Babylon’s Ashes

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Holden

When Holden left the Earth Navy, he’d had a dishonorable discharge on his record and a sense of relief and righteous anger stiffening his spine. He’d thought at the time that the greatest irony of his newly fallen position in life was that, while his career options were now substantially narrowed and his status in the world dimmed, he felt freer. Looking back at it now, that freedom only earned second place after the subliminal, barely expressed relief that he wouldn’t see any more ship-to-ship fighting.

Since the Rocinante had become his home, he’d tracked down pirates for the OPA. Battled over Io. The slow zone. Ilus. If he’d sucked it up and stayed in the service, he’d have been a thousand times safer. It wasn’t something that had occurred to him before. In all the previous battles, he’d been in charge. Working for so many years with a skeleton crew of only four made frantic action the norm. Between his crew and Fred Johnson’s now, every station had someone in it, and a backup ready to step in besides. Even with the high burn pressing him into the couch so hard he could barely breathe, there was a deeper urge to do something. To take control of some corner of the action. To have an effect.

The truth of the matter was that anything he did now would get in someone else’s way. Watching the tactical map and trying not to pass out were literally all he could usefully manage. Even calling Ceres for help had been someone else’s job. And Fred, in the couch at the far side of the command deck, had done it better than he could have. When a power exchange blew out and switched to the fallback, Amos or Clarissa had flagged it for repair before he could remember how to pull up the damage control schedule. Mfume and Steinberg were at stations amidships, Lombaugh and Droga down in engineering, two teams of pilot and gunner ready to take over if the Free Navy cleaved the cockpit off the ship. So he watched the Shinsakuto falling away to intercept the long-range torpedoes from Ceres and then shifted to the Koto and the Pella—Marco Inaros’ ship—as they raced up at them from below like sharks.

Naomi was in the next couch over, breathing in ragged gasps. He wanted to talk to her, to ask if she was okay, to offer her some sort of comfort. He tried to imagine her response. Something that meant, I appreciate that you care, but the time to talk through my emotional well-being isn’t during a firefight. It was just another way that he could try to control something. Make something better. Anything. She was less than a meter from him, and a million klicks away.

When the drive cut out and the ship spun hard, he knew they were dead. Then thrust slammed him back into his couch. For a few seconds he’d wondered whether it had actually happened, or if he was starting to hallucinate, but then he saw the Koto falling away beneath them. Even then it took a few seconds to understand what had happened, just in time for it to happen again. He heard Naomi cry out as the impact of the couch hit them all again.

He wanted to shout up to Bobbie that she had to stop it. That there were people in the ship—some of them Belters. And anyway no one had grown up in gravity hard enough that they could shrug off eight-g impacts all day, crap-ass third-rate juice or not. But he couldn’t even do that, because if she was doing it, she probably was right to. The best he could do was hate it and endure.

All of which was why, when something finally did arrive that he could do, he was practically giddy with relief.

DISTRACT THEM.

He stared at the words with blurry, aching eyes. Who was Bobbie asking him to distract? The crew? The enemy? He forced his fingers to the controls, managing ??? only with some effort.

The answer came back just the same. DISTRACT THEM.

Holden stared at the words. As much as he wanted to help, there really wasn’t much he could do that the ship wasn’t already doing. The ECM package was spraying radio chatter at the pursuing ship, doing its best to blind the enemy torpedoes. The comm laser was throwing as much high-frequency light into the Pella’s sensors as it could pump out. As far as distractions went, the Roci was already doing her best. He forced another painful breath.

On the other hand, what else was he doing? And thinking about the comm laser gave him an idea.

He grabbed the comm control and put in a tightbeam-connection request to the Pella. Maybe they’d think he was asking for their surrender. Or offering his. Intellectually, he knew there had to be some anxiety in him. This was Marco Inaros. The man who’d killed the Earth. Who’d tried to capture Naomi and kill him. But between the ache of the burn and his juice-regulated heartbeat, he didn’t feel it.

The tightbeam picked up carrier, paused while it negotiated wavelength and data protocol, and then the connection was accepted, and Holden was looking up into the eyes of Marco Inaros. He’d seen pictures of the man. Watched the videos of his press releases. He knew the face as well as he might any third-rate celebrity. Thrust had pulled back Marco’s hair, stretched his skin, pushed his cheeks back and in. It made him look younger than he was. Holden hoped it was doing the same for him.

He hadn’t assumed that the Pella would brake enough to make conversation possible. Whatever he was going to do, he’d thought it would be in text. But now that they were facing each other, he thought this might be enough. The monitor was only about sixty centimeters from Holden. Marco’s would be about the same. It created the illusion that they were close to each other. He could see the little flaw in Marco’s hairline where it curved back at the right temple. The blood vessels in his eyes. It felt intimate. Almost embarrassing. And, motionless as they were, there was also an uncanny feeling, like looking into the mirror and seeing someone else looking back. Here was a man who’d taken on the fate of humanity like it was a part-time job, right here in front of him. Close enough to touch.

