Cibola Burn (Expanse 4)

It was too domestic a location for the kind of meeting they were having. It all felt unreal, that he and five people he knew were discussing the murder of a dozen corporate security guards in Cate’s living room next to her vase full of sticks.

Scotty was talking, telling them to wait. Not the voice of reason, the voice of fear. Pete was on his side, arguing against escalating. Cate and Zadie shouted them down. Ibrahim said nothing, just pulled on his bottom lip and frowned at the floor.

“I think we wait for Holden,” Basia said when there was a pause in the conversation.

“Holden’s been here a day. What are we waiting for?” Cate asked, dripping angry sarcasm.

“He needs time to meet with us, get the lay of the land,” Basia said, the words sounding feeble even in his own ears. “But he’s the mediator. And he can talk directly to the OPA governing board and to the UN. His recommendations will have real weight. We need him on our side.”

“The OPA?” Zadie spat. “The UN? What exactly are they going to do for us? Send a tersely worded letter? Murtry and his thugs are right there!” Zadie stabbed her fingers at the wall, at the street beyond, at the guards with machine guns. “How many of our people do they get to kill before we defend ourselves?”

“We killed them first,” Basia said, then regretted it immediately. Everyone started shouting, mostly at him. Basia stood up. He knew he was an imposing figure, stocky and thick-necked. Bigger than anyone else in the room. He stepped forward, a physical challenge. He hoped his size would be enough. He was fairly certain Cate could beat him to death if she decided to. “Shut up!” They did. “We have a chance here,” he continued, quieting his voice with an effort. “But it’s so fragile. We killed the RCE people.”

“I wasn’t —” Zadie started, but Basia hushed her with a gesture.

“They killed Coop. Right now, they feel like they’ve made a point, so they won’t kill anyone else unless we provoke them. So, right now, we are at a balance. If no one does anything to tip it one way or another, Holden can do what they sent him here to do. He can help us resolve this without more violence.”

Cate snorted and looked away, but Basia ignored her. “I’m in this with you. I have just as much to lose as any of you. But we want this man on our side. He saw Murtry murder one of us. He’s never seen us do anything. We have the advantage of seeming like the victims right now. Let’s not change his mind on that.”

There was a long moment while Basia stood in the middle of the room, panting with emotion, and no one spoke.

“Okay,” Ibrahim said. He’d been a soldier once. The others respected him. When he finally spoke, it was with a tone of authority. Cate frowned, but said nothing.

“Okay?”

“Okay, big man,” Ibrahim said. “We play it your way for now. Go talk to this Holden. Get him on our side. He’s the one found your boy, sa sa? Use that.”

Basia felt a rush of anger and shame at the mention of Katoa, of using him as an in with Holden, but he pushed it down. Ibrahim was right. It would give Basia something to talk to Holden about, and it would make him seem sympathetic.

“I’ll talk to him tomorrow,” Basia said, swallowing the sudden nausea he felt.

“It’s on you now, big man,” Ibrahim said. It sounded like a threat.

~

Basia walked home in the pitch black of the Ilus night. He wished he’d thought to bring a light. He wished he’d never blown up a shuttle full of people and helped Coop murder the RCE guards. He wished his wife wasn’t angry with him, and that she wasn’t right. He wished that Katoa were still alive and that they all still lived in their home on Ganymede and that no one had ever come to Ilus in the first place.

He tripped on a rock and fell to his knee, skinning it. No way to fix the other things, but at least he could have thought to bring a light.

Lucia had left a light on in the house. Without it, Basia might have walked right past it without realizing. At least she wanted him to come home. She left lights on to make it happen. For the first time in a long time, Basia felt himself smile.

A shadowy figure darted through the dim light around the house to the back door. Before he had time to think, Basia was at a dead run. The figure at the door cowered, smaller than him and terrified.

Felcia.

“Papa! You scared me!”

“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry. I didn’t see it was you. Just saw someone sneaking around the house and came running.”

Felcia smiled up at him, eyes damp and lip trembling, but being brave.

“Okay, going in now.”

“Felcia,” Basia said, putting his hand against the door to hold it closed. “Why are you sneaking up to the house in the middle of the night?”

“I was out, walking.” She looked away, not able to meet his eyes.

“Please, baby, tell me it was a boy.”

“It was a boy,” she said, still not looking at him.

“Felcia.”

“I’m going up on the next shuttle, Papa,” she said, looking him in the eye finally. “I’m going up. When James Holden gets them to let the Barbapiccola go, I’m going with it. From Pallas I can catch transport to Ceres. Mama is calling her old mentor at CUMA to get me an interview for the pre-med program at the Hadrian on Luna.”

Basia felt like someone had punched him in the solar plexus. The pain in his stomach kept him from breathing.

“I’m going, Papa.”

“No,” he said. “You’re not.”

Chapter Thirteen: Elvi

Elvi’s grandfather had remarried late in life. His new husband had been a German man with a merry laugh, a snow-white beard, and a cheerful cynicism about humanity. What she remembered best about Grandpa Raynard was how quick he was with an epigram or a quip. He had one for every occasion. She’d thought they made him sound worldly and wise, in part because she was so often unsure what exactly he meant by them.

One thing he’d said was Once is never. Twice is always.

When the shuttle went down, she’d known – they’d all known – that someone had put the explosives there, but her experience of the Belter colonists beginning that same night had been so different that the knowledge and the emotional impact of it had become detached. Someone among the Belters had done a terrible thing, but that person was faceless, anonymous, unreal. Doctor Merton doing everything she could to save the wounded and soothe the injured was real. Her daughter, Felcia, who was at the farthest point humanity had ever been from Earth and whose ambitions were drawing her back toward Luna, was real. Anson Kottler and his sister Kani who’d helped Elvi set up her hut. Samish Oe with his goofy half smile was real. Carol Chiwewe. Eirinn Sanchez. They had all been so kind that Elvi had shelved the death of the governor as an outlier, something so rare it would never happen again.