Cibola Burn (Expanse 4)

“Will be less likely to,” Murtry amended.

“And what’s the plan when RCE orders us to release her?” Havelock said. “It might be worth cutting her loose early. Get out in front of it, get some goodwill back.”

“We’re way past goodwill.”

“I’m just not sure we have the authority to hold her, and if —”

“Are you in her brig?”

Havelock blinked. “Sorry?”

“Are you in her brig?”

“No, sir.”

“Right. She’s in yours. You have the jail and you have the pistol, that makes you the sheriff,” Murtry said. “If the home office doesn’t like what we’re doing, we’ll appeal the decisions. If we lose the appeal, they can send someone out and have a meeting face-to-face. By that time, all this will look so different they might as well not try. And the home office knows that, Havelock. What we’ve got here is a very free hand.”

“Yeah. All right. I just wanted to check.”

“My door’s always open,” Murtry said in a voice that meant maybe Havelock shouldn’t bother him with any more stupid ideas. The connection dropped, and Havelock considered the default screen for a few seconds before he pulled the grid back up. A few seconds later, he deactivated the privacy shield. Naomi was floating in the cage, pushing herself from side to side like a bored kid.

“Your privacy equipment sucks,” she said.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You heard that, then?”

“ ‘A very free hand,’ ” she said.

“Sorry. That was supposed to be between me and him.”

“I know, but it came right through. Honestly, can you hear me peeing in here?”

“Just that the vacuum comes on,” Havelock said, feeling a little blush in his neck and a sharp embarrassment at being embarrassed. “It’s pretty loud.”

“Old ships,” she said.

He went back to the business of running his staff. A report came in complaining of theft from one of the ship technician’s personal lockers. He routed it to the woman on duty. As long as things stayed pretty calm and the crew was all focused on the dangers outside, he could hold the place together. Having a common enemy actually helped with that. A lot of common enemies. Naomi started humming to herself, a soft melody that hovered just on the edge of recognizable. Havelock let himself enjoy it a little. It was that or be annoyed.

“He wasn’t the only one,” he said.

“Sorry?” Naomi said.

“He wasn’t the only one who got off Eros during the outbreak. My old partner was there. He got off too. Then he went back later. When it hit Venus.”

“Wait. You knew Miller?”

“Yeah,” Havelock said.

“Small universe.”

“He was one of maybe six decent people working Ceres Station when Star Helix had the contract. Warned me to quit Protogen before they imploded too. I was sorry about it when he died.”

“He’ll be flattered,” she said.

“We’re not the bad guys here. RCE didn’t start any of this. You said you liked Holden because he always does what he says he’ll do? That’s us. RCE are the ones who asked permission and made a plan and came out here to do what everyone agreed we should do.”

“Not the people in First Landing. They didn’t agree.”

“No, because they were breaking the rules that we were following. I’m just… I know how weird and dangerous this all is, but before your friends start blasting rail gun rounds through our reactor, I want you to see that we’re not the bad guys here.”

His voice had gotten thinner and higher as he spoke. At the end, he was almost shouting. He pressed his hands together. Bit his lips.

“Under a little pressure,” she said.

“Some,” he agreed.

“Let me out, I’ll put in a good word for you,” she said. “And it’ll keep Holden from doing anything stupid.”

“Really?”

“It’ll keep him from doing a couple particular stupid things,” she said. “He may come up with something else. He’s clever that way.”

“I can’t,” he said.

“I know.”

The ship passed invisibly into the planet’s shadow, the decks clicking and groaning as the expansion plates adjusted to the change in radiant heat. Havelock felt a little rush of shame. She was his prisoner. He was the jailer. He shouldn’t need her approval. If she thought he and his people were baby-killing fascist power freaks, it didn’t change anything he had to do. Naomi went back to humming. It was a different song now. Something slow, in a minor key. After a while, she let it drift into silence.

“They weren’t the only ones,” she said as he finished the week’s duty roster. “They were the only ones that were trapped in the outbreak, but the place was locked down before that. A bunch of thugs in stolen riot armor making sure everyone did what they were told, and shooting the ones who didn’t. Getting ready for it. A few people made it past them.”

“Really? Who?”

Naomi shrugged.

“Me,” she said.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Elvi

Elvi sat on the crest of the hill, looking west. The morning light behind her caught the wings of thousands of butterfly-like animals. She hadn’t seen them before, but today they filled the air from the ground to twenty meters high. A vast school of tiny animals. Or insects. Or whatever other name humanity eventually assigned to this foreign kingdom of life. For her, right now, they were butterflies.

They moved together like a school of fish, independent and coherent. Bursts of color – blue and silver and crimson and green – flashed through them, seeming almost to come in patterns for a moment and then dissolving into chaos. The column of them rose, narrowing, then broadened and flattened. They moved past her in a rush, and for a few seconds she was inside the cluster, palm-sized wings fluttering gently against her with a sound like sheets of paper falling and a clean, astringent smell like mint without being mint. She smiled and raised her arms up into the cloud of them, taking joy in the beauty and the moment, and then they passed, and she turned to watch them flow through the air, tumbling to the south as if they were going somewhere in particular.

She stood and stretched, adjusting her collection satchel against her hip. The sunlight pressed against her shoulders and the nape of her neck as she walked forward into the dusty, stone-paved field. The ruins rose to the north, with First Landing not even a smudge next to them, all human artifacts hidden by the curve of the planet and the shape of the hills. All except her.