Babylon’s Ashes

Chapter Fifteen: Pa

The grease crayon was meant to mark decking during construction, and so in a sense Michio was still keeping to its purpose. The marks weren’t inventory control or inspection chop, and what she was constructing wasn’t a ship, but still. The wall of her cabin had a long rectangular mark where she usually kept a mounted lithograph. An original print by Tabitha Toeava of false coral structures. Part of her One Hundred Aspects of Europa series, and it rested in its frame on her crash couch like it was watching her.

Along one side of the wall, Michio had listed the major settlements of the outer planets: Ceres, Pallas, Vesta, Iapetus, Ganymede, and on and on. Some were based on moons, some in the tunnels of well-mined asteroids, and a few—Tycho Station, the Shirazi-Ma Complex, Coldwater, Kelso—were spin stations that floated free. She’d started writing what she thought they needed there: water where there wasn’t local ice, complex biologicals everywhere but Ganymede, construction material, food, medical supplies. When it got too dense to read, she cleaned the wall with the side of her fist. The smears were still there.

In the middle column, the colony ships she and her fleet had taken: the Bedyadat Jadida, out of Luna. The John Galt and the Mark Watney, out of Mars. The Helen R. and Jacob H. Kanter, sponsored by the Congregation Ner Shalom. The San Pietro, sponsored by the DeVargas Corporation. The Caspian and the Hornblower and the Kingfisher, operating under independent charters. All of them stocked to make settlements on new and hostile worlds. Some hardly had enough for a small human toehold. Others, enough to carry a hundred people for three years. Enough to keep the Belt running long enough to remake itself independent of Earth and Mars. Hopefully.

And on the other edge, her own fleet. Serrio Mal captained by Susanna Foyle, Panshin by Ezio Rodriguez, Witch of Endor by Carl al-Dujaili, and so on down the wall. Each of them with their own complement of boarding troops. All of them were hers to command, and would be until it came clear that she answered to herself now. Then … Well. That would be then.

She squeezed the grease crayon and released it. The soft click as it gave up its grip on her fingertips again and again like someone tapping on the door. With every mark she made, the fear in her chest shifted. It didn’t leave her—nothing as straightforward as that—but instead of feeling bright and jittery and jagged, her heart folded in on itself and let the crust of a lifetime’s failures and pains fall away. At least for a little while. It felt like getting on a treadmill and finding the perfect rhythm. One that brought her breath and her body and her mind together and stilled time.

When she’d started, she’d half hoped to find a reason she couldn’t go through with her mutiny. Now that she was engaged, the doubt was forgotten. Somewhere in the process, she’d gone from whether she should to how she was going to. Until Nadia spoke, Michio didn’t even notice she was there.

“Bertold still not letting you on the system?”

Michio sighed and shook her head. “Until we make the break, he wants everything off the computers. He’s got the local countermeasures ready to update. But you know how it is. Tipping our hand.”

“Do you think Marco is monitoring the ship that closely?”

“No,” Michio said. Then, “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s all right. Part of me likes working this way. It’s more … I don’t know. Tactile?”

“Can see that,” Nadia said. “We’re getting close.”

“I don’t want more than a second of light delay,” Michio said. “I can’t do this trading messages. I have to be able to talk.”

“We’re getting close,” Nadia said again, her voice a halftone lower. She understood.

Michio squeezed the grease crayon and relaxed. Tick. “How long?”

“By tonight,” Nadia said. She stepped in close, considering the wall and all of its markings. She was half a head shorter than Michio, and the first scattering of gray hair complicated her temple. She sighed to herself and nodded.

“Checking my work?” Michio said, teasing a little.

“Yes,” Nadia said seriously. “This was a complicated situation before. We’re about to make it much more. Times like this, we check the seals we just checked.”

