Cibola Burn (Expanse 4)

The tritone alert came and the public-address system clicked.

“Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Patricia Silva and I’m your pilot on this little milk run.”

A chorus of laughter rose from the crash couches.

“We’re going to be detaching from the Israel in about ten minutes, and we’re expecting the drop to take about fifty. So an hour from now, you’re all going to be breathing entirely new air. We’ve got the governor on board, so we’re going to make sure this all goes smooth and easy so we can put in for a performance bonus.”

Everyone was giddy then. Even the pilot. Elvi grinned and Fayez grinned back at her. Eric cleared his throat.

“Well,” Fayez said with mock resignation. “We came all this way. I suppose we should finish it.”

~

The pain didn’t have a location. It was too large for that. It spread everywhere, encompassed everything. Elvi realized that she’d been looking at something. A massive, articulated crab leg, maybe. Or a broken construction crane. The flat ground of the lake bed stretched out toward it, and then grew rougher until it reached the thing’s base. She could imagine it had pushed its way out of the dark, dry soil or that it had crashed down into it. Her agonized mind tried to make it into debris from the shuttle and failed.

It was an artifact. Ruins. Some arcane structure left from the alien civilization that had designed the protomolecule and the rings, abandoned and empty now. Elvi had the sudden, powerful and disjointed memory of an art exhibit she’d seen as a girl. There had been a high-resolution image of a bicycle in a ditch outside the ruins of Glasgow. The aftermath of disaster in a single image, as compressed and eloquent as a poem.

At least I got to see it, she thought. At least I got to be here before I died.

Someone had dragged her out of the ruined shuttle. When she turned her head, she could see construction lights burning yellow-white and the others laid out on the flat ground in rows. Some were standing. Moving among the injured and the dead. She didn’t recognize their faces or the way their bodies moved. After a year and a half on the Israel, she knew everyone on sight, and these were strangers. The locals, then. The squatters. Illegals. The air smelled like burning dust and cumin.

She must have blacked out, because the woman seemed to appear at Elvi’s side in the blink of an eye. Her hands were bloody and her face smeared with dirt and gore not her own.

“You’re banged up, but you’re not in any immediate danger. I’m going to give you something for the pain, but I need to you stay still until we can splint your leg. All right?”

She was beautiful, in a severe way. Her dark cheeks had dots of pure black scattered across them like beads in a veil. Threads of white laced the black waves of her hair like moonlight on water. Only there was no moonlight on New Terra. Only billions of strange stars.

“All right?” the woman asked again.

“All right,” Elvi said.

“Tell me what you just agreed to.”

“I don’t remember.”

The woman leaned back, her hand pressing gently against Elvi’s shoulder.

“Torre! I’m going to need a scan on this one’s head. She may be concussed.”

Another voice – a man’s – came from the darkness. “Yes, Doctor Merton. Soon as I’m done with this one.”

Doctor Merton turned back to her. “If I get up right now, are you going to stay where you are until Torre gets here?”

“No, it’s all right. I can come help,” Elvi said.

“I’m sure you can,” the beautiful woman said with a sigh. “Let’s just wait for him, then.”

A shadow loomed up from the darkness. She recognized Fayez by the way he walked. “Go ahead. I’ll sit with her.”

“Thank you,” Doctor Merton said, and then vanished. Fayez lowered himself to the ground with a grunt and crossed his legs. His hair stood out from his slightly oversized head at all angles. His lips were pressed thin. Elvi took his hand without intending to, and she felt him pull back for a second before permitting her fingers to stay touching his.

“What happened?” she asked.

“The landing pad blew up.”

“Oh,” she said. And then, “Do they do that?”

“No. No, they really don’t.”

She tried to think through that. If they don’t, then how could it have happened? Her mind was clearing enough for her to notice how compromised she was. Unnerving, but probably a good sign.

“How bad is it?”

She felt Fayez’s shrug more than saw it. “Bad. Only significant good news is that the village is close, and their doctor’s competent. Trained on Ganymede. Now, if our supplies weren’t all on fire or smashed under a couple tons of metal and ceramics, she might be able to do something.”

“The workgroup?”

“I saw Gregorio. He’s all right. Eric’s dead. I don’t know what happened to Sophie, but I’ll go look some more once they get to you.”

Eric was dead. Minutes before, he’d been in the couch beside her, trying to flirt and being annoying. She didn’t understand it.

“Sudyam?” she asked.

“She’s back on the Israel. She’s fine.”

“That’s good then.”

Fayez squeezed her hand and let it go. The air felt cool against her palm where his skin had abandoned it. He looked out over the rows of bodies toward the wreckage of the shuttle. It was so dark, she could hardly make him out except where he blotted out the stars.

“Governor Trying didn’t make it,” he said.

“Didn’t make it?”

“Dead as last week’s rat. We’re not sure who’s in charge of anything now.”

She felt tears forming in her eyes and an ache bloomed in her chest that had nothing to do with her injuries. She recalled the man’s gentle smile, the warmth of his voice. His work was only starting. It was strange that Eric’s death should skip across the surface of her mind like a stone thrown over water and Governor Trying’s should strike so deep.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“Yeah, well. We’re on an alien planet a year and a half from home with our initial supplies in toothpick-size splinters, and the odds-on bet for what happened is sabotage by the same people who are presently giving us medical care. Dead’s not good, but at least it’s simple. We may all envy Trying before this is over.”

“You don’t mean that. It’s going to be okay.”