Cibola Burn

Chapter Thirty-One: Holden

Holden had witnessed the aftermath of a tornado as a child. They were rare in the Montana flatlands where he’d grown up, but not entirely unheard of. One had touched down on a commercial complex a few miles from his family’s farm, and the local citizens had gathered to help with the cleanup. His mother Tamara had taken him along.

The tornado had hit a farmers’ market at the center of the complex, while totally avoiding the feed store and fuel station on either side of it. The market had been flattened as if by a giant’s fist, the roof lying flat on the ground with the walls splayed out around it. The contents of the store had been scattered in a giant pinwheel that extended for hundreds of meters around the impact point. It was young James Holden’s first experience with nature’s fury unleashed, and for years afterward he’d had nightmares about tornadoes destroying his home.

This was worse.

Holden stood in what his hand terminal told him had been the center of First Landing, the constant rain sheeting off his poncho, and turned in a slow circle. All around there was nothing but thick mud occasionally cut by a rivulet of water. There were no flattened buildings. No wreckage strewn across the ground. With the fury and duration of the winds, it was entirely possible that the detritus of First Landing was hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away. The colonists would never rebuild. There was nothing to rebuild.

A ripple of lights danced through the heavy cloud cover overhead, and a second later the booming of the thunder, like a barrage of cannon fire. The rain intensified, reducing visibility to a few dozen meters, and swelling the little streams cutting gullies across the muddy ground.

“I’d say ‘what a mess,’ but it’s actually kind of the opposite of that,” Amos said. “Never seen anything like this, Cap.”

“What if it happens again?” Holden said, shuddering either at that thought or at the cold rainwater trickling down his back.

“Think they have more than one of whatever blew up?”

“Anyone know what the first one was yet?”

“Nope,” Amos admitted with a sigh. “Big fusion reactor, maybe. Alex sent an update, said it tossed a lot of radiation up around the initial blast.”

“Some of that will be coming down in the rain.”

“Some.”

The mud at Amos’ feet moved, and a small, sluglike creature pushed its way up out of the ground, desperately trying to get its head above water. Amos casually kicked it into one of the nearby streams where the current whisked it away.

“I’m running low on my cancer meds,” Holden said.

“Radioactive rain ain’t gonna help with that.”

“Was my thought. Bad for the colonists too.”

“Do we have a plan?” Amos asked. His tone suggested he didn’t expect an answer.

“Get off this hell-planet before the next catastrophe.”

“A-fucking-men,” Amos replied.

They walked back toward the alien towers, trudging through the thick mud and occasionally having to leap across a newly formed arroyo filled with fast-moving water. The ground was covered with small holes where brightly colored worm-slugs had pushed their way to the surface, and shiny trails of slime radiated in all directions showing their recent passage.

“Never seen these before,” Amos said, pointing at another of the creatures slowly making its way across the wet ground. They weren’t much bigger than Holden’s thumb, and eyeless.

“Forced up by the rain. This was pretty arid land before. There’s a lot of subterranean life drowning right now I’d bet. At least these guys have a way to get out of it.”

“Yeah,” Amos said, frowning down at one, “but, you know, gross. One of those things climbs into my sleeping bag, I’m gonna be pissed.”

“Big baby.”

As if in response to Amos’ worries, the ground shifted and dozens more of the slugs pushed their way up. Wrinkling his nose in disgust, Amos picked his way through them, trying not to get their slime on his boots. The trails they left were quickly washed away by the rain.

Holden’s had terminal buzzed at him, and he pulled it out to find that a message had been downloaded. The terminal had been trying to connect to the Roci for hours. There must have finally been a break in the storm long enough for it to send and receive updates.

He tried to open a channel to Alex, but got only static. Whenever his window had happened, he’d missed it. But the fact that there were occasional breaks in the atmospheric clutter was a hopeful sign that they’d get comms back soon. In the meantime, he could keep sending messages and hoping they’d slip through the static a bit at a time.

The update waiting for him was a voice message. He plugged the bud into his ear and hit play.

“This is a message for Captain James Holden, from Arturo Ramsey, lead counsel for Royal Charter Energy.”

Holden had sent dozens of requests to the various senior vice presidents and board members of RCE for Naomi to be released. Getting a reply back from the company’s top lawyer was not a good sign.

“Captain Holden,” the message continued, “Royal Charter Energy takes your request for the release of Naomi Nagata from detention on the Edward Israel very seriously. However, the legal landscape we’re navigating with this situation is murky at best.”

“It’s not murky, give me my damn XO back, you smug bastards,” Holden muttered angrily. At Amos’ questioning look he shook his head and continued the recording.

