Cibola Burn

Chapter Ten: Havelock

About five hours before—when Havelock had been halfway through his ten-hour shift—a man dressed in an orange-and-purple suit so ugly it approached violence sat down on a couch in a video studio on Mars. Havelock floated against his restraints, considering him. Strapping in was second nature now, even though it felt a little silly. The orbital space around New Terra was essentially empty, and the chance of a sudden acceleration was almost nil. It was just a habit. On the little monitor set into the cabin wall, the young man shook the feed host’s hand and smiled at the camera.

“It’s been a while since you came by, Mister Curvelo,” the host said. “Thank you so much for coming back.”

“Good to be here, Monica,” the man said, nodding like he’d been caught at something. “Good to be back.”

“So I got a chance to play the new game, and I have to say it seems like a real departure from your previous work.”

“Yeah,” the man said shortly. His jaw was tight.

“There’s been a certain amount of controversy,” the host said. Her smile was a little sharper. “You want to talk about that?”

It was physically impossible for Havelock to sink back into his couch, but psychologically it was a snap.

“Monica, look,” the man in the ugly suit said, “what we’re exploring here are the consequences of violence. Everybody’s looking at that first section, and they don’t think about how everything comes after.”

Havelock’s hand terminal chimed. He muted the newsfeed and took the connection.

“Havelock,” Murtry said, “I have a call I need you to take.”

His voice was so calm and controlled, Havelock felt his breath go shallow. It was the sound of trouble, and his mind clutched at the first fear that came. The Rocinante and Jim Holden, the UN mediator, was about ten hours from the end of its deceleration burn. Almost here. If something had gone wrong with it…

“Something happened downstairs,” Murtry said. “I’ve got Cassie on the horn, and I need you to keep her from melting down while I talk to the captain.”

“Is it bad?”

“Yeah. Take the call. Be the calm one. You can do that?”

“Sure, boss,” Havelock said. “Cool as November, smooth as China silk.”

“Good man.”

The picture froze for a fraction of a second, and then Cassie was looking out at him. For a year and a half, they’d been on the ship together, part of the same team, familiar if not intimate. He’d been aware vaguely when she’d struck up a romance with Aragão and then when they’d broken it off. He thought of her as a friend because he didn’t think about her much at all.

In the image, her skin had an ashy color, and her eyes were lined with red.

“Cassie,” Havelock said, his voice falling into the comforting register he’d trained for in the hostage negotiation workshop he’d taken after the Ceres riots. “Hear things are a little rough down there.”

Cassie’s laugh shifted the camera, shaking her on the screen like an earthquake. She looked away, and then back.

“They’re gone,” she said. In the pause afterward, her gaze shifted like she was looking for something. More words to say, maybe. “They’re gone.”

“Okay,” he said. A thousand different questions pressed forward, wanting to be asked. What happened? Who’s missing? What happened? But Murtry hadn’t asked him to find out, and Cassie didn’t need an interrogator. “Murtry’s talking to the captain.”

“I know,” Cassie said. “We had a lead. We found a hideout. Reeve took them out. I stayed back with the witness.”

“Is the witness there?”

“She’s sleeping now,” Cassie said. “I’m a security systems consultant, Havelock. I’m supposed to be figuring out optimal shift schedules and building the surveillance network. I don’t shoot people. That’s not my fucking pay grade.”

Havelock smiled, and Cassie smiled with him, a tear leaking out the side of her eye. For a moment they were both laughing, the horror and the fear transforming into something like exasperation. Something a little bit safer.

“I’m scared as hell,” Cassie said. “If they come for me too, I won’t be able to stop them. I’ve got the office locked down, but they could cut through the walls. They could blow the place up. I don’t know why we thought it was a good idea to be down here at all. After they blew the heavy shuttle, we should have hauled our butts back up the well and stayed there. We should have dropped rocks on them from fucking orbit.”

“The thing now is keeping you and the witness safe.”

“And how are you going to do that?” Cassie asked. Her voice was a challenge, but one that wanted to be answered. You can’t and Tell me that you can all at the same time.

“We’re working on that,” Havelock said.

“I don’t even have food in here,” Cassie said. “It’s all at the commissary. I’d kill for a sandwich. I really would. I’d kill for it.”

Havelock tried to remember what they’d said in the workshop about talking with people who’d been traumatized. There was a list. Four things. The mnemonic was BEST. He couldn’t remember what any of the letters stood for.

