Cibola Burn (Expanse 4)

“I hear you. My brain keeps trying to find Orion and the Big Dipper. What’s weirder is that I keep finding them.”

“That ain’t them,” Amos said.

“Oh, I know. But it’s like my eyes are forcing those patterns on stars that aren’t really lined up the right way to make them.”

There was another moment of silence, then Amos said, “That’s, like, one of them metaphors, right?”

“It is now.”

“Buy you a beer?” Amos said when they reached the doors of the commissary.

“Later, maybe. I think I’m going to take a walk. The night air is nice here. Reminds me of Montana.”

“Okay, see you when I see you. Try not to get shot or abducted or anything.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Holden walked slowly, the dirt of the planet puffing up around his ankles at every stride. The buildings glowed in the darkness, the only human habitation on the planet. The only civilization in the wilds. He put his back to it and kept on going.

He was far enough outside of town that he could no longer see its dim lights when a faint blue glow appeared beside him. The glow was both there and not there. It lit the air around it while also illuminating nothing.

“Miller,” Holden said without looking.

“Hey kid.”

“We need to talk,” Holden finished for him.

“That’s less funny the more you do it,” the detective said, his hands in his pockets. “Did you come out here to find me? I admit, I’m a little flattered, considering your other problems.”

“Other problems?”

“Yeah, that shantytown full of future corpses you’re trying to treat like grown-ups. No way that doesn’t end bloody.”

Holden turned to look at Miller, frowning. “Is that the former cop talking? Or the creepy protomolecule skin doll.”

“I don’t know. Both,” Miller said. “You want a shadow, you got to have light and something to get in its way.”

“Can I borrow the cop for a minute?”

The gray, jowly man hoisted his eyebrows just the way he had in life. “Are you asking me to use your brain to make these monkeys stop killing each other over rare dirt?”

“No,” Holden sighed. “Just advice.”

“Okay. Sure. Murtry’s a psycho who’s finally in a spot where he can do the creepy shit he’s been dreaming about doing all his life. I’d just have Amos shoot him. Carol and her gang of dirt farmers are only alive because they’re too desperate to realize how stupid they are. They’ll probably die of starvation and bacterial infections in a year. Eighteen months tops. Your pals Avasarala and Johnson have handed you the bloody knife and you think it’s because they trust you.”

“You know what I hate about you?”

“My hat?”

“That too,” Holden said. “But mostly it’s that I hate everything you say, but you’re not always wrong.”

Miller nodded and stared up at the night sky.

“The frontier always outpaces the law,” Holden said.

“True,” Miller agreed. “But this place was already a crime scene when you got here.”

“Bombing the heavy shuttle was —”

“Not that,” Miller said. “I mean all of it. All the places.”

“I seem to spend a lot of time asking people to explain themselves lately.”

Miller laughed. “You think somebody built those towers and structures and then just left? This whole planet is a murder scene. An empty apartment with warm food on the table and all the clothes still in the closets. This is some Croatoan shit.”

“The North American colonists who —”

“Except,” Miller said, ignoring him. “The people who vanished here? Not dumbass Europeans in way over their heads. The things that lived here modified planets like we remodel a kitchen. They had a defense network in orbit that could have vaporized Ceres if it wandered too close.”

“Wait, what defense network?”

Miller ignored him. “An empty apartment, a missing family, that’s creepy. But this is like finding a military base with no one on it. Fighters and tanks idling on the runway with no drivers. This is bad juju. Something wrong happened here. What you should do is tell everyone to leave.”

“Yeah,” Holden said, “sure, I’ll get right on that. This argument about who gets to live here really needed a third party both sides could hate.”

“No one lives here,” Miller said, “but we’re sure as shit going to play with the corpses.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Miller tipped his hat back, looking up at the stars.

“I never stopped looking for her. Julie? Even when she was dead, even when I’d seen her body, I never stopped.”

“True. Still creepy, but true.”

“This is like that too. I don’t like it, but unless something happens, we’re going to keep reaching and reaching and reaching until we find what did all this.”

“And then what?”

“And then we’ll have found it,” he said.

~

A man Holden didn’t recognize was waiting for him at the edge of town. Belter tall, stocky and thick-necked. Big meaty hands he was rubbing together nervously. Holden consciously forced himself not to drop his hand to the butt of his gun.

“Thought you got lost out there,” the man said.

“Nope, all good.” Holden held out his right hand. “Jim Holden. Have we met?”

“Basia. Basia Merton. From Ganymede.”

“Yeah, all of you are from Ganymede, right?”

“Pretty much.”

Holden waited for the man to speak. Basia stared back, wringing his hands again.

“So,” Holden finally said. “Mister Merton. How can I help you?”

“You found my son. Back… back there. You found Katoa,” Basia said.

It took Holden a moment to make the connection. “The little boy on Ganymede. You’re Prax’s friend.”

Basia nodded, his head moving too fast, like a nervous bird. “We’d left. Me and my wife and my two other kids. We got a chance to get out on the Barbapiccola and I thought Katoa was dead. He was sick, you know.”

“Same thing Prax’s daughter had. No immune system.”

“Yeah. Only he wasn’t dead when we left. He was still alive in that lab where you found him. I left my son behind.”