Cibola Burn

Chapter Twenty-Three: Holden

“Come on,” Holden said to the empty desert and the man who wasn’t there. “You show up every time I don’t want you around. But I get something I want to talk to you about, and nothing.”

The thing that had been Miller didn’t answer. Holden sighed, hoped, and waited.

Ilus had lost some of its strangeness. The moonless sky still felt too dark, but no darker than a new moon on earth. His nose had become accustomed to the planet’s strange scents. Now it just smelled like night and the aftermath of rain. His growing familiarity was both comforting and sad. Humans would go out to the thousand worlds of the gate network. They would settle down in little towns like First Landing, then spread out and build farms and cities and factories, because that’s what humans did. And in a few centuries, most of those worlds would be very similar to Earth. The frontier would give way to the civilizations that followed it. Remaking it in the image of their original home.

Holden had grown up in the Montana district of North America. A region filled with nostalgia for lost frontiers. It had held out against urban creep longer than most places in the former United States. The people there clung to their farms and ranches even when those things stopped making economic sense. And because of that, Holden couldn’t help but feel the allure of the untamed place. The romantic notion of sights no one else had seen. Ground no one else had walked.

This new frontier would last throughout Holden’s lifetime. Conquering and taming a thousand-plus planets was the work of generations, no matter how much of a head start the protomolecule’s masters had given them. But in his heart, Holden knew that conquered and tamed they would be. And then there would be a thousand Earths with steel-and-glass cities covering them. Holden felt a shadow of that distant future’s loss of mystery as though it were his own.

In the moonless black sky, a star moved too quickly. One of the ships. The Israel or the Barbapiccola. The Rocinante was too small and too black to reflect the light. Did the people up there think about how momentous what they were all doing was? Holden worried that they didn’t. That the strangeness had already become normal, like the night scents of Ilus. That all they saw now was the conflict to be won and the treasure to be harvested.

With a sigh, Holden turned back toward the town and started walking. Amos would be wondering where he was. Carol, the town administrator, had asked for an after-dinner meeting so he needed to track her down too. A fat, dog-shaped thing with a bullfrog’s head walked in front of him and made a sound like boots crunching on gravel. Mimic lizards, the locals called them. They were sort of scaled like a lizard, but to Holden the limbs looked all wrong. Holden took out his hand terminal and used it to shine a faint light on the creature. It blinked up at him and made the gravel noise again.

“You’d be a good pet if you didn’t vomit your stomach up periodically,” Holden said, crouching down to get a better look at the creature. It croaked back at him. Nothing like the words he’d used, but a surprisingly good imitation of his voice and tones. He wondered if the animals could be taught to speak words like a parrot.

The terminal in his hand buzzed. The lizard skittered away, buzzing back at him over its shoulder.

“Holden here.”

“Yeah, Cap,” Alex said. “I got some bad news.”

“Bad like the zero-g toilet on the Roci is out of order, or bad like I should be looking at the sky for incoming missile trails?”

“Well…” Alex started, and then took a long breath. Holden looked up at the sky. Just stars.

“You’ve scared me now. Spit it out.”

“Naomi,” Alex started, and Holden felt his heart drop. “She was out installing the remote cutout on the shuttle, and they were doin’ some kind of group exercise on the outside of the Israel and they spotted her. Just dumb luck, really.”

“What happened? Is she okay?” Please be okay.

“They got her, Cap,” Alex said. Holden felt his chest go empty.

“Got her. Like, shot her?”

“Oh! No. Captured. She’s not hurt. The security guy on the Israel called to make sure I knew she was unharmed. But they’re callin’ it sabotage, and they locked her up.”

“Fuck,” Holden said, able to breathe again. He knew who’d have authorized that. Murtry. And now that the RCE security chief had a big bargaining chip he’d go all-in. “Does anyone else know?”

“Well, Amos called up looking for her a minute ago—”

Holden didn’t hear the rest of what Alex said, because he was already running toward town. The longer he ran without hearing gunfire, the more hopeful he became that Amos had realized the sensitivity of the situation, had decided to wait and consult with his captain before taking any action. He hoped Amos wasn’t already on the radio with the Israel and a pistol held to Murtry’s head demanding Naomi’s safe return.

He was half right.

When he burst into Murtry’s security office he found the RCE security chief pressed to one wall with Amos’ left hand around his throat and a pistol against his forehead. At least no one had called the Israel with demands. Likely because Amos didn’t have a free hand to dial.

In addition to Murtry and Amos, four RCE security personnel stood around the room with drawn sidearms pointed at Amos’ back. One of them, a raven-haired woman named Wei, said, “Drop the gun or we’ll shoot.”

