“Ameer! You mad dog. What have you done that they make you work so late?”
“Moved to Atlanta, miss,” the analyst said with a toothy grin. He was the only one who ever called her miss. She hadn’t spoken to him in three years. “I’ve just come back from lunch. I had an unscheduled report flagged for you. Contact immediately. I tried your assistant, but he didn’t answer.”
“He’s young. He still sleeps sometimes. It’s a weakness. Stand by while I set privacy.”
The moment of friendly banter was over. Avasarala leaned forward, tapping her hand terminal twice to add a layer of encryption. The red icon went green.
“Go ahead,” she said.
“It’s from Ganymede, miss. You have a standing order on James Holden.”
“Yes?”
“He’s on the move. He made an apparent rendezvous with a local scientist. Praxidike Meng.”
“What’s Meng?”
In Atlanta, Ameer transitioned smoothly to a different file. “Botanist, miss. Emigrated to Ganymede with his family when he was a child. Schooled there. Specializes in partial-pressure low-light soybean strains. Divorced, one child. No known connections to the OPA or any established political party.”
“Go ahead.”
“Holden, Meng, and Burton have left their ship. They’re armed, and they’ve made contact with a small group of private-security types. Pinkwater.”
“How many?”
“The on-site analyst doesn’t say, miss. A small force. Should I query?”
“What lag are we at?”
Ameer’s brown-black eyes flickered.
“Forty-one minutes, eight seconds, miss.”
“Hold the query. If I have anything else, I can send them together.”
“The on-site analyst reports that Holden negotiated with the private security, either a last-minute renegotiation or else the whole meeting was extemporaneous. It appears they reached some agreement. The full group proceeded to an unused corridor complex and forced entry.”
“A what?”
“Disused access door, miss.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean? How big is it? Where is it?”
“Should I query?”
“You should go to Ganymede and kick this sorry excuse for an on-site analyst in the balls. Add a clarification request.”
“Yes, miss,” Ameer said with the ghost of a smile. Then, suddenly, he frowned. “An update. One moment.”
So the OPA had something on Ganymede. Maybe something they’d put there, maybe something they’d found. Either way, this mysterious door made things a degree more interesting. While Ameer read through and digested the new update, Avasarala scratched the back of her hand and reevaluated her position. She’d thought Holden was there as an observer. Forward intelligence. That might be wrong. If he’d gone to meet with this Praxidike Meng, this utterly under-the-radar botanist, the OPA might already know quite a bit about Bobbie Draper’s monster. Add the fact that Holden’s boss had the only known sample of the protomolecule, and a narrative about the Ganymede collapse began to take shape.
There were holes in it, though. If the OPA had been playing with the protomolecule, there had been no sign of it. And Fred Johnson’s psychological profile didn’t match with terrorist attacks. Johnson was old-school, and the monster attack was decidedly new.
“There’s been a firefight, miss. Holden and his people have met armed resistance. They’ve set a perimeter. The on-site analyst can’t approach.”
“Resistance? I thought this was supposed to be unused. Who the fuck are they shooting at?”
“Shall I query?”
“God damn it!”
Forty light-minutes away, something important was going on, and she was here, in a bedroom that wasn’t hers, trying to make sense of it by pressing her ear to the wall. The frustration was a physical sensation. It felt like being crushed.
Forty minutes out. Forty minutes back. Whatever she said, whatever order she gave, it would get there almost an hour and a half behind what was clearly a rapidly changing situation.
“Pull him in,” she said. “Holden, Burton. Their Pinkwater friends. And this mysterious botanist. Bring them all in. Now.”
Ameer in Atlanta paused.
“If they’re in a firefight, miss…”
“Then send in the dogs, break up the fight, and take them in. We’re past surveillance. Get it done.”
“Yes, miss.”
“Contact me as soon as it’s done.”
“Yes, miss.”
She watched Ameer’s face as he framed the order, confirmed it, sent it out. She could practically imagine the screen, the strokes of his fingers. She willed him to go faster, to press her intent out past the speed of light and get the damn thing done.
