Cibola Burn

“Okay,” Basia said, not sure if the pilot could hear him. He didn’t know if he needed to press a button to respond.

The message on the comm panel changed, and a male voice said, “You don’t need to do anything.”

For a moment, Basia had the irrational feeling that the person speaking had read his mind. He was about to reply when another voice, younger, male, said, “Just talk?” Jacek. The second voice was Jacek. And now Basia recognized the older voice as Amos Burton. The man who’d guarded him at the landing field. “Yeah,” Amos said. “I’ve opened a connection to the Roci.”

“Hello?” Jacek said.

“Hey, son,” Basia replied around the lump in his throat.

“They made our hand terminal work again,” Jacek said. By they Basia guessed he meant Holden and Amos.

“Oh yeah?” Basia said. “That’s real good.”

“It only talks to the ship,” Jacek said, his young boy’s voice bright with excitement. “It doesn’t play videos or anything like it used to.”

“Well, maybe they can make it do that too, later.”

“They said someday we’ll be on the network, like everyplace in Sol system. Then we can do whatever.”

“That’s true,” Basia said. Water was building up in his eyes, making it hard to see the little messages flashing by on the screen. “We’ll get a relay and a hub and then we can send data back and forth through the gates. We’ll have everything on the network then. There’s still going to be a lot of lag.”

“Yeah,” Jacek said, then stopped. There was a long silence. “What’s the ship like?”

“Oh, it’s pretty great,” Basia said with forced enthusiasm. “I have my own room and everything. I met Alex Kamal. He’s a pretty famous pilot.”

“Are you in jail?” Jacek asked.

“No, no, I get to go anywhere I want on the ship. They’re real nice. Good people.” I love you. I am so sorry. Please, please be all right.

“Does he let you fly it?”

“I never asked,” Basia said with a laugh. “I’d be scared to, though. It’s big and fast. Lots of guns on it.”

There was another long silence, then Jacek said, “You should fly it and blow up the RCE ship.”

“I can’t do that,” Basia said, putting as much smile in his voice as he could. Making it a joke.

“But you should.”

“How’s your mom?”

“Okay,” Jacek said. Basia could almost hear the shrug in his voice. “Sad. I started playing soccer more. We have enough for two teams, but we trade players a lot.”

“Oh yeah? What do you play?”

“Fullback right now, but I want to play striker.”

“Hey, defense is important. That’s an important job.”

“It’s not as fun,” Jacek said, again with the verbal shrug. There was a long silence while both of them reached for something to say. Something that could be said. Jacek gave up first. “I’m gonna go now, okay?”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Basia said, trying to keep the thickness in his throat from changing his voice. Trying to keep his tone light, fun. “Don’t run off yet. I need to ask you to do something.”

“Got a game,” Jacek said. “Pretty soon. They’ll get mad.”

“Your mom,” Basia said, then had to stop and blow his nose into the sleeve of his shirt.

“Mom what?”

“Your mom will work too much, if you don’t watch her. She gets to looking things up at night. Medical things. And she won’t get enough sleep. I need you to make sure she gets some sleep.”

“Okay.”

“It’s serious, boy. I need you to look after her. Your sister’s gone, and that’s good, but it just leaves you to help out. You gonna help out with this?”

“Okay,” Jacek said. Basia couldn’t tell if the boy was sad or angry. Or distracted.

“See you, son,” Basia said.

“See you, Pop,” Jacek replied.

“Love you,” Basia said, but the signal had already died.

Basia wiped his eyes with the sleeves of his shirt. He floated against his restraints, breathing deep, ragged breaths for a full minute, then pulled himself over to the crew ladder. He moved aft, deck hatches opening at his approach and slamming shut behind him as he went, the sound echoing through the empty ship.

He changed shirts in his room, then spent a few minutes in the head cleaning his face with wet towels. They had a large shower unit – he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a real shower – but it only worked when the ship was under thrust.

When he no longer looked like a man who’d been bawling, Basia floated back along the ladder to the cockpit. He was considering whether or not it was polite to knock before entering when he drifted too close to the hatch’s electronic eye and it snapped open with a hiss.

Alex was belted into the pilot’s chair, the large display directly in front of him spooling out ship status reports and a rendering of Ilus, its single massive continent dotted with red and yellow marks. And one green dot that was First Landing. The pilot scowling at the screen tensely as though he could will the universe to do something. Like he could make it give his crew back.

Basia was turning to leave when the deck hatch banged shut and Alex looked up.

“Hey,” he said and tapped out something on the panel.

“Hello,” Basia said.

“How’d your call go? Everything okay?”