Cibola Burn (Expanse)

by James S. A. Corey

  The Earther leaned around the doorway with a bulky rifle of some kind and fired several booming shots. “Havelock. Let’s cover the rest once we’re out of here.”

  Before Basia knew she was going to do it, Naomi plucked the pistol out of his hand and held it out to Havelock. “You might need this.”

  “No,” he replied, and fired off his big rifle a few more times. “No lethal rounds. We’re not killing these idiots if we can avoid it.”

  “Then what?” she asked.

  Havelock was pulling fat shotgun shells out of a pouch on his armor and loading them into his gun. “As soon as I move into the corridor, you two head to the airlock as fast as you can.” He loaded one last shell into the gun, then racked it with a loud clack. “Basia, you’re armored, so keep her in front of you. Naomi, you’ll be moving through a storage compartment. Grab a suit. Anything you can put on fast.”

  “Ready when you are,” Naomi replied and put a hand on Havelock’s shoulder. Basia nodded his fist at the Earthman.

  “Then go,” Havelock said and darted into the corridor firing his shotgun. Naomi followed him out and turned the other direction, toward the locker room and the airlock; Basia stayed right behind. They’d only gone a few meters when he felt two bruising hammer blows on his back.

  “I’m shot!” he yelled in a panic. “I got shot!”

  Naomi didn’t slow down. “Is your HUD telling you you’re bleeding out?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’ll live. That’s what the armor is for.”

  “Less talk,” Havelock said from right behind him, and gave him a shove in the back. “More escaping.”

  Basia hadn’t even known he was there. He stifled an undignifieed squeak. Several meters ahead, Naomi darted into the storage room, and Basia followed when he reached the doorway. She was already wriggling her way into a bright orange emergency atmosphere suit. Havelock paused at the door to fire several more shots down the corridor.

  “Tune to twenty-seven oh one five,” the Earther said.

  “What?” The words made no sense to Basia. And the whole sequence of events was more and more coming to feel like a bad dream. People shooting and spouting nonsense at him. The sense of peace and heroism he’d felt when he agreed to the rescue mission was entirely gone.

  “It’s the frequency the security team’s using,” Havelock said. “You can listen in. They aren’t encrypting. Because” – he sighed – “they’re fucking amateurs.”

  Basia found the menu to switch his suit’s radio frequency and set it to 27.015. “— in on it,” a voice said. Young, male, angry.

  “The fact that he’s shooting back at us makes it pretty goddamn clear,” an older voice said. “He shot me with a couple fucking beanbag rounds. I think he broke a rib.”

  “So,” Havelock said, then paused to fire off another shot. “I guess this is a decision I don’t get to take back.” Basia couldn’t tell who he was talking to.

  “I’m gonna shoot you in the face, asshole,” the older man said. This was followed by another barrage of gunfire that tore up the hallway.

  “Mostly you’re shooting the ship, chief,” Havelock replied. His voice was matter-of-fact. He seemed halfway between being embarrassed on the attacker’s behalf and steeled for more violence of his own. Basia remembered someone telling him about the idea of Bushido back when he’d first signed on for work on Ganymede. They’d said it was the peace and effectiveness that came from already thinking of yourself as dead. Havelock reminded him of that.

  “Kemp,” the older voice said. “Are you in position?”

  “We’re suited up and moving to emergency access one eleven,” a voice replied.

  “Go faster, get ahead of them.”

  “Hey Kemp?” Havelock said. “Thought I sent you to medical with Salvatore? You didn’t leave him bleeding out in a corridor somewhere, did you?”

  “No, sir,” Kemp replied. “Someone’s taking him there now —”

  “Stop talking to him!” the angry older man said. “He is not on our team!”

  Naomi was struggling to get the emergency suit over her shoulders, and Basia pushed over to help her. Havelock stayed at the locker room hatch, occasionally firing down the corridor.

  “Find an air bottle,” Naomi said, then started opening locker doors and rummaging through the contents. Basia helped.

  “Hey, Mfume?” Havelock said.

  “What?” a new voice snapped.

  “Turning on your boot mags to stick to the floor behind cover is a good instinct. But in the position you’re crouched in, your knee is sticking out past the corner.” Havelock fired a shot from his shotgun, and someone on the radio screeched in pain. “See?”

  Basia found a locker full of emergency air bottles and helped Naomi connect one to her suit, twisting it to break the seal. A few seconds later she gave him the thumbs-up.

  “We’re ready to go,” she told Havelock.

  The Earther fired off a few more shots, then backed into the locker room with them. He handed his shotgun to Naomi, who pointed it at the doorway to cover them while the two men sealed their helmets.

  “Changed your mind about giving me a gun?” Naomi asked.

  “I’ll want it back.”

  “We’re ready out here,” Kemp said on the radio.

  “Hey, guys?” Havelock said. “Don’t do that. We’d barely started on the spacewalk combat tactics. You head out there with live ammo and it will get really dangerous.”

