Cibola Burn (Expanse)

by James S. A. Corey

  “Okay, honey,” he said. “Bye now. I love you.”

  Whatever she might have said in reply was lost, as the Barbapiccola slipped behind Ilus and the channel broke up into static and died. No relay satellites in orbit around the new world yet. Back to line of sight, like nineteenth-century primitives bouncing radio around inside their atmosphere. Basia thought of his home, really just a shack in a tiny village with two dusty roads. Maybe that was appropriate.

  Seventeen hundred kilometers below, his world spun. Beneath his feet, a spaceship capable of flying across the solar system hummed to itself with barely restrained power.

  Maybe not just like a nineteenth-century primitive.

  “You ready to come back in?” Alex said, breaking into his reverie.

  “In a minute,” Basia replied. “Can you find First Landing and point it out?”

  “Sure. It’s moving away, but you can still see it.”

  Another tiny green dot appeared on his HUD over a spot just north of Ilus’ great southern desert. Knowing where to look, Basia thought he could detect the open bowl of the mining operations north of the village, but that might just have been wishful thinking.

  Lucia would be down there, seeing patients, looking after Jacek. It was daylight in the village, so Lucia would definitely still be working. Basia tried to imagine what she was doing at that moment. The temptation to have Alex call down to the village so he could talk to her was almost overpowering. But he’d been selfish enough already, calling Felcia. He was a source of pain to his family now. The only comfort to be had came at their expense.

  So instead he began packing up his tools and the damaged actuator.

  If he never came back, would Lucia find someone else? He tried to tell himself that he was the sort of man who’d want that for her. That her happiness was more important than his fears about losing her. He tried the idea on like a new outfit. Seeing if he could find a way to make it fit.

  It didn’t. He saw with clarity as perfect as if Alex were zooming his HUD in on the idea that he was not that sort of man. It was hard to tell if that was a flattering testament to his commitment to his marriage, or a scathing commentary on his own insecurities and selfishness. Like almost everything else that had happened to him over the last months, it was murky and difficult to navigate.

  He would go back with Holden, probably to the UN complex on Luna. The OPA would claim he was their citizen, but Ganymede had originally been a UN colony. The legality of which people were citizens of which government was still being worked out, and would be for decades. Plenty of time to try him as a UN citizen for crimes against a UN-based company and throw him in prison for all eternity.

  Years of trials, probably.

  Basia began slowly walking across the hull of the Rocinante, dragging his webbed-together bundle of tools and spare parts behind. At the stern of the ship he stopped and planted both feet, waiting for the bundle to float past him and stop at the end of its line. The weight pulled his arms out painfully for a moment as he killed its momentum.

  “Open the cargo bay hatch,” he said.

  “Roger,” Alex replied, and the ship started to vibrate under Basia’s feet. The two heavy doors of the cargo bay slowly slid open. When they were about halfway, he yanked down on the line and the bundle of tools swung around the edge of the ship and into the cargo bay. He let go of the line and let them sail inside without yanking him off the edge after them.

  In the corner of his vision, there was a bright burst of light, like the flash of a distant camera. Basia turned to look, expecting to see one of the other two ships moving into the sunlight. Instead, there was a growing point of white light centered over Ilus’ largest island. It was bright enough to overpower the faint green luminescence of its beaches, and rapidly expanding.

  In seconds, the dark side of the planet was lit up as brightly as if a second sun had risen. The other islands in the chain suddenly visible in stark black and white, casting long shadows across the ocean as the white spot grew. He felt his heart start to race.

  “Alex?” he said.

  The ocean around the big island heaved up, bulging out beyond the curve of the planet in what must have been a tsunami miles high. But before Basia could grasp the enormity of the forces involved in such an uprising, it was gone. The island, the massive upwelling of the ocean, the smaller nearby islands, they all disappeared in a column of white fire and a rapidly rising mushroom cloud.

  Basia’s visor darkened dramatically, and he had a sense that if it hadn’t the light coming from the planet below might have blinded him. But even through the welder’s shield darkness of the helmet, he could see the column of fire growing, hurling white vapor up until it broke free of the planet’s atmosphere and became glittering crystals of ice speeding away from the gravity well like a shower of glass from a bullet-shattered window.

  A massive ripple, like wind across a field of grass, sped away from the growing pillar of fire through the surrounding ocean. Intellectually, Basia knew the ripples had to be waves, hundreds or thousands of feet high, rushing away from the blast. But the intellectual part of his brain was rapidly disappearing behind the screaming primitive who was relieving his bladder into the suit’s condom catheter in fear.

  Basia had grown up in the Jupiter system. He’d seen video of Io up close more than once. Io was famous for having the most massive volcanoes ever seen by man. Gigantic geysers of sulfur blasting out of the surface of the moon until particles were flung into Jupiter’s plasma torus and faint ring system. They made Io an almost insanely inhospitable place.

