Babylon’s Ashes

Chapter Five: Pa

“I don’t trust anything about this,” Michio Pa said.

Josep yawned and propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at her. He was a beautiful man in a slightly ruined way. He wore his hair longer than a crew cut, shorter than his shoulders. The gray in it still only a highlight in the black. Decades had roughened his skin, and the ink there told the story of his life: the neck tattoo of the OPA’s split circle that had been covered over later to make the upraised fist of a radical collective long since collapsed. The elaborate cross on his shoulder, inscribed in a moment of faith and kept after that faith had crumbled. Phrases written along his wrists and down his side—No more water, the fire next time and To love someone is to see them as God intended them and Ölüm y chuma pas pas fóvos—spoke of the various men he had been in his life. His incarnations. That was part of why Pa felt so close to him. She was younger than him by almost a decade, but she’d been through incarnations too.

“Which ‘this’?” he asked. “There’s so many things not to trust.”

“Inaros calling in the clans,” she said, rolling over and gathering a blanket with her as she did. It wasn’t that she was uncomfortable naked, only now that their coupling was done, she was ready to go back to their more formal roles. Or something closer to them. Josep noted it and without comment went from being one of her husbands to her chief engineer. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.

“Is it the meeting or the man?” he asked.

“Any of it,” she said. “Something’s not right.”

“You say it, and I believe.”

“I know. This is the part where I always do this. The coyo in charge changes the plan and I start looking for them to be the next Ashford. The next Fred fucking Johnson. It’s my pattern.”

“Is. Doesn’t mean your pattern doesn’t match. What’s in your head?”

Pa leaned forward, chewing her lip. She could feel the thoughts bumping around like blind fish, searching for the words that would give them form. Josep waited.

By the terms of their ketubah, the marriage group was seven people: her and Josep, Nadia, Bertold, Laura, Evans, and Oksana. They had all kept their own surnames, and they made the Connaught’s permanent crew. The others who served under her came and went, respected that she was captain, that her orders were fair, and that she didn’t show any overt favoritism to her spouses, but there was the understanding always that the core of the ship was her family, and no threat to it would be tolerated. The idea of separating family from crew was an inner-planets thing, one example of the unconscious prejudice that made Earthers and Martians treat life aboard ships as somehow different from real life.

For them, the rules changed when the airlock closed, even if they didn’t know themselves well enough to see it. For Belters, there was no division. The Doctrine of the One Ship, she’d heard it called. That there was only one ship, and it had countless parts as a single body had countless cells. The Connaught was one part, as were all the ragtag ships under her command: Panshin, Solano, Witch of Endor, Serrio Mal, and a dozen more. And her fleet was only part of the Free Navy: a vast organism that passed information between its cells with tightbeam and radio, that consumed food and fuel, that worked its own slow destiny among the planets like a massive fish in the greater sea of the sky.

By some interpretations, even the Earther and Martian ships were part of the same one-ship, but for her, that always ran into conversations about cancers and autoimmune disorders, and the metaphor failed.

Still, there was a reason she was thinking of it now.

“We aren’t coordinated,” she said, trying out the words as she said them. “When you push off with a foot, you reach out with a hand. One movement. We aren’t like that. Inaros and military. Sanjrani and the finances. Rosenfeld and his production and design. Us. We’re not the same thing yet.”

“We’re new at this,” Josep said. The words could have been a refutation, a way to explain away her unease. From him, it was an offering. Something to react to that would help her mind come clearer.

“Maybe,” she said. “Hard to say. May be we’re supposed to be puppets and the strings all run to the Pella. Himself changes his mind, and we all jump.”

Josep shrugged, his warm eyes narrow. “He’s delivered. Ships, fuel, ammunition, drives. Freedom. He’s done what he said he’d do.” She could feel the gentle provocation in his words, and it was what she needed.

“He’s done what he says he said. His real record’s not so good. Johnson’s alive. Smith’s alive. Ganymede’s only gone neutral. We’re still throwing rocks at Earth and no surrender’s coming from them anytime soon. Go back and look at everything he promised, and it’s not what’s on the plate.”

“Politicians since immer and always, that. Still more than anyone else has done for the Belt. Inners are on their heels now. And with the Hornblower and ships like her, we’ll have stockpiles to last years. That’s our part. Keep everyone with food and air and supplies. Give us a chance to make the Belt without a boot on our necks.”

Pa sighed and scratched her knee—her nails against her skin with sound as soft and dry as sand. The air recycler clicked and hummed. The drive that pressed them both down toward the deck throbbed.

“Yeah,” she said.

“But?”

“But,” she said, and left it at that. Her unease didn’t find any further words that fit. Maybe they’d come in time or maybe she’d come to peace without having to speak them.

Josep shifted his weight and nodded toward the crash couch. “You want me to stay?”

