Babylon's Ashes

He found Salis and Roberts deep in the service passageways, testing flow on the sewage intake for the backup recycling plant. Roberts’ eyes lit up as he approached, and she threw her arms around him.

“Perdíd,” she breathed against his ear. “Are you okay? We were worried.”

“Es dui?” Salis said, reaching across the table for the wasabi-flavored soy nuts. “They beat you up à nothing?”

The shift done, the three had retired to their usual bar. The breeze from spinward was as it always was. The thin line of sunlight stretched above them. Vandercaust pushed the bowl toward Salis’ fingers. “Security is police, and police are the same everywhere.”

“Still,” Roberts said. “Why bother pushing off the inners if it’s just to have a Belter foot stepping on our necks instead?”

“Wouldn’t talk like that,” Vandercaust said, then drank. Water tonight. Might be some time before he went for a long, solid drunk again. “Anxious times, these.”

“Talk how I want to talk,” Roberts said, but softly. She turned to her hand terminal. He could see the green and silver of the station feed, same colors it had been before the Free Navy took over. He wondered why they hadn’t changed it. A way to give a sense of continuity, maybe. Anything on the feed would have been vetted, of course. The power of Medina Station was that it was so much not a part of any of the systems on the far sides of the gate. The price of it was that information came from a single source. Back in Sol system, there would be any number of feeds and subfeeds. Some broadcast, some left in storage to be queried and mirrored. Hard to control what got out. Maybe impossible. Medina, one set of jammers blocked every unlicensed receiver and transmitter at once.

The server came with his gyro—textured fungus and soybean curd instead of lamb and beef. Cucumber yogurt. A sprig of mint. He reached out for it with a little grunt and a sudden ache. It wasn’t the worst beating he’d ever suffered, but he’d still be sore for days.

“Why they set you out?” Salis asked. “Sprecht el la?”

“No, they didn’t say,” Vandercaust replied. “Or that they wouldn’t be back. Maybe they just needed someone to keep you two on schedule.”

He’d missed two full shifts and come in during the middle of the third. Three days, almost, lost in the darkness of the security cell. No lawyer, no union representative. He could have asked for one—should have, by the rules and customs—but the certainty was solid as steel that it would have only meant more bruises. Maybe a broken bone. Vandercaust knew enough of history and human nature to know when the rules weren’t the rules anymore. He took a bite of his sandwich, then put it down while he chewed. After this, he’d go home. Sleep in his own bed. Sounded like the promise of paradise. He traced fingertips over the split circle on his wrist. It had been a statement of rebellion once. Now, maybe it only made him seem old. Still taking sides in the last generation’s fight.

“My friend in comms?” Salis said. “You know what they say? Found a hidden dump in the data core. Walled off. Think it was what they used to coordinate with the colonies. Confirmations came in from all the gates just before the attack hit. Only funny thing? Two ships didn’t come through.”

Salis cranked his eyebrows up toward his hairline.

Vandercaust grunted. “Were asking me about how many ships came through. Like they wanted a number.”

“Probably why. See if you knew how many came through or how many were supposed to, yeah? Trip you up if you were in on.”

“But didn’t have nothing,” Vandercaust said, tapping his forehead with two fingers. “Bon besse for me.”

Salis put a hand on his arm. The young man looked pained. Aching, but not in the muscles and joints. Not the way he was. “You should let me buy you a drink, coyo. You had a shit week.”

Vandercaust shrugged. He didn’t know how to explain himself to Salis or Roberts. They were young. They hadn’t seen the things he’d seen. Hadn’t done the thing he’d done. Being picked up by security, locked away, beaten, interrogated. They didn’t scare him in themselves. They scared him for what they said about how it came next. They scared him because they meant that Medina Station wasn’t a new beginning in history. It was and would be as red in the gutter as everyplace else humanity had set its flags.

Roberts sat up, her eyes going wide. “They got!”

Salis let his hand drop, turned to her. “Que?”

“The mole? The coordinator. They got.”

She turned her hand terminal toward them. On it, station security in Free Navy uniforms were walking, eight of them, around a broad-shouldered, squat man with dark hair and a scruff of beard. Vandercaust thought he looked familiar, but couldn’t place him. The image jumped to Captain Samuels, with Jon Amash standing behind her on one side. Political power and security service, one beside the other, and no light between them.

Samuels’ lips began to move.