James Corey - Babylon's Ashes

Near the end of the third day, Rosenfeld asked Filip to join him in the command center. The older man looked tired, but his cyst-ridden skin made reading his expressions difficult. Rosenfeld had turned all the screens off. The command center felt smaller without their displays to give the illusion of depth and light. Rosenfeld floated beside one of the crash couches, his body canted a few degrees from the ship in a way that made him seem both taller and subtly threatening.

“So, young Master Inaros,” Rosenfeld said, “it seems we have a problem.”

“Don’t see it,” Filip said, but the amusement in the older man’s eyes was enough to show how weak his words sounded. Rosenfeld pretended Filip hadn’t spoken.

“The longer we go without responding to … call them ‘changes in the situation’? The longer we go, the more doubt starts to grow, yeah? Father Inaros is the face and voice of the Free Navy. Has been since the beginning. His skill, yeah? His peculiar gift. But—” Rosenfeld spread his hands. But he isn’t here .

“He has a plan,” Filip said.

“We have a problem. We can’t wait for him much longer. Haven’t told anyone. Hasn’t found its way to the grapevine. But the problem’s now, not tomorrow. Even the light lag may make us too late now.”

“What is it?” Filip asked.

“ Witch of Endor . It’s at Pallas. All the cache-safes we threw out into the void? Captain al-Dujaili has started gathering them back up. Says it’s under orders from his commander, and he doesn’t mean us. That’s the fifth ship broken for Pa. Meantime, the Butcher’s on Ceres, his ass keeping Dawes’ chair warm. Calling for a meeting of the OPA clans, yeah? Black Sky. Carlos Walker. Administration on Rhea is looking to send a delegation. Free Navy made a statement when we broke Earth’s chains. Statement was, The revolution is already over. That we’d won. Inevitable. Already happened, us. Only now, maybe not.”

Filip’s gut was tight. Anger warmed his throat and shoved his jaw forward like a tumor at the base of his jaw. He didn’t know who he was angry with, but the rage was deep and powerful. Maybe Rosenfeld saw it, because his voice changed, became softer.

“Your father, he’s a great man. Great men, they’re not like you or me. They have other needs. Other rhythms. It’s what sets them apart. But sometimes they go so far into the void we lose sight of them. They lose sight of us. That’s where little people like me come through, yeah? Keep the engines running. Keep the filters clean. Do the needful things until the great man comes back to us.”

“Yeah,” Filip said. The rage still shoving its way up his neck, filling his head.

“Worst thing we can do is wait,” Rosenfeld said. “Better that we point all our ships the wrong direction than that we leave them too long floating. Change it later, bring them back, they think the situation shifted. Put them on the burn, they know they’re going somewhere.”

“Yeah,” Filip said. “See that.”

“Time comes to say it, if it’s not him, it’s going to be me. For him, yeah, but me. Not a bad thing if you stood with. Make everyone know it’s me for him, not another Pa.”

“You want to give orders to the Navy?”

“I want orders given,” Rosenfeld said. “Don’t care who does it. Barely care what the orders are. Just there are some.”

“No one but him,” Filip said. There was a buzz in his voice. His hands ached, and he didn’t know why until he looked and saw them in fists. “My father made the Free Navy. He makes the calls.”

“Then he has to make them now. And he won’t listen to me.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Filip said. Rosenfeld lifted a hand in thanks and blinked his thick, pebbled eyes.

“He’s lucky to have you,” Rosenfeld said. Filip didn’t answer, just took one of the handholds, turned himself, and launched down the throat of the ship where the lift would have risen and fallen if there were any up and down to guide it. His mind was a clutter of different emotions. Anger at Michio Pa. Distrust of Rosenfeld. Guilt for something he couldn’t put a name to. Fear. Even a kind of desperate elation, like pleasure without being pleasure. The walls of the lift tube skinned past him as he drifted almost imperceptibly to the port. If I reach the crew deck without touching the wall, everything will be all right. An irrational thought.

And still, when he grabbed a handhold and swung into the corridor that led to Marco’s quarters without having to correct his path, he felt a little relief. And when he reached his father’s door, it was even justified. The fear he’d carried with him of his father wrecked by betrayal—glass-eyed, unshaven, maybe even weeping—were nothing like the man who opened the cabin door. Yes, the sockets of his eyes were a little darker than usual. Yes, there was a scent in his room of sweat and metal. But his smile was bright and his focus clear.

Filip found himself wondering what had kept him locked up so long. If he felt a twinge of annoyance, it was overwhelmed by the warmth of seeing his father back again. Behind Marco, tucked in at the edge of one of the cabinets, a strip of fabric spoke of something light and feminine. Filip wondered which of the crew had been here to comfort his father and for how long.

Marco listened to Filip’s report with a gentle attention, nodding with his hands at each point of importance, letting Filip cover everything—Fred Johnson, the Witch of Endor , Rosenfeld’s half-spoken threat to take the reins—without interrupting him. Filip felt the anger slip away as he spoke, his gut relaxing as the anxiety faded, until by the end he wiped away a tear that had nothing to do with sorrow and everything to do with relief. Marco put a hand on Filip’s shoulder, a soft grip that held the two of them together.

“We pause when it’s time to pause, and we strike when it’s time to strike,” Marco said.

“I know,” Filip said. “It’s only …” He didn’t know how to end the thought, but his father smiled anyway, as if he understood.

Marco gestured at the cabin’s system, opening a connection request for Rosenfeld. The pebble-skinned man appeared on the screen almost at once. “Marco,” he said. “Good to have you back among the living.”

“To the underworld and returned with wisdom,” Marco said, a sharpness in his voice. “Didn’t frighten you with my absence, did I?”

“Not as long as you came back,” Rosenfeld said through a rough laugh. “We have a full plate, old friend. Too much needs doing.” Filip had the sense that a second conversation was happening between the men he couldn’t quite parse, but he kept quiet and watched.

“Less soon,” Marco said. “Send me the tracking data for all of the ships still answering to Pa’s commands. You tell your guard ships at Pallas Witch of Endor ’s gone rogue. Jam it, kill it, and send the battle data to us. No mercy for traitors.”

Rosenfeld nodded. “And Fred Johnson?”

“Butcher will bleed in his turn,” Marco said. “Never fear. This war’s just beginning.”

Chapter Nineteen: Pa

Iapetus Station wasn’t on the moon itself, but in locked orbit around it. The station’s design was old: two long counter-rotating arms supporting habitation rings, a central docking station on the axis. Lights glittered on the surface of the moon, marking automated stations where the ice was quarried and split. On their approach, there was a point where the station and moon and the ringed bulk of Saturn behind it were all the same size on the screen. An illusion of perspective.

The docks were almost filled with ancient water haulers that the tariffs had kept from harvesting the moon. No one was enforcing the fees anymore, and all the ships that could were taking advantage of the opportunity. Tugs flying teakettle rose up from the surface or dropped down toward it. Shipping containers filled with ice studded the hulls of the haulers like a crust of salt. The administration of Iapetus hadn’t sided with Marco and the Free Navy or against them, but they weren’t losing the chance to shrug off the strictures of Earth and Mars either. Michio watched the traffic control data and tried to see it more as liberty and freedom, less as grabbing what there was to take and getting away while the getting was good.