Cibola Burn (Expanse 4)

It builds the investigator, and the investigator looks, but does not know. It kills the investigator. It builds the investigator, and the investigator looks, but does not know. It kills the investigator. It builds the investigator, and the investigator looks but does not know, and it does not kill the investigator. It is not aware of a change, that a pattern has broken. The investigator is aware, and it wonders, and because it wonders it looks, and because it looks, the investigator exceeds its boundary conditions, and it kills the investigator.

It builds the investigator.

Something knows.

The investigator hesitates. A pattern has broken, and it isn’t aware that a pattern has broken, but a part of it is. A part of it grasps at the change and tries to tell the investigator. And the investigator stops. Its thoughts are careful as a man walking in a minefield. The investigator hesitates, knows a pattern has been broken. Breaks it a little more. The dead place becomes better defined. It reaches out, and it does not kill the investigator. The investigator exceeds its boundary conditions, and it does not kill the investigator. The investigator considers the dead space, the structure, the reaching out, the reaching out, the reaching out.

The investigator licks his lips, he doesn’t have a mouth. He adjusts his hat, he doesn’t have a hat. He wishes in a distant way that he had a beer, he has no body and no passion. He turns his attention to the dead space, to the world, to how you solve unsolvable problems. How you find things that aren’t there. What happens when you do.

Chapter Thirty-Four: Holden

“Affirmative. You take care of my ship. Holden out.”

Holden killed the connection to the Rocinante and leaned back against the alien tower with a sigh. It was a mistake. The rainfall had been incessant since the planetary explosion, and even though it had slowed to a drizzle over the last day, the water still sheeted down the outside of the tower. And, unfortunately, down his back and into his pants.

“Bad news?” Amos asked. He stood a few feet away holding his poncho up with one arm to keep the rain out of his face.

“If it weren’t for bad news,” Holden replied, “we’d have no news at all.”

“The latest?”

“The shuttle with the relief supplies was shot down by the planetary defenses,” Holden said. “Which seem to have activated when the planet blew up. And they’re running their usual ‘high energy is a threat’ program.”

“So like the gate station did back when we were in the slow zone and Medina Station was still a battleship,” Amos said.

“You mean the good old days?” Holden asked bitterly. “Yes. Like that.”

“So we just need to get everyone to shut their reactors down like last time?”

“Seems this defense network has a new trick. They took care of that problem for us. Made fusion stop working.”

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Amos said, then barked out a laugh. “They know how to do that?”

“On the upside, if we can’t figure out how to get relief supplies from orbit, I’ll die of hunger long before the cancers get me.”

“Yeah,” Amos agreed with a nod, “that’ll be a plus.”

“The people in orbit don’t even have that long. Alex thinks we might see the Israel or the Barb come down in about ten days. We’ll be hungry enough by that point that we won’t be able to see all the food in the solar system falling out of the sky on fire with a detached sense of irony.”

“And,” Amos added with a shrug, “all our friends will be on those ships.”

“Yeah. That too.” Holden squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose hard enough to hurt, hoping the pain would help clear his head. It didn’t. All he could think of was Naomi riding the Edward Israel on its fiery descent.

He and Amos stood quietly outside the alien tower for several minutes, gentle rain washing over them. Holden hadn’t stood in the rain in years. If everything else weren’t falling apart around him, it might almost have been pleasant. Amos let his poncho fall down around his neck and rubbed the rainwater across his prickly scalp.

“All right,” Holden finally said. “I’m heading around to the back of the tower.”

“Nobody’s back there,” Amos said, then closed his eyes and washed his face with a double handful of rain.

“Miller is.”

“Right, then you won’t need company.” Amos shook his head, spraying rain around him like a dog, then trotted off toward the entrance to the alien tower. Holden walked the other direction, carefully avoiding the death-slugs.

“Hey,” Miller said as he appeared next to Holden in a flash of blue.

“We need to talk,” Holden replied, ignoring the apparent non sequitur. Holden kicked away a death-slug that got too close to his boot. Another was crawling toward Miller’s foot, but the detective ignored it. “The planetary defenses seem to have come online. They just shot down a supply shuttle and they’ve created some sort of field in orbit that’s damping nuclear fusion.”

“You sure it’s just in orbit?” Miller asked and raised one eyebrow.

“Well, the sun hasn’t gone out. Should I be expecting that? Miller, is the sun going to go out?”

“Probably not,” Miller said with a Belter shrug of his hands.

“Okay, assuming the sun stays on, we’re still going to be in a lot of trouble. The ships can’t drop us supplies, and without reactors, they’ll start to fall out of orbit in the near future.”

“All right,” Miller said.

“Fix it,” Holden replied, taking an aggressive step toward him.

Miller just laughed.

“If not for us, then do it for yourself,” Holden said. “That thing linking you to me is a bit of goo on the Roci. That burns up too. Fix it because of that if you have to. I don’t care why, just do it.”

Miller took off his hat and looked up at the sky, humming a tune that Holden didn’t recognize. Holden could see the rain falling on his head, beading, and rolling down his face. He could also see the rain falling straight through him. It made a spike of pain shoot through his brain, so he looked away.

“What do you think I can do?” Miller asked. It wasn’t a no.

“You got us off lockdown when we were in the slow zone.”

“Kid, I keep telling you. I’m a wrench. The defense network problem in the gate hub just happened to be a hex nut. I’ve got no control here. Not much anyway. And this system is falling apart. Half the planet blowing up might not be the end of that.”