James Corey - Babylon's Ashes

Then the rapping of fingers came again, and the door of his cabin slipped open. Karal floated in the corridor, his eyes an image of concern. And maybe excitement.

“Hoy, Filipito,” he said. “Bist bien?”

“Fine,” Filip said. What time was it? He felt like he’d woken in the middle of a cycle, but he couldn’t be sure. He’d been sleeping so much lately, it was easy for him to lose track. So long as there was nothing to do but wait, it hardly mattered how the hours passed. But sleeping too long was much like sleeping too little. It left him confused and tired.

“Marco wants you. Command deck, yeah?”

Filip nodded with his left hand while he unstrapped with his right. “Con que?” he said. “Something happened?”

Karal’s look of concern eroded into a bestial grin. “Dui,” he said. “But let Marco show you, yeah?”

Pulling himself along the lift tube, Filip’s heart tapped against his chest. The sense of the dream wasn’t quite gone, bleeding into the solid ship under his hands. Excitement and dread wore each other’s clothes, spoke in the same voice. When he reached the command deck, the lighting was set for battle, and the crash couches were crewed: Sárta strapping herself down, Wings already in place. Bastien’s voice echoed from the cockpit, and the anticipation of thrust made Filip think it was above them. The words were clipped and terse. The air seemed cleaner, as if Filip could see everything for the first time.

Marco reached out and spun his own couch on its gimbals to face him. The light from the screen threw shadows across his father’s eyes. Filip saluted, and Marco spread his hands.

“The hour has now arrived, Filip,” Marco said. “All of our patience and sacrifice have brought us here to this one, perfect moment.” Times like this, he sounded almost like an Earther. Filip nodded, his heart beating faster. He didn’t know whether to keep looking at Marco or if it would be all right to turn to the screens. Marco laughed, and pulled Filip close. He gestured to the tactical readout. A dot of light.

If he looked outside the ship, on float with merely human eyes or through the cameras that took in the same spectrum, the star field would have overwhelmed the glimmer from the ship. Even Ceres would have been little more than a bit of darkness where the starlight was blotted out. On the screen, the critical light was brighter, its path sketched in. Filip glanced at Marco for permission, received it in a nod, and then drew back the scale until the full arc of the little ship’s pathway was clear.

A single ship, burning hard from Ceres to Tycho.

“Fred Johnson,” Filip said.

“More than that,” Marco said, and the calm in his voice made him sound almost drugged by pleasure. “Look at the drive signature.”

Filip did, blinked. His breath went shallow and tight. It matched the Rocinante . James Holden’s ship. His betrayer of a mother. The clean, clear center of everything he hated, everything they had to overcome. And here it was, delivered to them like a present.

“I’ve been tracking them. They’ve left the effective protection range of Ceres. They’re alone in the void, except for us.” Marco’s smile was beatific, but the expression in his dark eyes changed. Instead of being lost in the gratification of the moment, he was looking at Filip. More than looking at him. Seeing him. Seeing into him.

“Karal,” Marco said. Half strapped into his couch, the big man paused. Marco shifted a degree. “Need you in engineering. Damage control, yeah?”

Karal shrugged, unstrapped. Marco looked back at Filip, then pointed to the crash couch with his chin. It’s your station. Take it. As Karal launched down the lift tube, feet vanishing last, Filip pulled himself into the crash couch. Weapons controls filled the screen. Torpedoes. PDCs. The sword of the Pella was in his hands.

The warning Klaxon seemed to come from a great distance. The Pella , preparing after weeks sleeping on the float. The needle stung when it went into his vein, and the cold, bright flow of military-grade juice lit him from within like he was fire itself, consuming everything he touched.

Two new dots appeared on tactical. New stars in the star-sown blackness, both marked as friendlies. The Koto and the Shinsakuto leaping from their cover, and announcing their attack. The Pella jumped up around Filip, grabbing his crash couch and all the others on the command deck. The gimbals hissed in unison as Bastien brought them around, couches snapping to face the new up and follow it, whichever way the maneuvering thrusters demanded. The rumble of the drive passed through the ship, through Filip’s bones. The crash couch gel flowed up the sides of his body. As if he was watching someone else do it, he keyed in firing solutions. One gunship against three. The Rocinante couldn’t help but die.

“They saw us, them!” Bastien shouted. “We’re getting painted!”

“Filip,” Marco said.

“Sa sa,” Filip said. With a motion, he trained the PDCs toward the distant flicker that was the enemy, ready to chew down any incoming torpedoes. The Pella jumped forward again, the hard burn jumping harder. Filip let his arms sink down to his sides, fingers on the built-in controls. He fought to inhale. Five gs. Six, and the acceleration was still going up. The wolves were loose now. The pack running.

His vision narrowed, shadows crowding his peripherals like the dead from his dream. He had the weird sensation that she was in the room. Naomi Nagata. But that was only an accident of sleep and high-g blood flow. The crash couch chimed, a fresh infusion of juice brightening him. His lips were growing numb and tingling. He couldn’t lift his head from the couch any longer. It was like he was becoming the ship. Or it was becoming him.

He heard his father trying to speak, but the acceleration was affecting him too. The Pella groaned, the superstructure settling and flexing under the acceleration. A high harmonic overtone rang through the air like a struck bell.

On Filip’s monitor, a message appeared. From his father. His captain. Leader of the Free Navy and liberator of the Belt.

FIRE AT WILL.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Bobbie

Confirm I’ve got four more fast-movers,” Alex said, his voice tense and calm at the same time.

“Got them,” Bobbie said, her jaw aching with the acceleration gravity. The gunner’s control identified the new torpedoes, adding them to the six already on her scopes. Three ships converging on them from different angles were identified as the Pella , the Shinsakuto , and the Koto . Marco Inaros’ personal ship and two gunships for backup, and nothing for the Roci to hide behind but her drive plume. The enemies were a long way off still—millions of klicks—and none on initial vectors that did them any favors. The Roci had already gotten past them. They were like a kid on a football pitch, running the ball with three opposing players sprinting to catch up. Except if the opposing players had guns.

When the Roci hit the mathematical balance point of velocity, mass, and distance that defined the halfway point, there would be some hard choices to make. Either they’d flip and start braking toward Tycho or commit to letting the chase go on indefinitely. If they let the Free Navy spook them out into the empty spaces between bases and stations, the chase turned into an ugly kind of attrition battle. Who ran out of ammunition or reaction mass first. Given how the outer system looked these days, it would make more sense to brake toward Tycho and hope that backup from the station could reach them before the Free Navy pounded them into scrap metal and blood.