Michio sat on her crash couch and let her wife go over all the ships and stations. Nadia put her hands to her hips in fists and made small sounds in the back of her throat. Michio thought they were approval. It would be easier when she had the ship’s system available to plot it all out, place each ship and its vector on a single interface. Even with her wall a mass of careful handwriting, there were other lists—longer lists—of critically important information. The warships under Marco’s direct control. The elite guard force that Rosenfeld held in reserve. The thousands of supply containers from Pallas and Vesta and Callisto that had already been scattered to the care of the overwhelming void. Michio stretched her back against the one-third g braking burn, feeling the ache between her ribs.

“When are we going to steal it all?” Nadia asked.

“When I talk to Carmondy,” Michio said. “Earlier than that, and Himself might notice. Later, and he might be warned.”

“Ah, Carmondy,” Nadia said with a sigh. “It bothers me.”

“Me too,” Michio said. Nadia turned from the wall to consider her. The air of checking for errors didn’t change.

“What bothers you?” Nadia asked.

Michio nodded at the wall. “All this. Doing what I’m about to do.”

“You don’t think it’s right?”

“I don’t know if that matters. I mean, Marco does what he thinks is right. And Dawes. And Earth. All of them do what they think is right, and tell themselves that they’re moral people with the strength to do the necessary things, however terrible they seem at the time. Every atrocity that has been done to us had someone behind it who thought what they did was justified. And here I am. A moral person with the strength to do this. Because it’s justified.”

“Ah,” Nadia said. “You don’t think Carmondy will join us.”

“I don’t. And then I think I’ll have to make an example of him so that the others will take me seriously.”

“It’s not much of a pirate queen who leaves survivors in peace,” Nadia said. And then, “You’re wrong about one thing, though. Not every evil thing is done by the righteous. Some people do harsh things for the pleasure. But that isn’t what bothers me.”

Michio lifted her hands, asking the question.

“Working with Carmondy,” Nadia said. “I don’t know what it is. The man annoys me.”

Both of their hand terminals chirped a connection request from Laura on a family-restricted channel. Nadia nodded to Michio to accept and then sat at her side so they could both see the screen. Laura was on the command deck, the backsplash of her control screen lightening her cheeks and dancing in her eyes. Icons of all the others except Nadia appeared along the side.

“What is it?” Nadia asked.

“Newsfeeds just arrived,” Laura said. “The inners have Ceres. Making an announcement.”

They were all silent for a moment. Knowing that it was coming pulled the punch, but Michio still felt it in her gut. “Play the feed,” she said.

Laura nodded, shifted forward to her controls, and blinked out. A feed appeared in her place. Earth and Mars naval ships docked in the berths at Ceres. Seeing them there was disorienting, a juxtaposition of two things that don’t belong together. Even though she’d known it was coming, the feeling was strong.

“—estimated at four and a half million, with sufficient reserves to sustain the station for a maximum of two weeks. The combined fleet is presently developing relief strategies including emergency rationing and a call for food and water from other stations in the Belt and the Jovian system.”

The image jittered and cut away, a sloppy edit done by an amateur. And then his face filled the screen. Fred fucking Johnson. Michio felt her gut clench. So that was their play. Trot out the Earther to speak for the Belt. Again. His eyes were soft and deep and sorrowful. His hair was close cut and white. A pale stubble stood out against the darkness of his cheeks. The text along the screen’s edge said Fred Johnson—OPA Spokesman / Tycho Manufacturing.

Not Colonel Fred Johnson. Not Butcher of Anderson Station. Opportunist. Face of the Belt When Earth’s Holding the Camera.

“Michi?”

“I’m fine.”

“The culture in the outer planets,” Johnson said, “has always been one of mutual support. Conditions aboard ship and on stations have always tested humanity’s ingenuity and competence. In the many, many years I’ve worked with the Outer Planets Alliance, I have never seen that ethos betrayed more profoundly than this.”

“You’re right,” Michio said. “I’m not fine. Shut it off.”

Nadia gestured to the screen, and the feed vanished. Michio stood for a long moment. She didn’t remember crushing the grease crayon, but it was a sticky pulp in her hand now. She took a towel from her cabinet and tried to wipe her fingers clean. The crash couch shifted behind her as Nadia sat on it. When Michio had her control back, she turned around. The intimacy of years let her read half a dozen things in Nadia’s expression.

