“That’s not ours,” Fayez said. “That’s the Barbapiccola’s. The mining operation’s under way again.”
Elvi shook her head. It was all one stupid, shortsighted mistake after another, strung together so that each one seemed inevitable. The colony would sell the ore, get lawyers, make deals. The containment dome would never be set up. What should have been clean, solid biology would turn into a salvage job of correcting for this and discarding the impurities that. Fayez seemed to know what she was thinking.
“No research protocol survives contact with the subject population,” he said. “That’s not just this. It’s everything.”
The sun had dipped to half a hand above the horizon when the loader topped another rise like a thousand before it. Wei braked and shut off the engines. Fayez stood up in his seat, his elbows resting on the roll bar. Holden said something obscene under his breath.
“Well,” Fayez said, his voice hushed. “At least it wasn’t hard to find.”
The thing hunkered down in the depression between two hills. Its vast carapace was the nacreous white that she’d seen in the walls of the ruins, but there was nothing architectural about this. It had an insectile form, long articulated limbs like legs pressing weakly out into the hardpack. Two larger appendages emerged from its back, one gray and splintered, the exoskeleton empty of anything but dust, the other swinging awkwardly. Five black circles on its abdomen recalled eyes, but didn’t shift to focus on them. At least not as far as Elvi could tell.
“What is it?” Wei asked. Elvi noticed that the rifle had made its way to the woman’s hands. She hadn’t seen that happen.
“I don’t know,” Elvi said. “I haven’t seen anything like it before.”
“I have,” Holden said. “It’s one of their machines. Whatever designed the protomolecule had… things like this on the station between the rings. They were smaller, though. I saw one of them kill someone.”
“You’re telling me,” Wei said, her voice even and calm, “that thing is a couple billion years old?”
“That would be my guess,” Holden said.
Fayez whistled low. “That is not dead which can eternal lie. Or, y’know, whatever.”
The monster from the desert shifted drunkenly, its legs awkward. Its one functioning arm twisted toward them, then collapsed to the ground. Its body shifted and trembled as it tried to lift it again.
“Look,” Elvi said. “Back there.”
All along the contour line at the bottom of the valley between hills, the stones had been scraped clean. None of the quasi-fungal grasses remained. No lizards or birds. It was like a vast hand had come down with a sponge and wiped the landscape clean. Now that she knew to look, she saw the thing’s legs were pulling the native life up and feeding into tiny, chitinous orifices along its underbelly.
“It’s… eating?” she said.
“On the station,” Holden said, “soldiers tried to kill one with a grenade. The machines killed the man who threw it and used his body. Reprocessed it right there. Turned him into paste and used him to repair the damage.”
“That makes sense,” Elvi said. “The protomolecule repurposed biological systems during the Eros event as well.”
“Glad you approve, Doctor Okoye,” Wei said dryly. “In your scientific opinion, could this pose a threat to the expedition?”
“Sure, maybe,” Elvi said, and Holden made a gurgling sound in the back of his throat. The thing lurched forward, lost its footing, and scrambled back. It was like watching a broken toy or a car-struck dog that hadn’t quite died yet. It was fascinating and frightening, and she couldn’t look away.
“I think we need to leave now,” Holden said, fear making the words come fast. “Like now now. Not later now.”
“Isn’t what we came here for,” Wei said, raising the rifle to her shoulder.
“What are you doing!” Holden shouted. “Did you not hear me about the putty making?”
In reply, Wei opened fire. Tracer rounds drew bright red lines through the air, and small explosions lit every place they struck. The thing staggered back, swinging its arm, but Wei pulled a fresh clip from her pocket when the first one went dry and resumed firing. The thing tried to push in toward Wei, and then to move away from her. A green-gray liquid poured from the wounds in its side. The report of the rifle was deafening.
The thing lurched one last time, and let out a high, teeth-clenching keen. It collapsed, legs splayed, in the pool of liquid. Wei let the gun’s barrel drift down until it pointed at the ground. When she looked at Holden, her eyes were hard. Holden hands were on the loader’s dash, the knuckles white. His face was gray.
“I hope that’s not a problem, sir,” Wei said.
“You are out of your fucking mind?” Holden said, his voice high and tight. “That thing could have killed you!”
“Yes, sir,” Wei said. “That’s why I killed it.”
“Did you?” Holden said, his voice continuing to climb. “Are you sure? What if it’s not all the way dead? Can we… burn it or something?”
Wei smiled.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, we can.”
An hour later, the great ruddy disk of the sun touched the horizon. The flames danced around the thing’s corpse, rising up higher than a bonfire. Greasy black smoke spiraled up toward the clouds, and the whole world seemed to reek of accelerants. Wei had taken a small tent from the loader’s storage, and Fayez had set it up. Elvi stood, the heat of the sun and the fire pressing against her face. The night was going to be long. They all were, here.
“You all right?” Fayez asked.
“I’m fine. I wish I’d gotten some samples, though.”
In the heart of the fire, the thing glowed. Its shell was white-hot, and thin cracks had started to show, radiating out from its joints. It was beautiful in its way, and she was sorry to see it destroyed and relieved in almost equal measures. It wasn’t an emotional mixture she was used to.
Wei insisted on setting up watches through the night, and Holden volunteered to take the first of them. He seemed uneasy in a way that Elvi wouldn’t have thought James Holden, captain of the Rocinante, was capable of. Vulnerable. Elvi lay in the tent, her head poking out. Fayez snored softly beside her. Wei, curled in the back of the loader with a thin blanket, was silent as stone. Elvi watched Holden and listened while he hummed to himself, a lonely human sound in the vast inhuman planet. Sleep didn’t come. After two hours, she gave up, rose from her uncomfortable bed, and went to sit at the man’s side. In a world without moonlight, there was only the orange glow of the alien’s dying pyre and a thin silver highlight of stars. It reduced him to a few lines and a sense of mass and warmth.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said.
“I don’t think I will either,” he said. “I hate the way those things scare me.”
“I’m surprised to hear you say that.”
“You were expecting me to enjoy it?” She could hear the smile. Far above them, a falling star streaked across the sky, bright, and then gone.
“I’m not used to hearing men admit to having emotions,” she said. “You were on Eros when the outbreak came, weren’t you? I’d think after that, nothing would frighten you.”
“Doesn’t work that way. After Eros, everything frightened me. I’m still trying to calm down.” He chuckled. When he spoke again, his voice had sobered. “Do you think that thing was a machine? Or was that an animal?”
“I don’t think that’s a distinction they would have made.”
“You mean the designers? Who the hell knows how they would have seen anything?”
“Oh, we can say some things,” Elvi said. “What they cared about was in what they designed. And still is, in a way. We know that they respected the power of self-replicators and knew how to harness it.”