“So,” he said. “I bet you’re pretty freaked out right now.”

“I’m not holding it together.”

“Yeah, it feels like that, but actually, you’re doing good just by not making it worse. That’s how people usually get it wrong when things go to hell. Overreact, escalate. All goes pear-shaped. You’re holed up and talking to us. Means you’ve got good instincts for this.”

“You’re making that shit up,” Cassie said. “I’m just this side of going catatonic.”

“Stay on this side, and that makes it a win. Seriously, though, you’re doing the right thing. Stay cool, and we’ll get on top of this. I know it feels like it’s all going to hell, but you’re going to be all right.”

“If I’m not—”

“You will be.”

“But if I’m not. If, right?”

“Okay,” Havelock said. “If.”

“Do me a favor. There’s a guy back on Europa. Hihiri Tipene. He’s a food engineer.”

“Okay.”

“Tell him I said I was sorry.”

She thinks she’s going to die, Havelock thought, and she may be right. The bright, coppery taste of fear flooded his mouth. The locals were killing RCE security, and she was the last one standing. He didn’t know anything about the state of play down there. For all he knew, there might be three tons of industrial explosive about to turn Cassie into a memory. Any moment, she could die, and he could watch her die and not be able to do anything about it.

“You’re going to tell him yourself,” he said gently. “And after this, it won’t even be scary.”

“I don’t know. You’ve never met Hihiri. Promise me?”

“Sure,” Havelock said. “I’ve got your back on this one.”

Cassie nodded. Another tear streaked down her cheek. He didn’t feel like he was doing a great job of keeping her from meltdown.

A tiny inset window appeared on the feed. Murtry’s security override.

“Hey there, Cass,” Murtry said. “I’ve talked to Captain Marwick, and we’re dropping a team to you. It’s going to take us a couple hours, though. Your job is to keep that civilian safe.”

Cassie’s voice trembled when she spoke, but it didn’t break. “There are forty of our people on the planet and two hundred of them. I’m one person. I can’t protect everyone.”

“You don’t have to,” Murtry said. “I’ve sent the lockdown notice. I’m coordinating the science teams. That’s on me. Your job is Doctor Okoye. You just keep her breathing until we’re down there, okay?”

“Yessir.”

“All right,” Murtry said. “Two hours. You can do this, Cass.”

“Yessir.”

“Havelock, we’re doing a briefing in the security office right now. If you could pop by?”

“On my way,” Havelock said. He undid his straps, pulled himself out of his couch, and launched for the hallway. The Edward Israel had corridors that were built as elongated octagons, like something his grandfather would have traveled in. The straps and toeholds along the walls had no directionality. He moved quickly down the hall, his brain flipping from telling him that he was climbing up a massive steel-and-ceramic well to falling headlong down it to—oddly—crawling upside down, as if he were on the ceiling of a drainage pipe. Belters, he’d been told, had a natural sense of themselves divorced from set ideas of up and down, but he’d only heard that from Belters, and always in the context of how they were better than him. Maybe it was true, maybe it was exaggeration. Either way, by the time he pulled himself into the security office, he felt a little woozy, and missed the false gravity of thrust.

Ten people clung to the walls, all oriented the same way. Men and women with radically different facial structures and skin tones, and all with the same expression. It was almost eerie. Murtry had broken out the riot gear, and the blue-gray body armor with the high neck-protecting collars made them all seem like huge, human-shaped insects. Even Murtry was wearing it, so apparently he was going on the drop too.

“—I have left,” Murtry was saying from his place at the front of the room. “And you’re all I have left. The cavalry’s not going to come in and save our butts. We are the cavalry, and that means I have already lost everyone I’m going to lose. We are the security team for this whole planet, right here in this room. And we can do it, but not if we’re making sacrifices. While we’re down there, if you feel threatened, you do whatever it takes to protect yourself and your team.”

“Sir?”

“Okmi?”

“Does that mean we have authorization for lethal response?”

“That means you have authorization for preemptive lethal response,” Murtry said, then waited a moment for the words to sink in. Havelock sighed. It was ugly, but there wasn’t a choice. If the heavy shuttle had been just a crime, they could have dealt with it like police. But the locals hadn’t stopped there, and now more RCE people were missing or dead. So now it was more like a war.

Well. At least they’d tried the peaceful way first. Not that the Belters would give them any credit for it.

