Cibola Burn (Expanse)

by James S. A. Corey

  “I —” he said.

  “If you’d like, I’ll take the rest of the watch,” Elvi said. The lightness in her voice sounded forced, even to herself. “I don’t think I’ll be sleeping much tonight anyway.”

  “That would be… great,” Holden said. “Thank you.”

  “Just be careful of Fayez. He steals the blankets.”

  James Holden slid off the loader. She heard his footsteps tracking back to the tent, heard the rustle of the plastic as he bedded down. She hunched over, arms around her belly. The thing from the desert was nothing more than embers, glowing dull orange in the night but illuminating nothing. The humiliation sat with her, bright and painful as a paper cut.

  “Stupid,” she said softly. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  The alien darkness didn’t disagree.

  Chapter Seventeen: Basia

  C

  oop and Cate had been old-school OPA, back when the Outer Planets Alliance was just a shared opinion with guns. They’d come up the ranks together when even wearing the OPA’s split circle on your sleeve was an arrestable offense. They’d learned their craft sneaking past armed Earth-Mars Coalition checkpoints, planting bombs, smuggling guns, and generally acting like the terrorists the inner planets had accused them of being. The only reason they hadn’t both gone to prison camps forever was because by some standards, the OPA had won. After Eros, the inner planets had begun treating the OPA like an actual government, and many of the OPA warriors had received the de facto amnesty that non-enforcement brought.

  Cate was just a miner now, like the rest of them, but she could use words like tactical advantage and actually sound like she knew what she was talking about.

  “The terrain and numerical superiority are our tactical advantages,” Cate said to the small group assembled in her house. “But we’re outgunned. No way around that. We have maybe a dozen firearms total. We can still get explosives, but the deal Holden struck with RCE makes it much riskier.”

  “Fucking Holden,” Zadie said.

  “We’ll deal with him soon enough,” Cate replied.

  Her audience was made up of the usual gang. Zadie’s son had taken a turn for the worse with his eye infection, and her wife was staying home with him full-time now. Basia had the impression that Zadie was looking for someone to punish for her family’s pain. Pete, Scotty, and Ibrahim were there as well, the veterans of their one skirmish with the RCE security people. It gave them a degree of status in the group that they’d latched on to. But there were a few new people as well. Other members of the colony who might have been on the fence before about the best way to deal with RCE, but had been pushed into the revolutionary camp by Murtry’s brutal tactics. By the martyring of Coop.

  “How?” Scotty asked. “How do we deal with Holden?”

  “I think we remove all of our problems in one multi-front operation,” Cate said. “Murtry and his team, Holden and his thug, everyone at once. The key to this kind of war is money.”

  “Make us too expensive to occupy.” Ibrahim nodded. He’d been OPA too.

  “Exactly. That’s how we got the inners off our asses in the Belt. If it’s not economically viable to occupy us, they won’t. Every one of them that goes home in a body bag is one more nail in the corporate coffin.” Cate punched one large fist into her other hand to punctuate.

  “I don’t follow. How does killing them help us with that?” Basia asked. He’d agreed to come in the hope he might be able to help cooler heads prevail. That was looking less and less likely the longer the meeting went on.

  “It’s an eighteen-month trip to send new troops to the front,” Cate answered. “That’s a long-flight freighter tied up for over three years. That’s expensive. And for the year and a half they’re flying out here, we’re fortifying our position. Making camps in the hills. Branching out. In order to win, they’ll need to do a full military program. Medina Station won’t support that, even if they get pissed at us for pushing the issue.”

  “Coercive alliance,” Ibrahim added, nodding.

  “By the book,” Cate said.

  The room was quiet for a moment as everyone there mulled over her words. The metal roof rattled and scraped as the wind outside blew sand across it. The windows creaked, cooling with the night. A dozen people breathed the alien air.

  “They’re here already,” Basia said, clearing his throat to break the silence. “Isn’t that exactly what they’ll do?”

  “What who will do?” Scotty asked.

  “The Rocinante,” Basia replied. “They’re in orbit right now. A warship, with guns and missiles and who knows what else. If we kill Holden, can’t they just bomb us?”

  “Let’s hope they do!” Cate thundered at him. “By God let’s hope so. A few videos of dead colonists, murdered by UN ships in orbit, and the public opinion war is over.”

  Basia nodded as though he were agreeing, while what he was really thinking was, I’m on the wrong team.

  “So, we move on both groups at once,” Cate said. Her voice had taken on the same cadences Coop used to have. It was as if the man were still in the room, haunting the place. “They keep two people on roving patrol at all times, so we’ll need a team shadowing them until the signal goes out. We’ll put a second team on the security building where Murtry and the rest of his people will be. The third team will go to the commissary where Holden and his crewman are holed up at night. I’m thinking Scotty and Ibrahim for team one. I’ll lead…”

  Cate rattled on, laying out the insanity of multiple murder like a puzzle to be solved or a game to be won. Coordinating the attacks so all three happened at once, so no one could raise the alarm. Using phrases like fields of fire and maximum aggression as if they meant anything other than gunning down a dozen women and men while most of them slept. The little group nodded and followed along. Basia was astonished by how easily the unthinkable became the routine.