  “Well, the chief said —”

  “Stop talking to him!” the older man yelled, loud enough to distort Basia’s helmet speakers. “Goddammit you guys!”

  “Koenen,” Havelock said. His voice sounded subtly different now that his helmet was on and sealed. “I’m serious. Don’t send your guys out there. Someone’s going to get hurt or dead.”

  “Yeah,” the chief replied. “You Belter-loving traitorous sonofabitch.”

  “How’re those ribs, chief?” Havelock said, a smile in his voice. “You see, right now, you’re acting out of anger. Not thinking it through. This is why I didn’t want to break out the live rounds.”

  Basia strapped on the EVA pack he’d left by the airlock hatch. Naomi handed him the shotgun and pulled two more packs out of storage. A moment later, she and Havelock were wearing them and the inner airlock door was cycling closed. Havelock took the shotgun away from Basia and hung it from a strap on his harness. Naomi started the airlock cycle.

  “You know,” she said, “they can just kill this airlock from the bridge.”

  As if in response to her words, the airlock status light on the control panel shifted to red, and the cycle stopped. Havelock punched something into the panel and it started again.

  “They won’t have had time to reset all the security overrides,” he said.

  “RCE security can countermand ship operations?” Naomi asked.

  “Welcome to corporate security. The ship’s crew are glorified taxi drivers. Security division works directly for the company, protecting its interests. We can override anything they do.”

  “This is why everyone hates you,” Basia said.

  The airlock cycle completed, and the outer door opened. Havelock gestured them out. “You sure you don’t like me right now? Just a little bit?”

  Ilus’ star was just peeking around the limb of the planet, and Basia’s visor dimmed dramatically to keep it from blinding him. The planet itself was the same angry ball of storm-wracked gray clouds. In the distance, the Rocinante flashed green and red landing lights at them, marking its position.

  “Okay,” Havelock said, his voice crackling with low-level static. “Should probably get moving. They’ve got guys outside on the other side of the ship. They can’t catch us, but watch each other for grapnel lines.”

  Naomi was already firing her EVA pack, moving out of the airlock on four small white cones of compressed gas. “Alex? We’re out.”

  “Oh, thank God,” the pilot said, his drawl mostly disapp
earing in the tension of his voice. “I’ve been worried sick over here. Basia with you?”

  “Yeah,” Basia said. “I’m here.”

  “You’ll be picking up three,” Naomi said. “Come get us.”

  “Three?”

  “Taking a stray home with me.”

  “A stray?” Havelock said, amusement in his voice. “I’m the one doing the rescuing here.”

  “It’s complicated,” Naomi continued. They were all out of the airlock now. The remote connection light went on in Basia’s HUD, and a complex program began spooling across it. Alex having the Rocinante take control of their EVA navigation to bring them to the ship. The pack did several sharp burns, and the Rocinante began slowly growing.

  “Glad Basia made it okay,” Alex said. “Worried sendin’ him in there like that.”

  “I didn’t wind up helping much,” Basia admitted, feeling that same rush of embarrassment.

  “You got everyone looking in the wrong direction,” Havelock said. “That was actually pretty helpful.”

  “Yay,” Alex said, “we’re all heroes. There’re four guys tailing you right now. Do we know about them?”

  A small box appeared on Basia’s HUD. Inside it was video of four people in vacuum suits and wearing EVA packs, the bulk of the Edward Israel behind them. Without his doing anything, the view zoomed in until he could see the weapons they were carrying. Alex was sending them all images pulled from the Rocinante’s telescopes.

  “Yeah, those are the militia I formed and trained,” Havelock said, then sighed. “In retrospect, that’s seeming like a bad idea.”

  “Do you want me to take care of that?” Alex asked.

  “Does your version of ‘taking care of it’ involve your ship’s point defense cannons?” Havelock replied.

  “Uh. Yeah?”

  “Then no. These guys are dumb and untrained enough to still be gung-ho. But they’re just engineers. They’re not bad guys,” Havelock said.

  “They’re shootin’ at you,” Alex said, and suddenly Basia’s HUD had red lines across it. “Got the Roci trackin’ bullet paths.”

  The knowledge that there were silent, invisible, and potentially deadly projectiles flying past him made Basia’s scalp tingle. The red lines on the display apparently meant more to Havelock, because the Earther said, “They’re nowhere near us. They haven’t got HUD-integrated targeting, so they’re just spraying and praying right now. There’s no reason to return fire.”

  “XO?” Alex said. It took Basia a second to realize he was talking to Naomi.

  “Havelock’s calling this one,” she replied. “They’re his people.”

  “Okay,” Alex said doubtfully.

  The Rocinante continued to grow minute by minute until Basia could see the tiny ring of lights around its airlock. He’d only been on the ship a short time, but it felt like coming home. His EVA pack fired off a quick series of blasts and spun him around to face the Israel, then began braking. Almost there.

  “Guys,” Havelock said. “Recoilless is an exaggeration. It doesn’t mean there’s no recoil at all.”

