Cibola Burn (The Expanse) (40 page)

“This is shuttle two requesting permission to drop,” the pilot said, her voice a slow drawl.

“Captain Marwick here. Permission’s given. Godspeed.”

Havelock watched his display as the shuttle’s thrusters went bright, driving it away from the
Israel
and down. The danger was turbulence in the lower atmosphere. Even if there were evil winds in the outer layers, the air was so thin there, the shuttle would be able to shrug them off. When it got down to the clouds, Havelock told himself, the real danger would begin.

The shuttle dropped, its body becoming only a light spot against the darker gray of the clouds. The sensor data feed from it looked fine. The turbulence was worse than Havelock had expected, but not so bad as he’d feared. The farther down it went, though —

The data signal dropped. Havelock switched over to visual in time to see the shuttle’s bright flare fade. A puff of smoke a few kilometers higher showed where it had detonated. The shock of it, the horror, was like being punched in the gut. He barely noticed the flickering of the lights in the
Israel
or the stuttering whine of the air recyclers restarting.

“Havelock?” the prisoner said. “Havelock, what’s happening? Did something go wrong? Why’s everything rebooting?”

He ignored her, leaning close to his terminal screen. The shuttle was dead, falling to the distant ground of New Terra in a hundred flaming bits. But there was something in the images. A barely visible line that passed through the cloud of smoke and debris where it had died. Something had shot the shuttle down. His first thought was the
Barbapiccola
. His second was the
Rocinante
. He pulled up the orbital tracking, trying to find how the enemy ships had taken action, but the only thing that intersected the line at the moment when the shuttle died was one of New Terra’s dozen tiny moons…

His mouth went dry. He heard the emergency Klaxon sounding for the first time, though he realized now it had been going for a while. Since the shuttle exploded, he thought. He assumed. Naomi Nagata was shouting at him, trying to get his attention, trying to get him to talk to her. He put a priority connection request through to Captain Marwick. For five long seconds, the captain didn’t respond.

“It was the planet,” Havelock said. “The shuttle. It was shot down by something on one of those moons.”

“I saw that,” Marwick said.

“What the hell was it? Some kind of alien weapon? Did the planet blowing up turn on some kind of defense grid?”

“Couldn’t say.”

“I need everything we have on that. All the sensor data. Everything. I need it sent back to Earth, and I need it ready for Murtry and the science team. I’m giving blanket permission for anyone on the crew to see it. Any information we can get – anything – is our top priority.”

“Might not be our top,” the captain said. “My plate’s a bit full right now, but as soon as I’ve a spare moment —”

“This isn’t a request,” Havelock shouted.

When Marwick spoke again, his voice was cool. “I’m thinking you might not have yet noted that we’re on battery power, sir?”

“We’re… we’re what?”

“On battery power. Backup, as you might say.”

Havelock looked around his office. It was like seeing it for the first time. His desk, the weapon locker, the cells. Naomi looking out at him with an expression of barely restrained alarm.

“Did… did it shoot us too?”

“Not so far as I can see. No new holes through the hull, certainly.”

“Then what’s going on?”

“Our reactor’s down,” Marwick said. “And it seems it won’t restart.”

“W
hat does that mean?” Basia asked.

Well,” Alex said, “it’s complicated, but these little pellets of fuel get injected into a magnetic bottle where a bunch of lasers fire. That makes the atoms in the fuel fuse, and it releases a
lot
of energy.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“No,” Alex said. “Well, maybe a little. What exactly are you asking?”

“If our reactor is off-line, does that mean we’ll crash? Is the ship broken? Is it just us?
What does it mean?
”

“Hold your horses,” Alex said. He was sitting in his pilot’s chair doing complicated things with his control panel. “Yeah,” he finally said, dragging the word out into a long sigh. “Reactors are off-line on the
Israel
and the
Barb
. That’s a lot worse for them than it is for us.”

“Felcia – my daughter is on the
Barbapiccola
. Is she in danger?”

Alex started working on his panel again, his fingers tapping out commands faster than Basia could follow. He clucked his tongue as he worked. The clucking while Basia waited for an answer made him want to scream and choke the laconic pilot.