  “My children live here,” Basia said, interrupting.

  “What?” Cate said, looking genuinely puzzled. She’d been mid-sentence when he spoke up. “I don’t —”

  “The bodies that we take pictures of to send to the newscasts,” Basia continued. “Those are our children. My children.”

  Cate blinked at him, too puzzled to be angry yet.

  “Como?”

  “I wanted to come here and maybe talk you out of doing something stupid,” Basia said, standing up and addressing the room. “I thought maybe with Coop gone, we could put an end to this. But this isn’t just stupid anymore. Not when you can talk about dead friends and family as media tools. That’s evil. And I can’t be part of it.”

  The room was silent again, except for the sand and the cooling windows and the breathing.

  “If you try to get in our way —” Ibrahim started, but Basia wheeled to face the man.

  “What?” he said, getting close enough that his breath stirred the whiskers in Ibrahim’s thin beard. “If I get in your way what? Don’t make half a threat, macho.”

  Ibrahim was smaller than him. He lowered his eyes and said nothing. Basia felt a brief moment of shameful relief that it was Ibrahim who had chosen to press the issue, not Cate. Basia was afraid of Cate. He’d never have been able to stand up to her.

  “Dui,” he said, backing away and nodding to them all. “Gone now.”

  They began talking in hushed tones after the door closed behind him, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying. It made the back of his neck itch. He wondered if he’d gone too far, and if they’d be content with just killing him and not Lucia too.

  Halfway home he ran into two of the RCE security people walking patrol. Two women in heavy body armor that made them look bulky and dangerous. One of them, a fair-skinned woman with raven-black hair, nodded at him as he walked past. Everything about her was a threat: the armor, the large assault rifle she cradled in her arms, the stun grenades and wrist restraints hanging on her belt. Her friendly smile looked wildly out of place. Basia couldn’t stop himself from picturing her
bleeding out in the street, shot in the back by one of his friends.

  Lucia was waiting on their porch, sitting cross-legged on a large pillow and drinking something that steamed in the night air. Not tea. They had almost none of it left. Probably just hot water with a bit of lemon flavoring. But even the artificial flavorings would soon be gone unless they were given permission to begin trading their ore.

  Basia sat down on the hard carbon fiber floor next to her with a thump.

  “So?” Lucia asked.

  “They won’t listen.” Basia sighed. “They’re talking about killing the RCE people. All of them. And Jim Holden and his people too.”

  Lucia shook her head, a gentle negation. “And you?”

  “At this point, they may be talking about killing me too. I don’t think they will as long as I don’t get in their way. But I can’t take part. I told them so. I’m so sorry I let it get this far, Lucy. I’m a very stupid man.”

  Lucia gave him a sad smile, and put her hand on his arm. “Not doing anything now keeps you on their side.”

  Basia frowned. The night air still held the earthy smell of the recent dust storm. A graveyard scent. “I can’t stop them by myself.”

  “Holden is here to do that. He’s back from whatever he was doing out in the desert with the science teams. You could talk to him.”

  “I know,” Basia said, admitting what he’d already been thinking. The fact that it was necessary didn’t make it feel like any less of a betrayal of his friends. “I know. I will.”

  Lucia laughed her relief. At Basia’s puzzled look, she grabbed him in her arms and pulled him close. “I’m so happy to know that the Basia I love is still in there.”

  Basia relaxed into her embrace, letting himself feel safe and loved for a moment.

  “Baz,” Lucia whispered in his ear.

  Don’t say anything that will ruin this moment, he thought.

  “Felcia is leaving on the shuttle for the Barbapiccola. Now. Tonight. I gave her permission.”

  Basia pulled himself away, holding Lucia at arm’s length. “She’s doing what?”

  Lucia frowned at him, and gripped his upper arms tightly. “Let her go.” There was a warning in her voice.

  Basia pulled himself free and leaped to his feet. Lucia called after him, but he was already running down the road toward the landing site as fast as his legs would carry him.

  His relief when he saw the shuttle still sitting there was so powerful he almost collapsed. One of the colony’s electric carts whizzed by, nearly running him over in the dark. The bed of the cart was filled with ore. They were still loading the shuttle. He had time.

  Felcia stood a few meters from the airlock, a suitcase in each hand, chatting with the pilot. They were in a bright pool of illumination cast by the work lights surrounding the ship, and her dark olive skin seemed to glow. Her black hair hung about her face and down her back in loose waves. Her eyes and mouth were wide as she spoke on some topic that excited her.

