James Corey: The Churn

“Huh,” the big man said.

“Look, there’s a high-speed line about nine blocks north of here. We can take you there if you want.”

“Erich, you sonofabitch,” the big man said. Instead of looking north, he turned to the east, toward the sea and rising sun. “I’m not Mr. Burton.”

“Sorry?”

“I’m not Mr. Burton,” the man said again. “You can call me Amos.”

“Whatever you want. But I think you’d better haul ass out of town if you don’t want to get in some serious shit, Amos.”

“You ain’t the only one that thinks that. But I’m good. I know where the high-speed lines are. I won’t miss my ride.”

“All right then,” the team lead said with a crisp nod. “Have a better one.”

The security team moved on, flowing around the big man like river water around a stone. Amos watched them go, then went to the tea-and-coffee stand, bought a cup of black coffee and a corn muffin. He stood on the corner for a long minute, eating and drinking and breathing the air of the only city he’d ever known. When he was done, he dropped the cup and the muffin wrapper into the recycling bin and turned north toward the high-speed line and Bogotá station and Luna. And, who knew, maybe the vastness beyond the moon. The sweep of planets and moons and asteroids that humanity had spread to, and where the chances of running into anybody from Baltimore were vanishingly small. A needle in a haystack all of humanity wide.

Amos Burton was a tall, stocky, pale-skinned man with an amiable smile, an unpleasant past, and a talent for cheerful violence. He left Baltimore to its dynamic balance of crime and law, exotics and mundanity, love and emptiness. The number of people who knew him and loved him could be counted on one hand and leave most of the fingers spare, and when he was gone, the city went on without him as if he had never been.

Meet the Author

James S. A. Corey is the pen name of fantasy author Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. They both live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Find out more about this series at www.the-expanse.com.

Also by James S. A. Corey

THEEXPANSE

Leviathan Wakes

Caliban's War

Abaddon's Gate

Cibola Burn

THEEXPANSESHORTFICTION

“The Butcher of Anderson Station”

“Gods of Risk”

“The Churn”

If you enjoyed

THE CHURN,

look out for

CIBOLA BURN

by James S. A. Corey

The gates have opened the way to thousands of habitable planets, and the land rush has begun. Settlers stream out from humanity’s home planets in a vast, poorly controlled flood, landing on a new world. Among them, the Rocinante, haunted by the vast, posthuman network of the protomolecule as they investigate what destroyed the great intergalactic society that built the gates and the protomolecule.

But Holden and his crew must also contend with the growing tensions between the settlers and the company that owns the official claim to the planet. Both sides will stop at nothing to defend what’s theirs, but soon a terrible disease strikes and only Holden—with help from the ghostly Detective Miller—can find the cure.

Chapter 1

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.

He rolled another one out of the little workshop behind his house and toward one of First Landing’s electric carts. The little stretch of buildings spread to the north and south, and then ended, the darkness of the plain stretching to the horizon. The flashlight hanging from his belt bounced as he walked, casting strange moving shadows across the dusty ground. Small alien animals hooted at him from outside the circle of light.

Nights on Ilus—he wouldn’t call it New Terra—were very dark. The planet had thirteen tiny, low-albedo moons spaced so consistently in the same orbit that everyone assumed they were alien artifacts. Wherever they’d come from, they were more like captured asteroids than real moons to someone who grew up on the planet-sized satellites of Jupiter. And they did nothing to catch and reflect the light of Ilus’ sun once it set. The local nighttime wildlife was mostly small birds and lizards. Or what Ilus’ new human inhabitants thought of as birds and lizards. They shared only the most superficial external traits and a primarily carbon base with their terrestrial namesakes.

Basia grunted with effort as he lifted the barrel onto the back of the cart, and a second later an answering grunt came from a few meters away. A mimic lizard, curiosity drawing it right up to the edge of the light, its small eyes glittering. It grunted again, its wide, leathery, bullfrog-shaped head bobbing, and the air sac below its neck inflating and deflating with the sound. It waited for a moment, staring at him, and when he didn’t respond, it crawled off into the dark.

Basia pulled elastic straps out of a toolbox and began securing the barrels to the bed of the cart. The explosive wouldn’t go off just from falling on the ground. Or that was what Coop said, anyhow. Basia didn’t feel like testing it.

“Baz,” Lucia said. He flushed with embarrassment like a small boy caught stealing candy. Lucia knew what he was doing. He’d never been able to lie to her. But he’d hoped she would stay inside while he worked. Just her presence made him wonder if he was doing the right thing. If it was right, why did it make him so ashamed to have Lucia see him?

“Baz,” she said again. Not insisting. Her voice sad, not angry.

“Lucy,” he said, turning around. She stood at the edge of his light, a white robe clutched around her thin frame against the chill night air. Her face was a dark blur.

“Felcia’s crying,” she said, her tone not making it an accusation. “She’s afraid for you. Come talk to your daughter.”

Basia turned away and pulled the strap tight over the barrels, hiding his face from her. “I can’t. They’re coming,” he said.

“Who? Who’s coming?”

“You know what I mean. They’re going to take everything we made here if we don’t make a stand. We need time. This is how you get time. Without the landing pad, they’ve got to use the small shuttles. So we take away the landing pad. Make them rebuild it. No one’s going to get hurt.”

“If it gets bad,” she said, “we can leave.”

“No,” Basia said, surprised to hear the violence in his voice. He turned and took a few steps, putting her face in the light. She was weeping. “No more leaving. We left Ganymede. Left Katoa and ran away and my family lived on a ship for a year while no one would give us a place to land. We’re not running again. Not ever running again. They took all the children from me they get to take.”

“I miss Katoa too,” Lucia said. “But these people didn’t kill him. It was a war.”

“It was a business decision. They made a business decision, and then they made a war, and they took my son away.” And I let them , he didn’t say. I took you and Felcia and Jacek, and I left Katoa behind because I thought he was dead. And he wasn’t. The words were too painful to speak, but Lucia heard them anyway.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Yes, it was floated at the back of his mouth, but he swallowed.

“These people don’t have any right to Ilus,” he said, struggling to make his voice sound reasonable. “We were here first. We staked claim. We’ll get the first load of lithium out, get the money in, then we can hire lawyers back home to make a real case. If the corporations already have roots here when that happens, it won’t matter. We just need time.”