Cibola Burn

Havelock let them talk for a while. It was funny, hearing the tactics of small-unit assault analyzed in terms of engineering, but those were his crew now. They were learning to solve violence like an equation: not to eliminate it, but to understand it fully.

“What I don’t understand,” Chief Engineer Koenen said, “is why we’re looking at the Barbapiccola at all.”

The eyes of the assembled team turned toward Havelock, looking for an answer. Or at least a response. A surprising nervousness crawled up his throat, and he chuckled.

“They’re the bad guys,” he said.

“The Barbapiccola is an unarmed freighter with a standing crew of maybe a hundred people that requires a shuttle to transfer from the surface,” the chief engineer said. “The Rocinante runs with less than a skeleton crew, half of which are already off the ship. It seems to me that we have a lower-risk, higher-value option here.”

A murmur of agreement passed through the room. Havelock shook his head.

“No,” he said. “First thing is just what you said. The Barbapiccola’s unarmed. If things don’t go well, the worst we can expect in retaliation is a strongly worded letter. The Rocinante was a state-of-the-art Martian warship before Holden took her to the OPA. God knows what modifications they’ve made since then. She’s got a full rack of torpedoes, PDCs, and a keel-mounted rail gun. If the crew on the Rocinante see us as a threat, they can end us, and there’s really nothing we can do about it.”

“But if we were the ones with that firepower —” Koenen began.

“We’d be fine as long as we stayed here,” Havelock said. “But as soon as we go back through the ring gate, there’s a whole mess of lawyers, treaties, and other ships with even bigger guns. If we have to commandeer the Barbapiccola, at least we have a legal argument to make.”

The engineers groaned and shook their heads. Legal arguments were another phrase for bullshit to them, but Havelock pressed on.

“For one thing, the ore they’re carrying is RCE property as long as the UN charter stands. For another, if they bring any of the colonists up from the surface, we can argue they’re aiding and abetting murder.”

“Argue?” one of the men in the back of the group said. The laughter that followed was bleak.

“Being true makes it a strong argument,” Havelock said. “Go after the Rocinante, and we look like everything they say we are. If we stand tough, we can protect ourselves and still win the long game.”

“Long game’s great if you’re around long enough to play it,” the man at the back said, but his tone of voice told Havelock that they’d seen the sense in what he said. For the time being, anyway.

~

Ivers Thorrsen was a geosensor analyst with advanced degrees from universities on Luna and Ganymede. He made more in a month than Havelock would in a year of working security. Also, he was a Belter. Growing up in microgravity hadn’t affected him as much as Havelock had seen in other people. Thorrsen’s head was maybe a little big for his body, his spine and legs maybe a little long and thin. With enough exercise and steroids, the man could almost have passed for an Earther. Not that it mattered. Everyone on the Israel knew what everyone else was. Back when they’d left home, the differences hadn’t mattered. Not much.

“In addition to the energy spikes, there are twenty heat upwellings that we’ve seen so far,” he said, pointing to the rendered sphere of New Terra on Havelock’s desk display. “They’ve all appeared in the last eighty hours, and so far we don’t have any idea what they are.”

Havelock scratched his head. The cells in the brig were empty, so there was no one to overhear them. No need to be polite.

“Were you expecting me to have a hypothesis? Because I was under the impression that we were here in order to find a bunch of stuff we didn’t know what it was. That you’ve seen something you don’t understand seems pretty much par for the course.”

The Belter’s lips pressed thin and pale.

“This could be important. It could be nothing. My point is that I have to find out. I’m busy with important work. I can’t spend all my time dealing with distractions.”

“All right,” Havelock said.

“This is the third day running that someone has sprayed urine in my locker. Three times, you understand? I’m trying to get my gear not to smell like piss instead of running the numbers.”

Havelock sighed and canceled out his display. New Terra and its mysterious hot spots vanished. “Look, I understand why you don’t like it. I’d be cheesed off too. But you have to cut them a little slack. People are bored and they’re under pressure. It’s natural to get a little rowdy. It’ll pass.”

Thorrsen folded his arms across his chest, his scowl deepening. “A little rowdy? That’s what you see? I am the only Belter on my team, and I am the only one getting —”