Pa considered. It might have been a kindness to say yes, but the truth was whoever she shared her body with, she slept better alone. Josep’s smile meant he’d heard her answer anyway. It was part of what she loved about him. He stepped forward, kissed her on the forehead where her hairline met the skin, and started pulling on his jumpsuit. “Tea, maybe?”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“You should,” Josep said. It was more than he usually did.

“All right.” She shrugged off the blanket, cleaned up, and put her own clothes on too. When they stepped out into the Martian gunship’s galley, she leaned against him. None of the other crew were there, after all. Just Oksana and Laura finishing bowls of mushroom and sauce. Just family. Josep angled toward a different bench, and she let him set them a little apart from their wives. Oksana laughed at something. Laura said something acid and cutting, but she said it without any heat. Pa didn’t catch the words.

Josep pulled bulbs of tea for them both and then sat in companionable silence. She sipped, and the astringent bite of the tea mixed with the aftermath of sex to settle her without her even knowing she’d been unsettled. When she sighed, Josep raised his eyebrows.

“Yes,” Pa said. “You’re very smart. This is what I wanted.”

He sketched a bow, and then sobered. “Thinking about what you said? About coordinated?”

“Don’t worry,” she said, but he went on.

“You’ve been betrayed by men who were supposed to be your leaders. Johnson when we were OPA. Ashford on the Behemoth. Okulski with the union. We went independent because, yeah? Only now we’re not independent. Now we’re Free Navy, because Inaros convinced us to. Not just you. Us.”

“You’re right,” Pa said. “I’m probably just pushing back on what already happened. I should let go of it.”

“Shouldn’t let go of being educated,” he said. “Universe spent a lot of time telling you something. Now you’re second-guessing it. Maybe all those other things were getting you ready for this.”

Something in Pa’s chest slipped a little tighter. “You don’t trust him either.”

“Me? You don’t want to judge anything by me. I don’t even trust God.”

“You are absolutely the worst mystic ever,” Pa said, but she said it laughing.

“I know,” Josep said, shaking his head. “Sad failure of a prophet, me. But”—he lifted a finger—“I know you. And I know you’re the kind that likes to pretend she doesn’t know things she knows so that there won’t be friction. So if you’re thinking maybe you’re wrong so things are okay, you better check again, make sure things are okay. The universe needs a knife, then it makes a knife. And no one sharper, you.”

“And if it turns out the universe is just a bunch of chemicals and energy bashing against each other until the light runs out?”

“Then pattern-matching’s still a good way to not get bashed,” he said. “You tell me if Himself matches the pattern. You’ve seen more than I have.”

“Doubt that,” she said, but she took his hand. He held hers. After a moment, Laura came over to sit with them, and then Oksana. The talk turned to less dangerous subjects—all the ways Martian design was worse than Belter, the latest news from Witch of Endor’s capture of yet another colony ship, Carmondy’s report from the overhaul of the Hornblower. The business of running the Connaught. But the little knot sat just under her ribs, reminding her that something was wrong.

When she went back to her cabin, she went alone. She fell into the crash couch, pulled the blanket over her head, and dreamed of a huge, fragile creature swimming through the currents of the deep ocean, only the sea was made of stars, and the animal was built from ships, and one of them was hers.

Nothing as big as a revolution can survive with only one account of it. The rise of Ceres Station—or its fall, according to the inners—was the precursor to Marco Inaros and the Free Navy. Looking back, the death of a water hauler seemed a pathetically small thing to have set Earth and Mars against each other, even for just a little time, but it had been enough. With the traditional oppressors of the Belt pointing guns at each other for a change, the OPA had stepped in, taken control of the port city of the asteroid belt.

No one back then had expected it to last. Sooner or later, Mars and Earth would get their feet back under them, and then Ceres would fall. Anderson Dawes, the de facto governor of the station, would lose the power he’d grabbed and either move on to some new scheme or live on in spirit, a martyr to the cause. Every autonomous space was temporary.

Only the fall never came.

The collapse of Ganymede and the exposure of the Mao-Kwikowski protomolecule program captured the attention of the powers that be. Then Venus hatched out the great and mysterious structures that made the first gate. By the time the Behemoth accompanied the combined forces of Earth and Mars to explore the gate and consider its vast and complex implications, Anderson Dawes had woven a web of relationships. Corporations on Luna and Mars, the Lagrange stations, the Belt, the Jovian moons—none of them could allow trade to stop for the years it might take to reconquer the port. In the way of humankind since before the first contract was pressed into Sumerian clay, the temporary accommodations lasted long enough to become invisible.

And when the gates beyond the gate opened and the flood of humanity lurched out toward the new planets and suns, there were powers and money with interests in keeping Ceres as it was. And Anderson Dawes had known which palms to grease and when to compromise in order to keep the port’s traffic flowing uninterrupted.

Through long, careful management the great negotiator had outlasted his status as a rebel and become instead a politician. Dawes became respectable, and Ceres Station became first city of the Belters just in time for it not to matter.

