Babylon's Ashes

“I did it,” Michio managed at last. “I did it again. I put us in Marco’s control, and he’s… He’s another Ashford. He’s another Fred fucking Johnson. I tried so hard not to do it again, and I did it. And I brought you all along. And I’m so… I’m so sorry.”

Her family descended on her gently, a hand or an arm, all of them touching her. Offering her comfort. Saying wordlessly that they were there. Evans wept with her, not even knowing why. The tears got worse for a while, confused for a while. And then better. Clearer. The worst of it passed. And when she was herself again, it was Josep that spoke.

“Tell us the story. It’ll have less power then.”

“He’s abandoning Ceres. Getting all the Free Navy out and leave the people for the inners. The colony ships we took? He wants to drive them dark out of the ecliptic for storage instead of delivering the supplies.”

“Ah,” Nadia said. “That kind, is he?”

“It’s hard, changing,” Josep said. “Tell yourself you’re a warrior long enough, you start believing it. Then peace looks like death. An annihilation of self.”

“Little abstract, honey,” Nadia said.

Josep blinked wide eyes at her, then smiled ruefully. “More concrete. You’re right. You always are.”

“I’m so sorry,” Michio said. “I did it wrong again. I trusted someone. I put myself in his command, and… I’m stupid. I’m just stupid.”

“We all agreed,” Oksana said through a scowl. “We all believed.”

“You believed because I asked you to,” Michio said. “This is my fault.”

“Now,” Laura said, “Michi? What’s the magic word?”

Against her will, Michio laughed. It was an old joke. A part of what made her family her family.

“The magic word is oops,” she said. And then a moment later, “Oops.”

Bertold took a moment to noisily blow his nose and wipe the last of the tears from his eyes. “All right. So what do we do?”

“We can’t keep working with the bastard,” Oksana said.

Nadia nodded with her hand. “And we can’t stay here and wait for the Earthers.”

Together, without meaning to, they all looked to her. Michio, their wife. But also their captain. She took a long, shuddering breath. “The thing he asked us for? Gather up the colony ships and spread the food and supplies to the Belters that need them? It still needs doing. And we still have a gunship to do it with. Some of the other ships might see things our way. So either we stick to the mission or else we try to find someplace quiet and sink out of sight before Inaros figures that we’re gone.”

Her family was silent for what felt like a long time, though it wasn’t more than a few breaths set end to end. Bertold scratched at his bad eye. Nadia and Oksana traded a look that seemed to mean something. Laura cleared her throat.

“Being small isn’t being safe. Not now.”

“Vrai,” Bertold said. “I’m for doing what we said we’d do, and fuck the rest. Changed sides before and it didn’t kill us.”

“Did we?” Josep said. “Would we be changing sides now?”

“Yes,” Evans said. “We would.”

Josep turned to look Michio full in the eyes. The humor and love in his face was like warmth radiating from a heater. “Fought the oppressor before. Still fighting the oppressor now. Followed your heart then. Still following your heart now. The situation changes, that doesn’t mean you do.”

“That’s sweet,” Michio said, taking his hand.

“Abstract, though,” Nadia said, and there was love in her voice too.

“Everything you’ve done,” Josep said, “every mistake, every loss, every scar. They all brought you here, so that as soon as you saw Big Himself for what he is, you’d be ready to act. Incapable of not acting, even. Everything then was preparation for now.”

“That’s bullshit,” Michio said. “But thank you.”

“If the universe needs a knife, it makes a knife,” Josep said with a shrug. “If it needs a pirate queen, it makes Michio Pa.”

Chapter Twelve: Holden

The wall screen in the dock’s public lobby was tuned to an entertainment newsfeed. A breathtakingly pretty young woman with one eyelid that was either rouged or tattooed red was being interviewed by someone off screen. The crawler at the bottom of the screen identified her as Zedina Rael. Holden wasn’t sure who she was. The sound was on, but incomprehensible over the sound of the people moving through the lobby to or from the docks. The subtitles were in Hindi. On the screen, Rael shook her head, and a thick tear dripped down her cheek as the feed shifted to images of a ruined city under a filthy brown sky. So something about the situation on Earth.