Cibola Burn

Basia pulled out his own seat and awkwardly lay on the ground to get into the straps. Naomi helped him buckle in.

The Martian voice counted down from five, and the floor lurched as the ship lifted off. There was a disorienting rotation, and the floor became a wall behind him and he was actually sitting on the cushion he’d pulled out. He became very grateful for the straps holding him in place.

Then a giant roared at the bottom of the ship, and an invisible hand crushed Basia into his chair.

“Sorry,” Naomi said, her voice given a false vibrato by the rumbling of the ship. “Alex is an old combat pilot, he only flies at full speed.”

As always when flying out of a gravity well, Basia was surprised by how quickly it was over. A few minutes of crushing gravity and the roar of the engines, then with almost no transition at all, he was floating in his straps in silence.

“All done,” Naomi said as she began unbuckling. “Might be a few short maneuvering bumps as Alex gets us into the orbit he wants, but those yellow lights on the wall will flash fifteen seconds before any burn, so just grab a strap and hang on.”

“Am I a prisoner?” Basia asked.

“What?”

“I’m just wondering how this works. Am I restricted to my room or is there a brig or something?”

Naomi floated for a moment staring at him, forehead crinkling with what looked like genuine puzzlement. “Are you a bad guy?”

“Bad guy?”

“Are you going to try to hurt anyone on this ship? Destroy our property? Steal things?”

“Definitely not,” Basia said.

“Because the way I heard it, you turned on your friends in order to save our captain’s life.”

For a moment, Basia felt something like vertigo and then pride or the promise of it. And then he remembered the concussion of the heavy shuttle rattling him and Coop’s voice. We all remember who mashed that button. He shook his head.

Are you a bad guy?

Naomi Nagata waited for him to speak, but he didn’t have words for the guilt and shame and anger and sorrow. In time she lifted a fist, the Belter’s physical idiom for a nod. He lifted his in reply.

“Make yourself at home.” She pointed at the hatch to his right. “That’s aft. That way is the crew decks and the galley. The galley is open whenever. We’ve got a cabin set up for you, it’s tiny but private. If you keep going aft and hit the machine shop you’ve gone too far. For safety reasons don’t go into the machine shop or engineering.”

“Okay, I promise.”

“Don’t promise, just don’t go in there. The other way” – she pointed at the hatch on his left – “takes you up to the ops deck. You can come up there if you want, but don’t touch anything unless we tell you to.”

“Okay.”

“I’m headed up there right now. You’re welcome to tag along.”

“Okay.”

Naomi stared at him for a second, an unreadable expression on her face. “You’re not our first, you know.”

“First?”

“First prisoner transport,” Naomi said. “Jim has this thing about fair trials. It means that we’ve done our share of taking people to court even when an airlock and mysteriously erased records made a lot more sense.”

Basia couldn’t stop himself from giving the airlock door a nervous look. “Okay.”

“And,” she continued, “you’re the first one I can remember that he specifically told me to be nice to.”

“He did?”

“He owes you one. I do too,” Naomi said, then gestured at the ladder and the deck hatch in a you-first motion. Basia pulled himself up to the hatch and it whined open. Naomi pulled herself along behind him. “So you can get comfortable. But the terrified mousey thing you’re doing right now will bug the shit out of me.”

“Okay.”

“Still doing it.”

The deck above the storage and airlock area was a large compartment filled with gimbaled chairs and wall-mounted screens and control panels. A dark-skinned man with thinning black hair and a middle-aged beer belly was strapped into one of the chairs. He turned to face them as they floated into the room.

“All good?” he asked Naomi. He was the source of the Mariner Valley voice.

“Seems to be,” Naomi said, and pushed Basia into the closest chair then strapped him in. He allowed it to happen, feeling like an infant being manhandled by his mother. “Didn’t get any face time with Jim. He wanted this fellow off the ground as fast as possible.”

“Well, can’t say I was lookin’ to stay longer.”

“I know. Gravity wells,” Naomi said with a shudder. “I don’t know how people live like that.”

“I was thinking more about the bugs all coming back to life. I got five more power spikes since the last time we checked.”

“I was trying not to think about those.”

“Should have gotten Holden and Amos both,” Alex said. “And anyone else with sense.”

“Just keep an eye. If anything gets close, I want them to know about it.”

Once she’d finished belting him in, Naomi floated over to a different chair and pulled herself into it. She began calling up screens and tapping on them faster than Basia could follow, still talking to the Martian man as she worked.

“Alex,” she said, “meet Basia Merton the welder.”