James Corey - Babylon's Ashes

Yes floated in the back of her mouth, ready to be said. She wanted this over. She hated conflict. How the hell had she wound up living in the middle of it?

“No,” she said. “Your arms and armor in a pack out the airlock within the hour or we break the Hornblower again. And we mean it this time.” She shrugged. She waited. About a second this time. Closer.

“Kill us to make a point?” he said.

“Kill you so I don’t have to kill as many other people later. Rather be loved than feared, but hey. Fallen world.” Pause.

“You can’t stop me getting the word out,” Carmondy said.

Michio sighed, shifted the feed, and sent out her message. The one that began, You have put yourself under my command out of loyalty to the Belt, and out of loyalty to the Belt I expect you to remain.

So that was it. Her time with Marco Inaros was over. Michio Pa, once OPA, once Free Navy, now just herself and her ship in a universe all too ready to see her destroyed. For all the consequences that were coming now, for all the pain and loss she’d just invited into her life, she still felt relieved. Like she was where she was supposed to be.

“They know,” she said. “Now can we get to the part where you surrender, or are you going to insist that I kill you?”

Chapter Sixteen: Alex

Seriously,” Arnold Mfume, one of Fred Johnson’s spare pilots, said. “You used a rail gun as a drive ? To pull a ship up from a decaying orbit?”

Alex shrugged, but the little bloom of pride in his chest was warm all the same. “Naomi did all the math on it,” he said. “I was mostly babysitting the Roci while it followed her orders. But … well, yeah.”

“That is fucking insane,” Arnold said through his laughter.

“Didn’t really have any other choices,” Alex said. “We wind up doin’ a certain amount of improvisation, one way and another.”

Across the table from him, Sandra Ip smiled. He didn’t know if the way her eyes were locked on his was a sign of how drunk she’d gotten, the beginning of an erotic invitation, or a little bit of both. Either way, he found himself smiling back.

“Wish I’d been there,” Mfume said.

“I kind of wish I hadn’t,” Alex said. “It’s a lot more fun now that it’s not going on anymore. At the time, it was more in the oh-shit-we’re-all-going-to-die category.”

“That’s what adventures are,” Bobbie said, and Ip’s lazy smile tracked over toward her without changing much. So more about drunk maybe. “Shitty things that make for good stories later.”

“I heard you went hand-to-hand with a protomolecule soldier,” Mfume said.

“That’s not even a good story,” Bobbie said. Her smile kept it from being awkward, but that path of conversation was definitely closed. Mfume shifted, and Alex could see the temptation to push. To maybe get Bobbie to elaborate, even if it was only a little bit more.

“Now, you want to talk about flying,” Alex said, “you should hear about when Bobbie and me were trying to outrun the Free Navy.”

“Pretty sure we told that story,” Bobbie said.

Alex blinked and looked into his glass. She was right. He had told that story, and since they’d all sat down, Ip might not be the only one well on her way to tipsy. “Right,” he said. “In that case, you want to talk about flyin’, you should get another drink.”

He lifted his arm and leaned back, trying to catch the server’s eye.

The Blue Frog was a port bar, and if Alex had to guess, he’d say it had seen better days. The round tables hunched together within larger, swooping, glowing structures that defined the booths that he and the others leaned against. Only the lights seemed dirty and the table was chipped. Different menus detailed the services of the bar: food, drink, pharmaceutical, sex. An empty stage promised live music or burlesque or karaoke, only later. Not right now. And more than that, there was a smell to the place. Not unpleasant, not rotten, but tired. Like spent oil or old sealant.

The expanded crew of the Rocinante were scattered among three tables. To Alex’s right, Amos sat grinning like a vaguely ominous Buddha with Clarissa Mao, Sun-yi Steinberg, and a shirtless young man who Alex suspected had been ordered from a menu. To his left, Naomi and Chava Lombaugh were locked in a vigorous conversation, while Gor Droga and Zach Kazantzakis leaned back, keeping out of it. The other tables were dominated by a mixture of Earth and Mars navy crews. The crispness of their military uniforms and haircuts seemed out of place, like they were rebuking the architecture for being only what it was. Here and there locals hunched together like they were defending a position against a siege. Covert glances of the natives of Ceres didn’t carry a sense of threat as much as bewilderment. The music that leaked from hidden speakers stayed lower than the conversation, shimmering major scale notes making an ambiguous wash of sound, neither celebratory nor sad.

The manager—a dark-skinned man with cold blue eyes and a permanent near-smirk—caught Alex’s glance, nodded to him, and sent a server trotting over. The smile on the woman’s face seemed almost genuine. Alex ordered another round for the table, and by the time his attention came back to the conversation, the topic had moved on.

“There were rules about that in the service,” Bobbie said.

“But there were ways to get around them, right?” Ip said. “I mean, you aren’t telling me everyone in the Martian Navy’s celibate.”

Bobbie shrugged. “If you’re in a relationship with someone above you or below you in the chain of command, it’s not a joke. Dishonorable discharge, loss of benefits, maybe jail time. That takes a lot of the shine off. But I wasn’t Navy. I’m—I was a marine. If there was a little cross-training between services, it wasn’t a problem until it started messing up operational efficiency.”

“I heard they put chemicals in the food to lower people’s libido,” Arnold said.

Bobbie shrugged. “If they did, they didn’t put in enough.”

“What about on the Rocinante ?” Ip said, turning her full attention to Alex. There was definitely more than just alcohol in the question. “Do you have rules against cheap, sleazy fraternization?”

Alex chuckled, not certain whether he was getting excited or uncomfortable. “Captain and the XO have been together damn near since we got on the ship. It’d be a difficult rule to enforce on the rest of us.”

Ip’s smile shifted. “You used to be a Navy boy, didn’t you? You and the gunny here ever …”

Alex regretted ordering the next round. He was going to need his wits about him pretty soon here. “Me and Bobbie? Nah. That ain’t a thing that happened.”

“We haven’t actually shipped out together that much,” Bobbie said. “And anyway … No offense, Alex.”

“None taken.”

“Really?” Ip said, leaning forward. Her knee pressed against Alex’s in a way that was absolutely innocent. Unless it wasn’t, in which case it absolutely wasn’t. “Never even wanted to?”

“Well,” Bobbie said. “There was one night on Mars. I think we were both feeling a little lonely. I’d probably have made out with him if he’d asked.”

“I can’t know that,” Alex said, suddenly flushed with heat and unable to look Bobbie in the eye. “You can’t tell me that.”

Ip kept her leg pressed to his and cocked her head at him. The question was clear. Is this a thing you’re still working out? Alex smiled back at her. No, it was never really a thing.

Naomi’s voice lifted, carrying over the murmur of conversation and the music both. She was leaning over her table, finger raised to make some boozy point to Chava. He couldn’t make out the words, but he knew her tones of voice well enough to know it wasn’t anger. Not real anger anyway. For that, Naomi got quiet.