Babylon's Ashes (Expanse 6)

“If you say.”

“Leaving Ceres, it was right. Clever. Genius move. Everyone says it. The inners, though. The old bitch on Earth and the new one on Mars? They’ll say otherwise. Call it fleeing, yeah? Retreat. A victory against the Free Navy and all it stands for.”

“Won’t be.”

“I know. But going to have to show it. Demonstration of power. Can’t …” Marco sighed again and leaned back. His smile was weary. “Can’t give them the tempo.”

“Can’t, so won’t,” Filip said.

Marco chuckled. A low, warm sound. He put his hand on Filip’s knee, his palm rough and warm. “Ah, Filipito. Mijo. You’re the only one I can really talk to anymore.”

Filip’s heart swelled in his breast, but he didn’t let himself smile. Only nodded the serious nod of a grown man and military advisor. Marco closed his eyes for a moment, leaning back against the bulkhead. He looked vulnerable then. Still his father, still the leader of the Free Navy, but also a man, weary and unguarded. Filip had never loved him more.

“So,” Marco said, “we will. Show of strength. Let them take the station and then show that they’ve won nothing against us. Not so hard.”

“Not at all,” Filip said as Marco pushed himself back up to standing and stepped to the door. When his father was halfway into the corridor, Filip spoke again. “Is there anything else?”

Marco looked back, eyebrows lifted, lips pursed. For a moment, they considered each other. Filip could hear his own heartbeat. All of his practiced lines seemed to have vanished under his father’s soft brown eyes.

“No,” Marco said, and stepped out. The door closed with a click, and Filip let his head sink onto his knees. His mistake on Ceres was gone. Forgotten. A disappointment he couldn’t explain tainted the relief that flowed through him, but only a little. He’d almost killed a man, and it was okay. Nothing bad was going to come of it. It was almost as good as being forgiven.

Someone should have kept that from happening, his mother whispered in his memory.

Filip pushed the thought away, turned his lights back down, and waited for sleep.

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.