“Still. Maybe some good can come out of it.”
“I admire your psychotic optimism.”
“I’m serious. I mean look at us all. You went out with Amos and Wei and the locals. We’re all here together. Working together. We’re taking care of each other. Maybe this is what it takes to resolve all the violence. There were three sides before. There’s only one side now.”
Fayez sighed. “It’s true. Nothing points out shared humanity like a natural disaster. Or a disaster, anyway. Nothing on this mudball of a planet’s even remotely natural if you ask me.”
“So that’s a good thing,” she said.
“It is,” Fayez agreed. And then a moment later, “I give it five days.”
Chapter Thirty-One: Holden
Holden had witnessed the aftermath of a tornado as a child. They were rare in the Montana flatlands where he’d grown up, but not entirely unheard of. One had touched down on a commercial complex a few miles from his family’s farm, and the local citizens had gathered to help with the cleanup. His mother Tamara had taken him along.
The tornado had hit a farmers’ market at the center of the complex, while totally avoiding the feed store and fuel station on either side of it. The market had been flattened as if by a giant’s fist, the roof lying flat on the ground with the walls splayed out around it. The contents of the store had been scattered in a giant pinwheel that extended for hundreds of meters around the impact point. It was young James Holden’s first experience with nature’s fury unleashed, and for years afterward he’d had nightmares about tornadoes destroying his home.
This was worse.
Holden stood in what his hand terminal told him had been the center of First Landing, the constant rain sheeting off his poncho, and turned in a slow circle. All around there was nothing but thick mud occasionally cut by a rivulet of water. There were no flattened buildings. No wreckage strewn across the ground. With the fury and duration of the winds, it was entirely possible that the detritus of First Landing was hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away. The colonists would never rebuild. There was nothing to rebuild.
A ripple of lights danced through the heavy cloud cover overhead, and a second later the booming of the thunder, like a barrage of cannon fire. The rain intensified, reducing visibility to a few dozen meters, and swelling the little streams cutting gullies across the muddy ground.
“I’d say ‘what a mess,’ but it’s actually kind of the opposite of that,” Amos said. “Never seen anything like this, Cap.”
“What if it happens again?” Holden said, shuddering either at that thought or at the cold rainwater trickling down his back.
“Think they have more than one of whatever blew up?”
“Anyone know what the first one was yet?”
“Nope,” Amos admitted with a sigh. “Big fusion reactor, maybe. Alex sent an update, said it tossed a lot of radiation up around the initial blast.”
“Some of that will be coming down in the rain.”
“Some.”
The mud at Amos’ feet moved, and a small, sluglike creature pushed its way up out of the ground, desperately trying to get its head above water. Amos casually kicked it into one of the nearby streams where the current whisked it away.
“I’m running low on my cancer meds,” Holden said.
“Radioactive rain ain’t gonna help with that.”
“Was my thought. Bad for the colonists too.”
“Do we have a plan?” Amos asked. His tone suggested he didn’t expect an answer.
“Get off this hell-planet before the next catastrophe.”
“A-fucking-men,” Amos replied.
They walked back toward the alien towers, trudging through the thick mud and occasionally having to leap across a newly formed arroyo filled with fast-moving water. The ground was covered with small holes where brightly colored worm-slugs had pushed their way to the surface, and shiny trails of slime radiated in all directions showing their recent passage.
“Never seen these before,” Amos said, pointing at another of the creatures slowly making its way across the wet ground. They weren’t much bigger than Holden’s thumb, and eyeless.
“Forced up by the rain. This was pretty arid land before. There’s a lot of subterranean life drowning right now I’d bet. At least these guys have a way to get out of it.”
“Yeah,” Amos said, frowning down at one, “but, you know, gross. One of those things climbs into my sleeping bag, I’m gonna be pissed.”
“Big baby.”
As if in response to Amos’ worries, the ground shifted and dozens more of the slugs pushed their way up. Wrinkling his nose in disgust, Amos picked his way through them, trying not to get their slime on his boots. The trails they left were quickly washed away by the rain.
Holden’s had terminal buzzed at him, and he pulled it out to find that a message had been downloaded. The terminal had been trying to connect to the Roci for hours. There must have finally been a break in the storm long enough for it to send and receive updates.
He tried to open a channel to Alex, but got only static. Whenever his window had happened, he’d missed it. But the fact that there were occasional breaks in the atmospheric clutter was a hopeful sign that they’d get comms back soon. In the meantime, he could keep sending messages and hoping they’d slip through the static a bit at a time.
The update waiting for him was a voice message. He plugged the bud into his ear and hit play.
“This is a message for Captain James Holden, from Arturo Ramsey, lead counsel for Royal Charter Energy.”
Holden had sent dozens of requests to the various senior vice presidents and board members of RCE for Naomi to be released. Getting a reply back from the company’s top lawyer was not a good sign.
“Captain Holden,” the message continued, “Royal Charter Energy takes your request for the release of Naomi Nagata from detention on the Edward Israel very seriously. However, the legal landscape we’re navigating with this situation is murky at best.”
“It’s not murky, give me my damn XO back, you smug bastards,” Holden muttered angrily. At Amos’ questioning look he shook his head and continued the recording.
“Pending further investigation, we’re afraid we’re going to have to follow the advice of the security team on site and hold Naomi Nagata in protective custody. We hope you understand the delicate—”
Holden turned off the recording in disgust. Amos raised an eyebrow.
“That’s the legal wonk at RCE telling me they plan to keep holding Naomi,” Holden said. “‘Following the advice of the security team on site.’”
“Murtry,” Amos grunted.
“Who else?”
“Sort of wondering why you haven’t let me off the leash on that, Cap,” Amos said.
“Because, before this”—Holden waved an arm at the mud and rain and worms around them—“we had a job to do that would not have been aided by murdering the RCE security chief.”
“Would’ve loved to give it a try, though. You know, just to see.”
“Well, my friend, you might still get your shot,” Holden said. “Because I am about to order him to do something he really isn’t going to want to do.”
“Oh,” Amos said with a smile, “goody.”
When they returned to the ruins, the camp was in chaos. People were frantically sweeping something out of the tower entrance using blankets and sticks and other makeshift implements. An agonized howl echoed out of the structure, like someone in terrible pain.