“Okay,” Amos said with a shrug. “Blast away, sweetie. I guarantee I take this piece of shit with me. I’m good. You good?” He leaned closer to Murtry, punctuating the question with a jab of the pistol against his forehead. A little trickle of blood had started to run down Murtry’s face from the force of the barrel pressed against it.

Murtry smiled. “Keep barking, dog. We both know there’s no bite coming. You shoot me, she’s dead.”

“You won’t know,” Amos said.

“Don’t, Amos,” Holden ordered.

“Oh, do,” Murtry said, the words almost a whisper.

Holden held his breath, sure the next thing they heard would be a gunshot. Amos surprised him by not firing. Instead he leaned in even farther until his nose was touching Murtry’s and said, “I’m gonna kill you.”

“When?” Murtry replied.

“That is exactly the question that should stay on your mind,” Amos said and let the man go.

Holden started breathing again with a gasp. “I’ve got this, Amos.”

The big mechanic holstered his gun, to Holden’s relief, but made no move to leave.

“Seriously. I’ve got it. I need you to go back to the rooms and get on the line with Alex. Get me a full report. I’ll be back there in a minute.”

For a moment, Holden thought Amos would argue with him. The mechanic stared back, face flushed with rage, his jaw clenched hard enough to crack his teeth. “Okay,” he finally said and then left. The other four security people kept their guns trained on him the entire time.

“That was smart,” Murtry said. He pulled a tissue out of a box on his desk and wiped the blood from his forehead. He had an ugly bruise forming around the cut Amos’ pistol had left. “Your boy almost didn’t make it out of this room, mediator.”

Holden surprised himself by laughing. “I’ve never seen Amos pick a fight he didn’t plan to win. I’m not sure what he had in mind, but even at five to one my money would be on him.”

“Everyone loses eventually,” Murtry said.

“Words to live by.”

“That’s quite the killer you have working for you, as critical as you are of my methods.”

“There’s a difference. Amos is willing to lose face to protect something he loves. He doesn’t need to win more than he needs to keep his friends alive. And that’s why you’re nothing alike.”

Murtry agreed with a nod and a shrug. “So if you weren’t here to save your man, then what?”

“We keep escalating,” Holden said. “Some of that is my fault. I asked Naomi to deal with the shuttle.”

“Sabotage—” Murtry started.

“But I did that in response to finding out you’d weaponized it. We keep reacting to what the person before us did, justifying ourselves like kids on a playground. ‘He started it.’”

“So you’ll be the first to break the cycle?”

“If I can,” Holden said. “You’ve gone too far, Murtry. Disable the shuttle, give me Naomi back. Let’s see if we can find a way to stop the escalation.”

Murtry’s vague smile shifted into an equally vague frown. The man leaned back on his desk and touched another tissue to the cut on his forehead. It came away with a single crimson spot. Then he folded his arms, casual but immovable. Holden knew that it was a deliberate affectation intended to look natural. He was both impressed and worried by anyone who had that level of self-awareness and control.

“I’ve acted entirely within the purview of my assignment here,” Murtry said. “I’ve protected RCE assets and personnel.”

“You’ve killed a bunch of colonists and kidnapped my XO,” Holden replied, trying to keep the anger out of his voice and failing.

“I’ve killed fewer squatters than they’ve killed of us, all of which were actively engaged in plotting and carrying out attacks on RCE assets and personnel. Which, as I said, is my job.”

“And Naomi—”

“And I captured a saboteur and am holding her pending an investigation. ‘Kidnapping’ is not only a provocative term, it’s inaccurate.”

“You want this to blow up.” Holden sighed. “You can’t wait for the next chance to make things worse, can you?”

The frown shifted back to the smile. Neither meant anything. Just different masks. Holden wondered what it looked like inside Murtry’s head and shuddered.

“I’ve done the minimum necessary at each step,” the man said through his disquieting grin.

“No,” Holden replied. “You could have left. You had the Israel. After the first attack on the shuttle you could have pulled your people out and waited for the investigation. A lot of people would still be alive if you had.”

“Oh no,” Murtry said, shaking his head. He stood up and uncrossed his arms. Every movement slow and deliberate and conveying threat. “No, that’s one thing we won’t do. We won’t give up a centimeter of ground. These squatters can throw themselves against us until every one of them is shattered into dust, but we’re not going anywhere. Because that…”

Murtry’s smile sharpened.

“… is also my job.”

The walk from the RCE security shed back to his room at the community center wasn’t a long one, but it was very dark. Miller’s faint blue glow illuminated nothing, but it was oddly comforting anyway.

“Hey, old man,” Holden said in greeting.

“We need to talk.” Miller grinned at his own joke. He made jokes now. He was almost like a real person. Somehow that was more frightening than when he’d been insane.

“I know, but I’m kind of busy with keeping these people from killing each other. Or, you know, us.”

“How’s that working for you?”

