Babylon's Ashes

“Bad news. I’m seeing a couple of fast-attack ships headed our way out from Ganymede.”

“Well, so much for not being noticed. How long before they reach us?” Jim asked, but Naomi had already queried the system.

“Five days if they’re just buzzing us and looping back,” she said. “Twelve if they try to match orbit while we’re on the burn.”

“Can we take them?” Clarissa said.

“If it was just us, might could,” Alex said. “Problem is we’re guarding this cow. But if we burn hard enough, we might make the ring before they get us.”

“Figure it out on the way,” Jim said. “Right now, we need to get the Giambattista up and burning as hard as it can and still let Bobbie do her inspections.”

“No plan survives contact with the enemy,” Alex said, unstrapping and pulling himself up toward the cockpit. “I’m warming her up.”

“I’ll tell our friends across the way to do the same,” Holden said, taking comm control.

On Naomi’s monitor, the thousands of hair-thin lines marked where the battles were, and where they were expected to be. On impulse, she took down the tactical display, leaving just the wide scatter of drive plumes all around the system, and then added in the star field.

It was the widest concerted attack ever. Hundreds of ships on at least four sides. Dozens of stations, millions of lives.

Among the stars, it didn’t stand out.

Chapter Forty: Prax

The more time passed, the clearer it became how little Ganymede’s official neutrality meant. The ships in the docks and orbiting the moon were more and more Free Navy ships, fewer and fewer anything else. The soldiers in Free Navy uniform appeared more often at the tube stations, in the markets, in the public halls and corridors, first with the apparent casualness of citizens, then in larger groups with more aggressive demeanors. Then with armored emplacements that would allow them to shoot in safety whoever happened by.

Djuna had stopped letting him watch the local newsfeeds at breakfast on the weekends. Too many stories about bodies being found in unfortunate conditions. Too many missing people, too many espionage claims, too many reminders from the still-official security apparatus that Pinkwater was an unaffiliated corporate entity with no political litmus tests and only the safety and well-being of the citizens of Ganymede at heart. The sorts of things people said because they weren’t true.

For Prax, the official news and the gun-wielding soldiers weren’t the most disturbing things. There were smaller things that he noticed. The way that the girls didn’t fight against being home by curfew anymore. The wistful conversations Djuna would start about taking positions somewhere else, emigrating off Ganymede entirely, and then end without ever drawing a conclusion. The small things carried more weight. Yes, a dissident circle was killed. Yes, people disappeared. But—apart from Karvonides—they weren’t people he knew. And the change in the station was also changing his family. It was also changing him.

Prax went about his work because there was nothing else to do. It wasn’t as if things would be made better by hiding in his bed. And the appearance of normalcy was sometimes almost as good as the real thing. So he went to the meetings in the mornings, worked with his plants in the afternoons. Some of the runs had to be scaled back. Research and development weren’t a priority as much as generating food to resupply the warships. Prax thought that was shortsighted. If anything, disruptions like this were an argument for more research, especially with the radioplast work that Khana and Brice had under proposal. He tried bringing the point up now and again. He’d even gone so far as to ask whether there was a contact with the Free Navy that the labs could talk to about it. No one was enthusiastic about it, though. So that was something else the occupation had taken away.

Under it all, the fear of what he’d done in sending the data to Earth hung over him. It was almost a relief when the security forces finally came.

He was in the overflow hydroponics lab at midafternoon. Rows of black-leaved plants rose up from the tanks toward the light banks. The roots that pushed through the underlying aqueous gel were pale as snow. Prax was moving from plant to plant, his hands in light-blue NBR gloves. He checked each leaf gently, looking for sprays of yellow and orange where the radioplasts were dying. Until the man called his name, his afternoon had been going pretty well.

“Dr. Meng?”

There were four people, all of them men. Two wore simple uniforms with the Pinkwater logo on the breast and shoulder. The other two were Free Navy. Prax felt his heart thud against his chest as the adrenaline hit, but he tried not to look more than a little uncomfortable. Anyone would be a little anxious when the Free Navy came asking for them. Even the innocent. He thought that was right.

“Can I help you?”

“We need you to come with us now,” the taller of the two Free Navy men said.