“Well,” Alex drawled out, then tapped one last control and a graphic display of Ilus with swirling lines around it appeared. “Yeah, the
Barb
’s orbit is decaying —”

“The ship is crashing?” Basia yelled at him.

“Wouldn’t say crashing, but we’ve all been keeping pretty low, with bringing up ore and all. Most times adding a little velocity’s just the way you do it, but —”

“We have to go get her!”

“Ease down! Let me finish,” Alex yelled back, patting the air in a placating gesture that made Basia want to punch him in his face. “The orbit’s always decaying, but it won’t be dangerous for days. Maybe longer, depending on how long they can run the maneuvering thrusters on battery power. Felcia’s not in any danger right now.”

“Let’s go get her,” Basia said, taking deep breaths to keep his words calm and level. “Can we do that? Can we go to her ship without the reactor?”

“Sure. The
Roci
’s a warship. Her battery backups are robust. We can do quite a bit of maneuvering if we need to. But with the reactor down, every bit of power we pull off those batteries is gone. It ain’t gettin’ replaced. Lose too much of it to land, and we’ll be in the same position as them. We’re not doing anything until we make a plan. So calm down, or I’ll lock you in your cabin.”

Basia nodded, but didn’t trust himself to speak around the rising panic in his chest. His daughter was on a spaceship that was falling out of the sky. He might never be calm again.

“On top of which,” Alex continued, “you think everyone else on the
Barb
is just gonna be okay with us leaving without them? We don’t have room for everyone on that ship. Docking with a ship full of frightened people looking to get off is never plan A.”

Basia nodded again. “But if we don’t get a plan,” he said.

Alex’s grin went away. “We’ll get your girl. If it comes to that, if we all fall out of the sky, your daughter will be on this ship when it happens. So will Naomi.”

Basia’s panic and anger was replaced by a feeling of shame and a sudden lump in his throat. “Thank you.”

“It’s family,” Alex said, with a smile that was almost only baring his teeth. “We don’t let our family down.”

~

Basia drifted through the
Rocinante
like a ghost.

Alex was in engineering, tinkering with the reactor, trying to figure out what was causing the failure. Basia had offered to help, but Alex had declined. He couldn’t blame the pilot. His ignorance of nuclear engineering and ship’s systems was utter and complete. He doubted the reactor failing to work could be fixed by a really clean bead of weld.

If it turned out he was wrong, Alex would call.

In the meantime, Basia moved through the ship trying to distract himself from the idea that he was slowly drifting toward the planet and a fiery death. That Felcia was too. He went to the galley and made a sandwich that he didn’t eat. He went to the head and bathed with damp scrubbing pads and rub-on cleansers. He left with a few friction burns and all the same worries he’d brought in with him.

For the first time since coming to the
Rocinante
, he actually felt like a prisoner.

Alex had left a panel on the ops deck monitoring the other two ships. Basia could check on the
Barbapiccola
as often as he liked. The pilot seemed to think that the display showing hundreds of hours before the
Barb
’s orbit decayed enough to be dangerous would make him feel better. But Alex didn’t understand. It didn’t matter how long that number was. What mattered was that it was counting
down
. Every time Basia looked at the counter, there was less time than when he’d looked before. When he was looking at a countdown timer for the death of his child, the numbers on it were almost meaningless.

He avoided looking.

He returned to the galley and cleaned up the mess his sandwich preparations had made. He threw his used scrubbing pads and towels into the bin, and then went ahead and ran a cycle of laundry to clean them. He watched a children’s cartoon and then one of Alex’s noir films. Afterward, he couldn’t remember either. He wrote a letter to Jacek and then deleted it. Recorded a video apology to Lucia. When he watched it he looked like a madman, with hair flying wildly out from his skull, and sunken haunted eyes. He deleted it.

He returned to ops, telling himself that he would just double-check that nothing had changed, that the inexorable ticking of his daughter’s death clock was just data to be monitored. He watched the tiny icon that represented the
Barbapiccola
travel its glowing path around Ilus, every passage taking it an imperceptible increment closer to the atmosphere that would kill it.

Just data. No change. Just data. Tick tick tick.

