The Churn (8 page)

The security forces had put a fresh lock on Lydia's door, but Timmy knew the back way in. He slid through the window into the bathroom he'd known so well over the last few years. It still smelled like her. They'd gone through everything. Her towels and the shower curtain were on the floor. Bottles of medications littered the sink. He dug through until he found some painkillers and dry swallowed three. In the kitchen, he wrapped his shoulder in ice, then waited motionless until the swelling was down as far as it was going to go. Putting his shoulder back in its socket was a question of lying on the bed, his grip on the mattress bottom hard and unforgiving, and then pulling back slowly, relaxing into the pain, until it slid back into place with a wet, angry pop. He stripped, washed himself with wet hand towels, and changed into a fresh set of his clothes. Ones that didn't have anybody's blood on them.

The churn, the crackdown, the catastrophe. The cycle of boom and bust. The turn of the seasons. Whatever name was applied to it, the inevitable cascade of events in the city rolled on just the same. When the fire trucks came and put out the blaze, they identified the two bodies as Feivel Oestra and an unregistered man. The unregistered was a small, compact, dark-skinned man in an expensive shirt and tailored slacks. He had no tattoos, and a wide birthmark on his right shoulder blade in the shape of a rough triangle. Both men had died by violence. If the fire had been meant to conceal that, it failed. If it was only meant to foul any trace DNA or fingerprint evidence, it did well enough. Add to that the fact that Oestra was on the Star Helix lists as someone to bring in for questioning, and the broad strokes of the story came clear.

The same night, fifteen men loyal to the Loca Griega were surrounded in a nightclub. The hostage situation that rose out of it left two people dead and ten in custody, and the attendant lawsuits against Star Helix and the owners of the nightclub were the top of the local and regional newsfeeds. Oestra's death was little more than a footnote, something mentioned and then moved on from. Other things—smaller things—fell even below that level of obscurity. A woman selling illicit painkillers out of her apartment beside the arcology had a screaming fight with one of her clients, called security, and was taken away for questioning. A sweep of the ruins on the bay islands found a small squatters' camp with an LED lamp, an emergency prep sleeping bag, and an exhausted chemical stove, but anyone who had been living there was gone. An art dealer contacted with a request for assistance with an investigation killed himself rather than come in. None of those events raised any notice at all.

Soon, the paroxysm of violence, legal and otherwise, would thin back down to the normal background radiation of human vice. Very serious people would argue about whether the program had worked. Some would argue that crime had gone down, others that it had actually risen. Star Helix would take its payment from the government and settle out of court most of the complaints made against it. One of the remaining lieutenants would rise to the top, or the whole criminal apparatus would turn over to a new organization, a new generation. Within a year, there would be a new working normal that would run more or less gracefully until the next time. People of little importance would survive and make names for themselves. The mighty would fall, the meek would rise up in their places and become mighty. But all that would come later.

In the pearly light that came before the dawn, one other thing happened that went unnoticed, meaningless to anyone but those involved.

It was on a street down near the water's edge. The eastern sky was brightening with the coming dawn, the western sky still boasted a scattering of stars. Traffic on the street was thick, but not yet the immobile crush that would come with the light. Sea and rot perfumed the air, but the cool made the scent seem almost pleasant. A tea-and-coffee stand was opening, sporting the blue-and-pink logo of a popular chain and a tray of baked goods just the same as a million other trays on five continents and two worlds. Old men and women on basic huffed down the sidewalk, getting in the day's exercise before the sun came up. Young men and women staggered home from long nights at the street clubs and rairai joints, exhausted from hours of dancing, drinking, sex, and frustrated hope. Soon, the streets and tube stations would thicken with the traffic of those who had jobs to go to, and then be released to the masses for whom basic was a way of life.

A boy on the verge of manhood stood on a corner near the tea-and-coffee stand. He was taller than average, and muscular. His close-cropped reddish-brown hair was receding, though he was young. His expression was blank, and he held himself in a tight, guarded way that could have been grief or the protecting of some physical injury. His right hand was swollen, the knuckles skinned. If it hadn't been for that last detail, the security team might have passed him by. Three women and two men, all in the ballistic armor and helmets of Star Helix.

