Cibola Burn (Expanse 4)

Tick tick tick, the clock burned soundlessly at his back.

He adjusted the air recycling system nozzle near his panel and sent a cool breeze across his face. He finished the recording and spent some time organizing his files by content and date. Then decided it was better by date and name, and reorganized them again.

Tick tick tick, hot like the sun on a dark shirt at noon. Burning without burning.

He opened up the file Alex had set up with repair tasks and scrolled through the list. He’d already checked off the ones he was actually capable of doing. He spent some time looking over the rest of the items, trying to decide if there were any he could help out with. Nothing jumped out at him. Not surprising, since it was his fifth time through the list.

Tick tick tick.

Basia turned around. The first thing he noticed was that the simulated orbital paths looked different. The changes were so slight that he probably shouldn’t have been able to see them, but the bright hateful lines that described his only daughter’s demise had burned themselves into his brain. There was no doubt, they were different. For some reason, it took him longer to notice that the clock had changed.

There were three fewer days.

Last time he’d looked at the clock, just a few hours before, there had been slightly over eight days on it. Now there were just under five.

“The clock is broken,” he said to no one.

Alex was up in the cockpit, where he seemed to spend most of his time. Basia yanked at the straps holding him to the chair, fighting with them without success until he forced himself to calm down and just press the release latches. Then he kicked off to the crew ladder and climbed up.

Alex had a complex-looking graphic on his main display. He was working at it with gentle touches on the screen and a steady stream of muttering under his breath.

“The timer’s wrong,” Basia said. If it weren’t for the fact that he found himself inexplicably out of breath, he probably would have yelled it.

“Hmmm?” Alex swiped at the panel and it shifted to a graph filled with numbers. He began entering new figures into it.

“The clock – the orbital timer thing is broken!”

“Workin’ on it right now,” Alex said. “It ain’t broke.”

“It’s down to five days!”

“Yeah,” Alex said, then stopped working to rotate his chair and look at Basia. “Was going to talk to you about that.”

Basia felt all the strength go out of him. If there had been gravity, he would have slumped to the floor on legs made out of rubber. “It’s right?”

“It is,” the pilot said, swiping the screen behind him again to get back to the graphical display. “But it ain’t unexpected. The initial estimates about their batteries were gonna change. They were back-of-the-napkin kind of shit to start with.”

“I don’t understand,” Basia said. His stomach had clenched tight. If he’d bothered to eat anything in the last day or two, he’d probably have vomited.

“The first estimate was based on orbital distance, ship mass, and expected battery life versus consumption.” As Alex spoke, he pointed at various places on his graph. As though that explained anything. As though the graph made any sense. “Orbital decay’s just not something anyone worries about when the reactors are on. If any of us had wanted to, we coulda built orbits that were damn near permanent, but the Barb’s got that shuttle going up and down with the ore, so she went kind of low. Save a little on each trip. And, forgive me for saying it, she’s a flyin’ hunk of shit. Heavier than she should be, and batteries dyin’ fast. So, the new numbers.”

Basia floated next to the gunner’s seat watching the hateful math spool out across the screen.

“She lost three days,” he finally said when he found the breath to do it. “Three days.”

“No, she never had those days to start with,” Alex replied. His words were harsh, brutal, but his face was sad and kind. “I haven’t forgotten my promise. If the Barb goes down, your little girl will be on this ship when it happens.”

“Thank you,” Basia said.

“I’m goin’ to call the captain right now. We’ll work up a plan. Just give me some time. Can you do that?”

Five days, Basia thought. I have five days to give you.

“Yes,” he said instead.

“Okay,” Alex said and waited expectantly for Basia to leave. When he didn’t the pilot shrugged and turned around to call up the comm display. “Cap’n, Alex here. Come in.”

“Holden here,” the familiar voice said a few seconds later.

“So, ran the updated numbers like you asked. We’re definitely losing the Barb first.”

“How bad?” the captain asked. His connection seemed fuzzy. It took Basia a moment to realize it was the sound of rain.

“Just under five days until she starts scraping on more atmo than she can handle.”

“Dammit,” Holden said, then nothing. The silence went on long enough that Basia started to worry they’d lost their connection. “How’s the Roci?”

“Oh, we’re fine. Pretty much everything’s off but the lights and the air. Lots of slack.”

“Can we help?”

“Like,” Alex said, dragging the word out, “give ’em a tow?”

“Like that. What can we do?”

“Boss,” Alex said, “hooking two ships together like that can be done, but doing it in low orbit ain’t a trivial problem. I’m just a pilot. Sure would be nice if we had, you know, our engineer back to run those numbers.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Holden said. He sounded angry to Basia. That was good. Angry was good. Basia found himself oddly comforted by the idea that someone other than him was upset by the situation.

“Any chance on that?” Alex prompted.

“Let me chat with Murtry again,” Holden said. “I’ll call back soon. Holden out.”

Alex sighed. His lips pressed thin.

“Talking’s not going to work,” Basia said. “Is it?”

“I don’t see how,” Alex said.

“Which means there’s a non-zero chance that we’ll wind up needing to go get her ourselves. You know there’s only two of us. You and me. That’s it.”

“There’s three of us,” Alex said, patting the control panel. “Don’t forget. We’ve got the Roci.”

Basia nodded, waited for his gut to clench up again, was surprised to find he felt a warm sense of peace flowing through him. “What will I need to do?”