James Corey - Babylon's Ashes

The aromatics and spices that kept everyone from eating like Clarissa were going to be hard to get. Supplies were thin on Ceres. Supplies were going to be thin all through the Belt, and now the inner planets too. Any of the complex organics that Earth used to supply could be synthesized in labs or grown in hydroponics on Ganymede and Ceres and Pallas. The touristy resorts on Titan. The problem, she thought as she replaced the injection nozzle on the coffee machine, was capacity. They could make anything, but they couldn’t make it all at once. Humanity was going to get by on the minimum until there was a way to increase production, and a lot of people living on the margin wouldn’t make it. They’d die on Earth, yes, but keeping the Belt fed wasn’t going to be trivial either.

As she dropped the old injection nozzle into the recycler, she wondered if Marco had thought about that or if his dreams of glory had swept away any realistic plan for taking care of all the lives he’d disrupted. She had a guess about that. Marco was a creature of the grand gesture. His stories were about the single critical moment that changed everything, not all the moments that came after. Somewhere in the system right now, Karal or Wings or—thinking the name was like touching a sore—or Filip might be doing the same kind of maintenance she was doing on the Pella . She wondered how long it would take them to realize that the spoils of war wouldn’t restock their ships forever.

Probably it wouldn’t come clear until they’d used up everything. Kings were always the last to feel the famine. That wasn’t just the Belt. That was all of history. The people who’d just been going about their lives were the ones who could speak to the actual cost of war. They paid it first. Men like Marco could orchestrate vast battles, order the looting and destruction of worlds, and never run out of coffee.

When the galley was done, she took herself back to the lift, and up to the command deck. There was new analysis of the ships that had gone missing in the ring gates. No new data, just a rechewing of the old. Her fascination came from a sense of dread. She’d been through those rings, traveled the weird not-space that linked solar systems, and of all the dangers she’d faced, just quietly vanishing away hadn’t even been on her scopes. For a few hundred people—maybe more than that—something else had happened. The best minds of Earth and Mars that weren’t occupied with trying to deal with their environment and governing bodies collapsing around them were looking at this. Naomi didn’t have their resources or the depth of background expertise they did, but she had her own experience. Maybe she’d see something they hadn’t.

And so she looked. Like an amateur detective, she followed clues and hunches, and like most investigations like that, she found nothing. The new conversation on the feeds was a theory surrounding the Casa Azul ’s drive signature showing that the reactor was probably misconfigured, but apart from it being a rookie mistake that transferred a lot of energy into waste heat, Naomi didn’t see anything in it. Certainly no reason that it or the other missing ships should have gone dark.

The analysis had just shifted into speculation over the plausibility of failed internal sensors in the Casa Azul increasing the pressure from the reactor bottle—which was what she assumed from the start—when her hand terminal chimed. Bobbie. She accepted the connection, and Bobbie’s face appeared on her screen. Naomi felt a twinge of alarm.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

Bobbie shook her head. It was probably meant to defuse the tension, but it reminded Naomi of a video of a bull getting ready to charge. “Do you know where Holden is? He’s not answering his comm.”

“Might be sleeping. He was up late going over footage for his broadcast thing with Monica.”

“Could you go wake him up for me?” Bobbie asked. The wall behind her was sculpted stone with recessed lighting. Naomi thought it was the governor’s palace. Fred Johnson’s distant voice, low and graveled by annoyance, confirmed that.

Naomi rose, taking the terminal with her. “On my way,” she said. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t understand why you’re part of this,” Fred Johnson said.

Across the desk from him, Jim still looked sleepy. Puffy-eyed and his hair still a little mashed from the crash couch. Bobbie, her arms crossed, sat off to one side. Before Jim could come up with an answer, she stepped in.

“He knew this Captain Pa,” Bobbie said. “Worked with her on Medina before it was Medina.”

“When she was in my chain of command,” he said. “She isn’t an unknown quantity. She was one of mine. I assigned her to that ship. I don’t need anyone telling me about who she is or what they think of her.”

Bobbie’s face darkened. “Fair enough. I got Holden here because maybe you’d listen to him.”

Jim raised a finger. “I don’t actually know what’s going on here,” he said. “So. You know. What’s going on here?”

“Michio Pa is one of Inaros’ inner circle,” Bobbie said. “Only it seems like she figured out that he’s a great big asshole, because she broke ranks. Started sending relief supplies places without the Free Navy’s say so. And now Inaros is shooting at her and she wants us to help her out.”

“Relief supplies?” Fred said, his voice hard as stone. “That’s what you’re calling them?”

“That’s what she’s calling them,” Bobbie bit back.

Jim glanced at Naomi. His expression said, This is not going well .

Naomi smiled back. I know, right?

“Michio Pa is stealing colony ships for the Free Navy,” Fred said. “Even if she isn’t complicit in the destruction of Earth, she has the blood of every colonist lost to her piracy on her hands. Those aren’t relief supplies. They’re the spoils of war . A war against us .”

“Marco’s shooting at her?” Jim said, trying to catch the conversation’s reins. But Fred was locked on Bobbie and he wouldn’t disengage.

“This is my best-case scenario, Draper. Inaros’ coalition is falling apart. They’re shooting at each other, not at us. If Pa degrades Inaros’ fleet, that means they’re that much easier for us to face. Every ship of Pa’s that Inaros turns to slag is one less that’s hunting down innocent people and stealing their property. There is no advantage to me or to Earth or to Mars that comes of getting involved in it, and I personally resent you calling in your friends here to try to bully me into thinking anything different.”

“You aren’t the only one here with military training,” Bobbie said. “You aren’t the only one who’s had to weigh taking on problematic allies. You aren’t the only one with command experience. But you are the one in this room who’s fucking wrong .”

Fred rose to his feet, and Naomi pushed back into the cushions of her chair. Bobbie stepped toward the man, her hands in fists, her chin jutting. Fred narrowed his eyes.

“I am not interested—” he began.

“If you want me to come here and wear a Martian uniform and puppet back whatever you say, you got the wrong girl,” Bobbie half said, half shouted. “You think your magic OPA coalition pajama party is going to step in here and fix this? It’s failing. They aren’t coming to you anymore. You got Ceres and you got a fleet and you got me as your goddamn window dressing, and it’s not enough. Stop acting like it is!”

The words hit Fred like a blow. He rocked back a little on his heels, his lips pressed together. Was it like this when Marco’s coalition fell apart? Naomi wondered.