“Morning,” the team lead said, and half a beat later the tall man smiled and nodded. He turned to walk away, but the other personnel shifted to block his path.

The man tensed, then made the visible decision to relax. His smile was rueful. “Sorry. I was just heading out.”

“I respect that, sir. We appreciate you taking a moment,” the team lead said, placing a hand on the butt of his pistol. “Really did a number on your hand.”

“Yeah. I box.”

“Can be a good workout. I'm going to need to see your ID.”

“Don't got it on me. Sorry.”

“We'll need to check you against the database, then. That isn't a problem, is it?”

“Think I got the right to refuse that, don't I?”

“You do,” the team lead said, letting a hint of hardness slip into his voice beneath the casual words. “But then we'd need to take you to the substation and do the full biometric scan to exclude you from the persons of interest list, and there are a whole lot of very unpleasant people who are in that queue. You don't want to hang out with them. Not if you have someplace you need to be.”

The big man seemed to consider this. He glanced back over his shoulder.

“Looking for someone?” the team lead asked.

“Was more thinking there might be some folks looking for me.”

“So. How do you want to play this?”

The man shrugged and held out his hand. The team's data analyst stepped forward and tapped the collector against the thick wrist. The readout stuttered red, then went to solid green. The seconds ticked away.

“If there's something you want to tell me,” the team lead said, “this would be the time.”

“Nah,” the big man said. “I think I'm good.”

“Yeah?”

“You know,” he said, “good enough.”

The team lead's hand terminal chimed. He pulled it out with his left hand, his right still on the butt of his gun. The readout had the red border of a flagged profile. The big man's body went very still while they read. It was a long moment before the team lead spoke.

“Amos Burton.”

“Yeah?” the big man said. It could have meant,
Yes, I killed him
, or
What about him?
All the team lead heard was the affirmation.

“I've got a travel flag on you here. You're cutting it pretty close.”

Amos Burton's eyebrows rose and the corners of his mouth turned down. “I am?”

“You're shipping out to Luna on the noon launch from Bogotá station, Mr. Burton. These apprenticeship programs are tough to get into, and last I heard, they take it mighty poorly if you miss your berth. Might wind up waiting another decade to get back on the list.”

“Huh,” the big man said.

“Look, there's a high-speed line about nine blocks north of here. We can take you there if you want.”

“Erich, you sonofabitch,” the big man said. Instead of looking north, he turned to the east, toward the sea and rising sun. “I'm not Mr. Burton.”

“Sorry?”

“I'm not Mr. Burton,” the man said again. “You can call me Amos.”

“Whatever you want. But I think you'd better haul ass out of town if you don't want to get in some serious shit, Amos.”

“You ain't the only one that thinks that. But I'm good. I know where the high-speed lines are. I won't miss my ride.”

“All right then,” the team lead said with a crisp nod. “Have a better one.”

The security team moved on, flowing around the big man like river water around a stone. Amos watched them go, then went to the tea-and-coffee stand, bought a cup of black coffee and a corn muffin. He stood on the corner for a long minute, eating and drinking and breathing the air of the only city he'd ever known. When he was done, he dropped the cup and the muffin wrapper into the recycling bin and turned north toward the high-speed line and Bogotá station and Luna. And, who knew, maybe the vastness beyond the moon. The sweep of planets and moons and asteroids that humanity had spread to, and where the chances of running into anybody from Baltimore were vanishingly small. A needle in a haystack all of humanity wide.

Amos Burton was a tall, stocky, pale-skinned man with an amiable smile, an unpleasant past, and a talent for cheerful violence. He left Baltimore to its dynamic balance of crime and law, exotics and mundanity, love and emptiness. The number of people who knew him and loved him could be counted on one hand and leave most of the fingers spare, and when he was gone, the city went on without him as if he had never been.

James S. A. Corey is the pen name of fantasy author Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. They both live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Find out more about this series at
www.the-expanse.com.