“He’s not our natural ally,” Michio said. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend? That’s bullshit. There are always more than two sides. Pretending it’s only one or else the other is what let that sonofabitch carry so much weight in the OPA for as long as he did.”

“He still does,” Nadia said. “Some people will listen to him. He has ships.”

“I’ll get us ships. We don’t need his protection.”

“If you say,” Nadia said. And then, gently, “Maybe he needs ours.”

“He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.”

“Four and a half million, though. That’s a lot of people.”

“Earth wanted the station. They have it. Good for them,” Michio said, but her voice sounded less certain in her own ears. “They can take care of it.”

“They’re going to need food. Water.”

Michio pointed to the list she’d scrawled on her wall. Her fingers were dark from the crayon. “Every base on that list is going to need food and water too. Medical supplies. Reaction mass. Construction material. Everything. Everyone is going to need everything. I’m not going to put Ceres at the top of our list. They’ve got help.”

“They got robbed,” Nadia said. “By us.”

“By Marco.”

Nadia smiled and looked off to her left, the way she did when she was ready to end an argument but didn’t agree that she’d lost it. Michio couldn’t let it go. The words pressed up out of her like Nadia had said them. Had invited her response.

“It’s not only that it’s Fred Johnson,” Michio said.

“If Ceres starts to starve,” Nadia said, ending the question as if it had been a statement.

“Fine,” Michio said. “If Ceres Station starts going hungry. If they’re running out of water. I’ll help the people on Ceres. Not for Johnson, not for the OPA. But I’ll help the people there.”

Nadia nodded, but still looked off to her left, staring at the empty screen like there was a picture still glowing on it. Michio even looked, but there was only black.

“And Earth?” Nadia asked.

“What about it?”

“People are starving there.”

“No,” Michio said. “I won’t send our supplies to Earth. They had centuries to help us, and they didn’t.”

Nadia’s smile widened a millimeter as she rose to her feet. She kissed Michio’s cheek and left. A moment later, her voice came from down the corridor with Evans answering. The life of the ship continued, even with everything changing around it. Michio turned back to her lists, but she wasn’t sure what she was looking at anymore. Her mind kept sliding back to Fred Johnson’s soft, tired eyes. I have never seen that ethos betrayed more profoundly than this. She leaned forward and used her thumbnail to scrape a clean line through the center of the word Ceres. The gray of the wall showed through the center of the letters. But she didn’t rub it out.

When, eight hours later, the Connaught finally came within a light-second of the Hornblower, the newsfeeds had settled on their narrative about the retaking of Ceres. The phrase combined fleet became a kind of catch-all for the patchwork of Earther and Martian naval ships that were clustered there beside a ragged handful of Belter vessels. It was like going back to the days before Eros, when the alliance between the inner planets had seemed unshakable. Certainly there was some nostalgia among the inner planets’ commentariat, but the reports from Earth and Mars kept the wailing for the golden age of squeezing the Belt in perspective. Riots had broken out in Londres Nova and scuttled a meeting of the Martian parliament, and the best news from Earth was that the climbing death rate was linear instead of exponential, with hopes that it would level off as the most vulnerable and compromised parts of the globe finished dying.

Marco had gone quiet, though she assumed that meant he was busy planning his next steps with some part of his cabal that didn’t include her. That suited her fine. She had enough to think about already.

She had already recorded her message to the other captains under her command. It was ready for tightbeam transmission at her word, and once they went out, there’d be no going back. Nothing else, not even talking to Carmondy, was as irrevocable as that.

So why did putting in the connection request to the Hornblower feel like stepping out an airlock?

Carmondy accepted the connection request, and his face appeared on her screen with an icon that showed the communication was secure. His face was broad and placid. On another man, it might have given the impression of harmlessness, but Carmondy had already killed people on her order. She wasn’t fooled.

