Babylon's Ashes

Between the three and a half gs and the violence of the Roci’s defense, Holden’s jaw and back ached. He couldn’t imagine how unpleasant this had to be for Naomi and the Belters in the Giambattista. Including the first-wave team that Bobbie was about to lead down the enemy’s throat. One wave to take the rail guns, then a second to secure Medina. By then, maybe he’d know what he needed to do next.

If it didn’t work out, they’d try to keep the Giambattista and the OPA soldiers still on her alive long enough to come up with some other plan.

The ring gate grew larger on the scopes, looming up until they were so close, it dwarfed the ships. A thousand kilometers from one side to the other, and beyond it, the weird nonplace of the slow zone, the other gates, and the ruins of a thirteen-hundred-world galactic empire that humanity aspired to salvage. Naomi was right. It didn’t matter whether they were servants of some greater historical movement or individual, disconnected lives suffering the consequences of their own choices. It didn’t change what they had to do.

The Giambattista reached a minimum in their vector curve and shut down their drive. A few seconds later, the Roci did the same, but by then, the sides of the giant ship were already sliding open. In the starlight, the thousands of tiny cheap boats looked like spores being thrown to the wind by a dark fungus, visible more by the starlight they blocked than by any actual color or shape of their own. This close, the ring gate dwarfed them. He couldn’t keep from seeing it as a massive milky eye, staring blindly down at a sun that was hardly more than the brightest star among billions.

The connection request came to his monitor. Bobbie Draper. He accepted, and her face appeared on his screen. Her powered armor made her unhelmeted head seem small. Voices behind her spoke in Belter cant so fast that he couldn’t make out the words.

“First wave’s ready to go,” she said. “Permission to deploy?”

“Granted,” Holden said. “But, Bobbie? Really, really don’t die out there.”

“No one lives forever, sir,” Bobbie said, “but as long as it doesn’t compromise the mission, I’ll try to live through it.”

“Thanks.”

One by one, and then in ragged groups, the small, weak chemical rockets began to ignite. All of them together didn’t have the power of the Roci’s reactor, but they didn’t need it. Their whole lives were the space from the ring gate to the station in the center of the slow zone. For most of them, less than that. And only one of them had Bobbie and Amos and their ground force. As Holden watched, the boats shifted like a flock of starlings, became a single, moving shape on an imaginary, tactical wind, and burned toward the gate.

And then through it.

Chapter Forty-Four: Roberts

She’d known it was coming. Even before they’d pried the specific information out of Jakulski, she’d known something was coming. It was a feeling that came up like a bad dream she couldn’t shake. A premonition or just the kind of fear that seeped through anytime she had something important and too clear an imagination about how it would be to lose it. Knowing that the war was coming to Medina was almost a relief. At least she knew in broad strokes what to be afraid of.

The fear had made small changes feel large. When Jakulski brought them the news that their work schedule was shifting, Roberts couldn’t keep from interpreting each change like tarot cards. Tracking down the signal drop on the interior of the drum was pushed off for a month, so maybe Captain Samuels thought it wasn’t important for defense from the invasion. The retrofit of the water supply for lower g moved up, so maybe they wanted extra capacity ready in case the environmental systems were damaged. They spent a day installing redundant comm lasers so that they could always have a tightbeam line to Montemayor and the rest of Duarte’s advisors and guards on the alien station. Everything that she could fit into the idea of fortifying against coming violence became more evidence that her fear was justified; the more evidence she had, the easier it became to see things as further proof.