“Pending further investigation, we’re afraid we’re going to have to follow the advice of the security team on site and hold Naomi Nagata in protective custody. We hope you understand the delicate—”

Holden turned off the recording in disgust. Amos raised an eyebrow.

“That’s the legal wonk at RCE telling me they plan to keep holding Naomi,” Holden said. “‘Following the advice of the security team on site.’”

“Murtry,” Amos grunted.

“Who else?”

“Sort of wondering why you haven’t let me off the leash on that, Cap,” Amos said.

“Because, before this”—Holden waved an arm at the mud and rain and worms around them—“we had a job to do that would not have been aided by murdering the RCE security chief.”

“Would’ve loved to give it a try, though. You know, just to see.”

“Well, my friend, you might still get your shot,” Holden said. “Because I am about to order him to do something he really isn’t going to want to do.”

“Oh,” Amos said with a smile, “goody.”

When they returned to the ruins, the camp was in chaos. People were frantically sweeping something out of the tower entrance using blankets and sticks and other makeshift implements. An agonized howl echoed out of the structure, like someone in terrible pain.

Doctor Okoye spotted them from the tower opening and ran to meet them. “Captain, we have a serious problem.” Before he could reply, she kicked one of the worms away from his feet with a squeal. “Look out!”

Holden had watched her capture and sacrifice a number of the local fauna during their association. She’d never struck him as squeamish. He couldn’t picture a few slimy slug analogs being the thing that broke her.

“What’s going on?” he asked when she’d finished kicking slugs away from him.

“A man died,” she said. “The one who was married to the man and woman who took care of the carts. The taller one. Beth is her name, I think. The wife’s name. That’s her crying inside.”

“And that relates to the worms how?”

“That slime they secrete is a neurotoxin,” Elvi replied, wide-eyed. “He touched it, and it was almost instant paralysis. Full respiratory failure. One of the worms was climbing up a wall near their sleeping area and he grabbed it to throw it outside. By the time we realized what was happening, he was dead.”

“Jesus,” Amos said, staring down at the worms surrounding them, something like respect mixed in with his disgust.

“Some kind of defense toxin?” Holden asked.

“I don’t know,” Elvi replied. “It might just be slime to aid in locomotion, like a terrestrial slug. It might not be toxic to the other life forms on New Terra. We’ve never even seen them before. How can we know anything? If I had my collection equipment, I could send the data back to Luna, if I could send the message back to Luna, but—”

Elvi’s voice was rising as she spoke. When she ended, she was almost in tears. “You’re right,” Holden said. “It was a stupid question, and it doesn’t matter anyway.”

“Why doesn’t it—” Elvi started, but Holden pushed past her.

“Where’s Murtry,” he asked.

“Inside, organizing the people to find and remove all the slugs from the structure.”

“Come on, Amos,” Holden said. “Let’s change his priorities.”

Inside, the fear was so pronounced it was almost an odor. Half of the colonists were in almost frantic activity, building slug-sweeping implements and clearing the structure. The other half sat on the floor, many wrapped tight in blankets, empty expressions on their faces. The human mind could only take so much threat. Everyone had a different limit, and he couldn’t really blame the people who had been broken by the last thirty hours. It was actually sort of amazing that it hadn’t happened to all of them.

He was, however, unsurprised to see Basia’s wife and son busily at work with the chemical sciences team.

“Doctor Merton,” he greeted her with an apologetic smile.

“Captain,” she replied. Her returning smile was thin, and very tired. As the colony’s only doctor, she’d had a very long day.

“I’ve heard about the death,” he started, but she cut him off with a sharp nod and a gesture toward the chemical analysis deck.

“We’re analyzing the toxin right now,” she said. “It’s unlikely we’ll be able to make a counter-agent with the tools available, but we’re going to try.”

“I appreciate the effort,” Holden said. “But I’m hoping to make it unnecessary.”

“Are we being forced to leave?” she said, a look of sad resignation replacing her wan smile. “After all this…”

“Maybe not forever,” Holden said, putting his hands on her shoulders. She felt very thin.

She nodded slowly, looking around them at the dirty, frightened people filling the room. “I can’t argue. There’s nothing left to fight over.”

Oh, Holden thought, some people can always find a reason to fight, speaking of which. “I need to find Murtry.”

Lucia gestured at an opening behind her, and Holden left with one last squeeze of her shoulders and what he hoped was an encouraging smile.

In the next room, Murtry was down on his haunches looking at something on the floor. Wei stood behind him, nose wrinkled in disgust and her rifle in her hands.

“Wei,” Amos said with a nod.

“Amos,” the security officer replied with a grin.

