Cibola Burn

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Basia

Basia floated above the world.

Seventeen hundred kilometers below, Ilus spun past at a dizzying pace. Alex had told him that the Rocinante had an orbital period just under two hours, but Basia couldn’t feel it. Floating outside the ship in microgravity, his inner ear told him that he was drifting, motionless. So instead the universe appeared to spin far too quickly, like some giant child’s toy. Every hour, moving from dark to light, and then an hour later back to darkness, the sun rising from behind Ilus, spinning around behind him, and setting again briefly. Basia had been outside long enough to see the change three times, the center of his own cosmos.

The planet’s one vast ocean was in night. The string of islands that crossed it tiny black spots in a larger darkness. One of the islands, the largest of them, was outlined in a faint green light. Luminescence in the waves crashing against its beaches and cliffs.

The day-side was dominated by Ilus’ single massive continent. The southwestern quarter was the enormous desert. First Landing would be just to the north of it. In daylight, it was far too small to see with the naked eye. Even the huge alien towers where he’d met with Coop and Kate and all the others in some previous lifetime were too small to find.

“You okay out there, partner?” Alex’s voice said over the radio. “Been driftin’ a while now. That hatch ain’t gonna fix itself.”

As he spoke, the Edward Israel passed into the daylight side of the planet and flashed like a tiny white spark. It was almost too far away to be seen, but, in orbital terms, very very close. Alex was holding the Rocinante locked in a matching orbit so he could keep his gun pointed at them.

“It’s beautiful,” Basia said, looking back down at the planet spinning by. “When we came in on the Barb I never took time to just look at it. But Ilus is beautiful.”

“So,” Alex said, his drawl adding an extra syllable to the word, “remember when we talked about the euphoria you can get on a spacewalk?”

“I’m not new at this,” Basia replied. “I know what the happys are like, and I’m good. The hatch is almost done. Just taking a break.”

They’d eaten all their meals together. Alex had shared his collection of twenty-second-century Noir Revival films with him. Just the night before they’d watched Naked Comes the Gun. Basia found noir too bleak, too hopeless to enjoy. It had led to a lengthy conversation over drinks about why Alex thought he was wrong to feel that way.

And, true to Naomi’s promise, Alex had dug up a list of open repair projects for Basia to work on. One of which was a sticky actuator arm on one of the Rocinante’s two torpedo loading hatches.

The hatch lay open next to him, a door in the flank of the warship a meter wide and eight meters long. A massive white tube sat just below the opening. One of the ship’s torpedoes. It looked too big to be just a missile. Almost a small spaceship in its own right. It didn’t look dangerous, just well crafted and functional. Basia knew that in its heart lay a warhead that could reduce another spaceship to molten metal and plasma. It was hard to reconcile that with the gentle white curves and sense of calmness and solidity.

The faulty actuator had already been cut out, and floated next to the ship at the end of a magnetic tether, waiting to be taken inside. With an effort, Basia turned away from the stunning view of Ilus and pulled the new actuator off the web harness on his back.

“Going back to work now,” he said to Alex.

“Roger that,” the pilot replied. “Be glad to have that working.”

“Planning to need it?” Basia asked.

“Nope, but I’d like to have the option if it comes up.” Alex laughed. He laughed, but he was also serious.

Basia began attaching the new arm to the hull mounts and the missile hatch. He knew almost nothing about electronics, and had worried that wiring up the new device would be beyond his skills, but it turned out that it had a single plug that went into a port inside the actuator housing. Which made sense when he thought about it. They would design warships around the idea that damage was inevitable. That repairs would sometimes take place in hostile environments. Making everything as modular and easy to swap out as possible wasn’t just sensible, it was a survival trait. He wondered if the Martians had had a Belter on the design team.

“The Barbapiccola is on our side of Ilus,” Alex said, still in that same lazy, sleepy voice.

“Can you show me?” Basia looked around, but could see nothing but the glowing planet below and the white spark of the Edward Israel.

“Hold on.” A moment later, a tiny green dot appeared on Basia’s heads-up display, drifting slowly.