It was hard to be certain what emotions were actually in Marco’s expression and what Holden only imagined. A defiant sneer. Then confusion. Maybe they were there; maybe they were only what he expected to see. He was certain, though, that a malicious gleam came into the man’s eyes at the end. The effort of working his controls showed in Marco’s face, and Holden expected a message to come through. A taunt, an accusation. He was wrong.

Marco clicked away, and a new face appeared. Younger. Darker. As crushed by the acceleration, but unmistakable. Filip Inaros. The boy didn’t look at Holden, didn’t seem aware of him. Holden, it seemed, wasn’t showing on his monitor. Marco was only giving Holden a moment to look at the boy.

He didn’t know what he was supposed to see there. Maybe it was a vulgar masculine boast. She may be with you now, but I fucked her first. That seemed about Inaros’ level. Maybe it was to show that the son hated them as much as the father. But where looking at Marco had felt awkward, seeing Filip was actually fascinating. Holden couldn’t help searching for traces of Naomi in the younger, masculine face. The epicanthic fold at the corner of his eyes. The angle of his cheeks and the shape of his lips. The way he moved reminded Holden of Naomi struggling under a burden.

What struck him most was how young the boy looked. At that age, Holden hadn’t left Earth yet. Had still been waking up at the ranch in Montana, having breakfast with his many parents before going out to mend fences and check the turbines at the wind farm. Thinking of the Navy because Brenda Kaufmann had broken up with him, and he was sure he’d never get over her.

There were mistakes you made because you were young. Everyone made some of them.

Thrust cut out. Holden’s couch snapped to the side again, bucked as the rail gun fired, and slammed back into him. On his screen, the boy’s eyes widened as his couch swiveled. Something loud happened on the Pella. Someone shouted. The high whine of a medical alert. The tightbeam dropped as the thrust gravity on the Roci dropped back. Still more than usual, but after that long pushing at eight gs, his body’s response was profound and visceral. Naomi’s moan was half pain, half relief. People were shouting in his ear: delight and exaltation. His mouth tasted like blood. His elbow ached as he reached for the monitor, switching to tactical without the in-couch control. Alex’s voice, muffled like they were both underwater, reached him. That was great. We did it. We kicked their butts.

The Pella was burning away, still under high thrust, but racing away. A wave of the Rocinante’s torpedoes raced after them. Without thinking, he disarmed them.

His fingers hesitated above the screen, his mind falling apart and coming back together and falling apart again the way it did at the end of a long burn. The blood reperfusing through his brain carried strange, fleeting sensations. His left leg cold and wet, like he was standing in a river. The smell of burning hair. A sense of unfocused moral outrage that flickered and went out as suddenly as it had come. He pressed his hands to his eyes and coughed. Pain shot down his spine. His ears rang. Tinnitus.

No, not tinnitus.

“Jim.”

He wrenched himself around, fighting against the unnatural weight of his body. Naomi was struggling in her couch, futilely trying to rise in the heavy g. Her face was ashen. His half-functioning brain leaped to panic. She was hurt. Something’s wrong. This is my fault.

“What?” he said, his voice rough and phlegmy. “What happened?”

Bobbie came down from the cockpit, muscles straining on the ladder rungs. Naomi looked from him to her and back again. She was pointing at something, gasping to get words out.

“Fred,” Naomi said. “He’s having a stroke.”

“Oh,” Holden said, but Bobbie had already surged forward, undoing the straps and half lifting Fred out of his couch. At their current acceleration, the old man had to weigh over two hundred kilos. Bobbie nearly collapsed but stayed on her feet, her arms wrapped around his upper body, trying to pull him free of the restraints. Holden staggered to the lift and shouted up. “Alex! Cut thrust. Put us at a third of a g.”

“Hostiles are still—”

“If they shoot at us, do something clever. We’ve got an emergency.”

The gravity let go again. Holden’s spine lengthened. His knees felt like they were swelling. Bobbie, now carrying Fred in her arms, was on the lift, dropping toward the medical bay. Fred looked tiny cradled against her, his eyes closed. Holden told himself that the old man’s arm draped around Bobbie’s shoulder was clinging to her. Had strength. He didn’t know if it was true.

A cacophony of voices shouted in his ear. Everyone asking what had happened. What was going on.

“Steinberg!” he barked. “You’re on weapons. Patel, take the comms.” Then he pulled off his headset. The lift was coming back up for them, the gentle hum barely audible in the noises of the ship, and the only thing he had ears for. He willed it to go faster.

Naomi put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Really?”

Naomi shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know.”

