Cibola Burn

Chapter Forty-Nine: Havelock

Havelock moved across the surface of the Rocinante, magnetic boots clicking to the exterior plating, then lifting free again. To his right, the sun—a sun, anyway—shone brighter than a welding torch. To his left, the great, clouded curve of New Terra filled his personal sky, the planet looming in. The upper boundary of the exosphere was invisible if he looked down, the gases too thin for an imperfect human eye to make out. The vast, sweeping curve of it before and behind the ship was hardly more then a grayness against the void. It felt too close. It was too close. He could already imagine the vicious friction tearing away his suit, the ship, the thin air burning him worse than a belt sander. The angry hot slag that had been one of the defense moons glowed high above, dull red against the pure white stars. His feet grabbed on to the plating, held, released.

“How’s it looking out there?” Naomi asked in his ear.

“As well as could be expected. Kind of wish that planet wasn’t quite so up in my face. I keep feeling like it’s trying to pick a fight.”

“Yeah, I was thinking that too.”

The point defense cannon was a single thick barrel on a hemispheric swivel joint, the metal smooth as a mirror. The hole at the end was a black dot small enough that Havelock could have blocked it with the tip of his ungloved pinky finger. The little tungsten slugs it spat out would have been small enough to hold in the palm of his hand, and the feed would have spat them out by the hundreds every second. It was a machine of inhuman power and sophistication, built to react faster than a human brain and with enough force to shoot down anything that threatened the ship.

Without power, he could use it to hide behind.

He lay flat against the decking, just the toes of the mag boots engaged. He took the rifle off his back, synced it to the suit’s HUD, and a handful of new stars appeared. Red for the militiamen, green for whatever the other things were they were hauling with them. The Rocinante bucked under him, the horizon of the ship shifting as the rail gun fired. A half dozen streaks of blue danced from the defense moons above, marking the path of the rail gun’s round with the instantaneous violence of lightning. He shifted a few centimeters, correcting for the movement of the ship, reacquired his targets, and opened the general frequency.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “This really isn’t something we need to be doing.”

He saw them respond. Their bodies stiffening, their heads craning while they tried to look for him. No one came on the channel. He zoomed in on them. Their faceplates were darkened against the sun, making them anonymous. But he knew all of them.

“Honestly, why? What’s this for? That ship down there and everyone on her is going to die. We’re doing everything we can to put that off, but you guys have done the math, right? You have the same numbers we do. You don’t gain anything from this. It’s just being mean. You don’t need to do that.”

One of the dots flinched. At a guess, the chief engineer was shouting on whatever frequency they were all using now. Drowning him out. Havelock let his sight drift to one of the other dots. The angle made it hard to parse exactly what he was seeing. A gas storage tube of some kind, with complications of wire and circuit board on either end. Some kind of improvised missile, he guessed. They would have been pointless if the PDC he was hiding behind had been working. He wondered whether the engineers knew the Roci’s defenses were down, or if they only guessed. Or if the prospect of their own deaths and their hatred of the Belters had taken them far enough that the risk of being killed in order to deny the Barbapiccola a little more life seemed worth it to them. No matter what, it was disappointing.

“Walters? Is this how you want to go down? Don’t listen to them for a second. Seriously, just turn off the radio. We don’t have to hurry here. Do you think you’re doing the right thing?”

They were visibly closer now than they had been. They weren’t accelerating toward him, but they weren’t braking either. Havelock’s HUD made the calculation. They’d be at the Roci or the Barb or the tether between them in about twenty minutes.

“You guys need to slow down now,” Havelock said. “You’re still my people, and I don’t want to hurt any of you.”

The radio clicked to life. The chief engineer’s voice was thick with anger and contempt. “Don’t try to play that on us, you traitorous bastard. Your little friend’s PDCs are powered down. We saw that before we dropped. Do you think we’re stupid? We have orders to bring you and the Belter bitch back to the Israel and put you both in the brig.”

“Orders?”

“Straight from Murtry.”

Because, Havelock figured, it was precedent. RCE would be able to assert that it had protected its claim down to the last minute. Murtry’s legacy would be that he hadn’t given up a centimeter. Not on the ground, not in space, not on the abstract legal battlefield. Nowhere.

There was a time not that long ago when Havelock would have thought there was a kind of hard purity in that. Now it just seemed weird and kind of pathetic.

“Okay,” he said. “You’re right. The PDCs are down, but you haven’t thought the rest of this through. I am outside the ship. I’m armored. I have an integrated HUD and a weapon that can reach any of you right now. None of you have any cover. The reason you guys are alive right now is because you’re my guys, and I don’t want any of you hurt.”

He watched them react. It was less than he’d hoped. The Roci bucked again. The bolt of the rail gun and the attacking streaks of energy from the moons. Havelock reacquired the targets. It took a fraction of a second for the HUD’s alert to make sense to him. Four of the targets were moving. Fast. Four of the gas tanks, accelerating hard, a cloud of thin mist flowing out behind them as whatever residual vapor had been trapped in it froze into snow.