“Terrible,” Holden admitted. “I’ve just lost the only real threat I had to make.”

“Yeah, Naomi being on their ship makes the Rocinante a non-factor. Letting her anywhere near that ship was a dumb mistake.”

“I never told you about that.”

“Should I pretend I’m not inside your head?” Miller asked with a Belter shrug. “I’ll do it if it makes you more comfortable.”

“Hey, Miller,” Holden said. “What am I thinking now?”

“Points for creativity, kid. That’d be difficult to pull off and less fun than you might expect.”

“So stay out.”

Miller stopped walking and grabbed Holden’s upper arm. Again he was surprised at how real it felt. Miller’s hand felt like iron gripping him. Holden tried to pull away and couldn’t. And all of it was just the ghost pushing buttons in his brain.

“Wasn’t kidding. We need to talk.”

“Spit it out,” Holden replied, finally yanking his arm away when Miller let go.

“There’s a spot a way north of here I need to go look at.”

“By which you mean you need me to go look at.”

“Yeah,” Miller said with a Belter nod of one fist. “That.”

Against his will, Holden felt his curiosity piqued. “What is it?”

“So, turns out our coming here caused a little ruckus with the locals,” Miller said. “May have noticed. Lot of leftover stuff waking up all over the planet.”

“Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that. Is that you? Can you control it?”

“Are you kidding? I’m a sock puppet. Protomolecule’s got its arm so far up my ass, I can taste its fingernails.” Miller laughed. “I can’t even control myself.”

“It’s just that some of it seems dangerous. That robot, for instance. And you were able to turn off the station in the slow zone.”

“Because it wanted me to. You can order the sun to come up if you time it right. I’m not driving this bus. Making it do what I want would be like talking someone out of a seizure.”

“Okay,” Holden said. “We have got to get off this planet.”

“Before that, though, there’s this thing. This not-thing. Look, I’ve got a pretty good map of the global network. Lots of leftover stuff coming up, checking in. Except one spot. Like a big ball of nothing.”

Holden shrugged. “Maybe it’s just a place where there are no nodes on the network.”

“Kid, this whole planet is a node on the network. There shouldn’t be anyplace that’s off-limits to me.”

“So what does it mean?”

“Maybe it’s just a spot that’s really really broken,” Miller said. “That’d be interesting but useless.”

“And the useful thing?”

“It’s a leftover bit of whatever killed this place.”

They stood in silence for a moment, the cool evening wind of Ilus ruffling Holden’s pants and not affecting the detective at all. Holden felt a chill start at the base of his spine and slowly climb his back. The hairs on his arms stood up.

“I don’t want to find that,” he finally said.

“And I do?” Miller replied with his best attempt at a friendly smile. “Free will left the conversation for me a while back. But that’s where the clues are. You should come with. It’s going to happen eventually anyway.”

“Why is that?”

“Because real monsters don’t go away when you close your eyes. Because you need to know what happened here just as bad as I do.”

Miller’s expression was still friendly, but there was a dread in it too. A fear that Holden recognized. And shared.

“Naomi first. I don’t go anywhere until we get her back.”

Miller nodded again and flew apart into a spray of blue fireflies.

Amos was waiting for him when he got back to the bar. The big man sitting alone at a table with a half-empty bottle of something that smelled like antiseptic and smoke.

“I’m guessing you didn’t kill him after I left,” Amos said as Holden sat down.

“I feel like I’m walking a tightrope so narrow I can’t even see it,” Holden replied. He shook his head when Amos offered him the bottle, so the mechanic took a long swig from it instead.

“This ends in blood,” Amos said after a moment. His voice sounded distant, dreamlike. “No way around that.”

“Well, since my job is pretty much exactly the opposite of that, I hope you’re wrong.”

“I’m not.”

Holden lacked a compelling argument, so instead he said, “What did Alex have to say?”

“We put together a list of demands for the captain of the Israel. Make sure Naomi gets well taken care of while she’s there.”

“What will we give up in exchange?”

“Alex isn’t blowing the Israel into its component atoms right this second.”

“I hope they agree we’re being generous.”

“He is, however,” Amos continued, “keeping a constant rail gun lock on the Israel’s reactor.”

Holden ran his fingers through his hair. “So not too generous, then.”

“Say pretty please, but carry a one-kilo slug of tungsten accelerated to a detectable percentage of c.”

“I believe I’ve heard that said,” Holden replied, then stood up. He suddenly felt very tired. “I’m going to bed.”

“Naomi’s in Murtry’s goddamn brig, and you can sleep?” Amos said and took another drink.

“No, but I can go to bed. Then tomorrow I’m going to figure out how to get my first officer back from the RCE maniac holding her hostage, so that I can go find the scary alien bullet fragment embedded in the planet.”

Amos nodded as if that all made sense. “Nothing in the afternoon, then.”