Cibola Burn (Expanse 4)

He groaned and shifted, the poncho still on him crackling with the motion. “Well, good morning, Doctor Okoye,” he said. “Imagine meeting you here.”

“Is it?”

“Is it what?”

“A good morning.”

He sighed in the dark. “Honestly, I don’t even think it’s morning.”

“Did you find them?”

“We didn’t find anything.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I mean we didn’t find anything at all. The huts are gone. First Landing’s gone. The mine pit’s gone or else the landmarks are so different we couldn’t find it. The roads are gone.”

“Oh.”

“You know those pictures you see of a natural disaster where there’s nothing but mud and rubble? Imagine that without the rubble.”

Elvi lay back down. “I’m sorry.”

“If we only lose them, it’ll be a miracle. We managed to get a signal through to the Israel. The atmospheric data make it look like we’ll be going without a sunrise for a good long time. No one said the words ‘nuclear winter,’ but I think it’s safe to say things aren’t going to be business as usual around here for a nice long while. We’ve got the battery power we carried in with us, but no hydroponics. Only as much fresh water as the chemistry deck will pump out. I was hoping that some of the storage buildings might have made it. They were pretty well built, some of them.”

“Still. Maybe some good can come out of it.”

“I admire your psychotic optimism.”

“I’m serious. I mean look at us all. You went out with Amos and Wei and the locals. We’re all here together. Working together. We’re taking care of each other. Maybe this is what it takes to resolve all the violence. There were three sides before. There’s only one side now.”

Fayez sighed. “It’s true. Nothing points out shared humanity like a natural disaster. Or a disaster, anyway. Nothing on this mudball of a planet’s even remotely natural if you ask me.”

“So that’s a good thing,” she said.

“It is,” Fayez agreed. And then a moment later, “I give it five days.”

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.