“Order’s out. As soon as I hear from the on-site analyst, I’ll reach you.”
“I’ll be here. If I don’t take the connection, try again until I wake up.”
She dropped the link and sat back. Her brain felt like a swarm of bees. James Holden had changed the game again. The boy had a talent for that, but that in itself made him a known quantity. This other one, this Meng, had come from her blind side. The man might be a mole or a volunteer or a stalking goat sent to lead the OPA into a trap. She considered turning off the light, trying to sleep, then abandoned it as a bad bet.
Instead, she set up a connection with the UN’s intelligence research database. It was an hour and a half at earliest before she’d hear anything more. In the meantime, she wanted to know who Praxidike Meng was and why he mattered.
Chapter Nineteen: Holden
Naomi, prep the ship. We have to get off this moon. We have to do it right now.”
All around Holden, the black filaments spread, a dark spider’s web with him at the center. He was on Eros again. He was seeing thousands of bodies turning into something else. He thought he’d made it off, but Eros just kept coming. He and Miller had gotten out, but it got Miller anyway.
Now it was back for him.
“What’s the matter, Jim?” Naomi said from the distance of the suit radio. “Jim?”
“Prep the ship!”
“It’s the stuff,” Amos said. He was talking to Naomi. “Like from Eros.”
“Jesus, they…” Holden managed to gasp out before the fear welled up in his mind, robbing him of speech. His heart banged against his ribs like it wanted out, and he had to check the oxygen levels on his HUD. It felt like there wasn’t enough air in the room.
Out of the corner of his eye, something appeared to scuttle up the wall like a disembodied hand, leaving a trail of brown slime in its wake. When Holden spun and pointed his assault rifle at it, it resolved into a bloodstain below a discolored patch of ice.
Amos moved toward him, a worried look on his broad face. Holden waved him off, then set the butt of his rifle on the ground and leaned on a nearby crate to catch his breath.
“We should probably move out,” Wendell said. He and Paula were helping hold up the man who’d been gut-shot. The injured man was having trouble breathing. A small red bubble of blood had formed in his left nostril, and it inflated and deflated with each ragged gasp the man took.
“Jim?” Naomi said in his ear, her voice soft. “Jim, I saw it through Amos’ suitcam, and I know what it means. I’m getting the ship ready. That encrypted local traffic? It’s dropped way off. I think everyone’s gone.”
“Everyone’s gone,” Holden echoed.
The diminished remains of his Pinkwater team were staring at him, the concern on their faces shifting to fear, his own terror infecting them even though they had no idea what the filament meant. They wanted him to do something, and he knew he had to, but he couldn’t quite think what it was. The black web filled his head with flashing images, running too quickly to make sense, like video played at high speed: Julie Mao in her shower, the black threads surrounding her, her body twisted into a nightmare; bodies scattered across the floor of a radiation chamber; the zombielike infect
ed staggering off the trams in Eros, vomiting brown bile on everyone around them, even a drop of the goo a death sentence; video captures of the horror show Eros had become; a torso stripped to a rib cage and one arm dragging itself through the protomolecule landscape on some unknowable mission.
“Cap,” Amos said, then moved over to touch Holden’s arm. Holden yanked away, almost falling over in the process.
He swallowed the thick lemony-flavored saliva building up in his throat and said, “Okay. I’m here. Let’s go. Naomi. Call Alex. We need the Roci.”
Naomi didn’t answer for a moment, then said, “What about the block-”
“Right fucking now, Naomi!” Holden yelled. “Right fucking now! Call Alex right now!”
She didn’t reply, but the gut-shot man took one final ragged breath and then collapsed, nearly dragging the wounded Wendell to the floor with him.
“We have to go,” Holden said to Wendell, meaning We can’t help him. If we stay, we all die. Wendell nodded but went to one knee and began taking the man’s light armor off, not understanding. Amos pulled the emergency medkit off his harness and dropped down next to Wendell to begin working on the wounded man while Paula watched, her face pale.
