Babylon's Ashes by James S. A. Corey
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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
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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 ge
The side of the van slid open, and the queue shifted in anticipation. Another week’s rations, however thin they might be. Nono felt a little stab of shame as her turn came near. She’d lived her whole life without ever needing basic. She was one of those who provided for others, not one who needed support. Except that she needed support now.
She reached the front. She’d seen the man handing out the packs before. He had a wide face, brown speckled with black freckles. He asked her address, and she gave it. A moment’s fumbling later, he held out a white plastic pack to her with the practiced efficiency of an automaton, and she took it. It felt terribly light. He only made eye contact with her when she failed to move away.
“I have a wife,” Namono said. “A daughter.”
A flash of raw anger rose in his eyes, hard as a slap. “If they can make the oats grow faster or conjure rice out of thin air, then do send them to us. Else, you’re holding us up.”
She felt tears welling up in her eyes, stinging them.
“One to a household,” the man snapped. “Move on.”
“But—”
“Go on!” he shouted, snapping his fingers at her. “There’s people behind you.”
She stepped away and heard him mutter something obscene at her as she left. Her tears weren’t thick. Hardly enough to wipe away. It was only that they stung so much.
She tucked her relief pack under her arm and, as soon as her eyes had recovered enough to see, put down her head and started home again. She couldn’t linger. There were others more desperate or less principled than herself who were waiting at the corners and in the doorways for the chance to steal water filters and food from the unwary. If she didn’t walk with purpose, they might mistake her for a victim. For a few blocks, her starved and exhausted mind entertained itself with fantasies of fighting off thieves. As if the catharsis of violence might somehow bring her to peace.
When she’d left their rooms, she’d promised Anna that she’d stop by Old Gino’s on the way home and make sure the elderly man was getting to the relief van. But when she reached the turn, she kept going straight. Weariness was already sucking at her marrow, and the prospect of propping the old man up and going back through the queue with him was more than she could face. She’d say she forgot. It would almost be true.
At the curve that led from the wide avenue into the residential cul-de-sac that was home, she found the violent fantasies in her mind had shifted. The men she imagined herself beating until they apologized and begged her forgiveness weren’t thieves, but the freckled relief man. If they can make the oats grow faster. What was that supposed to mean, anyway? Had he been joking about using their bodies as fertilizer? Had he dared to make a threat against her family? Who in hell did he think he was?
No, a voice said in her mind, as clearly as if Anna had been there to speak the words. No, he was angry because he wanted to help more, and he couldn’t. Knowing that all you can give isn’t enough is its own burden. That was all. Forgive him.
Namono knew that she should, but she didn’t.
Their house was small. A half dozen rooms pressed together like a child squeezing a handful of damp sand. Nothing quite lined up; no corner was perfectly square. It gave the space the feel of something natural—a cave or a grotto—more than something built. She paused before she opened the door, trying to clear her mind. The setting sun had fallen behind Zuma Rock, and the grit and smoke in the air showed where the wide beams of light streamed past it. It looked like the stone had a halo. And in the darkening sky, a pinpoint of light. Venus. Tonight, there might be stars. She latched onto the thought like a lifeboat in the sea. There might be stars.
Inside, the house was clean. The rugs had been shaken out, the brick floors swept. The air smelled of lilac thanks to the little sachet-and-candle that one of Anna’s parishioners had brought them. Namono wiped away the last of her tears. She could pretend the redness in her eyes was only the outside air. Even if they didn’t believe her, they could pretend to.
“Hello?” she called. “Is anyone home?”
Nami squeaked from the back bedroom, her bare feet slapping on the brick as she barreled toward the door. Her little girl wasn’t so little anymore. She came up to Nono’s armpit now. Or Anna’s shoulder. The gentle pudge of childhood was gone, and the awkward coltish beauty of adolescence was clearing its throat. Her skin was barely lighter than Nono’s and her hair was as rich and kinky, but the girl had a Russian smile.
“You’re back!”
“Of course I am,” Nono said.
“What did we get?”
Namono took the white relief package and pressed it into her daughter’s hands. With a smile that was like complicity, she leaned close. “Why don’t you go find out, and then come tell me?”
