Cibola Burn

But Breach Candy wasn’t as full as it used to be. There were fewer people in the tube stations and hallways, fewer people coming to the veteran’s outreach program. She heard that enrollment at the upper university was down six percent.

Humanity hadn’t managed a single viable colony on the new worlds yet, but the probe data was enough. Humanity had its new frontier, and the cities of Mars were feeling the competition.

As soon as she stepped in the door, the rich scent of her sister-in-law’s gumbo thickening the air and making her mouth water, she heard her brother and nephew, voices raised. It knotted her gut, but they were family. She loved them. She owed them. Even if they made the idea of take-out shwarma seem awfully tempting.

“— not what I’m saying,” her nephew said. He was in upper university now, but when the family started fighting, she could still hear the six-year-old in his voice.

Her brother boomed in reply. Bobbie recognized the percussive tapping of his fingertips against the tabletop as he made his points. Drumming as a rhetorical device. Their father did the same thing.

“Mars is not optional.” Tap. “It is not secondary.” Tap. “These gates and whatever’s on the other side of them isn’t our home. The terraforming effort —”

“I’m not arguing against the terraforming,” her nephew said as she walked into the room. Her sister-in-law nodded to her from the kitchen wordlessly. Bobbie nodded back. The dining room looked down into a living space where a muted newsfeed was showing long-distance images of unfamiliar planets with a beautiful black man in wire-rimmed glasses speaking earnestly between them. “All I’m saying is that we’re going to have a lot of new data. Data. That’s all I’m saying.”

The two of them were hunched over the table like there was an invisible chessboard between them. A game of concentration and intellect that wrapped them both up until they couldn’t see the world around them. In a lot of ways, that was true. She took her chair without either of them acknowledging she’d arrived.

“Mars,” her brother said, “is the most studied planet there is. It doesn’t matter how many new datasets you get that aren’t about Mars. They aren’t about Mars! It’s like saying that seeing pictures of a thousand other tables will tell you about the one you’re already sitting at.”

“Knowledge is good,” her nephew said. “You’re the one who always told me that. I don’t know why you’re getting so bent about it now.”

“How are things for you, Bobbie?” her sister-in-law said sharply, carrying a bowl to the table. Rice and peppers to use as a bed for the gumbo and a reminder to the others that there was a guest. The two men scowled at the interruption.

“Good,” Bobbie said. “The contract with the shipyards came through. It should help us place a lot of vets in new jobs.”

“Because they’re building exploration ships and transports,” her nephew said.

“David.”

“Sorry, Mom. But they are,” David replied, not backing down. Bobbie scooped the rice into her bowl. “All the ships that are easy to retrofit, they’re retrofitting, and then they’re making more so that people can go to all the new systems.”

Her brother took the rice and the serving spoon, chuckling under his breath to make it clear how little he respected his son’s opinion. “The first real survey team is just getting to the first of these places —”

“There are already people living on New Terra, Dad! There were a bunch of refugees from Ganymede —” He broke off, shooting a guilty glance at Bobbie. Ganymede wasn’t something they talked about over dinner.

“The survey team hasn’t landed yet,” her brother said. “It’s going to be years before we have anything like real colonies out there.”

“It’s going to be generations before anyone walks on the surface here! We don’t have a fucking magnetosphere!”

“Language, David!”

Her sister-in-law returned. The gumbo was black and fragrant with a sheen of oil across the top. The smell of it made Bobbie’s mouth water. She put it on the slate trivet and handed the serving spoon to Bobbie.

“And how’s your new apartment?” she asked.

“It’s nice,” Bobbie said. “Inexpensive.”

“I wish you weren’t living in Innis Shallow,” her brother said. “It’s a terrible neighborhood.”

“No one’s going to bother Aunt Bobbie,” her nephew said. “She’d rip their heads off.”

Bobbie grinned. “Naw, I just look at them mean, and they —”

From the living room, there was a sudden glow of red light. The newsfeed had changed. Bright red banners showed at the top and bottom, and on the screen, a jowly Earth woman looked soberly into the camera. The image behind her was of fire and then a stock image of an old colony ship. The words, black against the white of the flames, read TRAGEDY ON NEW TERRA.

“What happened?” Bobbie said. “What just happened?”

Chapter One: Basia

Basia Merton had been a gentle man, once. He hadn’t been the sort of man who made bombs out of old metal lubricant drums and mining explosives.