Babylon's Ashes (Expanse 6)

“Amos is saying they got knocked around a little, but only lost some plating in the storage decks and maybe half a dozen boats,” Naomi said. “Bobbie’s calling it a win, and they’re scrambling the first wave.”

Between the three and a half gs and the violence of the Roci’s defense, Holden’s jaw and back ached. He couldn’t imagine how unpleasant this had to be for Naomi and the Belters in the Giambattista. Including the first-wave team that Bobbie was about to lead down the enemy’s throat. One wave to take the rail guns, then a second to secure Medina. By then, maybe he’d know what he needed to do next.

If it didn’t work out, they’d try to keep the Giambattista and the OPA soldiers still on her alive long enough to come up with some other plan.

The ring gate grew larger on the scope

s, looming up until they were so close, it dwarfed the ships. A thousand kilometers from one side to the other, and beyond it, the weird nonplace of the slow zone, the other gates, and the ruins of a thirteen-hundred-world galactic empire that humanity aspired to salvage. Naomi was right. It didn’t matter whether they were servants of some greater historical movement or individual, disconnected lives suffering the consequences of their own choices. It didn’t change what they had to do.

The Giambattista reached a minimum in their vector curve and shut down their drive. A few seconds later, the Roci did the same, but by then, the sides of the giant ship were already sliding open. In the starlight, the thousands of tiny cheap boats looked like spores being thrown to the wind by a dark fungus, visible more by the starlight they blocked than by any actual color or shape of their own. This close, the ring gate dwarfed them. He couldn’t keep from seeing it as a massive milky eye, staring blindly down at a sun that was hardly more than the brightest star among billions.

The connection request came to his monitor. Bobbie Draper. He accepted, and her face appeared on his screen. Her powered armor made her unhelmeted head seem small. Voices behind her spoke in Belter cant so fast that he couldn’t make out the words.

“First wave’s ready to go,” she said. “Permission to deploy?”

“Granted,” Holden said. “But, Bobbie? Really, really don’t die out there.”

“No one lives forever, sir,” Bobbie said, “but as long as it doesn’t compromise the mission, I’ll try to live through it.”

“Thanks.”

One by one, and then in ragged groups, the small, weak chemical rockets began to ignite. All of them together didn’t have the power of the Roci’s reactor, but they didn’t need it. Their whole lives were the space from the ring gate to the station in the center of the slow zone. For most of them, less than that. And only one of them had Bobbie and Amos and their ground force. As Holden watched, the boats shifted like a flock of starlings, became a single, moving shape on an imaginary, tactical wind, and burned toward the gate.

And then through it.

Chapter Forty-Four: Roberts

She’d known it was coming. Even before they’d pried the specific information out of Jakulski, she’d known something was coming. It was a feeling that came up like a bad dream she couldn’t shake. A premonition or just the kind of fear that seeped through anytime she had something important and too clear an imagination about how it would be to lose it. Knowing that the war was coming to Medina was almost a relief. At least she knew in broad strokes what to be afraid of.

The fear had made small changes feel large. When Jakulski brought them the news that their work schedule was shifting, Roberts couldn’t keep from interpreting each change like tarot cards. Tracking down the signal drop on the interior of the drum was pushed off for a month, so maybe Captain Samuels thought it wasn’t important for defense from the invasion. The retrofit of the water supply for lower g moved up, so maybe they wanted extra capacity ready in case the environmental systems were damaged. They spent a day installing redundant comm lasers so that they could always have a tightbeam line to Montemayor and the rest of Duarte’s advisors and guards on the alien station. Everything that she could fit into the idea of fortifying against coming violence became more evidence that her fear was justified; the more evidence she had, the easier it became to see things as further proof.

