Babylon's Ashes

The torpedo had still hit hard enough to breach the outer hull, though. And the long, tedious work of finding each bit of scrap shaken loose needed to happen. Leaving a handful of metal and ceramic shards to rattle around between decks whenever they fired the maneuvering thrusters was begging for death. So Filip and Miral suited up, checked each other’s seals and bottles and rebreathers, and crawled into the space between the hulls. The Martian designs were elegant and well ordered, everything labeled along with inspection and change-out dates. In the white flare of light from his lamp, Filip considered the bent plate of the outer hull, the jagged gash where the stars showed through. The galactic plane glowed white and gold and rose against the black. It was hard not to stop and stare.

It was different looking at the stars as stars and not dots on a screen. He’d spent his whole life in ships and stations. Seeing the billions of unblinking lights with just his own eyes only happened when he went outside on a repair or an operation. It was always beautiful, sometimes alarming. This time, it seemed almost like a promise. The endless abyss opened around them, a whisper that the universe was larger than his ship. Larger than all the ships put together. Humanity could put its flag on thirteen hundred of those dots and not be a percent of a percent of a percent. That was the empire the inners were fighting and dying to control. A hundred more planets a dozen times over, and less than a rounding error of what was out there staring back at them.

“Hoy, Filipito,” Miral said on the suit’s private channel. “Come around. Think I’ve got something.”

“Commé. Moment.”

Miral was crouched down beside the power conduit for the sensor array. His light was playing over a bit of inner hull. A short, bright line showed where something had scratched it. Miral ran his glove over it, and it smeared. Ceramic, then.

“Okay, you little shit,” Filip said, playing his lamp down the conduit. “Where’d you go?”

“Follow on,” Miral said, scrambling down the handholds.

When they reached Pallas, the crews could do a more complete inspection. There were tools to blast nitrogen and argon into every crease and curve of the ship and blow out anything stuck there. Better, though, to have as much done before they arrived. And, Filip thought, there weren’t any other people out between the hulls. As jobs went, it was the most isolated one that the Pella had to offer. All alone, that was reason enough to work it.

Miral’s little gasp of victory caught Filip’s attention and brought him down close to where the other man was hunched. Miral took a pair of pliers from his belt, applied himself to a section of conduit where the weld had left a gap, then sat back with a grin Filip could see through the suit’s helmet mask. The chip was the size of a thumbnail, jagged along one side, smooth on the other.

Filip whistled appreciatively. “Big one.”

“Si no?” Miral said. “Leave esá bastard la bouncing around like shooting a gun in here, yeah?”

“One less,” Filip said. “Let’s see how many more we find.”

Miral made a fist and agreed, then tucked the shard into a pocket. “You know, when I was about your age? Drinker back then, me. Spent my time with this coyo always talked about fights he’d been in. Got in them a lot. Liked them, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Filip said, lowering himself farther down, playing his light across the housing of a maneuvering thruster. He didn’t know where Miral was going with this.

“This coyo, he said mostly when things spun up, it was from the other bastard getting embarrassed, sa sa? Maybe didn’t want to throw knuckles, but couldn’t find a way to push off without his crew seeing him weak.”

Filip scowled behind his faceplate. Maybe Miral was talking about what had happened on Ceres? It still bothered Filip sometimes. Not the violence itself, but little flashes of the humiliation left over from realizing the girl he’d been with at the Ceres bar had gone. It wasn’t something he wanted to spend more time with. “Que sa, es,” he said, hoping that would be enough.

But Miral went on. “Only saying, a man who’s feeling like he lost face, yeah? He’ll say things he doesn’t mean because of it. Do things he doesn’t mean.”

I meant all what I did, Filip thought but didn’t say. Would mean it again, to do it over.

But it had the bright, painful feel of touching a fresh scrape, and he’d already come across like a shitty little kid once today. Better to keep his own counsel. And as it turned out, that wasn’t what Miral meant at all.

“Your father? He’s a good man. Belter to his bones, yeah? It’s just this Holden bastard’s a sore for him. Getting knocked back, happens a alles one time and another, y alles talk a little bigger afterward. Not a good thing, not a bad thing. Just the way men get made. Don’t take it too close.”

Filip paused. Turned back.