Cibola Burn
One of the two men had a slug on his pants.
It hung on the fabric, just above his right knee. There was no slime trail around it. None of the five diggers seemed to notice it was there. Holden knew that if he shouted in alarm, the man might take a swipe at it with his hand without thinking. So he calmly walked toward him and said, “Don’t move.”
The man frowned back at him. “Que?”
Holden grabbed the man by the shoulders and shoved him onto his back. “The fuck?” the other man said. They were all backing away from him like onlookers at the start of a fight. Holden leaned over the man on the ground and repeated, “Don’t move.” Then he grabbed the cuffs of the man’s pants and yanked them off with one hard pull. He threw them as far away as he could.
“What just happened?” said the woman who’d first nodded at him. Holden recognized her now. Older, tough, one of the bosses at the mine. Probably in charge of the trench crew.
“Didn’t anyone see that he had a slug on his knee?”
“Babosa malo?” someone muttered.
Holden reached down a hand and pulled the dazed man to his feet. “You had a death-slug on your pants. Were you leaning against this wall?”
“No. I don’t know. Maybe, for a second,” the man started.
“I told you people,” Holden said, first to the man then rotating to face the crew boss. “I told you not to touch the walls. The slugs climb them to get away from the water.”
The crew boss nodded at him with one fist. “Sa sa.”
“You didn’t see it,” Holden said, not asking a question. “How bad? Malo que sus ojos?”
“Ojos?” the man asked.
“Not ojos. Ah. Orbas. Eyes.”
“Na khorocho,” the man agreed with a Belter shrug of his hands. Not good.
“Well, the price you pay for not letting your boss know you couldn’t see well enough to avoid slugs is now you have no pants.”
“Sa sa.”
“So go back inside,” Holden said, giving the man a gentle shove toward the tower entrance, “and see if you can find some way to cover your shame.”
“Sorry, boss,” the man replied, then trotted off.
“Anyone else on the crew that bad?” Holden asked the team leader. She frowned and shrugged.
“Not great. We all missed it.”
“All right,” Holden said, rubbing his head. It sent the water clinging to his scalp and hair running down his neck. After a moment he said, “Take them all back.”
“The trench.”
“Too risky now. I’ll stay on patrol. Get your people inside.”
“All right,” the woman said, then started leading her people toward the entrance.
Holden’s hand terminal buzzed at him, and when he pulled it out he saw someone had been trying to connect for a while. He allowed the connection and after a few seconds Elvi appeared on the screen.
“Jim, where are you? I need you back at the lab.”
“Sorry,” Holden replied. “Kinda busy out here.”
“Your bloodwork just finished. I need you to come read me the results.”
The screen on the analysis rig was tiny. Who, in the age of implantable vision correctives, had bad eyesight? Holden felt he could make a usability argument to the designers now.
“Let me finish this patrol,” Holden said.
“This is important.”
“So is keeping alive the idiots who insist on working outside when they can’t see.”
“Hurry then. Please,” she said and killed the connection.
Holden was putting his terminal away when it started pinging at him. A quick glance at the screen showed it was alerting him to another supply drop. He held the terminal up to the skyline and let it direct him to the location of the drop. A distant white parachute popped into view as the terminal zoomed in on it. Too far. They were still coming in randomly scattered over too wide an area. They had teams out recovering the first several drops, but pretty soon they wouldn’t have anyone left who could see far enough to make a dangerous trek out to the supplies and back.
Anyone but him.
He headed off to find Amos and their potential solution to that problem. The mechanic had set up his little workshop a few hundred meters away from the tower under an A-frame shelter made of corrugated plastic sheeting. A variety of tools, salvaged electric cart parts, and welding supplies littered the cramped space beneath.
“How’s it looking?” Holden asked, then walked into the shelter and sat on a plastic crate filled with odds and ends.
Amos sat cross-legged on a sheet of plastic surrounded by battery housings in various states of disassembly. “Well, here’s the problem,” he said, waving at the batteries with one thick arm.
“As in?”
“As in, I got a couple carts they hauled out of the soup around the mines that I can have ready to roll in hours if I throw my back into it. Turns out they don’t mind being submerged all that much. The drive assemblies need the mud cleaned out and shit, that’s an easy job.”
“But the batteries are hosed.”
“Yeah, that’s about the size of it.” Amos picked up a delicate-looking strip of metal covered in rust spots. “They minded.”
Holden took the corroded lead out of Amos’ hand and looked it over for a few seconds, then tossed it on a growing pile of bad parts. “The ships say high-altitude winds are making precise drops impossible,” he said. “Right now, I can send out search teams to track them down.”
“Right up until your searchers can’t see to piss without hitting their shoes.”
“Right up until then. And then I’m the only person who can go get the supplies. And I can’t keep up with that and everything else without some wheels.”
“Okay,” Amos said. “Good news is I think I can assemble two or three working batteries off the parts. Bad news is I’ll probably only be able to charge one.”
“One is all I need. And a functioning cart to put it in.”
“I can make that happen,” Amos said. He slowly reached across his body and grabbed the oxyacetylene torch. It popped to life with a bright blue flame that he pointed at something on the ground. A death-slug that had been creeping up on him died with a hiss and a sizzle.
“How are your eyes doing?” Holden asked, keeping his tone casual.
“Okay so far,” the mechanic replied. “We haven’t been here as long, maybe. But I can see green flaring at the edges of my vision, so I know I got the bug same as everyone else.”