James Corey - Babylon's Ashes

For two long hours, the Connaught dodged, strained, poured rounds down onto the surface of Pallas. What had originally been a fast, sharp attack turned into a long, bloody bout more about endurance and supplies than clever tactics. The Panshin and the Serrio Mal matched her blow for blow, hammer strikes against an anvil. The jammers were set too deep in the stone for even her torpedoes to reach, and every time the curve of asteroid cut off her line of sight to the other ships, Michio was afraid something would happen. That she wouldn’t see them again. And once, the Panshin emerged from a long pass with a bright scar and section of her hull peeled back.

Slowly, a blindspot appeared around the docks. Parts of space leading to Pallas that had been defended, weren’t. Evans brought the Solano into it kilometer by kilometer, then meter by meter until it had locked to Pallas’ orbit with only an occasional little push from the maneuvering thrusters to keep it stationary.

“They’re going to find a way to kill it, sir,” Oksana said. “May take them days, may take them hours, but this isn’t a blockade that can hold for long.”

“Get me line-of-sight on the Panshin , Oksana.”

“Sir.”

Rodriguez, when he appeared on the screen again, was grinning. So that, at least, was a good sign.

“How’s your ship, Captain Rodriguez?” Michio said, returning his smile despite herself.

“Esá bent, broken, fucked, flustered, and far from home,” Ezio said, laughing. “Got a couple in the med bay and one in the morgue, but we done the thing, que sí? Pulled a whole station’s teeth and half their eyes too, account son los champions .”

“I think we are,” Michio said. “I’m going to need you to stand guard on this. Pull back far enough that you’re out of range of anything Pallas puts together. Take control of the Solano .”

“Babysit?” Rodriguez said.

“Got your hull pulled back like a condom wrapper, Ezio. I’m not putting you in at Titan.”

God bless the man, he looked disappointed. “Bist bien,” he said. “We’ll hold the line. But you and Foyle take the torpedoes we’ve still got, yeah? Stock up. Anything we do, we can manage con PDCs and my winning smile.”

“Won’t say no to that,” Michio said.

“Que tu trigger?” he asked. “When do I light it up and slag the fuckers?”

“When you know it’s Free Navy you’re burning down. Not if just people. Lose the ship before you hurt civilians. Killing people because they got in the way is inner-planets bullshit. It’s Free Navy bullshit. We’re better than that.”

“Damn right we are,” Rodriguez said and signed off. When he saluted, he had blood on his fingers.

She pointed a tightbeam connection request at one of the less damaged comm arrays, unsure if it would do any good. Even if the equipment was limping along well enough to function, there was no reason for the connection to be accepted. Only it was.

A familiar dark, pebbled face appeared on her monitor. From what she could see behind him, he was in a well-appointed office, brightly lit and probably somewhere deep enough in the station that she couldn’t have reached him without nukes or a reactor set to critical and crashed into the station.

“Captain Pa,” he said. “You seem to be moving from one shitty decision to another.”

“Rosenfeld,” she said.

“When you broke with Inaros, I understood it. Respected it, even. I was disappointed when you turned to Fred Johnson. But this? Playing marionette to Chrisjen Avasarala and Emily Richards. And Holden?” He shook his head. “Something happened to you, Michio. You’ve changed.”

“Context changed,” she said. “I’m still the same. And here’s what happens next. I have a live, warmed-up Epstein drive pointed at the docks. If I see any activity there? I slag them. If I see any shuttles or boats taking off from the surface, I’ll shoot them down and slag the docks. If I see anything that looks like an attempt to sabotage the Solano , I’ll slag the docks. If any Free Navy ship comes within a hundred thousand klicks of Pallas, I’ll slag the docks. You will find yourself governor of an old, broken station that can’t move supplies in or out.”

“Duly noted,” Rosenfeld said dryly.

There didn’t seem anything more to say, but she didn’t kill the connection. Not yet. And then, “Use this.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re a political animal. Use this opportunity. I’m giving you an excuse to drop out of the fighting. You can tell Marco that I pinned you down. You won’t even be lying. Even if he beats us all, you know he can’t govern the system. And your plan?”

“My plan? What plan?”

“The one where you’re the man behind the throne. The real power while Marco’s the public face and figurehead. That won’t work either. He can’t be controlled. He can barely be predicted. I’m not blaming you. I made the same mistake. I saw what I wanted to see in him. But I was wrong, and you are too.” Rosenfeld’s face was unreadable and still. Michio nodded. “Do you know the magic word?”

“No,” he said, his voice rich with disdain. “What’s the magic word?”

“ Oops . You should say oops, Rosenfeld. Own it that you made a mistake. That ship I have with its ass pointed at you? It’s your chance to do something about the fact that you picked the wrong side.”

“You want me to thank you for that?”

“I want you to make sure all the people in there get food and water, and I want you to keep them safe until this is over.”

“And when’s that going to be?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and dropped the connection.

For a long moment, she rested in her couch, held in place by the straps and the familiarity of the voices and sounds around her. Her jaw ached where she’d been clenching it. She had a bruise across her collarbone, and she couldn’t remember which maneuver might have caused it. She closed her eyes, letting it all wash over her. Laura talking through the headset with Bertold about how many PDC rounds they had left. Oksana and Evans laughing over nothing, releasing tension, quietly celebrating that—on some level, by some measure—they’d won. The smell of the portable welding rig burning off the emergency sealant and closing the punctures in the hull. Her home. Her people. She filled her lungs with them all.

The comm display chirped. A request from the Serrio Mal . She accepted it. Susanna Foyle appeared on her monitor.

“Captain Pa,” she said.

“Captain Foyle.”

“Rodriguez tells me we’re not taking three ships to Titan after all.”

“That’s right.”

“Used up a lot of ordnance on this mission that wasn’t in the specs,” Foyle said.

“Also true,” Pa agreed.

“Going to leave us outnumbered and outgunned.” It wasn’t an accusation. Just an observation.

“We won’t be the only ships there,” Pa said. “We’ll have backup.”

For the first time, Foyle’s face lowered its dignity to have an expression. “Squats and Dusters. No one we can count on.”

“We’re all in this together,” Pa said, and Foyle coughed out a single laugh.

“As long as you’re going first, we’ll follow. Didn’t get this far by taking the easy way. We’ve got our patches in place and our bandages on. You’re ready to burn, then so are we.”

“Thank you.”

Foyle nodded, dropped the connection. Pa pulled up a system-wide tactical map with all the fighting that was going on throughout the system. A cluster of updates from Vesta. A chase between Free Navy fighters and a dozen Martian warships as Marco’s forces tried to loop around toward Mars itself. The guard force left behind at Ceres tracking four Free Navy ships. The orbital defense of Earth on high alert, most of its patrol ships away from their posts and on the attack. The sum of all of humanity’s presence in the solar system, bent on violence and spectacle. And at the edge of the display, almost off it, almost forgotten, the Giambattista and the Rocinante , already decelerating toward the ring gate, and two fast-attack ships burning hard to intercept.