Babylon's Ashes

Clarissa’s own contributions had been minimal at first. She’d tried some free verse about the possibility of redemption, but she’d read Carlos Pinnani and Anneke Swinehart and HD at her literature tutor’s insistence, so she knew her work wasn’t good. Worse, she knew why it wasn’t good: She didn’t really believe her thesis. On the few occasions she considered shifting to a different subject—fathers, regret, grief—it seemed less like catharsis and more like strict reportage. Her life had been squandered, and whether she said it in pentameter or not didn’t seem to matter much.

She quit because of the nightmares. She didn’t talk about those to anyone, but the medics knew. She might be able to keep the exact content of the dreams to herself, but the medical monitor logged her heartbeats and the activity in the various parts of her brain. The poetry made them come more often and more vividly. Usually, they were of her digging through something repulsive—shit or rotting meat or something—trying to reach someone buried in it before they ran out of air. When she stopped attending, they faded back. Once a week, say, instead of nightly.

Which wasn’t to say that the course hadn’t borne fruit. Three weeks after she’d told the chaplain that she didn’t want to be part of his little study anymore, she’d woken up in the middle of the night fully rested and alert and calm with a sentence in her head as clear as if she’d just heard it spoken. I have killed, but I am not a killer because a killer is a monster, and monsters aren’t afraid. She’d never spoken the words aloud. Never written them down. They’d become her words of power, a private prayer too sacred to give form. She went back to them when she needed them.

I have killed, but I am not a killer…

“We’re cycling out now,” she said, her mouth dry and sticky, her heart fluttering in her chest.

… because a killer is a monster…

“Wish us luck.”

… and monsters aren’t afraid. She cut the transmission, hoisted the recoilless rifle, and nodded to Amos. His grin, half hidden by the curve of his helmet, was boyish and calm. The outer door of the airlock slid soundlessly open on an abyss filled with starlight. Amos took the edge of the airlock, hauling himself forward and then ducking back in case someone was there waiting to shoot. When no one did, he grabbed a handhold and swung himself out, spinning so that the suit’s mag boots would land on the ship’s skin. She followed less gracefully. And less certain of herself.

The body of the Rocinante under her feet, she looked back at the drive cone. The hull of the ship was smooth and hard, studded here and there with blocky PDC mounts, the clustered mouths of thrusters, the black and deep-sighted eyes of sensor arrays. She held her rifle at the ready, finger near the trigger, but not on it the way that the Martian marine had shown her. Trigger discipline, she’d called it. Clarissa wished that she was the one trapped in the airlock and Bobbie Draper could be here instead.

“Moving forward, Peaches. You watch our six.”

“Understood,” she said, and started walking slowly backward, her boots grabbing to the ship and then letting go only to grab hold again. It felt like the ship itself was trying to keep her from spinning away into the stars. No enemies popped up as they moved around the curve of the ship, but to her right, the body of the Azure Dragon appeared like a whale rising up from the deep. It was so close to the Roci, she could have turned off her boots and jumped to it. The light of the sun streaming up from below threw harsh shadows across a hull scarred and flaking in places where too many years of hard radiation had scoured the coatings into a white, fragile glaze. It made the Roci seem solid and new by comparison. Something flickered behind her, throwing her shadow and Amos’ out before her. She took a slow, stuttering breath. Nothing had attacked them yet.

They were the attackers.

“Well, shit,” Amos said, and at once, Naomi’s voice was on the common channel.

“What are you seeing, Amos?”

A small window appeared in the corner of Clarissa’s helmet, the HUD showing the stretch of hull behind her. The three bright yellow spiders stood in a cloud of sparks. Two were braced against the hull, ready to haul back a section of ceramic and steel, while the third cut it free.

“All right,” Naomi said. “They’re going to get between the hulls.”

“Not if me and Peaches have anything to say about it. Right, Peaches?”

“Right,” Clarissa said, and turned to see the enemy with her own eyes. The brightness of the welding torch forced her helmet to dim, protecting her eyes. It was like the three mechs stayed the same, and the stars all around them winked out. There was nothing left but the people who wanted to hurt her and Amos and the darkness.