The Churn: An Expanse Novella (Expanse 3.5)

“That was incredible,” Erich said. “The way you did that? I mean, damn it. Everyone in there was cold as stone, and you were just madness and power, man. Did you see that? Did you see how gassed they were at you?”

“You said you needed the deck,” Timmy said.

“Come on! That was critical. You can brag about it some.”

“Tables don’t fight back,” Timmy said. “Come on. I got a boat.”

Erich’s relief left him chatty, but he didn’t talk about the fear he’d felt when Timmy had left him. Instead, he filled the trip with everything he’d seen on the feeds, and he told it all like he was telling ghost stories. The security forces were watching the ports, the trains, the transports up to the orbitals and Luna. Eighteen dead today, maybe three times that many in custody. It was news all over the world, and farther. There had even been a lady from Mars who’d come on for a while talking about the history of Earth-based police states. Wasn’t that cool? All the way to Mars, they were talking about what was going on right then in Baltimore. They were everywhere.

Timmy listened, adding in a few words here and there, but mostly he walked until they reached the water, and then he rowed. The ceramic oars dipped into the dark water and lifted out again. Erich drummed his fingertips against the stolen deck, anxious to reconnect it to the network, so see what was happening and what had changed in the time since they’d left the coffee bar. That being connected would somehow protect him was an illusion, and Erich half knew that. But only half.

At the little island, Timmy pulled the boat onto shore and marched into the ruins where a light was burning. An old woman was sitting beside a chemical stove, stirring a small tin pot. The smell of brewing tea competed with the brine and the reek of decaying jellyfish. She looked up. Her face was like a mask, the makeup applied so perfectly it shoved her back into the uncanny valley.

“I found your tea,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Nope,” Timmy said, not breaking stride. “Come on, Erich. I’ll get you set up.”

They walked through a doorway without a door and into a small room. It was even less comfortable than the one with the old lady. There was nothing on the floor but the glue marks where there had once been carpeting. Mold grew up along one wall, black and branching like tree limbs. Timmy put the deck on the ground. His knuckles were black with blood and forming scab.

“You be able to get signal here?” Timmy asked.

“Should be. May need to find a way to power up in the morning.”

“Yeah, well. We’ll come up with something. So this is your room, okay? Yours. That one’s hers,” Timmy said, pointing a thumb at the lighted doorway. “Hers. She asks you in, you can go in, but she asks you to leave, you do it, right?”

“Of course. Sure. Christ, Timmy. Your place, your rules, right?” Erich smiled, hoping to coax one in response. “We’ve always respected each other, right? Only, seriously, who is she? Is that your mom?”

It was like Timmy hadn’t heard him. “I’m gonna get some sleep, but come morning, I can go back in, get some food. And I’ll check in with the man.”

Erich felt his belly go cold. “You’re going to talk to Burton?”

“Sure, if I can find him,” Timmy said. “He’s got the plan, right?”

“Right,” Erich said. “Of course.”

He opened the deck, ran it through its startup options, and connected to the network. The signal strength wasn’t great, but it wasn’t awful. he’d been in half a dozen basement hack shacks with worse. He opened the newsfeed, still set to passive. The glow from the screen was the only light. Erich was cold, but he didn’t complain. Timmy stood, stretched, considered the skinned knuckles of his hand with what could have been a distant sort of ruefulness, and turned to go back to the old woman and the light.

“Hey, we’re friends, right?” Erich said.

Timmy turned back. “Sure.”

“We’ve always watched out for each other, you and me.”

Timmy shrugged. “Not always, but when we could, sure.”

“Don’t tell him where I am, okay?”

* * *

Security crackdowns, like plagues, had a natural progression. A peak, and then decline. As terrible as they might be at their height, they did not last forever. Burton knew this, as did all of his lieutenants, and he made his plans accordingly. Burton moved through his safe houses, playing shell games with the security forces. The first night, while Erich and Lydia slept in their respective rooms in the little island ruin and Timmy tried to find someone in the organization to report to, Burton slept in a loft above a warehouse with a woman named Edie. In the morning, he moved to the storage in the back of a medical clinic, locking the door and hijacking an untraceable connection so that he could speak to his people with relative safety. Little Cole had closed down her houses, locked away her reports, buried a month’s supply of drugs, and taken a bus to Vermont to stay with her mother until things died down. Oestra was still in the city, moving from place to place in much the same fashion that Burton was. Ragman and Cyrano were missing, but it was early enough that Burton wasn’t concerned yet. At least they weren’t in the newsfeeds. Liev and Simonson were.

And there was other evidence, indirect but convincing, of where the little war stood. Even in the first morning after the catastrophe began, security teams were calling on Liev’s underlings, sweeping them up for questioning. Some, they held. Others, they released. Burton had no way of knowing which of those who had been set free had cut deals with security and which had been lucky enough to slip through the net. It hardly mattered. That branch of the business had been compromised, and so it would die. The demand for illicit drugs, cheap goods, off-schedule medical procedures, and anonymous sex could be neither arrested nor sated, and so the thing that mattered most for Burton’s little empire was safe. Would always be safe. The question of how to feed the city’s subterranean hungers was only a tactical one, and Burton could be flexible.

The temptation, of course, was to fight back, and in the following days, some did. Five soldiers from the Loca Griega left a bomb outside a Star Helix substation. It exploded, injuring two of the security contractors and damaging the building, and all five bombers were identified and taken into custody. Tamara Sluydan, who really should have known better, organized street-level resistance, starting a two-day riot that ended with half of her people hospitalized or in custody, eighteen local businesses looted or set afire, and the goodwill of her client base permanently damaged. Burton understood. He wasn’t a man without passions. If someone hurt him, of course he wanted to hurt them back. Phrases like “even the score” or “blood for blood” came to mind, and each time they did, he made the practice of tearing them apart to himself. “Even the score” was the metaphor of a game, and this wasn’t a a game. “Blood for blood” made it sound as if through more violence, past wrongs could be balanced, and they couldn’t. The hardest lesson Burton had ever learned was to endure the blows, accept the damage, and let someone else strike back. Soon, very soon, the crackdown would shift from its great, overwhelming force to individual struggles. It was in his interests to see that those struggles were with the Loca Griega and Tamara Sluydan, not with him. As soon as the enemy was clearly defined in the collective mind of Star Helix and Burton’s name and organization were not central to their plans, the storm would move on and he could begin to reopen the folded fronds of his business.