And then the Free Navy had come and kicked the whole carefully built sandcastle into the waves. And Dawes, like any politician, had considered the players and the powers, the chances and the certainties. The story of the rise of Ceres Station, instead of a triumph of opportunism and political deftness, became the precursor of the Free Navy. Dawes embraced this new version of himself and his station. He’d chosen his side, just the same as she’d done.

He stood in the dock now, waiting for her to cross over from the Connaught. The spin gravity of the station locked her ship in its clamps. Even if the power failed, momentum would keep the ships from dropping out into the black. Pa still didn’t like leaving her ship behind. It felt like an unnecessary risk.

“Michio,” Dawes said, taking her by the hand and beaming. “It’s good to see you in the flesh.”

“You too,” she said. It wasn’t true. Dawes had spent too many years allied too closely with Fred Johnson to ever have the stink entirely washed away. But he was a necessary evil, and on good days probably did more to help the Belt than to compromise it. He gestured toward an electric cart with two police guards in light armor.

“Am I under arrest?” Pa asked, keeping her voice light and amused.

Dawes chuckled as they walked. “Ever since the rocks fell, the security’s been tighter,” he said. His acne-scarred cheeks tightened and a darkness came into his expression. “There are millions of people living on Ceres. Not all of them are comfortable with all that’s happened.”

“Have there been problems?” Pa asked as they reached the cart.

“There are always problems,” Dawes said, then after a brief hesitation, “but there have been more of them.”

The cart lurched, turned toward a wide ramp leading up into the station. The mildly adhesive wheels made a sound between a hiss and crackling as they rolled away from the docks. Pa looked back toward the Connaught’s berth. Maybe she should have brought guards of her own with her. Carmondy’s men were still all back on the Hornblower, but Bertold and Nadia were both combat trained. Too late now.

The administration levels were out nearest the skin of the station where the Coriolis was least pronounced. The old tunnels and corridors had been redone since the OPA claimed the station, but there was still a sense of age. Dawes made small, inane conversation intended to put her at ease, and his skill was such that it worked. If they were really talking about which restaurants made the best sausage and black sauce and what had happened when a religious convocation was booked in the same halls as a raï music festival, the situation couldn’t be that dangerous. She knew it was an illusion, but she appreciated it all the same. Neither of them mentioned the reason they were there. Inaros’ name didn’t come up.

The meeting itself was in a garden in the administrative level. A wide, arching ceiling glowed with full-spectrum light. Devil’s ivy draped columns and walls, and wide ferns spread massive fronds like herons about to take flight. The air smelled of hydroponic plant food and wine. She heard Sanjrani’s high, reedy voice before she turned the corner. Without a solid inventory of the fertilizer base on every station, a nitrogen-based currency is going to be swamped by illegal inputs. Another variation on his constant theme. It was almost good to hear it again. Dawes touched her elbow, gestured down a path between a small fountain and a spiral fern, and then they were there. The five leaders of the Free Navy. Nico Sanjrani, looking more like a middle-aged shopkeeper than the chief economist of a budding empire. Rosenfeld Guoliang, with his dark, pebbled skin and his too-ready smile, general of the second fleet and industrial czar. And sitting in a chair of woven cane, Marco Inaros, the man behind it all.

Victory suited him. His hair flowed down to his shoulders, and he held his body with an animal ease. When he rose to greet her and Dawes, she felt an echo of his pleasure in her own heart. Whatever else the man was, he had a charm that could coax the venom out of snakes. It was, she presumed, the gift that had put him in position to trade with the Martians for their ships, their munitions, all the material that allowed them to stage their revolution. The only other person there was Inaros’ skinny, crazy-eyed son, Filip. Pa made a point of not looking too closely at the boy. There was something about him that bothered her, and it was easier to stay aloof than to engage.

“The brilliant Michio Pa!” Marco said. “Excellent! We’re all here now. The founders of our nation.”

“Do you have stats on the new acquisitions?” Sanjrani asked, either unaware that he was stepping on Marco’s moment or at least unconcerned. “I need to get a complete accounting.”

“Carmondy’s working on that,” Pa said.

“Soon, though.”

“Nico, my boy,” Rosenfeld said. “Don’t be an ass. Say hello to Captain Pa first.”

Sanjrani scowled at Rosenfeld and then at Inaros, and finally turned back toward her and nodded curtly. “Hello.”

“Now that the inner circle’s all here,” Dawes said, “perhaps we could hear what’s brought us all together? Not that being in one room isn’t a pleasure in itself, but …”

Marco smiled as his son, behind him, fidgeted with the holster of his pistol. “We’ve broken Earth and beaten Mars. Johnson’s OPA is shown up as the collaborationist sham that it was. Everything we set out to do, we’ve done. It’s time to begin the third phase.”

Everything we set out to do except kill Smith and Fred Johnson, Pa thought but didn’t say. The silence from the others wasn’t about that, though.

When Dawes spoke, his voice was carefully light and conversational. “I didn’t know you had a third phase in mind.”

Marco’s grin could have been anger or pleasure, rage or satisfaction. “Now you do,” he said.