The gates have opened the way to thousands of habitable planets, and the land rush has begun. Settlers stream out from humanity's home planets in a vast, poorly controlled flood, landing on a new world. Among them, the
Rocinante,
haunted by the vast, posthuman network of the protomolecule as they investigate what destroyed the great intergalactic society that built the gates and the protomolecule.
 

But Holden and his crew must also contend with the growing tensions between the settlers and the company that owns the official claim to the planet. Both sides will stop at nothing to defend what's theirs, but soon a terrible disease strikes and only Holden—with help from the ghostly Detective Miller—can find the cure.

Basia Merton had been a gentle man, once. He hadn't been the sort of man who made bombs out of old metal lubricant drums and mining explosives.

He rolled another one out of the little workshop behind his house and toward one of First Landing's electric carts. The little stretch of buildings spread to the north and south, and then ended, the darkness of the plain stretching to the horizon. The flashlight hanging from his belt bounced as he walked, casting strange moving shadows across the dusty ground. Small alien animals hooted at him from outside the circle of light.

Nights on Ilus—he wouldn't call it New Terra—were very dark. The planet had thirteen tiny, low-albedo moons spaced so consistently in the same orbit that everyone assumed they were alien artifacts. Wherever they'd come from, they were more like captured asteroids than real moons to someone who grew up on the planet-sized satellites of Jupiter. And they did nothing to catch and reflect the light of Ilus' sun once it set. The local nighttime wildlife was mostly small birds and lizards. Or what Ilus' new human inhabitants thought of as birds and lizards. They shared only the most superficial external traits and a primarily carbon base with their terrestrial namesakes.

Basia grunted with effort as he lifted the barrel onto the back of the cart, and a second later an answering grunt came from a few meters away. A mimic lizard, curiosity drawing it right up to the edge of the light, its small eyes glittering. It grunted again, its wide, leathery, bullfrog-shaped head bobbing, and the air sac below its neck inflating and deflating with the sound. It waited for a moment, staring at him, and when he didn't respond, it crawled off into the dark.

Basia pulled elastic straps out of a toolbox and began securing the barrels to the bed of the cart. The explosive wouldn't go off just from falling on the ground. Or that was what Coop said, anyhow. Basia didn't feel like testing it.

“Baz,” Lucia said. He flushed with embarrassment like a small boy caught stealing candy. Lucia knew what he was doing. He'd never been able to lie to her. But he'd hoped she would stay inside while he worked. Just her presence made him wonder if he was doing the right thing. If it was right, why did it make him so ashamed to have Lucia see him?

“Baz,” she said again. Not insisting. Her voice sad, not angry.

“Lucy,” he said, turning around. She stood at the edge of his light, a white robe clutched around her thin frame against the chill night air. Her face was a dark blur.

“Felcia's crying,” she said, her tone not making it an accusation. “She's afraid for you. Come talk to your daughter.”

Basia turned away and pulled the strap tight over the barrels, hiding his face from her. “I can't. They're coming,” he said.

“Who? Who's coming?”

“You know what I mean. They're going to take everything we made here if we don't make a stand. We need time. This is how you get time. Without the landing pad, they've got to use the small shuttles. So we take away the landing pad. Make them rebuild it. No one's going to get hurt.”

“If it gets bad,” she said, “we can leave.”

“No,” Basia said, surprised to hear the violence in his voice. He turned and took a few steps, putting her face in the light. She was weeping. “No more leaving. We left Ganymede. Left Katoa and ran away and my family lived on a ship for a year while no one would give us a place to land. We're not running again. Not
ever
running again.
They
took all the children from me they get to take.”

“I miss Katoa too,” Lucia said. “But these people didn't kill him. It was a war.”

“It was a business decision. They made a business decision, and then they made a war, and they took my son away.”
And I let them
, he didn't say.
I took you and Felcia and Jacek, and I left Katoa behind because I thought he was dead. And he wasn't.
The words were too painful to speak, but Lucia heard them anyway.

“It wasn't your fault.”

Yes, it was
floated at the back of his mouth, but he swallowed.

“These people don't have any right to Ilus,” he said, struggling to make his voice sound reasonable. “We were here first. We staked claim. We'll get the first load of lithium out, get the money in, then we can hire lawyers back home to make a real case. If the corporations already have roots here when that happens, it won't matter. We just need time.”