The lift came. They loaded on, descending for the crew deck. If the Pella got itself back under control, it could loop around. The fight could start again at any second, catching them away from their crash couches. Holden knew they should be burning hard, rushing toward Tycho as fast as they could. He walked through the tight, military corridor, into the medical bay. It felt like he was in a different ship. Everything was just where it always was, but it seemed new. Fresh. Foreign.

Fred lay on the table, stripped to the waist. The autodoc was strapped to his arm, needles inserted into the veins. He looked weirdly vulnerable, as if he’d physically shrunk between the time he’d gotten into the crash couch and now. Bobbie stood over him, arms crossed, glowering like an angel out of the Old Testament. One of the scary kind. The kind that kept you out of paradise and killed armies in a single night. She didn’t look up as they came in.

“How bad is it?” Holden asked.

Somehow Bobbie made her shrug an expression of rage. “He’s dead.”

He didn’t know how Amos and Clarissa got the duty of preparing the body, but whatever the mechanism, it turned out to be a good fit. Amos stripped him, and Clarissa cleaned Fred’s skin with a damp cloth. Holden didn’t need to be there for it. Didn’t have to watch. Except that he did.

They didn’t talk. Didn’t make jokes. Clarissa swabbed Fred’s body with a calm, businesslike intimacy. Compassionate and unsentimental. Amos helped when Fred needed to be moved and dressed in a fresh uniform and when she needed to slide the body bag under him. It took a little less than an hour from start to finish. Holden didn’t know if that seemed like too long or not long enough. Clarissa hummed something as she worked. A soft melody he didn’t recognize, but one that didn’t seem to rest in either a major key or a minor one. Her thin, pale face and Amos’ thickness seemed perfectly matched. When the bag was sealed, Amos hefted it. Easy to do. They were still barely above a third of a g.

Clarissa nodded to Holden as they passed out of the medical bay. Her skin was bruised at the back of her neck and all along the arms where the blood had pooled during the burn. “We’ll take care of him,” she said.

“He was important,” Holden replied, and wasn’t ashamed at the catch in his voice.

Something like sorrow or amusement flickered in Clarissa’s eyes. “I’ve spent a lot of time with the dead. He’ll be okay now. You go take care of the ones that lived through it.”

Amos smiled amiably and carried the bag out. “You need to get drunk or in a fistfight later, just let me know.”

“Yeah,” Holden said. “All right.”

After they left, he stood beside the empty medical table. He’d been on it more than once. Naomi had. Alex. Amos. Amos had regrown most of a hand in this room. That death had come randomly—stupidly—seemed obscene even though it was mundane enough. People stroked out. Fred was older than he’d once been. He was dealing with high blood pressure. He’d been going without sleep, pushing himself. The juice they had was lousy. It had been a long battle and a hard burn. All of it was true. All of it made sense. And none of it did.

The others were still at their stations, but the word had gotten out by now. He was going to have to face them at some point. He didn’t know what he’d say to Fred’s crew. I’m so sorry, but after that?

He brushed his hand on the mattress, listened to the hiss of skin against plastic. It felt colder than he’d expected. It took him a second to realize it was the dampness from Clarissa’s cloth evaporating. He recognized Naomi by her footsteps.

“Do you remember when it came out he was working with the OPA?” Holden asked.

“I do.”

“It was the only thing on any of the newsfeeds for … I don’t know. A week. Everyone saying he was a traitor and a disgrace. Talking about whether there should be an investigation. Whether he could still be brought up on charges even though he’d resigned years before.”

“What I heard was more equivocal,” Naomi said. She came into the room, leaned against one of the other tables. She pulled her hair down over her eyes like a veil as she spoke, then scowled and brushed it back. “The people I knew assumed he was a mole. Earthers trying to Trojan horse their way into our organization.”

“Was it still your organization back then?”

“Yeah. It was.”

He turned, pulled himself up to sit on the table. The autodoc, sensing his weight, pulled up the start screen, glowed hopefully for a few seconds, and turned back off. “I just can’t remember a time when Fred Johnson wasn’t someone important. It’s just …”

Naomi sighed. He looked at her. The lines on her face that hadn’t been there when he’d met her. The way the line of her jaw had changed. She was beautiful. She was mortal. He didn’t want to think about it.

“Every faction of the OPA Fred could bully or beg or cajole into coming together is waiting for us at Tycho,” Holden said. “And we’re going to have to tell them Marco won.”

“He didn’t win,” Naomi said.

“We’ll have to tell them we were ambushed and Fred died, but Marco totally didn’t win.”

Naomi smiled. Laughed. It was strange how it made the darkness better. Not less dark. Just better, even though it still was what it was. “Well, all right, when you put it that way. Look, worst-case scenario is we don’t get them on our side. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be great to have more of the Belt on our side. But if we don’t have them to work with, we don’t. We can still win.”

“Only the war,” he said. “Not the part that matters.”