“It’s the dot?”

“Well,” Alex said, “it’s where the dot is. But it’s too far away to see right now. Just a sec.”

A green square appeared on Basia’s HUD, then zoomed in like a telescope until the distant freighter was the size of his thumbnail.

“That’s at 50X,” Alex said.

“Space is too big,” Basia replied.

“It’s been said. And this is just the space in low orbit around one planet. Breaks the head a bit to think about.”

“I try not to.”

“Wise man.”

The Barbapiccola looked like a big metal shipping container with the squat bell housing of a drive at one end, and the blocky superstructure of command and control on top. She was ugly and utterly functional. A thing of the vacuum that would never know the heat of atmospheric drag.

The large cargo bays that took up most of her interior would be full of the raw lithium ore they’d already pulled off of Ilus. Waiting to fly to the refineries on Pallas Station. Waiting to be traded for food and medicine and soil enrichments. All the things the fledgling colony needed to survive.

Waiting to take his daughter away.

“Can we talk to them?” he asked.

“Huh? The Barb? Sure. Why?”

“My daughter is over there.”

“Alrighty,” came the reply, followed by a burst of static. A few moments after that, a voice with a thick Belter accent replied.

“Que?”

“Sa bueno. Basia Merton, mé. Suche nach Felcia Merton. Donde?”

“Sa sa,” the voice said, the tone a fight between curiosity and irritation. The connection stayed open but silent.

While he waited, Basia finished mounting the actuator arm and plugged it in. He called down on the ship channel to have Alex test it, and it opened and closed several times without binding or twisting the hatch. The motor made a smooth vibration in the hull beneath his magnetic boots that set his helmet to humming.

“Papa?” came a hesitant voice.

“Baby, Felcia, it’s me, honey,” he replied, trying to keep from babbling like an idiot and mostly failing.

“Papa,” she said, delight coloring her voice. Deeper now, richer, but still the voice of the little girl that had squealed Papa when he came home from work. It still melted all the hard, angry, adult places in his heart.

“I’m up here with you, honey.”

“On the Barbapiccola?” she said in confusion.

“No, I mean, in orbit. Over Ilus. I can see your ship, honey. Flying by.”

“Let me find a screen! Where are you? I can look for you.”

“No, don’t worry about that. I’m pretty far away. Had to magnify a lot to see you. Just keep talking to me for a minute before you go around the planet again.”

“Okay,” she said. “Are they nice to you over there?”

Basia laughed. “Your brother wanted to know the same thing. They’re fine. The best jailers ever. And you?”

“Everyone is nice, but worried. Maybe the RCE ship won’t let us leave.”

“Everything will be fine, honey,” Basia said, patting at the empty space as if she could see him and take comfort from it. “Holden’s working it out.”

“He made you a prisoner, Papa.”

“He did me a favor, Felcia. He saved me,” Basia said, and realized it was true as he said it. Murtry would have killed him. And his son and wife were still down on the planet. “I just wanted to say hello. Not talk about that stuff.”

“So hello, Papa,” she replied with her grown-up little girl’s voice.

“Hello, podling,” he replied, calling her by a nickname he hadn’t used in years.

She made a strange noise, and it took Basia a moment to realize she was crying. “Never going to see you again, Papa,” she said, her voice thick.

He started to reply with objections, with reassurances. But his conversation with Alex came back to him, and instead he said, “Maybe, podling. That’s nobody’s fault but mine. Remember that, okay? I tried to do what I thought was right, but I messed up and it’s on no one but me if I have to pay for it.”

“I don’t like that,” Felcia said, still crying.

Me either, honey, he thought, but said, “Is what is, sa sa? Is what is. Doesn’t change that I love you, and your mama, and Jacek.” And Katoa, who I left to die.

“They say I have to go,” Felcia said. The tiny green dot that hid the massive spaceship his daughter lived on was moving away, toward the horizon, into radio blackout. He could see it happening. Watch the unimaginable distance between them getting wider until a planet came between them.

“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.