Cibola Burn

by James S. A. Corey

  “Life for a naval spouse is, frankly, pretty shitty,” Alex said after a few moments. “Typical tour on an MCRN boat can go from ninety days to four, maybe five hundred days. Depending on your MOS and fleet locations.”

  “MOS?” Basia asked before he could stop himself.

  “Your job. Anyway, while you’re out on a boat, your partner is back home, doin’ whatever they do. Lot of folks do plural marriages, group partnerships, things like that. But I’m a one-woman kind of guy, and I guess she was a one-man kind of woman. So we did it the old-fashioned way.”

  Basia nodded, even though Alex couldn’t see him. When they were building new domes Basia had done work that kept him at a surface camp for four or five days straight. His wife’s medical practice wouldn’t have let her travel with him, even if they hadn’t had children. Those were long weeks. Basia tried to imagine stringing ten or twenty of those weeks in a row and failed.

  “But that meant she stayed home while I flew,” Alex said after a quiet moment. “She had her own work. Software engineer. Good one, too. So it’s not like she was pinin’ away at home for me. But still, if you love somebody you want to be with ’em, and we loved each other. Faithful to each other, if you can imagine that. My tours were tough on us both. I’d get home and we’d break the bed.”

  Alex reached out and turned down the air vent, then spun his chair to face Basia. His broad dark face held a sad smile. “It was a crap situation, but she stuck with me. Through twenty years of me bein’ on ships she stuck with me. And when I was in port things were good. She’d work from home and I’d take a lot of leave, and we’d wake up late and make breakfast together. Work in the garden.”

  Alex closed his eyes again, and for a moment Basia thought he might have fallen asleep. “Ever been to Mars?”

  “No,” Basia replied. “But my wife has.”

  “The newer areas, the ones built after we had some idea of what folks need to feel happy, were built different. No more narrow stone corridors. They built wide corridors with lots of green space down the middle for plants.”

  “Like on Ceres,” Basia said. “I’ve been to Ceres.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. They do that on Ceres too. Anyway, you could apply for a permit to care for a section of that space. Plant what you wanted. We had a little chunk in the corridor outside our home. My wife planted an herb garden, some flowers, a few hot pepper plants. We’d work in it.”

  “Sounds nice,” Basia said.

  “Yeah.” Alex nodded, eyes still closed. “I didn’t know it at the time. But it really was. I kinda thought it was a pain in the ass, to be honest. Never been much for gardening. But she liked it and I liked her and back then that was enough.”

  “Did she die?” Basia asked.

  “What? Goodness, no.”

  “So what happened?”

  “What happened is that she waited twenty years for me to retire. And I did, and then we didn’t have to spend time apart anymore. She went to part-time with her work, I took a part-time gig flying suborbital shuttles. We spent a lot of time in bed.”

  Alex opened his eyes and winked. He seemed to be waiting for a response, so Basia said, “And then?”

  “And then one day I put into port at the Mariner orbital transit, and while they were unloadin’ my cargo I almost walked into an MCRN recruiting office and signed up again.”

  “Do they take —”

  “No, I didn’t do it, and yeah, I was too damn old anyway. But when I landed we had a big fight over something stupid. I don’t even remember what. Hell, I didn’t know what we were fightin’ about even at the time, except I sorta did.”

  “Leaving.”

  “No, actually, it was never about leavin’ her. I never stopped wanting to be with her. But I needed to fly. She’d waited twenty years for me, and she’d done it thinkin’ we’d have all the time in the world after I was through. She’d done her tour, just as much as I had, and she deserved the part that came after.”

  Basia felt what was coming like a punch in the stomach, unable to avoid comparing it to his own situation. “But you left anyway.”

  Alex didn’t reply for a time, didn’t move, just floated in the straps of his pilot’s chair like a corpse in water. When he spoke again, his voice was strained and quiet, like a man admitting something shameful. Hoping no one will hear.

  “One day I left work at the transit office and I walked across the street to the Pur’n’Kleen Water Company and I signed a five-year contract to fly long-haul freighters out to Saturn and back. That’s who I am. I’m not a gardener, or a shuttle pilot, or – turns out – a husband. I’m a long-flight pilot. Pushing a little bubble of air-filled metal across an ocean of nothing is what I was born to do.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for what happened,” Basia started.

  “No,” Alex said, a deep frown cutting into his forehead. “A person can fail the people they love just by being who they are. I’m who I am, and it wasn’t what my wife wanted me to be, and somethin’ had to break. You decided to do what you did down on that planet, and it put you up here with me instead of with your family.”

  Alex leaned forward, grabbing Basia’s hands in his own. “It’s still on you. I will never live down not being the person my wife needed after she spent twenty years waitin’ for me. I can never make that right. Don’t go feelin’ sorry for yourself. You fucked up. You failed the people you love. They’re payin’ the price for it right now and you demean them every second you don’t own that shit.”