“If you do this,” Lucia said, “they'll send you to jail. Don't do that to us. Don't do that to your family.”

“I'm doing this
for
my family,” he said softly. It was worse than yelling. He hopped up behind the controls and stomped on the accelerator. The cart lurched off with a whine. He didn't look back, couldn't look back and see Lucy.

“
For
my family,” he said again.

He drove away from his house and the ramshackle town that they'd started out calling First Landing back when they'd picked the site off the
Barbapiccola
's sensor maps. No one had bothered to rename it when it had moved from being an idea to being a place. He drove toward the center of town, two rows of prefab buildings, until he hit the wide stretch of flattened dirt that served as the main road and turned toward the original landing site. The refugees who'd colonized Ilus had come down from their ship in small shuttles, so the only landing pad they'd needed was a flat stretch of ground. But the Royal Charter Energy people, the
corporate
people, who had a UN charter giving the world to them, would be coming down with heavy equipment. Heavy lift shuttles needed an actual landing pad. It had been built in the same open fields that the colony had used as their landing site.

That felt obscene to Basia. Invasive. The first landing site had significance. He'd imagined it someday being a park, with a monument at the center commemorating their arrival on this new world. Instead, RCE had built a giant and gleaming metal monstrosity right over the top of their site. Worse, they'd hired the colonists to build it, and enough of them had thought it was a good idea that they'd actually done it.

It felt like being erased from history.

Scotty and Coop were waiting for him at the new landing pad when he arrived. Scotty was sitting on the edge of the metal platform, legs dangling over the side, smoking a pipe and spitting on the ground below his feet. A small electric lamp that sat beside him colored him with an eerie green light. Coop stood a little way off, looking up at the sky with bared teeth. Coop was an old-school Belter, and the agoraphobia treatments had been harder for him than others. The thin-faced man kept staring up at the void, fighting to get used to it like a kid pulling off scabs.

Basia pulled the cart up to the edge of the pad and hopped out to undo the straps holding the barrel bombs down.

“Give me a hand?” he said. Ilus was a large planet, slightly over one gravity. Even after six months of pharma to build his muscles and bones everything still felt too heavy. The thought of lifting the barrels back to the ground made the muscles in his shoulders twitch in anticipated exhaustion.

Scotty slid off the landing pad and dropped a meter and a half to the ground. He pushed his oily black hair out of his eyes and took another long puff on his pipe. Basia caught the pungent, skunky smell of Scotty's bathtub-grown cannabis mixed with freeze-dried tobacco leaves. Coop looked over, his eyes fighting for focus for a moment, and then the thin, cruel smile. The plan had been Coop's from the start.

“Mmm,” Coop said. “Pretty.”

“Don't get attached,” Basia said. “They won't be around long.”

Coop made a booming sound and grinned. Together they pulled the four heavy barrels off the cart and stood them in a row next to the pad. By the last one, they were all panting with effort. Basia leaned against the cart for a moment in silence while Scotty smoked off the last of his pipe and Coop set the blasting caps on the barrels. The detonators sat in the back of the cart like sleeping rattlesnakes, the red LEDs dormant for now.

In the darkness, the township sparkled. The houses they'd all built for themselves and one another glittered like stars brought down from the sky. Beyond them, there were the ruins. A long, low alien structure with two massive towers rising up above the landscape like a termite hill writ large. All of it was run through with passageways and chambers that no human had designed. In daylight, the ruins shone with the eerie colors of mother-of-pearl. In the night, they were only a deeper darkness. The mining pits were off past them, invisible as all but the dimmest glow of the work lights on the belly of the clouds. Truth was Basia didn't like the mines. The ruins were strange relics of the empty planet's past, and like anything that was uncanny without posing a threat, they faded from his awareness after the first few months. The mines carried history and expectations. He'd spent half a lifetime in tunnels of ice, and tunnels that ran through alien soil
smelled
wrong.

Coop made a sharp noise and shook his hand, cursing. Nothing blew up, so it couldn't be that bad.

“You think they'll pay us to rebuild it?” Scotty asked.