  In that moment, his daughter was so beautiful it made Basia’s chest ache. When she spotted him, her face lit up with a smile. Before she could speak, Basia wrapped her in his arms and squeezed her tight.

  “Papa,” she said, worry in her voice.

  “No, baby, it’s okay,” he shook his head against her cheek. “I didn’t come to stop you. I only… I couldn’t let you leave without saying goodbye.”

  His cheek felt wet. Felcia was crying. He held her by the shoulders and pushed her away to look at her face. His little girl, all grown up but crying in his arms. He couldn’t help but see the four-year-old she’d once been, weeping when she fell and hurt her knee.

  “Papa,” she said, her voice thick. “I was worried you would hate me for going. But Mama said —”

  “No, baby, no.” Basia hugged her again. “You go, and when they let the ship leave, you go to Ceres and become a doctor and have a fantastic life.”

  “Why?”

  Because the people here see your death as a tool for winning a public opinion battle. Because I’ve lost all the children I ever plan to lose. Because I can’t have you see me when they finally arrest me.

  “Because I love you, baby,” he said instead. “And I want you to go be amazing.”

  She hugged him, and for that one moment, all was right in the universe again. Basia watched as she boarded, stopping just inside the airlock to wave and blow him a kiss. He watched as they loaded the last of the ore into the cargo compartment. He watched as the shuttle lifted off with a roar and wash of heat.

  Then he turned back toward town to find Holden.

  Holden and Amos were sitting in the commissary’s tiny bar. Amos drank and watched everyone who came in through the door. He held his glass with his left hand, his right never far from the gun at his belt. Holden was typing rapidly on a hand terminal lying on the table. Both men looked tense.

  Basia walked toward them, smiling and nodding his head and keeping his hands visible and away from his body. Amos smiled back. The big man’s scalp looked pale and shiny under the commissary’s white LEDs. When he leaned forward in his chair it looked perfectly natural and non-threatening, and Basia noted that it also put the gun closer to hand seemingly by accident.

  They were not the sort of details he would have noticed before. Coop and Cate and the violence of the last few months had left him on edge, seeing the potential for violence everywhere. When he looked at Amos, he suspected his instincts were not wrong.

  Raising his hands, he said, “Captain Holden, can I join you for a moment?”

  Holden’s head darted up, startled and frightened. Basia was pretty sure he was not the source of the man’s fear, and wondered what was. Murtry and his corporate killers? Had Holden heard from someone else about the planned attack?

  “Please,” Holden said, the fear disappearing from his face as quickly as it had come. He gestured at one of their table’s empty chairs. “What can I do for you?”

  Amos said nothing, just kept smiling his vague smile. Basia sat, making sure to keep his hands on the table and in plain view. “Captain, I’ve come to warn you.”

  “About?” Amos said at once. Holden said nothing.

  “There is a group here. The same group that attacked and killed the RCE security team prior to your arrival. They plan to kill the remaining security people sometime in the next few days. Maybe as early as tomorrow night.”

  Holden and Amos shared a quick look. “We’ve been expecting something like that,” Holden said. “But that’s not the important —”

  Basia didn’t let him finish. “They also plan to kill you.”

  Holden sat up a little straighter. He didn’t seem angry so much as offended.

  “Me? Why would they want to kill me?”

  “They think it will send a message,” Basia said, his tone apologetic. “Also, they’re mad about the explosives inspectors.”

  “Told you,” Holden said to Amos. “A good compromise pisses everyone off.”

  Without realizing he was going to do it, Basia grabbed the bottle off the table and took a long drink. It must have been something they had brought with them, because it was much better whiskey than anything the colony had access to. It warmed his throat and belly pleasantly, but didn’t calm him as much as he’d hoped. He pushed the bottle back toward Amos, but the big man stopped him. “You keep that, brother. You look like you need it.”

  “What are you going to do?” Basia asked Holden.

  “About the assassination? Nothing. It won’t matter because we’re all leaving.”

  “We’re all —?”

  “We’re evacuating the planet. All of us. Everyone.”

  “No,” Basia said. “No one’s leaving. We can’t go now.” I helped kill people to stay here.

  “Oh, we really are,” Holden said. “Something very bad is happening on this planet, and it has nothing to do with obstinate Belters or sociopathic corporate security.”

  Basia took another long drink from the bottle. The al
cohol was starting to leave him a little fuzzy, but not any less anxious. “I don’t understand.”

  “Somebody used to live here,” Holden said, waving one arm around. It took Basia’s drink-addled mind a moment to realize Holden didn’t mean the commissary. “Maybe they’re gone, and maybe they aren’t, but they left a lot of stuff behind and some of it’s waking up. So before we wind up being Eros with a great big sky, everyone is getting the hell out of Dodge.”

  Basia nodded without understanding. Amos grinned at him and said, “The towers and robots, man. He means the alien shit. Looks like some of it’s waking up.”