Cibola Burn

“Makes ours look good. That lithium ore’s going to be a high-atmosphere vapor in a little over four days.”

“Well, I guess we won’t need to worry about stopping them from taking it back to the market.”

“Problem’s about to solve itself,” Marwick agreed. “But to the point. Security? These people are facing a death they can’t fight and they can’t flee from. They’re going to get crazy if we don’t do something. And neither you nor I have the manpower to stop them if things get out of control.”

What would it matter? Havelock wanted to say. Let them riot. It won’t change how long before we hit air. Not even by a minute.

“I hear you,” he said. “I do have the security override codes. I’ll have the autodoc add a little tranquilizer and mood stabilizer, maybe some euphorics to everyone’s cocktail. I don’t want to do much, though. I need these people thinking straight, not doped to the gills.”

“If that’s how you want to play it.”

“I’m not putting this ship on hospice. Not yet.”

The captain’s shrug was eloquent, and left nothing more to say. Havelock dropped the connection. The screen went to its default. Despair rushed up over him like a rogue wave. They had done everything right, and it didn’t matter. They were all going to die – all the people he’d come to help protect, all the people on his team, his prisoner, himself, everyone. They were going to die and there wasn’t anything he could do about it but get them high before it happened.

He didn’t know he was going to punch the screen until he’d already done it. The panel shifted in its seating a little, but he hadn’t left a mark on it. The gimbals of his crash couch hissed as they absorbed the momentum. He’d split his knuckle. A drop of blood welled on his skin, growing to the size of a dark red marble, the surface tension pulling it out along his skin as he watched. When he moved, he left a spray of droplets hanging in the air like little planets and moons.

“You know,” Naomi said, “if you’re looking at hundreds of people burning to death as a problem solving itself, that may be more evidence that you’re on wrong side.”

“We didn’t plant the bombs,” Havelock said. “That was them. They started it.”

“Does that matter to you?”

“At this point? Not as much as it probably should.”

Naomi was floating close to her cage door. He was always amazed at a Belter’s capacity to endure small spaces. Probably claustrophobia had been selected out of their gene pool. He wondered how many generations of Naomi’s family had lived up the well.

“You’re bleeding,” she said.

“Yep. That’s not going to matter much either.”

“You know you could let me out. I’m a very good engineer, and I have the best ship out here. Get me back on the Roci, and I might be able to figure out a way to make things better.”

“Not going to happen.”

“And here I thought it didn’t matter to you,” she said with a smile in her voice.

“I don’t know how you can be so calm about all this.”

“It’s what I do when I’m scared. And really, you should let me out.”

Havelock gathered the blood out of the air. His knuckle had scabbed over already. He logged into the autodoc with the sick sense of taking the first step toward giving up. But it had to be done. A crew full of panicking people wasn’t going to make anything better. Especially since the closest thing he had to a full staff was down on the planet with Murtry.

Havelock’s newsfeeds from back home were filled with hyperbolic pieces about the tragedy at New Terra. The sensor data of the explosion had found its way to a few of the reputable feeds, but there were also three or four other forged versions out there too. The faked data wasn’t particularly more impressive than the truth. He spooled through a dozen commentators. Some of them seemed angry that the expedition had been allowed to go out, some were somber and sad. None of them seemed to think there was much chance of anyone surviving. His message queue had over a thousand new entries. People in the media. People from the home office. A few – just a few – from people he’d known. An old lover from when he was at Pinkwater. A cousin he hadn’t seen in a decade and a half who was living on Ceres Station now. A couple of classmates from school.

There was nothing like dying publicly on a few billion screens to help reconnect with folks. He wasn’t going to answer any of them. Not even the ones from his employers. Not even the ones from his friends. All of it felt like he was trapped underwater and drowning, looking up at the water’s surface and knowing he’d never make it there.

He undid his straps.

“Goodnight, Havelock,” Naomi said.

“I’ll be back,” he said, launching himself across the office.