Babylon's Ashes

A thick band of metal-and-ceramic almost a meter high stretched out ahead of her like a low wall, disappearing over a much-too-close horizon. The rail gun, its base hidden by the station’s curve, rose up toward an eerie starless sky. She could hear the throb of its firing as static on her radio, feel it like a change in the air pressure or a sickness just coming on.

Bobbie had seen video feeds from the slow zone. She hadn’t been prepared for her own sheer animal rebellion at how uncanny it was. Even in the most designed architectural spaces she’d seen—Epping Cathedral on Mars, the UN building on Earth—there was a sense of nature. The station and the ring gates out beyond it weren’t like that. They were like a ship, but unthinkably huge. It was that combination of size and artificiality that brought the hair up on the back of her neck.

There wasn’t time for it now.

“We’ve got no cover,” she barked. “Spread out. Make it hard for the bastards to get us all. Now! Go!”

They jetted forward in a broken line, their suit thrusters more than enough to defy the barely perceptible gravity of the eerie blue sphere. Good tactics, moving in a hard to predict ragged line like that, even if it came more from a lack of discipline than from a plan. Ahead of them, a dark line on the horizon. A second wall to match the first, converging at the rail gun. Just beyond it would be the low blister of the bunker. She could hope they hadn’t noticed her make landfall. That she could get her engineers to the base of the rail gun and cut into the control systems before the enemy knew she was there…

“Heads up,” Amos called.

The first enemy fire came when they were still twenty meters from the corner where the walls converged. Enemy troops in what looked like Martian light armor crouched low to use the wall as cover, aiming down at them. Bobbie’s heart sank. The enemy knew she was there, and were in position. Charging the walls, getting to the base of the rail gun. They’d be killed before they managed it.

“Fall back,” she snapped, then squeezed off a few hundred rounds along the top of the wall. The faces peering over disappeared. Some dead, some ducking, no way to know how many of each yet. The OPA soldiers followed orders, though. No one tried to stay behind and play the hero. The only cover she could be sure of was the curve of the station itself. Bullets flew past her. Where they struck the station, the blue showed streaks of yellow, bright as sparks that faded slowly back to blue. The rail gun was still spitting.

Once the station’s curve had hidden the far wall, she jetted to a stop near the boat they’d landed in, and floated up until just the very top of the wall was visible above the curve of the station. She zoomed in, setting the optics to a high-contrast false color that would make any movement stand out like neon. Soon enough a shape moved. Someone emboldened to poke their head up for a quick look. She fixed on it, fired. It disappeared. Dead or ducking? No way to tell, that damned wall of metal in the way. The curve of the station protected her, but it also protected them. The other Martians. The ones, she was certain, who’d betrayed their world and armed the Free Navy. Was it so much to ask that one of them would get careless and come close?

Amos followed her lead without being told, and the others came behind him, hauling themselves up well behind her where the enemy rounds didn’t reach and then crawling forward. The steel curve the enemy had looped around the station was wider than it was thick—eight meters across at least—plenty of room to lie on. They could move forward, push the enemy back centimeter by centimeter. Unless they were themselves pushed back. Unless the traitorous Martians had a boat of their own that could skim overhead and lay them all to waste.

She gestured to keep their eyes forward and tried opening a connection to the Rocinante. The static seemed thicker now, ticking along in time with the rail gun fire. But then the weird fluting sound and Holden on the other side of it like she was seeing him through a veil.

“How’s it going there, Bobbie?” he asked.

“It’s shit,” she said. “We’re encountering well-armed resistance in a fortified position.”

“All right. How long is it going to take you to get past them? I’m only asking because we’re looking at those fast-attack ships getting back here in a little under two hours, and it would be really great if we weren’t here when they did.”

“That’s going to be difficult, sir,” Bobbie said. The flickers of muzzle flash told her that someone on the enemy side had tried taking a shot, but they were gone again by the time she looked. “In fact we could use a little air support.”

“Don’t know how we do that,” Holden said.

Naomi broke in on the line. “We’ve lost essentially all of the decoy fleet. Anything still flying would be chewed to kibble before it got to you.”

“All right,” Bobbie said. “I’m open to suggestion at this point.”