“Alex, Holden here,” a voice blared from the communications console. Basia floated to the panel and turned on the microphone.

“Hello, this is Basia Merton,” he said, surprised at how calm his voice sounded. Holden was calling. Holden worked for the governments of Earth and the OPA. He’d know what to do.

“Uh, hi. Alex left me a message, but comms have been really spotty. He, uh, around?”

Basia laughed in spite of himself.

“I could probably find him.”

“Great, I’ll —”

“Hey, Captain,” Alex said. He sounded out of breath. “Sorry, took a sec to get to the panel. I was elbows deep in the
Roci
’s nethers when you called.”

Basia reached out to turn off his speaker and let them talk, but stopped with his finger hovering millimeters over the control. This was James Holden on the line. He was probably going to be talking to Alex about the reactor shutdowns. Feeling a little like a Peeping Tom, Basia left the connection on.

“There a problem?” Holden asked.

“Yeah, so, fusion don’t work no more,” Alex said, exaggerating his drawl.

“If that’s the punch line, I don’t get it.”

“Wasn’t a joke. Just yanked the reactor apart. Injector works, fuel pellets drop, laser array fires, magnetic bottle is stable. All the parts that make it a fusion reactor work just fine. Only, you know, without the fusing.”

“God damn it,” Holden said. Even Basia, who’d only just met the man, could hear the frustration in his voice. “Is it just us?”

“Nope,” Alex said. “We’re all flyin’ on batteries up here.”

“How long?”

“Well, even on batteries I can put the
Roci
up far enough we’ll all die of old age before she falls down, or I can slope on down planetside and park. The
Israel
’s got maybe ten days or so, depending on how much juice she stores. But she’s also got a ton of people sucking up air, so she’ll be burning through her batteries just keeping everyone warm and breathing. The
Barb
’s worse off than that. Same problems, shittier boat.”

Basia’s gut clenched at this casual description of his daughter’s peril, but kept silent.

“Our creepy friend said there was a defense grid,” Holden said. “Their power station blew up, so the old defenses are in lockdown.”

“They do seem to dislike big energy sources near their stuff,” Alex replied. Basia had the sense they were talking about something from their past, but didn’t know what it was.

“And we heard the supply drop was shot down,” Holden said. “So, we’ve got a few hundred people down here, a bunch more up there, and we’re all about to die because the planet’s defenses won’t let us help each other.”

“The
Roci
’s got the juice to land, if you need us,” Alex said. Basia wanted to scream at him,
We can’t land, my daughter’s still up here!

“They shot the shuttle down,” Holden said. “Do not risk my ship.”

“If we can’t get supplies down to you, me and Naomi’ll be inheriting it pretty soon.”

“And until that happens, do what I tell you to do,” Holden said. The words were harsh, but there was affection in them.

“Roger that,” Alex said. He didn’t sound offended.

“You know,” Holden continued, “we’ve got what seems like an engineering problem. And the best engineer in this solar system is locked up on that other ship. Why don’t you call them and point that out?”

“I’ll do that,” Alex replied.

“I’ll see if there’s anything we can do from this end.”

“Miller,” Alex said. Basia had no idea what that meant.

“Yeah,” Holden said.

“You take care of yourself down there.”

“Affirmative. You take care of my ship. Holden out.”

~

“Look,” Alex said, not quite yelling, “I’ve run the damn numbers. You’re going down. It might take two weeks if you’re lucky, but that ship is gonna be scrapin’ atmosphere and catching on fire.”

“Heard you the first time,” the face on the other end said. A man named Havelock. Alex had called him after the conversation with Holden. He’d stopped off on his way up from the engine room to don a fresh uniform and comb his thinning black hair. He looked very official. It didn’t seem to impress Havelock very much.

“So stop dickin’ me around and turn Nagata loose to help us figure this shit out,” Alex said.

“And that’s where you lose me,” Havelock replied with a tight smile. He was a compact, pale-skinned man with a military-style haircut. He radiated the self-assured physical competence carried by soldiers and professional security people. To Basia, a Belter who’d lived under the thumbs of two different inner planet governments, it said,
I know how to beat people up
.
Don’t make me show you.