Everything was darkness, and then, for a moment, light.
And then darkness.
Chapter Fifty-Two: Holden
Holden ejected his spent magazine and reached for a new one. His fingers hit only an empty space where he expected it to be. He hadn’t been managing his ammo well. He’d wanted to keep at least one magazine in reserve. Corin was firing around him with her rifle. She had spare pistol ammo on her belt. Without asking, he started pulling magazines off her belt and putting them in his. She fired off a few more shots and waited for him to finish. It was that sort of fight.
Cass was leaning around the corner firing. Answering bullets hit everyplace on her side of the corridor except where she was. Holden was about to shout at her to get back into cover when the lights went out.
It wasn’t just the lights. So many things about his physical situation changed all at once that his hindbrain couldn’t keep up. It told him to be nauseated just in case he’d been poisoned. It was working with fifty-million-year-old response algorithms.
Holden collapsed to his knees with the nausea, the sudden appearance of gravity being one of the many changes. His knees banged against the floor because he was no longer wearing a heavy environment suit. Which also meant he could smell the air. It had a vaguely swampy, sulfurous odor. His inner ear didn’t report any Coriolis, so they weren’t spinning. There were no engine sounds, so the Behemoth wasn’t under thrust.
Holden fumbled at the ground around him. It felt like dirt. Damp soil, small rocks. Something that felt like ground-cover plants.
“Oh, hey, sorry,” a voice said. Miller’s. The light level came up with no visible source. Holden was kneeling naked on a wide plain of something that looked like a mix of moss and grass. It was as dark as a moonlit night, but no moons or stars shone overhead. In the distance, something like a forest was visible. Beyond that, mountains. Miller stood a few meters away, looking up at the sky, still wearing his old gray suit and goofy hat. His hands were in his pockets, his jacket rumpling around them.
“Where?” Holden started.
“This planet was in the catalog. Most Earth-like one I could find. Thought it’d be calming.”
“Am I here?”
Miller laughed. Something in the timbre of his voice had changed since the last time Holden had spoken to him. He sounded serene, whole. Vast. “Kid, I’m not even here. But we needed a place to talk, and this seemed nicer than a white void. I’ve got processing power to spare now.”
Holden stood up, embarrassed to be naked even in a simulation, but without any way of changing it. But if this was a simulation, then that brought up other issues.
“Am I still in a gunfight?”
Miller turned, not quite facing him. “Hmmm?”
“I was in a gunfight before you grabbed me. If this is just a sim running in my brain, then does that mean I’m still in that gunfight? Am I floating in the air with my eyes rolled back or something?”
Miller looked chagrined.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Maybe. Look. Don’t worry about it. This won’t take long.”
Holden walked over to stand next to him, to look him in the eyes. Miller gave him his sad basset hound smile. His eyes glowed a bright electric blue.
“We did it, though? We got under the power threshold?”
“Did. And I talked the station into thinking you were essentially dirt and rocks.”
“Does that mean we saved the Earth?”
“Well,” Miller replied with a small Belter shrug of the hands. “We also saved the Earth. Never was the big plan, but it’s a nice bonus.”
“Good that you care.”
“Oh,” Miller said with that same vaguely frightening laugh. “I really don’t. I mean, I remember being human. The simulation is good. But I remember caring without really caring, if you know what I mean.”
“Okay.”
“Oh, hey, look at this,” Miller said, pointing at the black sky. Instantly the sky was filled with glowing blue Rings. The thousand-plus gates of the slow zone, orbiting around them like Alex’s dandelion seeds, seen from the center of the flower. “Shazam!” Miller said. As one, the gates shifted in color and became mirrors reflecting thousands of other solar systems. Holden could actually see the alien stars, and the worlds whirring in orbit around them. He assumed that meant Miller was taking a little artistic license with his simulation.
There was a croaking sound at his feet, and Holden looked down to see something that looked like a long-limbed frog, with grayish skin and no visible eyes. Its mouth was full of sharp-looking little teeth, and Holden became very aware of his bare toes just a few dozen centimeters from it. Without looking down, Miller kicked the frog thing away with his shoe. It blurred away across the field on its too-long limbs.
“The gates are all open out there?”
Miller gave him a quizzical look.
“You know,” Holden continued. “In reality?”
“What’s reality?” Miller said, looking back up at the swirling gates and the night sky.
“The place where I live?”
“Yeah, fine. The gates are all open.”
“And are there invading fleets of monsters pouring through to kill us all?”
“Not yet,” Miller said. “Which is kind of interesting in its own way.”
“I was joking.”
“I wasn’t,” Miller said. “It was a calculated risk. But it looks clear for now.”
“We can go through those gates, though. We can go there.”
“Can,” Miller said. “And knowing you, you will.”
For a moment, Holden forgot about Ashford, the Behemoth, the deaths and the violence and the thousand other things that had distracted him from where they really were. What they were really doing.
What it all meant.
He would live to see humanity’s spread to the stars. He and Naomi, their children, their children’s children. Thousands of worlds, no procreation restrictions. A new golden age for the species. And the Nauvoo had made it happen, in a way. Fred could tell the Mormons. Maybe they’d stop suing him now.
“Wow,” he said.
“Yeah, well let’s not get too happy,” Miller said. “I keep warning you. Doors and corners, kid. That’s where they get you. Humans are too fucking stupid to listen. Well, you’ll learn your lessons soon enough, and it’s not my job to nursemaid the species through the next steps.”
Holden scuffed at the ground cover with his toe. When it was scraped, a clear fluid that smelled like honey seeped out. This world was in the station’s catalog, Miller had said. I could live here someday. The thought was astounding.
The sky shifted, and now all the ships that had been trapped around the station were visible. They drifted slowly away from each other. “You let them go?”
“I didn’t. Station’s off lockdown,” Miller said. “And I’ve killed the security system permanently. No need for it. Just an accident waiting to happen when one of you monkeys sticks a finger where it doesn’t belong. Is this Ashford cocksucker really thinking he can hurt the gates?”
“And there are worlds like this on the other side of all those gates?”
“Some of them, maybe. Who knows?” Miller turned to face Holden again, his blue eyes eerie and full of secrets. “Someone fought a war here, kid. One that spanned this galaxy and maybe more. My team lost, and they’re all gone now. A couple billion years gone. Who knows what’s waiting on the other side of those doors?”
“We’ll find out, I guess,” Holden replied, putting on a bold front but frightened in spite of himself.
“Doors and corners,” Miller said again. Something in his voice told Holden it was the last warning.