“You’ve got incoming,” Alex snapped in his ear, and Havelock lifted his gun. One of the missiles was clearly flying off course, a vicious spiral wobble leading it down toward the planet. He took aim at one of the three remaining and blew holes on both sides of the tube. The improvised missile wobbled as whatever steering device the Israel’s engineers had put on the back struggled to use the last of the escaping ejection mass to correct the course, but the venting gases were too destabilizing. It drifted up and began to turn. He shifted to the two remaining targets. He wasn’t going to have time to get them both, but he managed to sink two rounds in the one that was heading straight toward him, trying to knock out the payload.

The one remaining tube hit the Roci’s skin eight meters to Havelock’s right, and the world went white. Something pushed him, and something hurt, and the sound of his suit radio was still there, but it was faintly distant. His body seemed very large, like it had expanded to fill the universe or the universe had shrunk down until it fit in his skin. His hands seemed a very long way away. Someone was shouting his name.

“I’m here,” he said, and it felt like hearing a recording of himself. The pain started ramping up. His HUD was flashing red medical warnings, and his left leg was frozen stiff and unbending. The stars spun around him, New Terra coming up from below him and then spinning up past his head. For a moment, he couldn’t find the Rocinante or the Barbapiccola. Maybe they were gone. He caught a passing glimpse of the Israel, though, far off to his right, and so small he could almost have mistaken it for a tightly packed constellation of dim stars. His HUD spooled up a fresh warning, and he felt a needle fire into his right leg. A cold shudder passed through him but his mind seemed to clear a little.

“Havelock?” Alex said.

“I’m here,” Havelock said. “I’m not dead. I think I’ve been knocked off the ship, though. I seem to be floating.”

“Can you stabilize?”

“I don’t think so. The suit may be malfunctioning. Also I seem to have taken a lot of shrapnel in my left leg and hip. I may be bleeding.”

“Do you have containment? Havelock? Are you losing air?”

It was a good question, but his gorge was rising. The spinning was making him sick. If he puked in the helmet, things would go from bad to worse very, very quickly. He closed his eyes and focused on his breath until he thought he could stand to look again. When he did, he kept his gaze on the unshifting images of the HUD readout.

“I have containment. I can breathe.”

He heard Naomi sigh. It sounded like relief. He was flattered. The red dots of the militiamen spun past in the corner of his eye. He couldn’t tell if they were still getting closer or if they’d stopped. Something bright happened in the atmosphere. The rail gun firing again. The planet rose up from below him and disappeared over his head.

“Hang on, coyo,” Basia said. “I’m coming out.”

“Belay that,” Havelock said. “The guys from the Israel have more of their improvised missiles. They have guns. Stay inside.”

“Too late,” Basia said. “Already cycled out the lock. I just need too… Shit, that’s bright.”

Havelock twisted to the left, finding the Rocinante at last. The explosion hadn’t thrown him as far as he’d thought, but he was on the drift now. Every breath took him farther from the metal-and-ceramic bubble of air. He wondered if he stayed out here whether his body would outlast the ships. His air supply wouldn’t. The improvised missile had left a bright scar on the Roci’s outer hull, but didn’t look like it had made any holes. Tough little ship.

“Huh,” Basia said. “Well, they’re shooting at me.”

“Get back in the ship,” Havelock said.

“I will. In a minute. Now where did you… Ah! There you are.”

The grapnel struck his left arm, the gel splashing out and hardening in almost the same moment. At the first tug, his right leg shrieked in pain. But the vectors were such that his uncontrolled spinning slowed. The red dots of the militia were much closer now. Basia was in real danger of being shot. And there were still eight more improvised missiles.

The Rocinante jumped. The rail gun path through the high atmosphere glowed. Had it really only been five minutes? He had to have missed a couple of rounds. Or maybe getting blown out into space just changed how he experienced time. Or maybe he’d seen them and then forgotten.

“Don’t pull me too fast,” Havelock said. “You’re going to have to put just as much energy into stopping me once I’m there. I could knock you off.” Or smash against the hull, he didn’t say.

“I’ve been in low g more than I haven’t,” Basia said, a real amusement in his voice. “Don’t worry yourself.”

The slow-spinning Rocinante came closer, Havelock’s own spin making it seem like the universe and the ship and his own body were all in slightly different realities. Basia was a darker blot against gray ceramic and metal. Havelock’s HUD cheerfully informed him that his blood pressure had been stabilized. He hadn’t realized that it was unstable. The suit’s attitude jets were still off-line, but Basia jumped up to meet him before he touched the deck, wrapping arms around his shoulders in a bear hug while Basia’s suit slowed them.

“You need to get inside,” Havelock said as his left mag boot locked against the hull.

“I was about to say the same to you,” Basia said. “How much shrapnel did you take?”

Havelock looked at his leg for the first time. The suit was dotted with emergency sealant, the result of a dozen holes at least. “All of it, apparently.”

“I’ve got fast movers,” Alex said.