“Captain,” he said. “Wondered when I’d hear from you. Alles gut, yeah?”

“Alles interesting anyway,” Michio said with a smile that, to her surprise, was mostly genuine. “Looking at some changes to the plan.” The message went out to the Hornblower, and it came back. One second each way. It made Carmondy’s response seem considered and thoughtful. An illusion made from distance and light.

“I heard. Ceres. Hell of a thing.”

“Yes,” she said. “Ceres. More than Ceres too. Technically, I know you’re in Rosenfeld’s chain of command, but I’m about to issue some orders to you and your people. I’d appreciate it if you’d follow them.”

One second. Two. Carmondy’s eyebrows went up. Another second. “Interesting, sa sa? Tell me.”

You can turn back. You haven’t said it. No one knows but your family, and they’ll still support you if you back away. Put your faith back in Inaros. Or find another Himself out there to fall in line behind, since that always works out so well.

“I’m rerouting the Hornblower to Rhea. Cutting the prisoners loose. Redistributing the cargo.”

One second. Two. Or was it a little faster this time? How close were the ships now? “Rhea not one of ours.”

“It’s not aligned with the Free Navy, no,” Michio said. “That’s why I picked it.”

One second. No, the messages were definitely coming faster now. Carmondy nodded and sucked his teeth. A high, hissing sound as his eyes narrowed. She watched him understand and waited to see his reaction.

“Mutiny, then?”

“Won’t be my first,” she said with a lightness that she didn’t feel. “Taking as many ships from my command as will come. Mission’s the same. Get the colony ships and support the Belt. No drift.”

The pause seemed to last forever. “No drift,” Carmondy said and shrugged. “Bien. You want us to ride it there, or are we coming back on board?”

Alarms went off in Michio’s hindbrain. This wasn’t right. She shook her head. “Ah, Carmondy. We could have been beautiful. You’re coming on board. All your people. But you’re sending your arms and armor here first, and you’re coming in pairs.”

Pause. “Oh now, Captain, I don’t see how that happens.”

“I’ve got two options,” Michio said. “Bringing you and yours, armed and armored, onto the ship because I’m just so sure you’re loyal to me and not Marco? Not one of them.”

Pause. A smile she couldn’t quite read. Carmondy leaned in toward his camera. His hands weren’t in the square of the screen, but she imagined them folded together on his table. When he spoke, his voice was just as friendly but somehow flatter. “Que then?”

“Either you and yours come to me and I send the supplies to the Belt the way we always said we would, or I kill the Hornblower as a warning to al-Dujaili and Foyle and the rest that I’m serious.”

It took longer than two seconds this time. Longer than three. Michio kept her expression calm even while her heart was thudding against her ribs like it wanted out.

“Here’s what I say,” Carmondy said. “I turn this pinché ship to Pallas. You go your way, I go mine. A que comes between you and Inaros comes between you and Inaros. But you and me walk away, honor on all sides.”

Yes floated in the back of her mouth, ready to be said. She wanted this over. She hated conflict. How the hell had she wound up living in the middle of it?

“No,” she said. “Your arms and armor in a pack out the airlock within the hour or we break the Hornblower again. And we mean it this time.” She shrugged. She waited. About a second this time. Closer.

“Kill us to make a point?” he said.

“Kill you so I don’t have to kill as many other people later. Rather be loved than feared, but hey. Fallen world.” Pause.

“You can’t stop me getting the word out,” Carmondy said.

Michio sighed, shifted the feed, and sent out her message. The one that began, You have put yourself under my command out of loyalty to the Belt, and out of loyalty to the Belt I expect you to remain.

So that was it. Her time with Marco Inaros was over. Michio Pa, once OPA, once Free Navy, now just herself and her ship in a universe all too ready to see her destroyed. For all the consequences that were coming now, for all the pain and loss she’d just invited into her life, she still felt relieved. Like she was where she was supposed to be.

“They know,” she said. “Now can we get to the part where you surrender, or are you going to insist that I kill you?”