  The explosion Basia was looking at from orbit dwarfed those eruptions. It looked like half the planet was being flattened by the force of the blast.

  His initial thought was that it was a very good thing First Landing was on the other side of the world. His second, that the shock wave was heading that direction, and not even traveling around the planet was going to slow it down much.

  “Jesus Christ!” Alex yelled across the radio. “Are you seein’ that shit!”

  “Call down,” Basia tried to yell back. It came out as a panicky whimper. “You have to warn them.”

  “Warn them to do what?” Alex asked. He sounded dazed.

  What do you do when the planet you’re standing on tries to kill you?

  Basia didn’t know.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Holden

  H

  olden stood on a low hill overlooking First Landing trying to enjoy the beauty of the planet while his brain chewed on the half dozen insoluble problems that he was somehow supposed to solve. The usual dust had been tamped down by the recent run of gentle rains. It made the town look clean, well-tended. Peaceful. Above, the sky was a stunning indigo blue with just the faintest streamers of high-altitude clouds breaking it up. His hand terminal was reporting the temperature as 22 degrees Celsius with a gentle four-knot wind coming out of the northeast. The only thing that would have made it better was Naomi there with him, or at least back safe on the Roci. But that would have made it a lot better.

  I miss planets,” Holden said, closing his eyes and facing the sun.

  “I don’t,” Amos replied. He’d been so quiet during their afternoon walk that Holden had sort of forgotten he was there.

  “You never miss a breeze? The sun on your skin? A gentle rain?”

  “Those are not the parts of planetary life that imprinted on my memory,” Amos replied.

  “Want to talk about it?” Holden asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Okay.” Holden didn’t take the mechanic’s refusal personally. Amos had, as he described it, a lot of past in his past. He didn’t like people digging around there, and Holden was the last person to pry. Holden already knew more about Amos’ brutal upbringing on Earth than he wanted to.

  “Better head back, I guess,” Holden said after a few more pleasant moments in the breeze. “Might have an RCE reply to my requests.”

  “Yeah.” Amos snorted. “If the RCE bigwigs sent a
reply seconds after receiving your message, they should be arriving just about now.”

  “I won’t let your facts about light delay get in the way of my optimism.”

  “Not much does.”

  Holden was silent for a long moment. He licked his lips.

  “If they say no,” he said. “If they’re committed to letting Murtry hold on to her. I’m going to have to make a decision about whether she’s more important than keeping this place from devolving into a shooting war.”

  “Yup.”

  “I’m pretty sure I know what I’m going to pick too.”

  “Yup.”

  “There will be people who think I’m very selfish.”

  “True,” Amos said. “But also, fuck ’em. They’re not us.”

  “That us-and-them thing is the problem at the base of all this —” Holden started, but his hand terminal interrupted, a high-priority alarm sounding. It was the alert reserved for crewperson in danger. Naomi, he thought. Something happened to Naomi.

  Amos took a few steps toward Holden, he brow furrowing and hands clenching into fists. His mind had gone to the same place. If something had actually happened to Naomi, there was no way he’d be able to stop Amos from killing Murtry this time. Probably, he wouldn’t even try.

  “Holden here,” he said, trying to keep his voice level.

  “Cap, we got a problem,” Alex replied. His voice was shaky, terrified. Holden had flown with Alex through half a dozen battles. Not even when the missile trails filled the sky around them had he ever heard his pilot panic. Whatever it was, it was bad.

  “Is she hurt?”

  “What? Who? You mean Naomi? Naomi’s fine, far as I know,” Alex replied. “You’re in deep shit, Captain.”

  Holden looked around. First Landing looked quiet. A new shift of Belters were boarding the carts that would take them to the mine. A few people walked the streets, going about their business. The two RCE security people on patrol were chatting amiably with a local and sipping some sort of hot drink from a thermos. The only violent thing happening within line of sight was a mimic lizard slowly dragging a stomach-engulfed bird back through its gullet.

  “Okay?” Holden said.

  “Something blew up on the other side of the planet,” Alex said, talking fast enough to stumble over his words, most of his drawl disappearing. “Absolutely flattened an island chain over there. I mean it’s like someone dropped a rock. Kill-the-dinosaurs kind of thing. Shock wave is heading around the planet right now. You have about six hours. Maybe.”

  Amos had traded his angry face in for one of genuine surprise. It wasn’t an expression he wore often, and it made him look vaguely childlike.

  “Six hours until what, Alex?” Holden said. “Details, please.”

  “Figure two-, three-hundred-kilometer-an-hour winds, lightning, torrential rains. You’re far enough inland to avoid the three-kilometer-high tsunami.”

  “Basic wrath of God package, minus drowning,” Holden said, reaching for humor to hide his rising fear. “How certain is this?”

  “Uh, Captain? I’m watching the other side of the planet rip itself to shreds right now. This isn’t a prediction. This is thousands of klicks of planet between you and the apocalypse disappearing fast.”

  “Got some video to send?”

