Babylon's Ashes (Expanse 6)

None of them answered. They weren’t meant to. This was a performance. Marco’s grin widened. He lifted a hand.

“They cared about different things,” he said. “To the enemy, war was about territory. Ownership. Occupation. To these geniuses, it was about controlling the spaces they did not occupy. When the English armies came to an Afghan city, ready to take the field of battle, they found … nothing. The enemy faded into the hills, lived in the spaces that the enemy discounted. For the English, the city was a thing to be owned. For the Afghan, it was no more sacred than the hills and the desert and the fields.”

“That’s a bit romantic, don’t you think?” Rosenfeld said, but Marco ignored him.

“These brave people. They were the Belters of their age and place. Our spiritual fathers. And the time has come for us to honor them. My friends, the Azure Dragon has fallen, as we knew it would eventually. Earth is preparing to lash out in its pain and ignorance.”

“You’ve heard something?” Dawes asked. His face was pale.

“Nothing new,” Marco said. “We always knew that Ceres was a target for them. They’ve been biding their time since the OPA’s takeover, but our cousin Anderson here was always careful to balance his power with appeasement. It was never their greatest concern. Not until now. The UN Navy is redeploying. They are heading for Ceres. But when they get here …?”

Marco lifted his two closed fists to his mouth, then blew on them and spread his fingers. It was an illusion, but Michio felt she could almost see the ashes blowing off his hands.

“You can’t mean …” Dawes choked.

“I’ve already started the evacuation,” Marco said. “All our soldiers and materiel will be off the station well before they arrive.”

“There are six million people on the station,” Rosenfeld said. “I don’t know that we can take them all.”

“Of course not,” Marco said. “This is a military action. We take the military ships and supplies that we need, and cede the territory to Earth. They won’t let Ceres starve and die. The only thing they have is the chance to play victim and wring sympathy out of the simpleminded. If they don’t take care of Ceres, they’ll lose even that. And us? We’ll be in the emptiness that is our natural home. Unassailable.”

“But,” Sanjrani said. Almost whined. “The economic base.”

“Don’t worry,” Marco said. “Everything we’ve discussed is coming. Only first, we have to let the enemy overextend itself and collapse. This was always part of the plan.”

Dawes rose to his feet. His face was gray as ash apart from two bright red smears on his cheeks. His hands shook. “This is about Filip. You’re getting back at me?”

“This isn’t about Filip Inaros,” Marco said, but the elation and excitement had vanished from his voice. “This is about Philip of Macedon. And about learning the lessons of history.” He was silent for a long, terrible moment. Dawes sank back into his chair. “Now. Michio and I have already discussed rerouting the incoming ships. Let’s talk about the logistics of emptying the station itself, yes?”

The way that inners fled their own ships when they came to a station fed a certain species of jokes among Belters. How can a Belter choose a ship’s dinner menu? Dock. How can you tell an Inner’s been away from port too long? They go outside to shit. If you give an Earther the choice of staying on board ship and saving her sweetheart’s life or heading out to the docks and never loving again, how do you dispose of the body? It was the way they looked at everything: The ship wasn’t real, the planet was. Or the moon. Or the asteroid. They couldn’t let go of the idea that life involved rock and soil. It was what made them smaller.

Michio’s people weren’t all on the Connaught when she passed through the docking tube and into her ship’s lock, but most were. The ones who were out would likely come back to sleep in their bunks. No one would think it was odd that her whole marriage group was there. Or if it was a little odd, not implausible at least.

She headed down the lift with the weird sense of seeing the ship for the first time. Like stepping into a new station, everything was in sharp focus.

Unfamiliar. The green and red indicators of the lift control. The thin, white text printed on every panel to show what was housed behind it and when it had been installed. The subtle MCRN logo still visible on the floor despite their best efforts to buff it away. The smell of black noodles came from the galley, but she didn’t pause. If she tried to eat now, she’d only vomit anyway.

They were in the cabins set aside for the family. One of the first things Bertold had done when they got the Connaught was take the walls off three of the cabins to make a wider space with crash couches enough that they could all sit together. The Martian designers had made the ship so that people could be alone or else together. It took a Belter to make space to be alone together. Oksana and Laura were sitting on the deck, their harps almost touching as they played through an old Celtic melody. Oksana’s paleness and Laura’s dark made them seem like something from a fairy tale. Josep lounged in one of the couches, his hand terminal set to some text or another, reading and swaying his foot to the music. Evans sat beside him, trying not to seem nervous. Nadia, looking like the however-many-greats-granddaughter of Marco’s Afghan soldier, stood behind one of the other couches, gently massaging Bertold’s thinning black hair.

Michio sat in the couch they’d left for her and listened until the melody came to an end in a series of ambiguous fourths and fifths. They put down their harps and hand terminal. Bertold opened his one good eye.

“Thank you for coming,” Michio said.

“Always,” Laura said.

“Just to ask,” Josep said. “Are you our captain or our wife right now?”

“I’m your wife. I think … I think that I …”

And then she was weeping. She leaned forward, hands over her eyes. The tight monkey’s-fist knot that was her heart blocked her throat. She tried to cough it out of the way, but it sounded like a sob. Laura’s hand touched her foot. And then Bertold’s arm was across her back and he folded her in against him. She heard Oksana murmuring, “It’s okay, baby. It’s all right,” from what might have been half a world away. It was too much. It was all too much.

“I did it,” Michio managed at last. “I did it again. I put us in Marco’s control, and he’s … He’s another Ashford. He’s another Fred fucking Johnson. I tried so hard not to do it again, and I did it. And I brought you all along. And I’m so … I’m so sorry.”

Her family descended on her gently, a hand or an arm, all of them touching her. Offering her comfort. Saying wordlessly that they were there. Evans wept with her, not even knowing why. The tears got worse for a while, confused for a while. And then better. Clearer. The worst of it passed. And when she was herself again, it was Josep that spoke.

“Tell us the story. It’ll have less power then.”

“He’s abandoning Ceres. Getting all the Free Navy out and leave the people for the inners. The colony ships we took? He wants to drive them dark out of the ecliptic for storage instead of delivering the supplies.”