Babylon's Ashes

“Aldo says there was another bunch of threats coming out of the Jerusalem gate,” Roberts said. “We send their reactor core, or they come get it.”

“Surprise them if they do,” Vandercaust said, taking the fresh bulb from Salis. “Guns up, and it’s past time for alles la.”

“Maybe,” Roberts said, then coughed. “Maybe we should give it to them, yeah?”

Vandercaust scowled. “For for?”

“They need and we have is all,” Roberts said.

Vandercaust made a dismissive wave of his hand. Who gives a shit what they need? But something in Roberts’ voice caught Salis’ attention. Like she’d said more than she’d said. He met her dark eyes and lifted his chin as a question. The words she was trying to say pushed her head forward like a nod.

“Can help if we want. Might as well, sí no? No reason no, since we’re not what we were anymore, us,” she said. Vandercaust scowled, but Roberts went on. “We did it. Us. Today.”

“Que done que, us?” Vandercaust said. His voice was rough, but if Roberts heard it, she didn’t stop. Her eyes glittered like she was about to cry. When she spoke, it was like water coming out a snapped pipe. Her voice gushed and pulsed and gushed again.

“Always, it’s been when we find place. Ceres o Pallas o the big Lagranges never got built. Mi tía talked about making a station for all Belters alles. Capitol city à te void. It’s this. Belters built it. Belters live in it. Belters gave it power. Y because of guns we put in, it’s ours forever. We made this place home today. Not just our home, ours. All of ours. Esá es homeland now. Because of us three.”

Tears dripped down her cheeks, slow in the sixth g. Joy lit her from inside like a fire, and it left Salis embarrassed. Seeing Roberts like this was like walking in on someone pissing—intimate and wrong. But when he looked away, the drum spread out around them. The plants, the soil, the land above him squinting down at him like a sky.

He’d been on Medina for fifteen months. Longer than he’d ever been on a station in his life. He’d come because Marco Inaros and the Free Navy needed people here. He hadn’t thought about what it meant, except he’d known in his gut he was more OPA than the OPA, and that was what Free Navy meant. Now, maybe, he caught a glimpse of what it was behind that. Not a war forever. A place.

“Homeland,” he said, speaking carefully. Like the word was made from glass, and could cut him if he said it too hard. “Because the rail guns.”

“Because something’s ours,” Roberts said. “And because now they can’t take it away.”

Salis felt something in his chest, and he let his mind poke at it. Pride, he decided. It was pride. He tried a smile and turned it to Roberts, who was grinning back. She was right. This was the place. Their place. Whatever else happened, they’d have Medina.

Vandercaust shrugged, took a long pull from his bulb, and belched. “Besse for us,” he said. “But here’s for that? They ever do take it away, we sure as shit never get it back again.”

Chapter Five: Pa

I don’t trust anything about this,” Michio Pa said.

Josep yawned and propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at her. He was a beautiful man in a slightly ruined way. He wore his hair longer than a crew cut, shorter than his shoulders. The gray in it still only a highlight in the black. Decades had roughened his skin, and the ink there told the story of his life: the neck tattoo of the OPA’s split circle that had been covered over later to make the upraised fist of a radical collective long since collapsed. The elaborate cross on his shoulder, inscribed in a moment of faith and kept after that faith had crumbled. Phrases written along his wrists and down his side—No more water, the fire next time and To love someone is to see them as God intended them and Ölüm y chuma pas pas fóvos—spoke of the various men he had been in his life. His incarnations. That was part of why Pa felt so close to him. She was younger than him by almost a decade, but she’d been through incarnations too.

“Which ‘this’?” he asked. “There’s so many things not to trust.”

“Inaros calling in the clans,” she said, rolling over and gathering a blanket with her as she did. It wasn’t that she was uncomfortable naked, only now that their coupling was done, she was ready to go back to their more formal roles. Or something closer to them. Josep noted it and without comment went from being one of her husbands to her chief engineer. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.

“Is it the meeting or the man?” he asked.

“Any of it,” she said. “Something’s not right.”

“You say it, and I believe.”

“I know. This is the part where I always do this. The coyo in charge changes the plan and I start looking for them to be the next Ashford. The next Fred fucking Johnson. It’s my pattern.”

“Is. Doesn’t mean your pattern doesn’t match. What’s in your head?”