  It sounded like more nonsense talk to Basia until he looked at the Rocinante’s video of the pursuing team and saw one of the four men spinning and rotating in space, frantically firing his EVA pack to get under control. It only seemed to make it worse, as every blast of gas from the pack just added a new axis to the rotation.

  “Then that’s an inaccurate name for the weapons,” the man called Kemp replied.

  “And if we’d gotten to more advanced zero-g tactics, I would have explained that,” Havelock said. “I also would have taught you to use the integrated compensation software to have the EVA pack do stabilizing bursts every time you fire the gun.”

  “Seems to me there’s a lot you didn’t show us,” Kemp replied.

  “Yeah, and now that you’re shooting at me, I’m just sick about that. In the meantime, please stop. Drake is way out of control and drifting away from you guys. Someone needs to go get him before he gets too far.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” the one Havelock had called Koenen said. “Get us to call off the chase.”

  “I’d like,” Havelock said, his voice sad, “to keep Drake from falling out of space and dying. Also, I’m arguing with the pilot of the gunship behind me so that he doesn’t need to turn you into a cloud of red mist with his point defense cannons. But you guys are making it harder and harder to be convincing.”

  “Don’t threaten —”

  “Go get Drake. Get back in the ship. Stop shooting. If one of those shots you’re spraying around accidentally hits, I’m taking the gunship off the leash.”

  There was a long silence. The red lines on Basia’s HUD began disappearing one by one until none were left. The EVA pack fired off one long, final burst, then spun him around. The outer airlock door of the Rocinante was already open, waiting for them. Naomi drifted inside, grabbed a handhold, and waited for them to follow. Shaded from Ilus’ star the polarization of her faceplate faded, and the blue glow of the airlock’s LED lights illuminated the inside of her helmet. Her wide smile was clearly visible.

  “Home again, home again,” she said. Basia drifted in next to her and she caught his arm to stop him. “Thank you for coming for me.”

  Basia blushed and raised his palms in a Belter shrug. “I didn’t do much but get shot at.”

  “Sometimes just showing up is a lot.”

  Havelock caught the edge of the airlock entrance and stopped, looking back toward the Israel. “Hey, you got Drake? He okay?”

  “Yes, sir,” Kemp replied. “We caught him.”

  “Havelock,” the older, angrier voice said. “You won’t get away with this. RCE will burn you to the ground when we get back. And I’ll be there to see it happen.”

  Havelock laughed. “Chief? I hope we both live so long. Havelock out.” He backed into the airlock and slapped the wall panel to start the cycle.

  “We made it,” Basia said. He felt a brief moment of euphoria, followed by a sudden release of pants-shitting terror he hadn’t even known he’d been repressing. If he’d been standing in gravity, he would have collapsed. Naomi and Havelock began stripping off their EVA packs while the airlock ran through the pressurization cycle. Basia fumbled at the straps of his own, but his hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t manage it. After a few moments, Naomi helped him pull it off.

  The pack drifted across the compartment and hit the bulkhead with a dull thud. Basia had just enough time to realize he’d actually heard something other than his own breathing when the inner airlock door slid open. Alex floated, framed by the airlock entrance, a goofy grin on his broad dark face.

  “XO,” he said, “good to have you back on the ship.”

  Naomi pulled her helmet off and tossed it to him. “Good to be back, Mister Kamal.”

  There was a short pause while they grinned at each other, then Naomi pushed off toward him and Alex grabbed her in a hug.

  “They treat you okay?” Alex asked.

  “Kept me locked in a kennel like a dog,” Naomi replied, jerking her head toward Havelock. The squat Earthman had removed his own helmet, and it floated in the air next to him. He was wearing a sheepish half smile. Without his helmet on, Basia saw his short, light-colored hair, a square jaw, and dark eyes. A sort of generic rugged handsomeness. Like a video star playing a cop in an action movie. It made Basia want to dislike him.

  “It was policy,” Havelock said. “I’m – I was chief of ship security on the Edward Israel. I think I may have just resigned that position. I was the one that took your XO captive. I hope you won’t hold that against me.”

  “Okay,” Alex said, then turned back to Naomi as if Havelock weren’t even there. “What now?”

  “Status report,” Naomi replied. “What’s the latest on the degrading orbit?”

  “Barbapiccola’s going down first, then the Israel, then we get to pick between dying in orbit when the batties run out, burning in the atmosp
here, or getting shot by aliens,” Alex said with a humorless laugh. “We’re all fucked six ways from Sunday. But it’s nice to have you back on board.”

  Chapter Forty-Four: Holden

  H

  olden shuffled his way around the tower again.

  He tried to calculate how many hours he’d gone without sleep, but his brain had lost the ability to do math, and Ilus’ thirty-hour day kept screwing up his estimates. A long time was all he could come up with.

  He triggered his armor’s medical system to shoot him up with more amphetamines, and was troubled when the HUD told him the supply was empty. How much did that mean he’d taken? Like the question of how long it had been since he slept, it was an insoluble mystery.