Babylon’s Ashes

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 looking 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.

Rindai 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.

“Come you, have a drink,” Samuels said, clapping Montemayor on the arm just as if they were friends. “We’ll get you an escort to your quarters.”

“It’s Callisto all over again,” Roberts said.

“You weren’t even born when Callisto had trouble,” Salis replied. “Que Callisto all over again?”

Jakulski leaned back, pressed to the ground by the spin of the drum. Somewhere five levels below their feet, a quarter of a klick aft, and maybe ten degrees spinward, his cabin waited and with it, his comfortable clothes. After the Martians had all been greeted and drunk to and made welcome and all, he’d hurried to the café, thinking maybe he’d be able to catch the technical team before they went home. He hadn’t taken the time to stop and change clothes. So now the uniform, even undone at the throat, sanded his neck.

The technical team had all been there, and still were. Planted in their chairs like they’d taken root.

“Don’t have to have been there to know what a proxy war is,” Roberts said. “My family’s Callistan, three generations. I know what it looked like, even if I wasn’t there. Earth sends private security. Mars sends advisors. Everybody just there to help out this union or that trade group, but what it came down to was Earth and Mars spending Belter lives so they never had to risk their own.”

He’d expected the place to be empty. It was long after his shift, well into when he should have been spinning down for sleep. But the light of the straight-line sun was bright and high, and even after generations in the black, some atavistic part of his brain still told him that meant midday. Drum time was permanent noon, first and last and always. And with the overlapping shifts that kept Medina alive and working no matter what the clock pretended, there were people coming in for an early breakfast or a late lunch, grabbing a quick drink on the way back to their cabin. Or like him and the technical team—burning the midnight oil. All at the same time. It was the drift of humanity left to live on whatever schedule they chose instead of being chained to the twenty-four hours of Earth and Mars. Belter time.

“Maybe if they’d come on their own, yeah,” Salis said. “Could see it then. But that’s not the way I heard it.”

“The way you heard it?” Roberts laughed. “Didn’t know you had your cameras in the bedrooms of power. Inside scoop, you?”

Salis made a rude gesture, but he was smiling while he did it. Jakulski took a drink of his beer, surprised to find the bulb so close to empty already.

“Friends in comms, me,” Salis said. “What I heard was Marco asked Duarte to come. Not Laconia coming to pull our puppet strings. It’s them dancing to a Free Navy song.”

“The fuck would they do that for?” Jakulski asked. He sounded like Roberts, like he was busting Salis’ balls, but he more than half wanted Salis to talk him into agreeing. In his fatigue, Jakulski couldn’t stop imagining the six advisors in their civilian clothes and martial bodies.

“Same reason start storing your casino chips someplace new when your boyfriend moves out,” Salis said. “Think on it, yeah? Michio Pa was one of his five. High up. Maybe Marco kept her out of the loop on Medina, only ran that through Rosenfeld. Maybe everyone knew a little of everything. Now Pa’s making her play, it’s only smart to change it up. She thinks she knows how the rail guns are protected? So he changes how the rail guns are protected. Simple.”

“Or now Marco and Rosenfeld and Dawes are distracted, Duarte moves his ‘advisors’ in place so when he wants to, he can point the rail guns at Medina, tell us all what we should make him for breakfast,” Roberts said.

Jakulski lifted a hand, caught the server’s eye, and pointed to his spent bulb. One more wouldn’t do any damage that wasn’t already done. And all of it was going on God-damn Shului’s tab anyway. Best make it count. Vandercaust, across from him, noticed and raised his own bulb as well. The server nodded with her hand and went back to what she’d been doing. A bird with wings as wide as Jakulski’s outstretched fingers skinned past them, a fluttering and a flash of blue. It rode the breeze like it was still on a planet that curved down at the horizon instead of up. There was something wonderful about air wide enough to fly in.

“Say you?” he asked, looking at Vandercaust.

“Not saying nothing, sa sa?” the oldest tech said, scratching idly at the split-circle tattoo on his wrist. “Drinking.”

Jakulski narrowed his eyes. Curiosity shifted sluggishly in his brain. He was too tired. He should go back and sleep. But the server was on her way with two fresh bulbs, and he’d made the trip so he could be with the team. “Best guess, then. Duarte pushing pawns to get control of Medina? Marco using Laconia against Pa? What are we looking at?”

“Best guess is I don’t fucking know,” Vandercaust said in an amiable voice, and gestured in a controlled way that made it clear he was very drunk indeed. “It’s a war. Wars aren’t like that.”

“Aren’t like what?” Roberts said.

“Aren’t like stories about wars,” Vandercaust answered solemnly. “Stories about wars come after. Like Qin Shi Huang unified China or when you look and say this led to this led to this, and then it was over. How did anything begin? War start when Marco hit Earth? When Earth hit Anderson Station? And it ends when Earth and Mars are dead? When Belters have a home? When everyone agrees it’s done?”

Roberts rolled her eyes, but Salis leaned forward, fingers laced across his knee. Jakulski took his new bulb from the server and drank. It was cold and rich, but something made him a little sorry he’d stayed to drink it. Martians on Medina, and Pa running her own crew, and Fred Johnson taking Ceres back. It all felt like someone building the solar system’s biggest mousetrap. And Jakulski thought maybe he was living inside the cheese.