Babylon's Ashes

There was no viewing of the body. Fred Johnson—the Butcher of Anderson Station—had requested that his body be recycled into the system of Tycho Station. Water that had been his blood was likely already coming through the taps and faucets throughout the station. His chalk bones would reenter the food cycle in the hydroponics pools. The more complex lipids and proteins would take longer to become humus for the mushroom farms. Fred Johnson, like all the dead before him, fell to his component parts, scattered, and entered the world again, changed and unrecognized.

Instead, there were printed images of him on the chapel wall. A portrait of the man as a colonel in the service of Earth. A picture of him as an older man, still strong in his features but with a weariness creeping in at his eyes. Another of a ridiculously young boy—not more than ten years old—holding a book in one hand and waving with the other, his face split by a massive and childlike grin. They were the right ears, the right spacing of the eyes, but Dawes still had to work to believe that happy child had grown into the complex man he’d known and called friend and betrayed.

The memorial was in a small chapel so aggressively nondenominational that it was hard to tell the difference between it and a waiting room. Instead of religious icons, there were sober, abstract shapes. A circle in gold, a square in forest green. Intentionally empty symbols meant as placeholders for where something with significance might have been. The Tycho Manufacturing logo in the hallway outside held more meaning.

The pews were bamboo textured to look like some sort of wood—ash or oak or pine. Dawes had only ever seen pictures of live trees. He wouldn’t have known one from another, but it gave the little room some sense of gravitas. Still he didn’t sit. He walked past the pictures of Fred Johnson, looking into the eyes that didn’t look back. The thing in his chest, the one making it hard to breathe, felt thick and complicated.

“I had a speech ready,” he said. His voice echoed a little, the emptiness giving it depth. “Well practiced. You’d have liked it. All about the nature of politics and the finest of humanity being our ability to change to match our environment. We are how the universe consciously remakes itself. The inevitability of failure and the glory of standing back up after it.” He coughed out a chuckle. It sounded like a sob. “What I really meant was I’m sorry. Not just sorry I backed the wrong horse. Am sorry about that. But I’m sorry I compromised you while I did it.”

He paused as if Fred might answer, then shook his head.

“I think the speech would have worked. You and I have so much history behind us. Seems strange. I was a mentor to you once. Well. Feet of clay. You know how it is. Still, I really think you’d have seen the value in having me back. But this Holden prick?” Dawes shook his head. “You picked a shit time to die, my friend.”

The doors opened behind him. A young woman in an oil-stained Tycho Station jumpsuit and a deep-green hijab stepped in, nodded to him, and took a place in the pew, her head bowed. Dawes stepped back from the pictures of the dead man. There was more he wanted to say. Apparently there always would be.

He took a seat across the aisle from the woman, folded his hands in his lap, lowered his head. There was a profound mundanity in shared grief. A set of rules as strong as any human etiquette, and they didn’t allow for him to keep up his one-sided conversation. Not aloud, anyway.

The Free Navy could have been—ought to have been—a glorious moment for the Belt. Inaros had conjured up a full military for them out of nothing. Dawes had told himself at the time that Inaros’ failings as a political animal weren’t a problem. Were an opportunity, even. As a member of the Free Navy’s inner circle, Dawes could exert his influence. Be kingmaker. The cost was high, yes, but the rewards were nothing short of visionary. An independent Belt, cut free of the inner planets. The threat of the gate network under their control. Yes, Inaros was a peacock who made his way through life on charisma and violence. Yes, Rosenfeld had always had a whiff of brimstone about him. But Sanjrani was smart, and Pa was capable and dedicated. And if he’d said no, it would all have gone ahead without him anyway.

It was what he’d told himself. How he’d justified it all. The best would have been that someone besides Inaros had acquired the ships. The second best was that Inaros’ circle of advisors and handlers include him. So what was third?