Holden wondered what was going on there. They couldn’t have a thing, could they? When would they have found time to have a thing? But they definitely acted like they were sharing a private joke.

“Captain Holden,” Murtry said, standing up, not giving him more time to think about possible Amos-and-Wei dalliances. On the floor behind the RCE security chief was a clear plastic bowl inverted over one of the slugs. The creature was nuzzling its prison with its pointed eyeless face.

“Made a friend,” Holden said, pointing at the slug.

“They say it’s a good idea to know your enemy,” Murtry replied.

“They say a lot of stuff.”

“Yes. Yes, they do. How did the recon go?”

“About how you’d expect,” Holden said. “Initial reports are correct. There isn’t a single standing structure. Not even the remains of one. All the colony supplies are lost. We can make potables out of ground water until the chem lab runs out of supplies. But what’s raining out of the sky is radioactive, and probably has things living in it.”

“All right,” Murtry said, scratching his ear with one thick fingernail. “Can we agree that at present, the insurgent colony might not be viable?”

“You don’t have to sound happy about it.”

“I’m going to have some relief flown down as soon as comms clears up. RCE is happy to share these needed supplies with the refugees.”

“Very magnanimous,” Holden said. “But RCE is going to do me a bigger favor.”

“Oh,” Murtry said, his face shifting into a smile. “We are?”

“Yeah. Go ahead and bring the supply shuttle down. Evacuation is going to take some time, and we’ll want plenty of medicine, food, and shelter to keep these people healthy until everyone is off-world.”

“Off-world? Sounds like you’re doing us a favor there, Captain.”

“I’m not done,” Holden said, and took a step forward, deliberately moving into Murtry’s space. The security man stiffened, but didn’t step back. “When the shuttle leaves, it’s going to take some of the colonists with it. The sick and vulnerable first. And as soon as your people can de-weaponize the second shuttle, it’ll start making runs too. I’m giving the same orders to the Barbapiccola and the Rocinante. We’re leaving this planet, and if I can’t stick everyone on the Roci and the Barb, the Edward Israel will be taking the rest.”

Murtry’s smile cooled. “Is that right?”

“It is.”

“I fail to see why the ship that brought the squatters here can’t also take them away,” Murtry said.

“One, it no longer has the room,” Holden started.

“Then they should dump the ore they illegally stole from this world,” Murtry said.

“And two,” Holden continued as if he hadn’t interrupted, “she’s down to the last of her supplies. I won’t stick hundreds of people on that ship that may not make it back to Medina. I doubt it’s RCE policy to ignore a humanitarian crisis. And even if it is, it’s sure as hell going to make for terrible press.”

Murtry took an answering step toward Holden, crossing his arms and shifting his smile into an equally meaningless frown.

Plan B is that I have Amos kill you right now and just take what I want when the shuttle lands, Holden thought, but worked to keep it off his face.

Almost as if he could sense the thought, Amos shuffled forward and put one hand on the butt of his pistol. Wei shifted to his right, still gripping her rifle.

We are so close, Holden thought, to all of this going completely off the rails. But he couldn’t back down. Not with a couple hundred people living or dying on the outcome of the confrontation. Wei cleared her throat. Amos grinned back at her. Murtry cocked his head to one side, his frown deepening.

Here we go, Holden thought, and suppressed the urge to swallow a mouth suddenly full of saliva.

“Of course,” Murtry said. “We’d be happy to assist.”

“Uh,” Holden replied

“You’re right. We can’t leave them here,” Murtry continued. “And there isn’t room for them anywhere else. I’ll let the Israel know they’re taking on passengers as soon as we get comms up.”

“That would be great,” Holden said. “Thank you.”

“Doctor Okoye,” Murtry said. Holden turned to find the diminutive scientist had come in, her usual tentative smile on her face.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “But we’ve gotten the radio back up. We’re on with the Israel right now. You said to tell you as soon as we got through.”

“Thank you,” Murtry said and started to follow her out of the room. He paused, as though something had suddenly occurred to him, and turned to Holden. “You know, we’re only in this situation because these people came down and built a shantytown. We’d brought much better structures with us on the heavy shuttle. Much of this could have been avoided.”

Holden started to reply, but Elvi said, “Oh, no. I’m unhappy about the loss of the dome and the permanent structures too. But we clocked gusts of three hundred and seventy kilometers an hour out there. Nothing we set up would have withstood that.”

“Thank you, Doctor Okoye,” Murtry said with a tight smile, “for correcting me. Let’s go call the ship, shall we?”

Elvi blinked in puzzlement as Murtry left. “Is he mad at me?”

“Sweetie,” Amos said, clapping her on the back, “that just means you’re not an asshole.”