Babylon's Ashes

Pa leaned forward, chewing her lip. She could feel the thoughts bumping around like blind fish, searching for the words that would give them form. Josep waited.

By the terms of their ketubah, the marriage group was seven people: her and Josep, Nadia, Bertold, Laura, Evans, and Oksana. They had all kept their own surnames, and they made the Connaught’s permanent crew. The others who served under her came and went, respected that she was captain, that her orders were fair, and that she didn’t show any overt favoritism to her spouses, but there was the understanding always that the core of the ship was her family, and no threat to it would be tolerated. The idea of separating family from crew was an inner-planets thing, one example of the unconscious prejudice that made Earthers and Martians treat life aboard ships as somehow different from real life.

For them, the rules changed when the airlock closed, even if they didn’t know themselves well enough to see it. For Belters, there was no division. The Doctrine of the One Ship, she’d heard it called. That there was only one ship, and it had countless parts as a single body had countless cells. The Connaught was one part, as were all the ragtag ships under her command: Panshin, Solano, Witch of Endor, Serrio Mal, and a dozen more. And her fleet was only part of the Free Navy: a vast organism that passed information between its cells with tightbeam and radio, that consumed food and fuel, that worked its own slow destiny among the planets like a massive fish in the greater sea of the sky.

By some interpretations, even the Earther and Martian ships were part of the same one-ship, but for her, that always ran into conversations about cancers and autoimmune disorders, and the metaphor failed.

Still, there was a reason she was thinking of it now.

“We aren’t coordinated,” she said, trying out the words as she said them. “When you push off with a foot, you reach out with a hand. One movement. We aren’t like that. Inaros and military. Sanjrani and the finances. Rosenfeld and his production and design. Us. We’re not the same thing yet.”

“We’re new at this,” Josep said. The words could have been a refutation, a way to explain away her unease. From him, it was an offering. Something to react to that would help her mind come clearer.

“Maybe,” she said. “Hard to say. May be we’re supposed to be puppets and the strings all run to the Pella. Himself changes his mind, and we all jump.”

Josep shrugged, his warm eyes narrow. “He’s delivered. Ships, fuel, ammunition, drives. Freedom. He’s done what he said he’d do.” She could feel the gentle provocation in his words, and it was what she needed.

“He’s done what he says he said. His real record’s not so good. Johnson’s alive. Smith’s alive. Ganymede’s only gone neutral. We’re still throwing rocks at Earth and no surrender’s coming from them anytime soon. Go back and look at everything he promised, and it’s not what’s on the plate.”

“Politicians since immer and always, that. Still more than anyone else has done for the Belt. Inners are on their heels now. And with the Hornblower and ships like her, we’ll have stockpiles to last years. That’s our part. Keep everyone with food and air and supplies. Give us a chance to make the Belt without a boot on our necks.”

Pa sighed and scratched her knee—her nails against her skin with sound as soft and dry as sand. The air recycler clicked and hummed. The drive that pressed them both down toward the deck throbbed.

“Yeah,” she said.

“But?”

“But,” she said, and left it at that. Her unease didn’t find any further words that fit. Maybe they’d come in time or maybe she’d come to peace without having to speak them.

Josep shifted his weight and nodded toward the crash couch. “You want me to stay?”

Pa considered. It might have been a kindness to say yes, but the truth was whoever she shared her body with, she slept better alone. Josep’s smile meant he’d heard her answer anyway. It was part of what she loved about him. He stepped forward, kissed her on the forehead where her hairline met the skin, and started pulling on his jumpsuit. “Tea, maybe?”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“You should,” Josep said. It was more than he usually did.

“All right.” She shrugged off the blanket, cleaned up, and put her own clothes on too. When they stepped out into the Martian gunship’s galley, she leaned against him. None of the other crew were there, after all. Just Oksana and Laura finishing bowls of mushroom and sauce. Just family. Josep angled toward a different bench, and she let him set them a little apart from their wives. Oksana laughed at something. Laura said something acid and cutting, but she said it without any heat. Pa didn’t catch the words.