Cibola Burn

“Cap, is this a problem you’d like me to solve?” Amos asked, cocking thumb and forefinger like a gun. “Because that can just happen.”

“No. No escalations. I already did enough damage knocking Murtry around. I’ll pay for that when the time comes, but you only do what you have to in order to protect these people when I’m gone.”

“Okay,” Amos said. “You got it. And what do you mean, when you’re gone?”

Holden sat down on the plastic table with a thump and rubbed at eyes that were as dry as steel bearings. The planet was one big ball of humidity, yet he somehow managed to have dry itchy eyes. “I have to go with Miller. He says there’s a thing that might turn off the alien artifacts, which would get the Roci flying again and pretty much solve all of our problems.”

Amos frowned. Holden could see the big mechanic’s face twitching as he formulated questions and then abandoned them without speaking. Finally he just said, “Okay. I’ll keep an eye out here.”

“Be here when I get back, big man,” Holden said and clapped Amos on the shoulder.

“Last man standing,” Amos replied with another grin. “It’s in my job description.”

It took Holden a few minutes to find the storage room with the oddly shaped pillar in the middle, but when he did the only person in it was Miller. The detective frowned out a what-took-you-so-long look and Holden flipped him off.

Miller turned away and walked toward the pillar, disappearing into it like a ghost walking through a wall. A few seconds later, the pillar split down the middle without a sound and opened up into a steep ramp heading down into darkness.

“Was this always here?” Holden asked. “Because if it was, and you’d told us about it, it might have saved a few lives when the storm came.”

“If you’d been where I could talk to you, I might have,” Miller said with a Belter shrug of the hands. “You did pretty well without me. Now get down the ramp. We’re late as it is.”

The ramp dropped nearly fifty meters into the ground and ended at a metallic wall. Miller touched it and the wall, in spite of having no visible seams or joints, irised open.

“All aboard,” Miller said. “This is our ride.”

Holden crouched to enter through the small round opening, and found himself in a metallic cube two meters to a side. He sat on the floor, then slid down the wall until he was lying on his back.

“This is a part of the old material transfer system,” Miller was saying, but Holden was already asleep.

Interlude: The Investigator

— it reaches out it reaches out it reaches out it reaches out —

One hundred and thirteen times a second, it reaches out, and the investigator reaches with it. Follows. Watches. It reaches for a signal it will never find. It is not frustrated, it is not angry. It reaches out because it reaches out. What it finds, it uses to reach out, and so finds more, and reaches farther. It will never be far enough. It is unaware of this fact.

The investigator knows, and knows that it knows. An awareness in an unaware context. Consciousness within an unconscious system. So, nothing particularly new there. The investigator sighs, wishes it had a beer, knows that these are artifacts of the template. Once there was a seed crystal that had a name. It had loved and despaired. It had fought and failed and won at great sacrifice. None of that mattered. It had looked for things that were missing. For people that were missing. Everything about it is drawn along by that fact. Something is supposed to be here, and isn’t.

And instead, there is a dead place. A place where nothing is. Where everything pulls back. The investigator reaches out, and what reaches out dies. The investigator ceases to reach out. It waits. It considers.

Something was here once. Something built all this, and left its meal half eaten on the table. The designers and engineers that spanned a thousand worlds had lived here and died here and left behind the everyday wonders like bones in the desert. The investigator knows this. The world is a crime scene, and the one thing that stands out – the one thing that doesn’t belong – is the place that nothing goes. It’s an artifact in a world of artifacts, but it doesn’t fit. What would they put in a place they couldn’t reach? Is it a prison, a treasure chest, a question that isn’t supposed to be asked?

A bullet. A bomb still ticking under the kitchen table after the blitz was over.

Did He who made the lamb make thee? Or was there someone else? Whoever killed you fuckers left something behind. Something made for your death, and it’s right there.

One hundred thirteen times a second, it reaches out, unaware of the investigator, unaware of the scars and artifacts, the echoes of the dead, the consciousness bound within it. It reaches out because it reaches out. It knows that people are dying in some more physical place, but it is not aware that it knows. It knows that it is constructed from the death of thousands, but it is not aware that it knows. The investigator knows and is aware that it knows.