James Corey - Babylon's Ashes

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Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2016 by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck

Cover design by Kirk Benshoff

Cover illustration by Daniel Dociu

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Corey, James S. A., author.

Title: Babylon’s ashes / James S. A. Corey.

Description: First Edition. | New York : Orbit, 2016. | Series: The expanse ; book 6

Identifiers: LCCN 2016037890| ISBN 9780316334747 (hardback) | ISBN 9780316217644 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780316546430 (hardcover (special edition)) | ISBN 9781478965374 (audio book CD) | ISBN 9781478909521 (Audio book downloadable) | ISBN 9780316217637 (ebook (open))

Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Space Opera. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Adventure. | GSAFD: Science fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3601.B677 B33 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037890

ISBNs: 978-0-316-33474-7 (hardcover); 978-0-316-21763-7 (ebook)

E3-20161109-JV-PC

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue: Namono

Chapter One: Pa

Chapter Two: Filip

Chapter Three: Holden

Chapter Four: Salis

Chapter Five: Pa

Chapter Six: Holden

Chapter Seven: Clarissa

Chapter Eight: Dawes

Chapter Nine: Holden

Chapter Ten: Avasarala

Chapter Eleven: Pa

Chapter Twelve: Holden

Chapter Thirteen: Prax

Chapter Fourteen: Filip

Chapter Fifteen: Pa

Chapter Sixteen: Alex

Chapter Seventeen: Holden

Chapter Eighteen: Filip

Chapter Nineteen: Pa

Chapter Twenty: Naomi

Chapter Twenty-One: Jakulski

Chapter Twenty-Two: Holden

Chapter Twenty-Three: Pa

Chapter Twenty-Four: Prax

Chapter Twenty-Five: Fred

Chapter Twenty-Six: Filip

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Bobbie

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Holden

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Avasarala

Chapter Thirty: Filip

Chapter Thirty-One: Pa

Chapter Thirty-Two: Vandercaust

Chapter Thirty-Three: Holden

Chapter Thirty-Four: Dawes

Chapter Thirty-Five: Amos

Chapter Thirty-Six: Filip

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Alex

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Avasarala

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Naomi

Chapter Forty: Prax

Chapter Forty-One: Pa

Chapter Forty-Two: Marco

Chapter Forty-Three: Holden

Chapter Forty-Four: Roberts

Chapter Forty-Five: Bobbie

Chapter Forty-Six: Holden

Chapter Forty-Seven: Filip

Chapter Forty-Eight: Pa

Chapter Forty-Nine: Naomi

Chapter Fifty: Holden

Chapter Fifty-One: Marco

Chapter Fifty-Two: Pa

Chapter Fifty-Three: Naomi

Epilogue: Anna

Acknowledgments

Also by James S. A. Corey

Orbit Newsletter

To Matt, Hallie, and Kenn, who get none of the credit and make everything possible

Prologue: Namono

The rocks had fallen three months ago, and Namono could see some blue in the sky again. The impact at Laghouat—first of the three strikes that had broken the world—had thrown so much of the Sahara into the air that she hadn’t seen the moon or stars for weeks. Even the ruddy disk of the sun struggled to penetrate the filthy clouds. Ash and grit rained down on Greater Abuja until it piled up in drifts, changing her city to the same yellow-gray as the sky. Even as she’d helped the volunteer teams to clear the rubble and care for the injured, she’d understood that her wracking cough and the black phlegm she spat out came from breathing in the dead.

Three and a half thousand kilometers stretched between the crater where Laghouat had been and Abuja. The shock wave still had blown out windows and collapsed buildings. Two hundred dead in the city, the newsfeeds said, four thousand wounded. The medical clinics were swamped. If you were not in immediate distress, please stay home.

The power grid degraded quickly. There was no sun to drive the solar panels, and the gritty air fouled the wind farms faster than the teams could clean them. By the time a fusion reactor was trucked north from the yards at Kinshasa, half of the city had spent fifteen days in the dark. With the hydroponic houses and hospitals and government buildings taking precedence, there were still brownouts more days than not. Network access through their hand terminals was spotty and unreliable. Sometimes they were cut off from the world for days at a time. It was to be expected, she told herself, as if any of this could have been foreseen.

And still, three months in, there came a break in the vast, blindfolded sky. As the reddened sun slid toward the west, the city lights of the moon appeared in the east, gems on a field of blue. Yes, it was tainted, dirty, incomplete, but it was blue. Nono took comfort in it as she walked.

The international district was recent, historically speaking. Few of the buildings were over a hundred years old. A previous generation’s fondness for wide thoroughfares between thin, mazy streets and curved, quasi-organic architectural forms marked the neighborhoods. Zuma Rock stood above it all, a permanent landmark. The ash and dust might streak the stone, but they could not change it. This was Nono’s hometown. The place she’d grown up, and the place she’d brought her little family back to at the end of her adventures. The home of her gentle retirement.

She coughed out a bitter laugh, and then she just coughed.

The relief center was a van parked at the edge of a public park. It had a leafy trefoil icon on its side, the logo of the hydroponic farm. Not the UN, not even basic administration. The layers of bureaucracy had been pressed thin by the urgency of the situation. She knew she should have been grateful. Some places, vans didn’t come at all.

The pack of dust and ash had made a crust over the gently sloping hills where the grass had been. Here and there, jagged cracks and furrows like vast snake tracks showed where children had tried to play anyway, but no one was sliding down it now. There was only the forming queue. She took her place in it. The others that waited with her had the same empty stare. Shock and exhaustion and hunger. And thirst. The international district had large Norwegian and Vietnamese enclaves, but no matter the shade of their skin or the texture of their hair, ash and misery had made a single tribe of them all.