Basia cursed and spat on the ground.

“We wouldn't have to do this if it wasn't for people wanting to suck on RCE's tit,” he said as he rolled the last barrel into place. “They can't land without this. All we had to do was not build it.”

Scotty laughed out a cloud of smoke. “They were coming anyway. Might as well take their money. That's what people said.”

“People are idiots,” Basia said.

Scotty nodded, then smacked a mimic lizard off the passenger seat of the cart with one hand and sat down. He put his feet up on the dash and took another long puff on his pipe. “We gonna have to get gone, if we blow this. That blasting powder makes serious boom.”

“Hey, mate,” Coop shouted. “We're good. Let's make the place, ah?”

Scotty stood and started walking toward the pad. Basia stopped him, plucked the lit pipe from between his lips, and put it on the hood of the cart.

“Explosives,” Basia said. “They explode.”

Scotty shrugged, but he also looked chagrined. Coop was already easing the first barrel down onto its side when they reached him. “It's buena work this. Solid.”

“Thank you,” Basia said.

Coop lay down, back against the ground. Basia lay beside him. Scotty rolled the first bomb gently between them.

Basia climbed under the pad, pulling himself through the tangle of crisscrossed I-beams to each of the four barrels, turning on the remote detonators and syncing them. He heard a growing electric whine and felt a moment of irritation at Scotty for driving off with the cart before he realized the sound was of a cart arriving, not leaving.

“Hey,” Peter's familiar voice yelled.

“Que la moog bastard doing here?” Coop muttered, wiping his hand across his forehead.

“You want me to go find out?” Scotty asked.

“Basia,” Coop said. “Go see what Peter needs. Scotty hasn't got his back dirty yet.”

Basia shifted himself out from under the landing and made room for Scotty and the last of the four bombs. Peter's cart was parked beside his own, and Peter stood between them, shifting from one foot to the other like he needed to piss. Basia's back and arms ached. He wanted this all over and to be back home with Lucia and Felcia and Jacek.

“What?” Basia said.

“They're coming,” Pete said, whispering as if there were anyone who could hear them.

“Who's coming?”

“Everyone. The provisional governor. The corporate security team. Science and tech staff.
Everybody.
This is serious. They're landing a whole new government for us.”

Basia shrugged. “Old news. They been burning eighteen months. That's why we're out here.”

“No,” Pete said, prancing nervously and looking up at the stars. “They're coming right now.
Edward Israel
did a braking burn half an hour ago. Got into high orbit.”

The copper taste of fear flooded Basia's mouth. He looked up at the darkness. A billion unfamiliar stars, his same Milky Way galaxy, everyone figured, just seen from a different angle. His eyes shifted frantically, and then he caught it. The movement was subtle as the minute hand on an analog clock, but he saw it. The drop ship was dropping. The heavy shuttle was coming for the landing pad.

“I was going to get on the radio, but Coop said they monitor radio spectrum and—” Pete said, but then by Basia was already running back to the landing pad. Scotty and Coop were just pulling themselves out. Coop clapped clouds of dust off his pants and grinned.

“We got a problem,” Basia said. “Ship's already dropped. Looks like they're in atmosphere already.”

Coop looked up. The brightness from his flashlight threw shadows across his cheeks and into his eyes.

“Huh,” he said.

“I thought you were on this, man. I thought you were paying attention to where they were.”

Coop shrugged, neither agreeing nor denying.

“We've got to get the bombs back out,” Basia said. Scotty started to kneel, but Coop put a restraining hand on his shoulder.

“Why?” he asked.

“They try to land now, they could set it all off,” Basia said.

Coop's smile was gentle. “Could,” he said. “And what if?”

Basia balled his fists. “They're coming down
now
.”

“See that,” Coop said. “Doesn't inspire a great sense of obligation. And however you cut it, there ain't time to pull them.”

“Can take off the primers and caps,” Basia said, hunkering down. He played his flashlight over the pad's superstructure.

“Maybe could, maybe couldn't,” Coop said. “Question's should, and it's a limp little question.”

“Coop?” Scotty said, his voice thin and uncertain. Coop ignored him.