a wider space with crash couches enough that they could all sit together. The Martian designers had made the ship so that people could be alone or else together. It took a Belter to make space to be alone together. Oksana and Laura were sitting on the deck, their harps almost touching as they played through an old Celtic melody. Oksana’s paleness and Laura’s dark made them seem like something from a fairy tale. Josep lounged in one of the couches, his hand terminal set to some text or another, reading and swaying his foot to the music. Evans sat beside him, trying not to seem nervous. Nadia, looking like the however-many-greats-granddaughter of Marco’s Afghan soldier, stood behind one of the other couches, gently massaging Bertold’s thinning black hair.

Michio sat in the couch they’d left for her and listened until the melody came to an end in a series of ambiguous fourths and fifths. They put down their harps and hand terminal. Bertold opened his one good eye.

“Thank you for coming,” Michio said.

“Always,” Laura said.

“Just to ask,” Josep said. “Are you our captain or our wife right now?”

“I’m your wife. I think … I think that I …”

And then she was weeping. She leaned forward, hands over her eyes. The tight monkey’s-fist knot that was her heart blocked her throat. She tried to cough it out of the way, but it sounded like a sob. Laura’s hand touched her foot. And then Bertold’s arm was across her back and he folded her in against him. She heard Oksana murmuring, “It’s okay, baby. It’s all right,” from what might have been half a world away. It was too much. It was all too much.

“I did it,” Michio managed at last. “I did it again. I put us in Marco’s control, and he’s … He’s another Ashford. He’s another Fred fucking Johnson. I tried so hard not to do it again, and I did it. And I brought you all along. And I’m so … I’m so sorry.”

Her family descended on her gently, a hand or an arm, all of them touching her. Offering her comfort. Saying wordlessly that they were there. Evans wept with her, not even knowing why. The tears got worse for a while, confused for a while. And then better. Clearer. The worst of it passed. And when she was herself again, it was Josep that spoke.

“Tell us the story. It’ll have less power then.”

“He’s abandoning Ceres. Getting all the Free Navy out and leave the people for the inners. The colony ships we took? He wants to drive them dark out of the ecliptic for storage instead of delivering the supplies.”

“Ah,” Nadia said. “That kind, is he?”

“It’s hard, changing,” Josep said. “Tell yourself you’re a warrior long enough, you start believing it. Then peace looks like death. An annihilation of self.”

“Little abstract, honey,” Nadia said.

Josep blinked wide eyes at her, then smiled ruefully. “More concrete. You’re right. You always are.”

“I’m so sorry,” Michio said. “I did it wrong again. I trusted someone. I put myself in his command, and … I’m stupid. I’m just stupid.”

“We all agreed,” Oksana said through a scowl. “We all believed.”

“You believed because I asked you to,” Michio said. “This is my fault.”

“Now,” Laura said, “Michi? What’s the magic word?”

Against her will, Michio laughed. It was an old joke. A part of what made her family her family.

“The magic word is oops,” she said. And then a moment later, “Oops.”

Bertold took a moment to noisily blow his nose and wipe the last of the tears from his eyes. “All right. So what do we do?”

“We can’t keep working with the bastard,” Oksana said.

Nadia nodded with her hand. “And we can’t stay here and wait for the Earthers.”

Together, without meaning to, they all looked to her. Michio, their wife. But also their captain. She took a long, shuddering breath. “The thing he asked us for? Gather up the colony ships and spread the food and supplies to the Belters that need them? It still needs doing. And we still have a gunship to do it with. Some of the other ships might see things our way. So either we stick to the mission or else we try to find someplace quiet and sink out of sight before Inaros figures that we’re gone.”

Her family was silent for what felt like a long time, though it wasn’t more than a few breaths set end to end. Bertold scratched at his bad eye. Nadia and Oksana traded a look that seemed to mean something. Laura cleared her throat.

“Being small isn’t being safe. Not now.”

“Vrai,” Bertold said. “I’m for doing what we said we’d do, and fuck the rest. Changed sides before and it didn’t kill us.”

“Did we?” Josep said. “Would we be changing sides now?”

“Yes,” Evans said. “We would.”

Josep turned to look Michio full in the eyes. The humor and love in his face was like warmth radiating from a heater. “Fought the oppressor before. Still fighting the oppressor now. Followed your heart then. Still following your heart now. The situation changes, that doesn’t mean you do.”

“That’s sweet,” Michio said, taking his hand.

“Abstract, though,” Nadia said, and there was love in her voice too.

“Everything you’ve done,” Josep said, “every mistake, every loss, every scar. They all brought you here, so that as soon as you saw Big Himself for what he is, you’d be ready to act. Incapable of not acting, even. Everything then was preparation for now.”

“That’s bullshit,” Michio said. “But thank you.”

“If the universe needs a knife, it makes a knife,” Josep said with a shrug. “If it needs a pirate queen, it makes Michio Pa.”