  Basia recoiled as if from a slap to the face. He bounced off the chair and back into the straps. A fly caught in a spider’s web. He had to stop himself from ripping at the straps to get free. When he’d stopped struggling, he said, “Then what?”

  “Shit,” Alex said, leaning back. “I barely figured out my own mess. Don’t ask me to figure out yours.”

  “What was her name?” Basia asked.

  “Talissa,” Alex said. “Her name is Talissa. Even just sayin’ it makes me feel like ten kilos of manure in a five-kilo sack.”

  “Talissa,” Basia repeated.

  “But I can tell you this. I’ll never let someone I care about down again. Never again. Not if I can help it. Speakin’ of which, I need to make a call,” he said with a bright, frightening smile.

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Havelock

  I

  t was hard to say exactly what changed on the Edward Israel after they captured the saboteur, but Havelock felt it in the commissary and the gym, at his desk as he worked, and in the hallways as he passed by the crew members and RCE staff. Part of it was fear that someone had taken action directly against the ship, part of it was excitement that after months of floating and frustration, something – anything – had happened that wasn’t at ground level. But more than that, it felt to him like the mood of the ship had clarified. They were the Edward Israel, the rightful explorers of New Terra, and everyone was against them. Even the UN mediators couldn’t be trusted. And so, strangely, they were free.

  The remaining crew of the Rocinante wasn’t doing anything to change their opinions.

  “If you try to break orbit,” the man on the screen said, “your ship will be disabled.”

  His name was Alex Kamal, and he was the acting captain of the Rocinante. If RCE’s intelligence was accurate, he was also the only remaining crew member of the corvette, and had the one remaining squatter terrorist on the ship with him awaiting transport back to Earth for trial. Havelock crossed his arms and shook his head as the list of threats went on.

  “If we find that any harm has come to Naomi Nagata, your ship will be disabled. If she is subjected to torture, your ship will be disabled. If she is killed, your ship will be destroyed.”

  “Well, ain’t that just ducky,” Captain Marwick said. “You recall we were talking about not having people want to kill my ship?”

  “It’s just talk,” Havelock said as Kamal went on.

  “We have already sent our petition to the United Natio
ns and Royal Charter Energy demanding Naomi Nagata’s immediate and unconditional release. Until that petition is answered and she is back on the Rocinante, the Edward Israel and all RCE personnel and employees are advised to do everything in their power to avoid any further escalation of this situation. This message serves as final verbal notification before the actions I’ve outlined are taken. A copy of this message is being included in the packet to the UN and RCE’s corporate headquarters. Thank you.”

  The round-faced, balding man looked into the camera for a moment, then away, and then back before the recording ended. Marwick sighed.

  “Not the most professional production,” he said, “but made his points effectively enough, I’d say.”

  “Sneeze, and he shoots us,” Havelock said. “Look like we’re going to sneeze, and he shoots us. Make sure his chief engineer doesn’t catch cold, or he shoots us. Give her a blankie at night and a cup of warm milk, or he shoots us.”

  “Did have a certain sameness to his thinking, didn’t he?” Marwick said.

  Havelock looked around the cabin. The captain’s rooms were smaller than the security station, but he’d placed steel mirrors at the sides and along the tops of the walls to make it feel big. It was an illusion, of course, but it was the kind of illusion that could make the difference between sanity and madness over the course of a few years in confined spaces. The screen set into the wall hiccupped and shifted to a starscape. Not the real one outside, but the one from Sol. Seeing the old constellations was disconcerting.

  “Who’s seen this?” Havelock asked.

  “Sent to me and Murtry,” Marwick said. “Don’t know who Murtry’s shown it to, but I’ve run it past you.”

  “All right,” Havelock said. “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Want? I want you to pop the lady free and set her back home with a stern talking-to,” Marwick said. “After that, I want to get my ship back under thrust and go the hell home the way my contract said. What I expect is that you find out whether this is really all talk, or if my ship’s going to come under fire.”

  “They have the firepower.”

  “I’m deeply aware of that. But do they have the will and expertise to use it? I’m only asking because the lives of my crew are in threat here, and it’s making me a bit nervous.”

  “I understand,” Havelock said.

  “Do you, now?”

  “I do. And I’ll find out what I can. But in the meantime, let’s start by assuming that he means it.”

  “Yeah,” Marwick said, running a hand through his hair. He sighed. “When I signed up for this, I was thinking it was a hell of an adventure. First alien world. No stations or relief ships if things went pear-shaped. A whole new system full to the top with Christ only knows what. And instead, I get this shite.”

  “Right there with you, sir,” Havelock said.

