Cibola Burn

“Right. See you on the other side,” Holden didn’t really believe in another side. Nothing after death but infinite black. Or, he hadn’t, anyway. Sure, out-of-control alien technology might be involved, but maybe, just maybe, sometimes there was something else. “Goodbye, my friend.”

He gave the probe a hard push, and it drifted slowly away from the ship. Holden watched it dwindle until it was just a tiny point of light reflected from Ilus’ star. Then it lit up for a few seconds with a short drive flare and streaked away from the planet. Holden waited until he couldn’t see it anymore, then shut the cargo bay doors.

He stripped the vacuum suit off in the airlock after it cycled. Naomi was waiting for him when the inner airlock door opened.

“Hey,” he said.

“Is it done?”

“Yeah, I’m all done down here.”

“Then come to my room, sailor,” she said. “There’s something there I want to show you.”

~

Holden floated half a meter above his bed, his body soaked with sweat. Naomi drifted next to him, long and lean, hair wild from their lovemaking. He touched his own scalp, feeling the weird sweaty points his own hair had become.

“I must look a fright,” he said.

“Hedgehogs are cute. You’re fine.” Naomi tapped one long toe against the bulkhead and drifted a few centimeters closer to the atmospheric controls. She aimed the airflow vent at them both, and Holden’s skin tingled as the cool air dried him.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to take enough showers to wash Ilus off of me,” he added after a moment.

“I was in a brig for a couple of weeks. Trade you.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Not your fault. Just bad luck. Did you know that the security guy Havelock was Miller’s partner on Ceres?”

Holden touched the bed so he could rotate his body and look at her. “You’re shitting me.”

“Nope. Before we met him, of course.”

“Wish I’d known.”

“You think you do, but it would have been weird.”

“Probably right,” Holden said, then sighed and stretched until his joints popped. “I’m never doing that again.”

“Which that?”

“Leaving you. When I thought I was going to die down on Ilus and you were going to die in orbit and we wouldn’t even be able to hold each other when it happened, it was the worst thing I could possibly think of.”

“Yeah,” she agreed with a nod. “I understand.”

“I promise it won’t happen again.”

“Okay. Why’d you let Basia go?”

Holden frowned. The truth was, he wasn’t really sure why he had. And it was something he’d been trying hard not to think about too much.

“Because… I like him. And I like Lucia. And breaking up their family wouldn’t solve anything. I bought his story about blowing the landing pad early to try and save people. Plus, he’s not going to be setting any more bombs. And the one thing Murtry told me that made me really think is that we’re beyond the borders of civilization right now. Black-and-white legal arguments don’t make a lot of sense here. Someday, maybe.”

“The frontier doesn’t have laws, it has cops?” Naomi said, but she smiled when she said it.

“Ouch,” Holden replied and she laughed.

They drifted together in companionable silence for a few minutes. “Speaking of which, I should probably go see our prisoner,” Holden finally said.

“To gloat?” Naomi said, poking him in the ribs. “You love that thing at the end where you gloat.”

“It’s what makes this all worth doing.”

“Go,” she said, putting her feet against the bulkhead and then pushing him toward the closet with her hands. “Get dressed. And comb your hair.”

“I’ll be back soon,” he agreed, pulling clothes out of the drawers. “I have another thing I want you to show me.”

“Making up for lost time.”

“Damn straight.”

~

Holden stopped off at the head to brush his teeth and wash his face before visiting Murtry in the med bay. While he worked to get the knots and tangles out of his hair, Amos drifted in and then just waited.

“Am I in the way or something?” Holden asked. “Do you need privacy?” Amos had never been shy with his toilet usage before.

“Naomi says you’re going to see Murtry,” Amos said, keeping his tone carefully neutral.

“Yep.”

“You told me I wasn’t allowed to go see him.”

“Nope.”

“Can I go with you, then?” Amos asked.

Holden almost said no, then thought about it for a minute and shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

Murtry’s leg wound hadn’t been particularly serious, but Holden’s bullet had shattered his right humerus, so they were keeping him locked up in the medical bay while the expert system tracked the bone regrowth. The RCE security chief had his left arm handcuffed to the crash couch. When the arm was better healed, they’d move him to one of the crew cabins where Amos had added exterior locks.

“Captain Holden,” Murtry said when they entered. “Mister Burton.”