  “Yep,” said the pilot. “Got fresh underwear for after you watch it?”

  “Send it anyway. I may need it to convince the locals. Holden out.”

  “So, Cap,” Amos said. “What’s the plan?”

  “I haven’t got a clue.”

  “Run it again,” Murtry said after Holden played the apocalyptic video Alex had shot with the Rocinante’s telescopes. Holden, Murtry, and Carol Chiwewe were in the town hall, Holden’s terminal synced up to the big screen hanging on one wall.

  Holden obliged and played through the recording a second time. Again, the big island disappeared in a flash of light and a column of fire. Again, the other islands vanished under a massive wall of water and then the spreading clouds of steam and ash. Again, the shock wave raced away from the center of the explosion, dragging massive waves behind it.

  As the video played, Murtry talked quietly on his hand terminal with someone. Carol shook her head gently, as though it were possible to deny the evidence playing on-screen.

  The video ended, and Murtry said, “This is matching our data. The geoengineering group thinks there was some kind of fission reaction down near the bottom of the ocean.” Holden prickled at the implication he might be lying about something so serious, but held his tongue.

  “Like a bomb?” Carol Chiwewe said.

  “Or an alien power plant failing out,” Murtry said. “Can’t really speculate.”

  “How quickly can we evacuate?” Carol said, her voice surprisingly firm for a person who’d just looked Armageddon in the eye.

  “That’s what we’re here to talk about,” Holden said. “What’s our best plan for protecting the colony? Evacuation is one option, but we’re down to a little over five hours now.”

  “Evacuation won’t work,” Murtry said, “at least using our shuttle. The window’s too tight. We’d be taking off in the face of that shock wave, with turbulence and atmospheric ionization doing its best to knock us out of the sky. Better to survive down here and still have a shuttle available afterward for relief.”

  Holden frowned and nodded. “I hate to admit it, but I agree. Alex says he can’t put the Roci down and get it back off the ground before the blast. And if we do try to evacuate, we’ll probably have riots on our hands. How do you tell someone that their kid doesn’t get to leave on the shuttle?”

  “Riots won’t be a problem,” Murtry said. The calm of his voice was chilling.

  “How do we protect everyone? The entire colony?” Holden said, again choosing to ignore the provocation.

  “There’s mines,” Amos said. He hovered over Holden like an anxious parent. He’d started doing that whenever Murtry was around.

  “No.” Carol shook her head. “It’s low ground. It’ll flood if we get too much rain.”

  “I think we should count on anything that can go wrong doing so,” Holden agreed. “So no pits and caves that can fill up with water. I’m thinking the ruins.”

  Murtry leaned back in his chair, frowning. “What makes you think those’ll hold up to three-hundred-kilometer-an-hour winds?”

  “Honestly? I have no good reason to believe that,” Holden said. “But they’ve been there a very long time. That’s what I’ve got. Hope that if they made it this far, they can make it through what’s coming.”

  “Better’n those huts you guys are living in,” Amos added with a beefy shrug. “I can kick down any building in this town in ten minutes.”

  Murtry leaned back even farther in his chair, staring up at the ceiling and making clicking noises with his tongue. After a few seconds he said, “Okay. That’s as good a plan as any I have. We just need to outlive that initial shock wave. What comes after will be bad, but we’ll be able to take any survivors off through it. So let’s play it your way. I’ll get my people moving. Better get the word out.”

  “Carol, find as many people as you can to spread the news,” Holden said. “Make sure everyone brings as much food and water as they can reasonably carry, but nothing else. The planet’s on fire. Can’t stop to save mementos.”

  “I’ll give her a hand,” Amos said.

  “We’re on the clock,” Holden reminded them, punching an alert into his hand terminal as he said it. “I want to see all of you inside the structure in four hours, not a minute later.”

  “We’ll try,” Carol said.

  It took longer to move the colonists than Holden had hoped. Each person told had to express shock and disbelief. Then they had to have a conversation about their surprise. Then they had to have a conversation about what items they’d bring with them. Some argued about bringing personal items, each one sure that their particular case was unique. Every time Holden heard it happen, he wa
nted to start shouting.

  It was the blue sky and gentle breeze. The disaster just wasn’t real to them. Not when they could look out across the sky and see nothing but wisps of cloud. They were playing along, because Holden and Carol and Murtry were in charge, and you did what the people in charge asked you to do unless there was a compelling reason not to. But Holden could see the disbelief in their eyes, hear it in every silly delay and argument.

  Across the street, a man was clutching a bundle of clothing under one arm while he dragged a large plastic container of water behind him. Amos walked over and traded a few smiling words with the man. The man vigorously shook his head and tried to walk off. Amos grabbed the bundle of clothes out of his hands and threw them on top of a nearby hut, then picked up the water and shoved it into the man’s arms. The man started to argue, but Amos stared him down with a vague smile, and eventually the other man turned and left, trudging after the others headed to the alien ruins.