Babylon's Ashes (Expanse 6)

“You sure you don’t want to answer those?” Marta said. “Your girlfriend’s wanting you pretty solid.”

“No. It’s all right,” he said. And then, “I don’t have a mother either.”

“What happened to yours?”

“Broke up with my dad when I was a baby. Dad always said he hid me away because she was crazy. But I don’t know. I met her first time a few months ago, but she’s gone again.”

“Did she seem crazy to you?”

“Yeah,” Filip said. Then, “No. Seemed like she didn’t want to be there.”

“Harsh.”

“She told me that the only right you have with anyone in life is the right to walk away.”

Marta coughed out a disbelieving laugh. “Kind of bitch says that to her kid?”

The doors to the club were built like an airlock with inner and outer doors either side of a short hall, but to keep the brightness of the common corridor out. A bright streak and a few silhouetted bodies showed both sets of doors opened at once. Filip wondered whether he should tell the girl more. I thought I watched her kill herself, only it turns out she didn’t die. She was only leaving again. It was true, but it wouldn’t seem like it. Some things you couldn’t talk about except with people who’d been there. His hand terminal chimed again.

Someone shoved him, hard. Filip’s stool tilted, and he grabbed the table to stop his fall. Marta yelped and stood up, shouting as she did. “Berman! Que sa?”

Filip turned slowly. The man who’d shoved him was his own age plus maybe a year or two. Deep-green jumpsuit with the logo of a shipping company on the sleeve. His chin jutted. His chest was pushed forward, his arms pulled back. Everything about him said he was looking for violence except that he wasn’t hitting Filip.

“Que nammen?” the new man demanded.

“Filip,” he answered. He was aware of the mass of the gun in his pocket like it was calling to him. Calmly, slowly, he put a hand against the grip of the pistol. Marta shoved her way between them, her arms wide. She was yelling about how Berman—who had to be the guy with the chin—was out of his mind. How he was stupid. How she was just talking with coyo and Berman was out-of-his-head jealous and fucked up too. Berman kept shifting his head to stare at Filip around her. Filip felt his own rage boiling up, like fumes off a fire. Draw the gun, level it just long enough for the coyo to know what was coming, then bang and the kick in his wrist. He was Filip Inaros, and he’d killed billions. He’d killed Marta’s mother.

“It’s okay,” Filip said as he stood. “Misunderstanding. No harm, sa sa?”

“Pinché asshole better run,” Berman shouted at Filip’s back, and then Marta shouting some more and Berman shouting at her, and Filip was in the fake airlock and pushing through to the common corridor beyond. It was bright there. The smell of liquor and old smoke stayed around him for a few seconds before the gentle breeze from the recyclers pulled it away. He was shaking. Trembling. His hands ached with the need to hit something or someone. He started walking without any idea where he was walking to, just needing something to let him move. Let whatever beast was running through his bloodstream work itself out a little.

Callisto passed him as he went. Pale corridors wider than most of the stations and ships he’d been on, with a honeycomb pattern on the curved walls that made him think of a football. Banks of heaters made irregular tapping sounds as they glowed down from the ceilings, radiating at the top of his head the way that the cold of the moon’s body crept up from the floors. People walked or rode bicycles or carts. He wondered how many of them had lost family in the attack on Callisto. In the story he’d told himself about the attack, it had all been Dusters that died. Soldiers whose work was to keep the Belt’s head underwater until it drowned. And in his story, his father was the leader to unite the Belt, to lead it against everything that was bent on destroying their futures and erasing their pasts.

And he still thought that. Even while he doubted, he believed. It was like everything in his private world had doubled. One Callisto that had been the target of his raid. His critical victory that led to the bombardment of Earth and the freedom of the Belt. Another Callisto that he walked through now, where normal people had lost their mothers and children, husbands and friends in a disaster. The two places were so different, they didn’t relate. Like two ships with the same name but different layouts and jobs.

And he had two fathers now. The one who led the fight against the inners and who Filip loved like plants love light, and the one who twisted out of everything that went wrong and blamed anyone but himself. The Free Navy that was the first real hope the Belt had ever had, and the Free Navy that was falling apart. Swapping out generals and leaders faster than air filters. They couldn’t both exist, and he couldn’t let either version go.

His hand terminal chimed again. He plucked it out of his pocket. The connection request came from Karal and the Pella. It was the twelfth he’d made. Filip accepted.

“Filipito!” Karal said. “Hell have you been, coyo?” He was on the command deck and wearing his uniform. Even had the collar done, which he usually didn’t. It didn’t make him look like he was military, though. He looked like himself, but in costume.

“Around.”

“Around,” Karal said, shaking his head. “You got to get back to the ship. You got to come now.”

“For for?”

Karal leaned in close to the screen like he was going to whisper a secret. “Battle analysis leaked out à Medina, yeah? The rail guns are down. Medina has one ship guarding it. One, and it’s—”

“Rocinante,” Filip said.

“Sí no? Every ship with more than half a hull, Marco’s putting them together. Retaking Medina like we’re putting out a fire, us.”

“Yeah,” Filip said.

“Getting fresh juice. Topping up the reaction mass. And then we’re gone. Meeting up with the rest of the navy on the way, but your father? I’ve never seen him like—”

A voice came from the hand terminal, snapping Karal’s attention away from him. “You found him?”