Babylon's Ashes

The Blue Frog was closed for renovations, so after the meetings were over, she drove the cart to a pub two levels higher and a little to spinward. The sign beside the door was cheap steel set into the wall with the words COOPERATIVE FOURTEEN hand-welded into it. Naomi didn’t know if the name had a history behind it, or if that was just the new style in naming clubs. On the other side of the door, the decor took on a much less industrial feel. The tables glowed in bright primary colors, and the walls were covered in strands of woven wire, looped and tied to look like old pictures of waterfalls. A low stage with a karaoke setup hummed and danced with itself, waiting for someone to break the ice. There was room for as many as a hundred people in the space, and counting herself and Jim, there were probably fewer than twenty. But it was also off-hours, so that made it hard to judge.

The crew were already there and, to judge from the empty bottles the waiter was clearing away, had been there for some time. As they walked across to them, Jim relaxed. The four of them gave a little cheer and made space for two new chairs at the table.

“What happened?” Bobbie said. “You were supposed to be here hours ago.”

“Avasarala jumped me,” Jim said, and Amos’ empty, amiable smile got a degree wider. Jim laughed and shook his head. “No, I mean she tried to get me named as the head of the spacing guild.”

“You know that name’s not going to stick, right?” Alex said.

“Wait, she did what?” Bobbie said.

Jim held out his hands, a gesture of helplessness. “She gave out the proposal, and I gave my little speech about it, and then boom. Right at the front, she said I should be the one to help put it together. First union president. It probably took the first two hours just convincing her I wouldn’t do it.”

“Why didn’t you take the position?” Clarissa asked. She seemed genuinely confused.

“Because then I’d have to do it,” Jim said, waving to call the waiter back.

“Makes sense she’d want someone she could control calling the shots, though,” Alex said.

“Avasarala doesn’t think she can control Holden,” Bobbie said. “But she also doesn’t think anyone else can. She might just want someone from Earth in charge, at least as a figurehead. Makes the union feel like it’s in her circle of influence. Fred Johnson was OPA to the marrow, but he was from Earth. He never totally got away from that.”

The waiter trotted over and took Jim’s order. Naomi leaned in around him so she could see Bobbie as she spoke.

“That was our point,” she said. “If it’s going to work, the Belt needs to know it’s their own and not another set of scraps that the inners are tossing out.” The waiter reached out, his fingers stopping just short of touching her shoulder. “Whatever your best stout is,” she said, and he vanished with a nod. She turned back. “Anyway, we threw Michio Pa under the bus.”

“She’s perfect,” Holden said. “She knows all the players in the Belt. She’s not afraid to work with Earth and Mars. She’s literally the former commander of Medina Station. Granted back before it was a station, but she’s got a real familiarity with the ship. And look what she’s been doing since she broke with Inaros. Coordination and distribution. Exactly the job we’re looking at.”

“Well,” Alex said, “except with less piracy this time. I mean, assuming.”

“Did she take the job?” Bobbie asked.

“She’s coming around,” Naomi said. “It was a long meeting.”

“What about us?” Clarissa asked. Her voice had dread in it. A hollowness. “What do we do now?”

“We join the union,” Jim said. “I mean, we’ll need to vote on it here in the family, but it seems weird to push for a new architecture for the colonies and then not be part of it. And there’ll be a lot of work for a good ship. We have a good ship.”

Clarissa’s gaze flickered up to Naomi, then, with an almost invisible smile, away. Jim hadn’t understood what she’d really been asking. Now that the war’s over, do I still have a place here? And he didn’t know that he’d answered yes. He had a genius for assuming things that let Clarissa trust him. Naomi handed the girl a napkin so she wouldn’t have to dab her eyes with a cuff.

“Seems to me,” Alex said, “we should look at escorting colony ships. And making sure the ore or whatever the colony has to trade gets where it’s going.”

“Lot of trade in-system too,” Amos said. “Don’t have to go out past the gates.”

“Yeah,” Alex agreed. “But there’s more planets out there than I’m going to be able to see in my lifetime. I’d like to get to a few of them.”

The waiter returned with Jim’s gin and tonic and her own stout. When she tried to pay, the transaction was already zeroed out. The waiter smiled at her, shook his head, and said, “On the house.” Naomi nodded her thanks. Jim was already drinking.