“We’re dropping in twenty minutes,” Murtry said. “It’s a long, fast drop, and some of it’ll be choppy. I’m bringing us down just east of the Belter camp. Smith and Wei are squad leads. Our first priority is reaching and reinforcing the office down there.”

“What about the Barbapiccola?” someone asked.

“Screw the Barbapiccola! What about the Rocinante?”

Murtry lifted his hand, palm out.

“Don’t any of you spend your time worrying about what’s happening up in orbit or back at home. That’s on me, and I’ll take care of it. Me and Havelock.” Murtry flashed a quick smile at him, and Havelock nodded, almost a little bow. “You have your orders, and you have my trust. Let’s get downstairs and get this clusterfuck under control.”

The security force broke, bodies moving through the air in a fast, efficient stream toward the hangar and the light shuttles. Havelock felt a thin stab of regret, watching the others head down without him. He remembered something from his childhood, a flash of memory here and gone, about a lame child and the Pied Piper.

Murtry floated through the air toward him, moving against the flow.

“Havelock, good to see you. I’m going to need a minute.”

“Yes, sir.”

Murtry nodded toward his private office. It was a tiny room, smaller even than a sleeping cabin, with a crash couch on old-style gimbals that arced up and over it. Murtry closed the door behind them.

“So I’m putting you in charge of the ship.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. I’m leaving you in a crap position,” Murtry said. “We’ve got a full crew on the Israel that are mostly eggheads with their petticoats in a bunch because we’re not letting them do science, and the captain’s been fighting hard to keep them up here. Now there’s trouble, they won’t be pushing so hard to go down, but the pressure’s got to go someplace. I’m leaving you a skeleton crew to deal with it.”

“We’ll get it done, sir.”

“Good man. The biggest threat we’ve got on the board is the Rocinante. Used to be Martian military before it went OPA. Israel is huge, but we’re a science ship. If the Rocinante knocks us down, we’re going down.”

“Why would they shoot us down?”

Murtry shrugged. “I think less about why and more about if. So… there’s something I need, and it’s going to play hell with your shuttle schedules, but I want you to do it anyway.”

“Of course.”

“We’re taking one of the light shuttles for the drop,” Murtry said slowly, as if he were thinking it through while he spoke, even though that clearly wasn’t the case. “The one that’s left? I want you to weaponize it. Take off anything that’d keep its reactor from overloading, and set it with a hardened remote ignition. Lock out all the standard nav controls and put in something that just you and me have access to.”

“Captain Marwick too?”

Murtry’s smile was an enigma. “Sure, if you want.”

“Give me half a day, I’ll get it done,” Havelock said.

“Good.”

“Sir? Who are you thinking we’d be using this against? The Belter camp?”

“We’re just buying options, Havelock. I hope not to use it at all,” Murtry said. “But if I decide I’m going to, I’ll want it fast.”

“You’ll have it.”

“I feel better knowing that,” Murtry said, and put his hand on the desk to push off.

“Sir?”

Murtry lifted his eyebrows. Havelock felt a sudden flush of embarrassment, and almost didn’t go on. And then he did.

“I know it’s a small thing, sir, but when I was on the call, Cassie said she was hungry. I told her we’d bring her a sandwich.”

Murtry’s expression was empty as stone.

“I was wondering if you could take her a sandwich, sir.”

“Might could manage,” Murtry said, and Havelock couldn’t tell if the man was amused or annoyed. Maybe both.

Havelock floated at his desk. The cells of the brig were all empty. His skeleton crew—the four most junior security staff and a technician they’d borrowed from the ship’s maintenance crew—were quietly modifying the one remaining light shuttle. Making the bomb. On his monitors, the shuttle drop and the Rocinante’s final deceleration burn, and the internal monitors of the station with Cassie and Doctor Okoye, each had their own window. Havelock watched them all, waiting for the next thing to go wrong. Every minute seemed to stretch. The air recycler hummed and clicked. He chewed his thumbnail.

When the incoming message chime sounded, he started and had to put his hands to the console to keep from drifting off. He shifted to his message queue. The new one came from the RCE corporate offices on Luna, and the subject was listed as POSSIBLE STRATEGIES FOR DEESCALATING CONFLICT ON NEW TERRA: CALL FOR INPUT. The timestamp was five hours ago.

Somewhere out near the ring gates, the radio signals had passed each other, waves of electromagnetism passing through the void with human meanings coded into them. The distance it had taken a year and a half to travel in person, the message had managed in five hours.

Five hours, and still too goddamn slow.