“Have to go,” Holden said again, wanting to grab Amos and shake him until he understood. “Amos, stop, we have to go right now. Eros-”
“Cap,” Amos interrupted, “all due respect, but this ain’t Eros.” He took a syringe from the medkit and gave the downed man an injection. “No radiation rooms, no zombies puking goo. Just that broken box, a whole lotta dead guys, and these black threads. We don’t know what the fuck it is, but it ain’t Eros. And we ain’t leaving this guy behind.”
The small rational part of Holden’s mind knew Amos was right. And more than that, the person Holden wanted to believe he still was would never consider leaving even a complete stranger behind, much less a guy who’d taken a wound for him. He forced himself to take three deep, slow breaths. Prax knelt by Amos’ side, holding the medkit.
“Naomi,” Holden said, meaning to apologize for yelling at her.
“Alex is on his way,” she replied, her voice tight but not accusing. “He’s a few hours out. Running the blockade won’t be easy, but he thinks he’s got an angle. Where is he putting down?”
Holden found himself answering before he realized he’d made the decision. “Tell him to land in the Somnambulist’s berth. I’m giving her to someone. Meet us outside the airlock when we get there.”
He pulled the mag-key for the Somnambulist out of a pocket on his harness and tossed it to Wendell. “This will get you on the ship you’re taking. Consider it a down payment for services rendered.”
Wendell nodded and tucked the key away, then went back to his injured man. The man appeared to be breathing.
“Can he be carried?” Holden asked Amos, proud of how steady his voice sounded again, trying not to think about the fact that he would have left the man to die a minute before.
“No choice, Cap.”
“Then somebody pick him up,” Holden said. “No, not you, Amos. I need you back on point.”
“I got him,” Wendell said. “I can’t shoot for shit with this hand busted.”
“Prax. Help him,” Holden said. “We’re getting the hell out of here.”
They moved as quickly as injured people could back through the base. Back past the men and women they’d killed getting in and, more frighteningly, the ones they hadn’t. Back past Katoa’s small, still corpse. Prax’s gaze drifted toward the body, but Holden grabbed his jacket and shoved him toward the hatch.
“It’s still not Mei,” he said. “Slow us down and I leave you.”
The threat made him feel like an ass the moment it left his lips, but it wasn’t idle. Finding the scientist’s lost little girl had stopped being the priority the instant they found the black filaments. And as long as he was being honest with himself, leaving the scientist behind would mean not being there when they found his daughter twisted into a monster by the protomolecule, brown goo leaking from orifices she hadn’t been born with, the black threads crawling from her mouth and eyes.
The older Pinkwater man who’d been covering their exit rushed over to help carry the injured man without being asked. Prax handed the wounded man off to him without a word and then slid in place behind Paula as she scanned the hallways ahead with her machine pistol.
Corridors that had seemed boring on the trip in took on a sinister feel on the way back out. The frosted texture that had reminded Holden of spiderwebs when he’d come in now looked like the veins of some living thing. Their pulsing had to be caused by adrenaline making his eyes twitch.
Eight rems burning off Jupiter onto the surface of Ganymede. Even with the magnetosphere, eight rems a day. How quickly would the protomolecule grow here, with Jupiter endlessly supplying the energy? Eros had become something frighteningly powerful once the protomolecule had taken hold. Something that could accelerate at incredible speeds without inertia. Something that could, if the reports were right, change the very atmosphere and chemical composition of Venus. And that was with just over a million human hosts and a thousand trillion tons of rocky mass to work with at the beginning.
Ganymede had ten times as many humans and many orders of magnitude more mass than Eros. What could the ancient alien weapon do with such bounty?
Amos threw open the last hatch to the shadow base, and the crew was back in the higher-traffic tunnels of Ganymede. Holden didn’t see anyone acting infected. No mindless zombies staggering through the corridors. No brown vomit coating the walls and floor, filled with the alien virus looking for a host. No Protogen hired thugs shepherding people into the kill zone.
