Babylon's Ashes

She had a little gap between her front teeth and skin as pale as anyone he’d ever met. She could blush on command, which was a pretty good trick, and she’d been in the life since she was a kid. Before she’d come to Tycho for the legal trade. His own childhood in the illegal trade meant they had context that made the talk before and after more comfortable for him, and she knew he wouldn’t pull any of that “you’re better than this” soul-saving bullshit. He also wouldn’t start calling her a bitch and being abusive out of shame the way some johns did. He liked shooting the shit with her afterward, and usually the way she snored just a little didn’t keep him from drifting off.

Only that wasn’t what was keeping him awake. He knew what was keeping him awake.

He got out of bed quietly so as not to wake her up. He’d paid her and rented the room for the whole night, and the house wasn’t about to give him a refund for leaving early, so she might as well get the rest herself. He gathered up his clothes and slipped out into the hallway to get dressed. A john on his way out passed by as he was pulling on his jumpsuit, made brief and awkward eye contact, nodded curtly. Amos smiled his amiable smile and made room for the guy to go past before he zipped himself in and headed out toward the docks.

The Roci had spent more time in Tycho than any other port, usually getting put back together after the last whatever went wrong. It wasn’t home—nowhere outside the Roci was home—but it was familiar enough that he could feel the differences. It was in the way people talked to each other in the hallways. The kinds of images that played on the newsfeeds. He’d seen what it was like for a place to change in ways that didn’t change back. Earth was like that. Now Tycho. Kind of like a big, slow wave coming out from where the rocks had hit Earth and spreading through everyplace humans were.

There were people on Tycho who recognized him too. Not like they knew Holden. Holden, he couldn’t walk through a room anymore without people staring at him and pointing and making a fuss. Amos had the sense that was going to be a problem eventually, but it wasn’t one he knew how to fix. He wasn’t even sure what it implied at this point.

Back at the ship, he headed down to the machine shop and his workstation. The Roci told him that Holden was in the galley with Babs, Naomi was catching some bunk time, and Peaches was at work replacing the hatch seals they’d been talking about. He made a note on his work schedule to double-check them when she was done, even though he knew they’d be fine. Peaches turned out to be a pretty good worker. Smart, focused, seemed to really enjoy fixing things, and never bitched about the stresses of shipboard life. Perspective, he figured. Shittiest ship there was still had to be better than the best cell in the pit, if only because you got to pick that you were in it.

He shrugged into his couch, pulled up the technical reports, and spooled through the way he had before. Not that he expected to find anything different. Just to see if there was any reaction when he got to the weird bit. He got to it and looked at the data for a while. The torpedoes Bobbie had fired off. Their trajectories. The error logs. And he had the same reaction. It was bugging him.

He shut the workstation down.

“Hey,” Peaches said, coming up from engineering with an ARL polymer tank slung over one shoulder.

“Hey,” he said. “How’s it going?”

She was still too skinny. The smallest standard jumpsuit still left her swimming in it. They’d had to adjust the code to convince the Roci that anyone flying on her could be so slight. Working made her look healthier, though.

She thumbed open a storage locker, slid the tank into place, and dropped into her couch. “I got the seals replaced, but I don’t like the inner airlock door in the cargo bay. It’s not throwing errors, but the power’s dirty.”

“Dirty dirty? Or inside the error bars but it pisses you off dirty?”

“Second one,” Peaches said, and then grinned. But her grin faded fast. “You all right?”

He smiled. “Why do you ask?”

“Because you’re not all right,” she said.

Amos leaned back, shifted to crack his neck. Part of him wanted to talk to her about the torpedoes, but he couldn’t picture Holden doing it. And this was kind of a Holden thing, so he only shrugged. “Need to talk to the captain about something.”

“Then we’re back to the ‘throw ships at them until they run out of ammunition’ plan,” Bobbie said. Her voice was clear and sharp. Someone who didn’t know her might have thought she was pissed, but Amos was pretty sure that was her having a good time. He hesitated in the corridor outside the galley. Truth was, even if they decided to go after Medina like they were stomping snakes to death, they’d be in port for a couple more days. There’d be time to ask the question later that didn’t mean putting his elbow in the planning. But he also wanted to get some decent sleep, so he went forward anyway.