Nami grinned back and loped off to the kitchen as if the water recyclers and fast-grown oats were a brilliant present. The girl’s enthusiasm was vast and partly sincere. The other part was to show her mothers that she was all right, that they didn’t need to worry for her. So much of their strength—all their strengths—grew from trying to protect each other. She didn’t know if that made it better or worse.
In the bedroom, Anna lay on her cushions. A thick volume of Tolstoy rested beside her, its spine bent by being reread. War and Peace. Her complexion was grayish and drawn. Nono sat beside her carefully, putting her hand on the exposed skin of her wife’s right thigh just above where her knee had been crushed. The skin didn’t feel hot anymore, and it wasn’t stretched drum-tight. Those had to be good signs.
“The sky was blue today,” Nono said. “There may be stars out tonight.”
Anna smiled her Russian smile, the one her wife’s genes had also given Nami. “That’s good, then. Improvement.”
“God knows there’s room for it,” Namono said, regretting the discouragement in her voice even as she spoke. She tried to soften it by taking Anna’s hand. “You’re looking better too.”
“No fever today,” Anna said.
“None?”
“Well, only a little.”
“Many guests?” she asked, trying to keep her tone light. After Anna’s injury, her parishioners had made such a fuss, bringing by tokens and offers of support until it was impossible for Anna to rest. Namono had put her foot down and sent them away. Anna had allowed it mostly, she thought, because it also kept her flock from giving away the supplies they couldn’t afford to do without.
“Amiri came by,” Anna said.
“Did he? And what did my cousin want?”
“We’re having a prayer circle tomorrow. Only about a dozen people. Nami helped clean the front room for it. I know I should have asked you first, but …”
Anna nodded at her distended, swollen leg as if her inability to stand at the pulpit was the worst thing that had happened to her. And maybe it was.
“If you’re strong enough,” Namono said.
“I’m sorry.”
“I forgive you. Again. Always.”
“You’re good to me, Nono.” Then, softly so that Nami couldn’t hear them, “There was an alert while you were out.”
Namono’s heart went cold. “Where’s it going to hit.”
“It won’t. They got it. But …”
The silence carried it. But there had been another one. Another rock thrown down the gravity well toward the fragile remnants of the Earth.
“I didn’t tell Nami,” Anna said, as if protecting their child from the fear was another sin that required forgiveness.
&nbs
“How is Gino?”
I forgot floated at the back of Namono’s throat, but she couldn’t speak the lie. To herself, maybe, but Anna’s clear eyes forbade it. “I’m going there next.”
“It’s important,” Anna said.
“I know. It’s just that I’m so tired—”
“That’s why it’s important,” Anna said. “When the crisis comes, we all pull together naturally. It’s easy then. It’s when things drag on too long that we have to make the effort. We need to make sure everyone sees we’re all in this together.”
Unless another rock came and the Navy didn’t catch it in time. Unless the hydroponics collapsed under the strain and they all went hungry. Unless the water recyclers failed. Unless a thousand different things happened, any one of which meant death.
But even that wouldn’t be failure for Anna. Not as long as they were all good and kind to each other. If they helped carry each other gently into the grave, Anna would feel she was following her calling. Perhaps she was right.
“Of course,” Namono said. “I just wanted to bring the supplies back to you first.”
Nami rushed in a moment later, a water recycler in either hand. “Look! Another glorious week of drinking cleaned-up piss and filthy rainwater!” she said with a grin, and it struck Namono for the millionth time what a perfect distillation of her mothers their daughter could be.
The rest of the package was oatmeal pucks ready to be cooked, packets of something that claimed in Chinese and Hindi to be chicken stroganoff, and a handful of pills. Vitamins for all of them. Painkillers for Anna. So that was something.
Namono sat with her wife, holding her hand until Anna’s eyelids began to droop and her cheeks took on the softness that spoke of coming sleep. Through the window, the last of the twilight glowed red, fading to gray. Anna’s body relaxed a degree. The tightness in her shoulders released. The furrows in her brow smoothed. Anna didn’t complain, but the pain of her injury and the stress of being suddenly crippled had mixed with the fear they all shared. It was a pleasure to watch it all fall away, if only for a moment. Anna was always a handsome woman, but when she slept, she was beautiful.