Babylon's Ashes

The higher-up was a thick-faced boy with a brown complexion that matched his eyes. Handsome, in his way, but too young for Vandercaust’s tastes. He’d come to an age when sex was less about who he fell into bed with and more about who he woke up next to, and the set of people he considered children extended to include men in their early thirties. The pretty child scowled, maybe at Vandercaust and maybe at how he’d been treated. For a moment, the silence in the room made him wonder if they’d leave again. Lock the door and stick him in the dark. The idea made him aware of his thirst.

“Agua, yeah?”

“Commst,” the boy said. Vandercaust levered himself up to his feet, his abused muscles shrieking, but not badly enough to stop him. The guards fell in, one ahead and one behind, and the boy leading them all like a sad little parade. The room they took him to was brighter, more comfortable, though not by much. A low metal stool was welded to the deck, short enough that sitting on it made Vandercaust feel like he was in some school for children, expected to take a desk meant for a six-year-old. He’d been questioned by security enough in his life to recognize the little humiliation as the tactic it was. A guard brought him half a bulb of tepid water, watched him drink it, and took it back.

The guards stepped out, the door closing behind them. The boy stood at a desk, looking down at him through a floating display. Seeing the display from behind was like seeing someone through a bright mist.

Vandercaust waited. The boy took a flat yellow lozenge out of his pocket. Focus drugs, or what Vandercaust was supposed to assume were. The boy put the lozenge under his tongue, sucked thoughtfully for a moment. Shuddered.

“You missed the battle alert yesterday,” he said.

“I did.”

“Can you explain that?”

Vandercaust shrugged. “Deep sleeper when I’m drunk, me. Didn’t hear it. No se savvy what happened before it was over, yeah?”

“Savvy tú now?”

“Heard some things, yeah.”

“Let’s go over what you heard, then.”

Vandercaust nodded, as much to himself as to the boy. Time to pick his handholds careful. Whatever they were spun up over, this was the time he’d land in it if he spoke the wrong words.

“Was a bunch of ships came from the colonies, what I heard. Fourteen, fifteen ships all through rings at the same time. Fast too. Trying to get to Medina before the rail guns took them out, yeah? Only didn’t so much. What the guns didn’t put holes in, station defenses took out. Some debris hits on the drum hull, aber nothing can’t be fixed.”

The boy nodded, made some notation in the bright air between them. “Fourteen or fifteen?”

“Yeah.”

The boy’s eyes hardened. “Was it fourteen you heard, or fifteen?”

Vandercaust frowned. There was something about the boy’s reaction that didn’t sit right. If they’d been playing poker, he’d wait to see if the boy’s hand was particularly strong or weak, then spend the rest of the night cleaning him out over that hardness. Only there weren’t any cards to come down here.

“Heard fourteen or fifteen. A phrase. Eight or ten. Six or seven. Didn’t hear a number.”

“What rings did they come through?”

“Don’t know.”

“Look at me,” the boy said. Vandercaust looked up into the boy’s light-brown eyes. “What rings did they go through?”

“No savvy. I don’t know.”

The boy’s eyes flickered, looked away. Vandercaust scratched his arm even though it didn’t itch. Just to be doing something.

“They all came through within fifteen seconds of each other,” the boy said. “And they were going fast. Any thoughts about that, Mister Vandercaust?”

“Coordinated,” he said. “Sounds like they been talking con alles, sa sa? Making plans.”

Which—ah, yes—meant they’d found some way to break lightspeed, bend time, and locate each other in the vastness of the galaxy, or else that conversation had been passing through the rings. Through Medina. It meant somewhere on Medina Station, somebody had been working against the Free Navy. He’d known that the arrest couldn’t just be for missing an emergency shift. Now it came a little clearer what the boy was looking for. Watched the boy watch him understand.

“Who told you about the attack?”

“Heard about it in my workgroup. Jakulski. Salis. Roberts. Just chap-chap over coffee, yeah?”

Another notation made. “Anything you think of I should know about them?”

A coldness that had nothing to do with the temperature ran up Vandercaust’s back, lifted his skin in bumps. Maybe it wasn’t only that he’d slept through the alarm. He’d been drunk. Drunk men could sleep through anything. But if he hadn’t made the call and he was near to someone with something worth hiding…