It wasn’t only her, either. The others in her workgroup were all suffering from the same dread. Jakulski was gone more often than not now, not supervising them except to tell them at the start what to do and ask at the end if they’d done it. And when he did come out after shift, he left early without giving any excuses beyond Things need doing. Salis was drinking more, showing up for shift hungover and angry and then not wanting to head back to his quarters when the day was done. Vandercaust … well, ever since the false alarm with the mole, Vandercaust had been a smaller man. Not in his body, but the way he moved through his life. Careful, amenable, tucking into himself like a snail. Once, just after they’d heard about the ice hauler burning out toward the Sol gate, they’d been in the bar when some young coya, drunk off her ass, had started off shouting about how the colony planets didn’t deserve aid or attention. They don’t like being treated that way, they shouldn’t have done it to us and They’re just as bad as Mars only without the stones to back it and Come back five generations from now and maybe we’ll be close to even. Vandercaust had finished his drink fast and left without saying goodbye. Anything political got his back up now, even if it was something they all agreed with.

And still, Roberts found she needed the company. When the leaks and rumors got bad enough that Captain Samuels had to make an announcement—Enemy ships associated with OPA factions outside the Free Navy are sending a large cargo ship and escort. We don’t know their intentions. The Free Navy has dispatched fighters to back Medina up, but with the fighting so hot in the system, it is a minimum force.—Roberts was almost relieved. At least they could talk about it all openly now and not get Jakulski’s balls in a vice.

When the enemy was on close approach to the far side of the ring, all the work on Medina ground to a halt. There were schedules and lists and work reports, but there were also enemies at the gate. Jakulski didn’t show up to give them their daily orders, and even their freedom seemed ominous. They shifted to a bar where the wall screens were set to a local security newsfeed—the latest on the siege of Medina Station as it happened.

Diagrams of the positions of enemy ships and their Free Navy defenders. Analysis of who Aimee Ostman and Carlos Walker were and why they hadn’t joined the Free Navy. Confirmation that the escort ship was James Holden’s Rocinante. Beer. Dried tofu with wasabi powder. The camaraderie of the mob. It felt almost like gathering up to watch football, except their home was the pitch, and loss would mean the deaths of more than only people. The autonomy and freedom the Free Navy promised was balanced on the head of a pin.

“Did they get them?” Salis asked breathlessly. “Did we kill them?”

Roberts reached across the table, grabbing his hand and squeezing, waiting for the feed to update. For fresh information to come through. There wasn’t any romance in the gesture. Not even a sexual invitation. There just wasn’t a better way to express hope and fear and oh holy shit all at the same moment. Across the bar, three dozen people—maybe more—stared at the thick, confused images bleeding through the gate. If it hadn’t been a live image, it could have gotten cleaned up almost to where the gate’s weirdness didn’t show at all. But jagged and bent right now was better than clear as nothing later on.

A flash of the Rocinante, blooming fire-bright. The whole room took in its breath. Waited. But when the glow faded, the enemy was still there. Salis spat out an obscenity and let her hand go. On the feed, the Free Navy attack ships were already gone, carried off into the black by their own rush to get to the Giambattista and Rocinante before they’d reached the gate. For all the fucking good it had done.

“Es bien, es bien, yeah?” Vandercaust said. “Took a shot, bruised them. Make them rush is the thing. Keep them from going slow, being careful.”

“You don’t know what they’ve got on that ship,” Roberts said. “Could be anything.”

Vandercaust nodded, took a bit of tofu between his finger and thumb and squeezed it until it cracked. “Whatever it is, we’ll put rail gun rounds through it until it’s dust.” He held out his green-powdered thumb like he was demonstrating the idea of dust. She nodded so tight and fast it was more like rocking back and forth.

“Dui,” she said, wanting to believe it. Needing to. On the feed, the looming mass of the ice hauler had come to a relative stop on the far side of the gate and just off to the side where the rail guns couldn’t fire through at it. So they knew that the defenses were there and to keep their heads down. That was too bad.

“What are they doing?” Salis said, not expecting an answer. In the feed, a hundred faint new stars bloomed around the ice hauler, wavering and inconstant. Then a thousand. Then double that. Roberts felt some part of herself step back, shock pulling her away from herself.

“Mé scopar,” she breathed. “Are those drive plumes?”

The dots of light surged, all moving at once. A swarm of bright wasps, swirling, curving, and passing through the ring gate and out into their space. Her space. Here and there, a light flickered and died, one of the thousands sputtering and dying, but most flowed around each other, flight systems taking in the situation—their position, the alien station, Medina, the rings.