Babylon's Ashes

“Do. Refugees too. Hornblower’s original crew.”

“Pissed off, them?”

“Not happy,” Michio said. “Think they’ll be grateful to be in rooms that aren’t welded shut, though. Your supply officer said you’d be able to take them.”

“Can take contract here, can book passage to Earth or Mars. Or refugees, can etwas. Prisoners are their own thing.”

“Won’t have them hurt,” Michio said. “Don’t want them let free either.”

“Guests of the station,” Iapetus control said. “All marked. Good and good. And… not official, yeah? ’Gato for the load. Hydroponics were getting mighty strained with the shipments from Earth dead.”

“Glad we could help,” Michio said before she dropped the connection.

It was true too. There was something in her chest—a soft, golden feeling—that came from knowing that the people who would have suffered without her would at least suffer less. She’d spent more time on Rhea than on Iapetus, but she’d had enough experience to know what shortages of hydroponic equipment meant to a station like this. At the least, her shipments would mean the difference between uncertainty and stability. At most, between death and life.

It wouldn’t have been this way if the Belt had been allowed to grow and become independent. But Earth and Mars had kept the labor here on a leash made of soil analogues and complex organics. Now, thanks to Marco, the Belt would have a chance to bootstrap itself up into a sustainable future. Unless, thanks to Marco, it starved and collapsed in the attempt.

She hadn’t heard back from him one way or the other since she’d called her ships to refuse his orders. Statements of allegiance had come from eight of her sixteen ships. Acknowledgment from four more. Only the Ando and the Dagny Taggart had rejected her outright, and even they hadn’t taken action yet. Everyone was waiting for Marco to make an announcement. Even her. And every hour he didn’t made it seem more possible that he wouldn’t.

Other voices, though. Oh, there were others. A collective of independent prospecting vessels out of Titania needed replacement parts for their drives. A cargo ship that was also home to a family crew of twenty people suffered a catastrophic failure of their Epstein drive’s power systems and were on the drift. Vesta was putting its population on protein rationing until the food relief Michio had promised them actually arrived. Kelso Station, in an irrational fit of altruism, had sent relief supplies to Earth and was now facing shortages of water and helium-3 for the reactors.

Centuries of technology and progress had allowed humanity to create a place for itself in the vacuum and radiation of space, but nothing had overcome entropy or ideology or bad judgment. The millions of skin-bound complications of salt water and minerals that were human bodies scattered throughout the Belt still needed food and air and clean water, energy and shelter. Ways to keep from drowning in their own shit or cooking in their waste heat. And through accidents of Marco’s charisma and her own idealism, she’d become responsible for it all.

But here was her start. The supplies of the Hornblower, instead of flying through gates and away forever, would feed Iapetus and give the station there the reserves to help others. The Connaught and her sister ships didn’t need to solve every distribution issue. Only get the supplies, make them available, and let market forces and the communal nature of the Belt take over from there.

She hoped it was enough.

Oksana, at her station, laughed. It wasn’t mirth, so much as a kind of amazed disbelief.

“Que?” Evans asked.

Oksana shook her head. Michio had known her long enough to read the gesture and the ghost of shame that came with it. Not while I’m on duty. Keeping that division between being family during family time and crew during crew time had always been important to Oksana. Usually, it was important to Michio too, but between waiting for a berth and dreading news of Marco, any distraction was a gift.

“What is it, Oksana?” Michio said.

“Just something odd on the newsfeeds out of Ceres, sir,” she said.

“Well, I don’t think it’s going to disrupt us. Put it on screen.”

“Sir,” Oksana said, and Michio’s controls vanished, replaced by a professional-looking news video, crawl at the bottom and filtering options along the side. And looking out of her screen, the earnest, open face of James Holden. For a moment, Michio was on the Behemoth again, and then she was back. Like a long-forgotten smell or the taste of a food eaten only in childhood, James Holden carried an echo of the guilt and fear, a reminder of violence.