  Havelock’s paintball militia, emboldened by the capture, had pressed for immediate action. They had the emergency airlock. The orbital mechanics of the Rocinante had clearly brought it close enough for a transit. Go now, they’d said, take the Rocinante when they weren’t expecting it, and get the whole charade over with. Havelock had been tempted. If he hadn’t seen what point defense cannons could do to a human body, he might have given the go-ahead.

  Instead, they’d pulled power on the prisoner’s suit and hauled her back to the Israel before she suffocated. Since then, she’d been in the drunk-tank cell in Havelock’s office. With the security team down to less than a skeleton crew, he’d given the prisoner access to the privacy controls. He didn’t have enough women left on the team to put one on guard duty full-time.

  In fact, when he got back to his office, the place was empty except for Nagata in her cell. She looked over, greeting him with a little chin-lift. She wore a red paper jumpsuit and her hair floated around her head in a dark starburst. Enemy capture protocol didn’t allow her hairband, a hand terminal, or her own clothes. She’d been in the cell for the better part of two days. Havelock knew from training exercises that he’d have been half crazed with claustrophobia by now. She’d gone from looking embarrassed to retreating into her own thoughts. It was a Belter thing, he assumed. A few generations living and dying without a sky, and enclosed spaces lost the atavistic terror of premature burial.

  He sloped across the room to her.

  “Nagata,” he said. “I had some questions for you.”

  “Don’t I have the right to an attorney or union representative?” she asked, her voice making it clear that she was at least half joking.

  “You do,” Havelock said. “But I was hoping you’d help me out of your kind and generous spirit.”

  Her laugh was sharp, short, and insincere. He pulled up the video file on his hand terminal and set it floating just outside the steel mesh of the cell door.

  “My name is Alex Kamal, and I am acting captain of the Rocinante. In light of recent events —”

  Havelock shifted back to his desk, strapping himself in at the couch from force of habit more than anything. He watched Naomi’s face without actually staring at her. The woman had a great poker face. It was hard to tell whether she felt anything at all as she watched her shipmate of years threaten them all on her behalf. When the file ended, he reached out and pulled the hand terminal back to himself.

  “Don’t see what you need me for,” she said. “He used small words.”

  “You’re hilarious. The question I have is this: Are you really going to let your shipmates turn themselves into criminals and murderers so that you can postpone answering for your crimes?”

  Her smile could have meant anything, but he had the sense he’d touched on something. Or close to it. “I feel like you’re asking me for something, friend. But I don’t know quite what it is.”

  “Will you tell the Rocinante to back off?” Havelock said. “It won’t do you any damage. It’s not like we’re letting you go regardless. And if you cooperate, that’ll speak well for you when we get back to Earth.”

  “I can, but it won’t matter. You haven’t shipped with those men. When you listen to that, you hear a list of threats, right?”

  “What do you hear?”

  “Alex saying how it is,” Naomi said. “All that stuff he told you? Those are just axioms now.”

  “I’m sorry to hear you say that,” Havelock said. “Still, if you’ll record something for him assuring him that you’re in good condition and aren’t being mistreated, it’ll only help.”

  She shifted, the microcurrents of air and the constant drift of microgravity bringing her back against the cell’s far wall. She touched it gently, steadying herself.

  “Alex isn’t the problem,” she said. “Let me tell you a little about Jim Holden.”

  “All right,” Havelock said.

  “He’s a good man, but he doesn’t turn on a dime. Right now, there’s a debate going on in his head. On the one hand, he was sent out here to make peace, and he wants to do that. On the other hand, he protects his own.”

  “His woman?”

  “His crew,” Naomi said, biting the words a little. “It’s going to take him a while to decide to stop doing what he agreed to do and just tip over the table.”

  Havelock’s hand terminal chimed. It was a reminder to review the next week’s schedules. Even in the depths of crises, minor office tasks demanded their tribute. He pulled up the scheduling grid.

  “You think he will, though,” Havelock said.

  “He’s got Amos with him,” Naomi said, as if that explained everything. “And then they’ll assault the ship and get me out.”

  Havelock laughed. “We’re stretched a little thin, but I don’t see how they can expect to get through to you.”

  “You’re talking about the man who got a load of people off Ganymede when it was still a war zone,” Naomi said. “And went onto the alien station at Medina by himself. And scuttled the Agatha King by himself when it had two thousand protomolecule zombies on it. He fought his way off Eros in the
first outbreak.”

  “Rushing in where angels fear to tread,” Havelock said.

  “And making it through. I can’t tell you how many last goodbyes I’ve had with him, and he always comes back.”

  “Sounds like a rough guy to have for a boyfriend,” Havelock said.

  “He is, actually,” she said with a laugh. “But he’s worth it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he does what he says he’s going to do,” she said. “And if he says he’s going to pop me out of this cell, then either that will happen, or he’ll die.”