Cibola Burn (Expanse 4)

“Why what?” Elvi asked, walking through the main chamber of the ruins. She had two thick plastic sacks of fresh-ish water. Potable, at least. And a box the size of her hand with protein rations in it. It was supposed to be enough for one person for one day, and it was all they were going to have until they came back to the camp in the ruins. She’d also found a satchel with a wide fake-leather belt to strap it closed.

“Why you’re chasing after Holden again,” Fayez said, ducking around a passing woman.

“I’m not chasing after Holden,” Elvi said, then stopped and turned, putting her palm against Fayez’s chest. She could feel his heartbeat against her fingertips. “You know I’m not chasing after Holden, don’t you? Because that’s… I mean, no.”

“Then why?” he said.

The organisms still dying in Elvi’s eyes had lost all their green tinge, but they left the world a little blurry. She felt like she was seeing Fayez through a filter that softened his features, smoothed his skin. He looked like a media star in some particularly unflattering role that involved a lot of mud and not many showers.

“Because I want to see,” she said. “It’s why I came out here. It’s why I’ve been spending all my time taking samples and running assays. I love what I do, and what I do is go look at things. Holden said he was talking to aliens, and that he might be able to turn off the defense grid, and it means we’re going to drive through the wilderness —”

“What’s left of it,” Fayez said.

“And because I’m going to die,” Elvi said.

Fayez looked away.

“We’re all going to die,” Elvi said. “And we’re all very probably going to die very, very soon. And my choices are to go out and look at this amazing, strange, beautiful, ruined world or else stay in the camp and watch everyone around me die by centimeters. And I’m a coward and a hedonist and I’m sometimes very, very selfish.”

“You know. Between the two of us, I always thought of myself as more along those lines.”

“I know.”

Outside, Amos’ kludged cart was roaring, the constant burn of the combustion chamber was like a synthesizer stuck on a particularly ragged and unpleasant G under middle C. Amos was in the cab, sitting at the controls. Fayez walked with her to the side of the cart and then helped her scramble up into the cab. When he stepped back, he had his hands shoved deep in his pockets. She couldn’t see quite well enough to know if there were tears in his eyes too.

“Those the supplies, doc?” Amos asked.

“They’re what we’ve got to work with.”

“All right then. I got the signal from the captain’s hand terminal locked in. We got maybe a week’s worth of gas, and the guy I’m after’s got a day’s head start.”

“I wish we had sunglasses,” she said. “Or a pizza.”

“Fallen fucking world, doc.”

“Let’s go.”

The cart lurched once, the tires spinning in the mud for a moment, then catching and lurching again. The rain made tiny dots on the windshield, and a wide, smeary wiper cleared them away. The world before her was a vast plain of mud. She checked Amos’ hand terminal. The path toward James Holden would take them through territory that had been forestlike, past the shoulder of a massive freshwater lake, through a maze of canyons that defied any standard geological explanation. She was going to see a world in the aftermath of utter disaster, but she would still see it. And the state of nature was always recovering from the last disaster.

“Stop,” she said. “Could you please stop. Just for a minute?”

“You need a potty break, you should have thought of that before we started,” Amos said, but he stopped the drive. She couldn’t even hear the electrical motors winding down over the roar of the acetylene-powered generator. She opened the door of the cab and leaned out. They’d only gone a hundred meters. She could still see Fayez, even though he was mostly a dark, fuzzy blot. She waved, and he waved back. She gestured that he should come toward her, and he did. She watched him trot across the mud field, looking down and watchful for slugs.

When he reached the cab, he looked up at her. She was sure there were tears in his eyes now.

“Chances are I’m not coming back,” she said.

“I know.”

“Kind of need to get a move on, doc,” Amos said. “Don’t mean to be a buzz-kill or nothing.”

“I understand,” Elvi said. She looked down again. Her gaze met his dark eyes. “Are you getting up here?”

“Is he what?” Amos asked at the same moment Fayez said, “Of course I am.”

Elvi scooted across the seat, making room for him. Fayez climbed up beside her and slammed closed the door. Amos looked at them both, his eyebrow lifted. Elvi smiled at him and pulled Fayez’s arm over her shoulder.

“Don’t remember this was part of the deal, doc,” Amos said.

“It’s kind of like our honeymoon,” Elvi said. She felt Fayez stiffen for a moment, and then almost melt against her.

Amos considered that for a moment, then shrugged. “Whatever floats your boat.”

Chapter Forty-Seven: Basia

“How’s it look in there?” Naomi said in Basia’s helmet. She had a nice voice, a singer’s voice. It sounded good even over the tiny suit speakers. Basia recognized that his cognition was drifting and shook his head once, sharply. A glance at his HUD told him his O2 levels were low, and he pulled out a replacement bottle.

I’ve found the other five holes,” he said while he worked at the air intake nipple. “You were right. Two were behind a console. Tough to see from that side. But I think this is all of them in ops.”

“Machine shop is next,” she replied. “Got one slow leaker there. It’s cramped. We’ve got some after-market equipment using up a lot of the space between hulls.”

“I’ll squeeze,” Basia said, then pulled out a small metal disk and started welding it over one of the five holes.

“She is over the horizon… now,” Alex said over the channel. Naomi was sitting in her vacuum suit on the ops deck coordinating the work, so the only way anyone could talk to her was on her suit radio. Basia wanted to ask who she was, but started welding a second patch instead. A tiny red glob of molten metal spun off the bead and stuck to his faceplate, cooling to a black dot over his left eye. There wasn’t much danger of it hurting his suit, but it was a rookie mistake anyway. A sign he was tired. The gentle rotation of the Rocinante at the end of the tether made free-floating objects drift toward the walls. He’d need to remember that.