Havelock turned, rifle up, ready to shoot the missiles down before they reached him or die trying. It took a few seconds to find them. The green dots weren’t heading for him. They were tracking down toward the planet. Toward the Barb.

“Okay,” he said. “Hold on.”

“I think they’re still shooting at you,” Naomi said. He moved forward, his leg not painful now so much as eerily numb. The shifting of the Rocinante was throwing off his aim. His HUD showed a lock and he pulled the trigger. One of the missiles exploded. Basia was hunched down, hands and legs against the decking, a stream of obscenity coming from him sounding like a chant. Havelock tried to move his mag boots, but he couldn’t get them to respond. The Roci bucked.

“The crew of the Barb’s braced,” Alex said. “First impact in—”

A new brightness bloomed below them. Havelock felt it, the impact traveling through the tether to the Roci to his boots almost instantaneously. Through the radio, he could hear Alex groan.

“Okay,” Naomi said. “This is a problem.”

Below them, the Barbapiccola was starting to tilt. The force of the explosions just enough to give it a little velocity, a tumble so slow, he could almost pretend it wasn’t there. Almost. Not quite. The webwork of the tether was shredded. Two strands still held, but the others were drifting. One was cut in two, the others might have broken free of their foot supports or pulled the supports off the skin of the ship. He wasn’t sure. New Terra was so large below, it filled his field of vision. A wave of vertigo washed over him, and he had the near-hallucinatory sense that the planet was a monster rising up through a vast ocean to swallow them all.

“Alex,” Naomi said, “drop the cable.”

“No!” Basia shouted at her.

“Not responding,” Alex said. “The release seems to be damaged.”

The Roci bucked, and the tether snapped taut.

“Cease firing!” Basia shouted. “Stop firing the rail gun!”

“Sorry,” Alex said. “It was on automatic. It’s shut down now.”

“I’m going to the Barb,” Basia said. “I’ve got my welding rig. May be something I can do.”

“That’s not going to work,” Naomi said. “Just cut it.” The Barbapiccola was a good ten degrees off the stable orbit she’d had. Tumbling.

“I’m not coming back in,” Basia said. “And I’m not cutting it. I gotta go look.”

“You remember they’re still shooting at you, right?” Naomi said.

“I don’t care,” Basia said.

“I’ll cover him,” Havelock said. “I can do that.”

“Can you move?”

Havelock consulted his HUD. His shredded leg was immobilized and under pressure to contain the bleeding. One of his attitude jets had been holed. The air in his suit smelled sharp, like melting plastic. That couldn’t be a good sign.

“Not really, no,” he said. “But Basia can get me to cover. The outer airlock hatch on the Roci, maybe. I can stay there and snipe.”

“Hurry, then,” Naomi said. “They’re still getting closer, and eventually they’ll get to a range they might hit something.”

Havelock disengaged his mag boots and turned toward the Belter. “All right. If we’re going to do this, let’s go.”

Basia clapped a hand on Havelock’s arm and started dead hauling him down the ruined side of the ship. The pockmarks and bright spots where the debris of the shuttle had struck were everywhere, now joined by the scar of the improvised missile. A soft white plume curved into the void where something was venting. Time seemed to skip, and he was at the airlock’s outer door. It was open, waiting for him. The red dots showed that his men were still ten minutes away. The Barb was above him now, and the planet above that. Not a beast rising to devour him, but a whole clouded sky falling down to crush him.

“Are you all right?” Basia said. “You can do this?”

“I’ll live,” Havelock said, and immediately realized how completely inappropriate that had been to say. “I’m all right. Lightheaded, but my blood pressure’s solid.”

“Okay, then. I’ll be right back. Don’t let those sons of bitches screw this up any worse.”

“I’ll do my best,” he said, but Basia had already launched himself up along the tether. Havelock checked his rifle, his HUD. He still had to adjust for the Roci’s spin, but he found the little red dots quickly.

“All right, guys,” he said. “You’ve made your point. Now let’s just dial this back. There’s still time. I don’t want to hurt anybody.” The words were surreal. Like a poem from some other century. A litany for deescalating conflict. No one really appreciated how much of security work was just trying to keep things under control for a few more minutes, giving everyone involved in the crisis a little time to think it all through. The threat of violence was just one tool among many, and the point was not making things worse. If there was any way at all, just not making things worse. It occurred to him that Murtry was actually really bad at that part of the job.

His HUD marked a fast-moving object. A bullet or a slow meteor. From the angle, probably a bullet. Another one was moving on a track to pass Basia. It was going to miss too, but not for much longer.

“All right,” Havelock said, raising his rifle. “I’m counting to ten, and anyone that’s still on approach, I’m going to have to put a hole in you. I’ll try to just disable your suits, but I’m not making any promises.”

The red dots didn’t change their vectors.

It was strange. He’d come all this way, faced all these dangers. He was falling by centimeters into a planet and struggling for a few more minutes or hours of life. And the thing that worried him most was still that he was going to have to shoot somebody.