James Corey - Babylon's Ashes

“Seriously?”

“We had better than this on the Canterbury ,” Alex said.

Holden felt a twitch of concern. “Why did we get third-rate juice?”

Naomi answered as if she were beside him instead of strapped into the loading mech on the dock. “Because the alternative was loading the injectors with morphine so you don’t care so much about being crushed. There’s a war on, you know.”

“So there is,” he said as the inventory chimed another update.

Amos said, “Should show we’re at eighty percent on PDC rounds.”

“Showing eighty-one point seven,” Holden said.

“Really? I’m pretty sure that ain’t right.”

“Track it down,” Holden said. “I’ll let you know if the ship changes her mind in the meantime.”

“We’re on it,” Amos agreed.

We. Meaning Clarissa. He was really going to have to get over that. He felt guilty that he hadn’t already, but he didn’t have a clear idea how to let his discomfort with her go. He pushed the issue back down his priority list again, the way he always did. And who knew? Maybe they’d all die in a hail of gunfire before it came up again and he wouldn’t have to worry about it.

On his hand terminal, the new edit of latest video flickered. This would be the tenth one when it came out. Most of it was an interview with a couple of musicians he’d met up in the shitty part of the station. Two Belters with patois so thick, he’d fed it through a translation program, but their voices were musical and there was an affection in them that transcended the language. Monica had redone the subtitles, putting them at the top of the image, so that the words were beside their faces, close enough to see their expressions as they spoke. They looked like grandfather and grandson, but they called each other “cousin.”

As he watched, they talked about the music scene on Ceres, the difference between live music and recordings, between what they called tényleges performance and using microphones. They didn’t talk about Earth or Mars, the OPA or the Free Navy. Holden hadn’t asked, and the few times that they’d strayed in a political direction, he’d brought it back to the music. Two more reminders that not everyone who lived outside a gravity well had dropped the rocks on Earth. He liked this one a lot, and he wanted to get it approved for release before they left dock. In case , without ever quite letting himself think in case of what. Just in case .

The first nine pieces he’d released had gotten a little traction. Some of that was, he knew, because his name was on it. Being a minor political celebrity had its perks, and one was a small but reliable audience baked in for this project. Better than that, though, he’d started getting copycats. People with their own feeds on Titan and Luna and Earth doing interviews and slice-of-life bits like the ones he’d put out.

Or maybe they’d always been doing that, and he was copying them. Only he hadn’t noticed any of it until now.

“Cap?” Amos said, and Holden realized it wasn’t the first time. “You okay up there?”

“I’m here. I’m fine. Distracted. What’ve you got?”

Clarissa answered. “One of the feeds didn’t zero before. We got it. The count’s confirmed.”

“Great,” Holden said. On his hand terminal, the older man struck a chord on his guitar and the younger man laughed. He closed the file. He couldn’t tell if it was working or not anymore. His brain couldn’t imagine what it would be like to run into it for the first time. Whether the humanity that he saw in it would be there for someone on Earth or Mars or in the colony ships. Or on the far side of the gates.

He heard Naomi coming up before he saw her. He looked back over his shoulder as she stepped off the lift. Her jumpsuit still showed lines of sweat where the loading mech’s straps had held her, and when she leaned over to kiss his forehead, he took her arm. Her eyes were a little bloodshot, the way they got when she was tired. She looked back down at him, laughed a little.

“What?”

“You’re very beautiful,” Holden said. “I hope I tell you that often enough.”

“You do.”

“Then I hope I don’t tell you so often it gets annoying.”

“You don’t,” she said, and sat in the crash couch beside his, stretching her arm as she did so she could keep her fingers twined in his. “Are you all right?”

“A little exhausted.”

“Just a little?”

“I’m not hallucinating yet.”

Naomi shook her head. Just a few millimeters one way and then the other. “You know you’re not responsible for fixing everything.”

“Saving humanity from itself is a group project, yes,” he said. “Really, all I’m doing is trying to show everyone on Earth and Mars and the Belt and Medina and the colonies that really we’re all still just one tribe.”

“So just transcend all lived human experience since before the dawn of history?”

“And keep the part where we kill each other to a minimum,” he said. “Shouldn’t be hard.”

“At least you know why you’re tired.”

She squeezed his fingers and let them go, pulling up a tactical display of Ceres and the space around it. The station itself and the fleet ships that surrounded it like a cloud of blue fireflies were marked as friendlies. The colony ship and its escort slowing toward them were in yellow—status unknown, but of interest. The time to rendezvous was down to hours.

“Part of me hopes that Fred won’t let us go out,” he said. “We request the clamps come off, and they just say no and we’re stuck in here.”

“While the colony ship flips at the last minute and accelerates into the port, exploding in a nuclear fireball,” Naomi said.

He pulled up his hand terminal and sent his approval to Monica on Tycho. At lightspeed, it would still be minutes before she got it. “It does sound less appealing when you put it that way.”

Behind them, the lift cycled down, humming as it went. Alex—his voice still doubled by the headset and the free air—finished his checklist with Amos and Clarissa. Holden stowed his hand terminal in the crash couch’s high-g compartment. If things went poorly, he didn’t want it zooming around the command deck.

Naomi’s voice was low, but focused. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Why are we doing this?”

Holden wished his brain had been a little clearer. After a certain point, he felt like his verbal centers ran straight to his mouth without passing through the rest of his brain. “Because we can’t just blow up enough things that this becomes a good situation. We’re going to need more than that in our toolbox.”

Bobbie stepped off the lift. There was something odd about her, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. She was wearing simple blacks, but the way she held herself made them look like a uniform. Her hands were in fists at her sides, but she didn’t seem angry so much as nervous. That didn’t bode well.

“Hey,” Holden said.

“Sir.”

“Please don’t call me sir. No one on the ship does. Everything all right? Fred want something?”

“Johnson didn’t send me,” Bobbie said. “You’re going out, and I’m reporting for duty.”

“Okay,” Holden said. “You can route tactical and fire control down here, or take the gunner’s seat up by Alex. Wherever feels most comfortable.”

Bobbie took a deep breath and something Holden didn’t understand played out across her wide face. “I’ll take the gunner’s seat,” she finally said, and climbed up to the cockpit. Holden watched her ankles disappear above him, his brow furrowed hard enough to ache a little.

“That was … um,” he said. “Was that a moment?”