Cibola Burn

Holden ran his fingers through his hair. “So not too generous, then.”

“Say pretty please, but carry a one-kilo slug of tungsten accelerated to a detectable percentage of c.”

“I believe I’ve heard that said,” Holden replied, then stood up. He suddenly felt very tired. “I’m going to bed.”

“Naomi’s in Murtry’s goddamn brig, and you can sleep?” Amos said and took another drink.

“No, but I can go to bed. Then tomorrow I’m going to figure out how to get my first officer back from the RCE maniac holding her hostage, so that I can go find the scary alien bullet fragment embedded in the planet.”

Amos nodded as if that all made sense. “Nothing in the afternoon, then.”

Chapter Twenty-Four: Elvi

Elvi slept, and she dreamed.

In her dream she was back on Earth, which was also the corridors of the Edward Israel. A sense of urgency pressed at her, shifting quickly toward dread. Something was on fire somewhere because she hadn’t turned in the right forms. She had to file the forms before everything burned. She was in the bursar’s office at the university and Governor Trying was there too, only he was waiting for his death certificate and it was taking too long. She couldn’t submit her forms. She looked at the onionskin papers, trying to find the submission deadline, but the words kept changing. First, the line at the bottom read, Elvi Okoye, lead researcher and Argonaut, and the next time she read it, Fines to be paid directly at the temple: rabbits and hogs. The urgency pushed at her, and when she shouted the onionskin started coming apart in her fingers. She tried to press the forms back together, but they wouldn’t go.

Someone touched her shoulder, and it was James Holden, only he looked like someone else. Younger, darker, but she knew it was him. She realized she’d been naked this whole time. She was embarrassed, but also a little pleased. His hand touched her breast, and —

“Elvi! Wake up!”

Her eyes opened, the lids heavy and slow. Her eyes struggled to focus. She didn’t know where she was, only that some dumb bastard was interrupting something she didn’t want interrupted. The dark lines before her slowly became familiar. The roof of her hut. She shifted, reaching out for someone but already uncertain who. She was alone in her bed. Her hand terminal glowed dimly. Her analysis equipment flickered as data from her work flew up and out, through the vast darkness to the Ring and Medina Station, to Earth, and answering information flew back out to her. Which was all fine and as it should be, so why the hell was she awake?

A soft knock came at the door, and Fayez’s voice. “Elvi! Wake up. You’ve got to see this.”

Elvi yawned so deeply her jaw ached with it. She pulled herself up to sitting. The dream was already fading quickly. There had been something about a fire and someone touching her whom she had badly wanted to be touched by. The details lost all coherence as she sat up and reached for her robe.

“Elvi? Are you there?”

When she spoke her words were slow, heavy, a little slurred. “If this isn’t important, I will rip your throat open and piss down your lungs.”

Fayez laughed. There were other voices behind his. Sudyam saying something too low to make out the words. Yma Chappel, the geochemistry lead too. Elvi paused, threw off the robe, and pulled on her real clothes and work boots to go with them. When she stepped out of her hut, a dozen of the people in the research teams were standing in pairs or small groups all across the night-dark plain. They were all looking up. And in the high darkness, something larger than a star glowed a sullen red. Fayez, squatting on the ground, glanced over at her.

“What is that?” Elvi asked, her voice instinctively low, as if she might startle it.

“One of the moons.”

She stepped forward, her neck back, scowling up at the night. “What’s it doing?”

“Melting.”

“Why?”

“Right?” Fayez said, standing up.

Sudyam, to their left, raised her voice. “Makes you wish we’d sent probes there, doesn’t it?”

“We’re one ship, and this is a whole damn planet,” Fayez said. “Plus which, we’ve been focusing a lot of effort on killing each other.”

“Point being?” Sudyam asked.

Fayez spread his hands wide. “We’ve been busy.”

The moon shifted colors for a moment, turning from dull red to a bright orange to yellow-white, and then back down the spectrum again, waning as suddenly as it had waxed.

“Is anyone recording this?” Elvi asked.

“Caskey and Farengier aborted the high-altitude refraction study and started sucking down data from it is as soon as they saw it was happening. Mostly, it’s visible light, heat, and about thirty percent more gamma particles than background. The sensor array on the Israel’s showing about the same thing.”