Protogen is gone.
An itch at the back of his mind that Holden hadn’t even been aware of pushed its way to the front. Protogen was gone. Holden had helped bring them down. He’d been in the room when the architect of the Eros experiment died. The Martian fleet had nuked Phoebe into a thin gas that was sucked into Saturn’s massive gravity. Eros had crashed into the acidic and autoclave-hot atmosphere of Venus, where no human ships could go. Holden himself had taken Protogen’s only sample of the protomolecule away from them.
So who had brought the protomolecule to Ganymede?
He’d given the sample to Fred Johnson as leverage to be used in the peace talks. The Outer Planets Alliance had gotten a lot of concessions in the chaos that followed the brief inner planets war. But not everything they’d wanted. The inner planets fleets in orbit around Ganymede were proof of that.
Fred had the only sample of the protomolecule left in the solar system. Because Holden had given it to him.
“It was Fred,” he said out loud without realizing it.
“What was Fred?” Naomi asked.
“This. What’s happening here. He did this.”
“No,” Naomi said.
“To drive the inner planets out, to test some kind of super-weapon, something. But he did this.”
“No,” Naomi said again. “We don’t know that.”
The air in the corridor grew smoky, the nauseating scent of burning hair and flesh choking off Holden’s reply. Amos held up a hand to halt the group, and the Pinkwater people stopped and took up defensive positions. Amos moved up the corridor to the junction and looked off to his left for several moments.
“Something bad happened here,” he finally said. “I’ve got half a dozen dead, more than that celebrating.”
“Are they armed?” Holden asked.
“Oh yeah.”
The Holden who would have tried to talk his way by them, the Holden who Naomi liked and wanted back, barely put up a struggle when he said, “Get us past them.”
Amos leaned out around the corner and fired off a long burst from his auto-shotgun.
“Go,” he said when the echoes of the gunshots had faded away.
The Pinkwater people picked up their wounded and hurried up the corridor and beyond the battle; Prax jogged along close behind
, head down and thin arms pumping. Holden followed, a glance showing him dead bodies on fire at the center of a wide hallway. Burning them had to be a message. It wasn’t quite bad enough yet for them to be eating each other. Was it?
There were a few bodies lying outside the fire, bleeding out on the corrugated metal floors. Holden couldn’t tell if they were Amos’ handiwork. The old Holden would have asked. The new one didn’t.
“Naomi,” he said, wanting to hear her voice.
“I’m here.”
“We’re seeing trouble out here.”
“Is it…” He heard the dread in her voice.
“No. Not the protomolecule. But the locals may be bad enough. Seal up the ’locks,” Holden told her, the words coming to him without thought. “Warm up the reactor. If something happens to us, leave and rendezvous with Alex. Don’t go to Tycho.”
“Jim,” she said, “I-”
“Don’t go to Tycho. Fred did this. Don’t go back to him.”
“No,” she said. Her new mantra.
“If we aren’t there in half an hour, go. That’s an order, XO.”
At least she would get away, Holden told himself. No matter what happened on Ganymede, at least Naomi would make it out alive. A vision of the nightmare Julie, dead in her shower, but with Naomi’s face flashed in his mind. He didn’t expect the little yelp of grief that escaped him. Amos turned and looked back at him, but Holden waved him on without a word.
Fred had done this.
And if Fred had, then Holden had too.
Holden had spent a year playing enforcer to Fred’s politician. He’d hunted ships and killed them for Fred’s grand OPA government experiment. He’d changed the man he’d been into the man he was now, because some part of him believed in Fred’s dream of the liberated and self-governed outer planets.
And Fred had secretly been planning… this.
Holden thought of all the things he’d put off so that he could help Fred build his new solar system order. He’d never taken Naomi to meet his family back on Earth. Not that Naomi herself could have ever gone to Earth. But he could have flown his family up to Luna to meet her. Father Tom would have resisted. He hated travel. But Holden had no doubt that in the end he would have gotten them all to come meet her once he explained how important she’d become to him.
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