It didn’t. He saw with clarity as perfect as if Alex were zooming his HUD in on the idea that he was not that sort of man. It was hard to tell if that was a flattering testament to his commitment to his marriage, or a scathing commentary on his own insecurities and selfishness. Like almost everything else that had happened to him over the last months, it was murky and difficult to navigate.
He would go back with Holden, probably to the UN complex on Luna. The OPA would claim he was their citizen, but Ganymede had originally been a UN colony. The legality of which people were citizens of which government was still being worked out, and would be for decades. Plenty of time to try him as a UN citizen for crimes against a UN-based company and throw him in prison for all eternity.
Years of trials, probably.
Basia began slowly walking across the hull of the Rocinante, dragging his webbed-together bundle of tools and spare parts behind. At the stern of the ship he stopped and planted both feet, waiting for the bundle to float past him and stop at the end of its line. The weight pulled his arms out painfully for a moment as he killed its momentum.
“Open the cargo bay hatch,” he said.
“Roger,” Alex replied, and the ship started to vibrate under Basia’s feet. The two heavy doors of the cargo bay slowly slid open. When they were about halfway, he yanked down on the line and the bundle of tools swung around the edge of the ship and into the cargo bay. He let go of the line and let them sail inside without yanking him off the edge after them.
In the corner of his vision, there was a bright burst of light, like the flash of a distant camera. Basia turned to look, expecting to see one of the other two ships moving into the sunlight. Instead, there was a growing point of white light centered over Ilus’ largest island. It was bright enough to overpower the faint green luminescence of its beaches, and rapidly expanding.
In seconds, the dark side of the planet was lit up as brightly as if a second sun had risen. The other islands in the chain suddenly visible in stark black and white, casting long shadows across the ocean as the white spot grew. He felt his heart start to race.
“Alex?” he said.
The ocean around the big island heaved up, bulging out beyond the curve of the planet in what must have been a tsunami miles high. But before Basia could grasp the enormity of the forces involved in such an uprising, it was gone. The island, the massive upwelling of the ocean, the smaller nearby islands, they all disappeared in a column of white fire and a rapidly rising mushroom cloud.
Basia’s visor darkened dramatically, and he had a sense that if it hadn’t the light coming from the planet below might have blinded him. But even through the welder’s shield darkness of the helmet, he could see the column of fire growing, hurling white vapor up until it broke free of the planet’s atmosphere and became glittering crystals of ice speeding away from the gravity well like a shower of glass from a bullet-shattered window.
A massive ripple, like wind across a field of grass, sped away from the growing pillar of fire through the surrounding ocean. Intellectually, Basia knew the ripples had to be waves, hundreds or thousands of feet high, rushing away from the blast. But the intellectual part of his brain was rapidly disappearing behind the screaming primitive who was relieving his bladder into the suit’s condom catheter in fear.
Basia had grown up in the Jupiter system. He’d seen video of Io up close more than once. Io was famous for having the most massive volcanoes ever seen by man. Gigantic geysers of sulfur blasting out of the surface of the moon until particles were flung into Jupiter’s plasma torus and faint ring system. They made Io an almost insanely inhospitable place.
The explosion Basia was looking at from orbit dwarfed those eruptions. It looked like half the planet was being flattened by the force of the blast.
His initial thought was that it was a very good thing First Landing was on the other side of the world. His second, that the shock wave was heading that direction, and not even traveling around the planet was going to slow it down much.
“Jesus Christ!” Alex yelled across the radio. “Are you seein’ that shit!”
“Call down,” Basia tried to yell back. It came out as a panicky whimper. “You have to warn them.”
“Warn them to do what?” Alex asked. He sounded dazed.
What do you do when the planet you’re standing on tries to kill you?
Basia didn’t know.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Holden
Holden stood on a low hill overlooking First Landing trying to enjoy the beauty of the planet while his brain chewed on the half dozen insoluble problems that he was somehow supposed to solve. The usual dust had been tamped down by the recent run of gentle rains. It made the town look clean, well-tended. Peaceful. Above, the sky was a stunning indigo blue with just the faintest streamers of high-altitude clouds breaking it up. His hand terminal was reporting the temperature as 22 degrees Celsius with a gentle four-knot wind coming out of the northeast. The only thing that would have made it better was Naomi there with him, or at least back safe on the Roci. But that would have made it a lot better.
“I miss planets,” Holden said, closing his eyes and facing the sun.
“I don’t,” Amos replied. He’d been so quiet during their afternoon walk that Holden had sort of forgotten he was there.
“You never miss a breeze? The sun on your skin? A gentle rain?”
“Those are not the parts of planetary life that imprinted on my memory,” Amos replied.
“Want to talk about it?” Holden asked.
“Nope.”
“Okay.” Holden didn’t take the mechanic’s refusal personally. Amos had, as he described it, a lot of past in his past. He didn’t like people digging around there, and Holden was the last person to pry. Holden already knew more about Amos’ brutal upbringing on Earth than he wanted to.
“Better head back, I guess,” Holden said after a few more pleasant moments in the breeze. “Might have an RCE reply to my requests.”
“Yeah.” Amos snorted. “If the RCE bigwigs sent a reply seconds after receiving your message, they should be arriving just about now.”
“I won’t let your facts about light delay get in the way of my optimism.”
“Not much does.”
Holden was silent for a long moment. He licked his lips.
“If they say no,” he said. “If they’re committed to letting Murtry hold on to her. I’m going to have to make a decision about whether she’s more important than keeping this place from devolving into a shooting war.”
“Yup.”
“I’m pretty sure I know what I’m going to pick too.”
“Yup.”
“There will be people who think I’m very selfish.”
“True,” Amos said. “But also, fuck ’em. They’re not us.”
“That us-and-them thing is the problem at the base of all this—” Holden started, but his hand terminal interrupted, a high-priority alarm sounding. It was the alert reserved for crewperson in danger. Naomi, he thought. Something happened to Naomi.
Amos took a few steps toward Holden, he brow furrowing and hands clenching into fists. His mind had gone to the same place. If something had actually happened to Naomi, there was no way he’d be able to stop Amos from killing Murtry this time. Probably, he wouldn’t even try.
“Holden here,” he said, trying to keep his voice level.
“Cap, we got a problem,” Alex replied. His voice was shaky, terrified. Holden had flown with Alex through half a dozen battles. Not even when the missile trails filled the sky around them had he ever heard his pilot panic. Whatever it was, it was bad.