“Maybe,” Holden said. “There’s no way to know that.”
“I know that. I know it. But I brought my family here. So I could keep them safe.”
Holden nodded. He didn’t say, This is an alien world filled with dangers you couldn’t possibly anticipate, on top of which you didn’t actually own it, and you came here to be safe? It didn’t seem helpful.
“No one can make us leave,” the man finished.
“Well —”
“No one can make us leave,” Basia repeated. “You should remember that.”
Holden nodded again, and after a moment Basia turned and walked away. If that’s not a member of the resistance, he at least knows who they are, he thought. Someone to keep an eye on.
His hand terminal chimed an incoming connection request at him.
“Jim?” Naomi said. There was a nervous edge to her voice.
“Here.”
“Something’s happening down there. Massive energy spike in your location, and, uh —”
“Uh?”
“Movement.”
Chapter Fifteen: Havelock
Slowly, New Terra was taking on a sense of familiarity. The planet’s one big continent and long strings of islands turned under the Edward Israel every ninety-eight minutes, orbital period and the rotation of the planet conspiring to make a slightly different image every time Havelock looked. The features of the planet had started developing names for him, even though they would never be the ones that the official records showed. The largest southern island was Big Manhattan, because the outline reminded him of the North American island. The Dog’s Head islands were scattered in the middle of the planet’s one enormous ocean, and looked like a collie’s face if he squinted. What he thought of as the Worm Fields were actually a massive network of rivers on the big continent, any one of them longer than the Amazon or the Nile. In the north was Crescent City, a massive network of alien ruins that sort of looked like a cartoon moon.
And there, in the flat beige sweep of what he thought of as the Plate, was the black dot of First Landing, like the first lesion of a rash. It was tiny, but when the ship passed over it at night, it was the only spot of light. There were more places and ecosystems down there, more discoveries to make and resources to use, than there had ever been on Earth. It seemed bizarre that they were fighting and dying over that one tiny piece of high desert. And it also seemed inevitable.
Murtry looked out from the display, listening to Havelock’s report. Gravity changed the shape of his face, pulling down at his cheeks and eyes. It actually looked pretty good on him. Some people just belonged down a well.
“We had one incident with Pierce and Gillett.”
“Those are the two in marine biology?”
“Gillett is. Pierce is actually a soil guy. It didn’t amount to anything more than a little domestic spat, but… well, tempers are fraying. All these folks came out here to work, and instead, they’re stuck here. We’re doing sensor sweeps and dropping the occasional high-atmo probe, but it’s like giving starving people a cracker when they can smell the buffet. It’s starting to come out at the seams a little.”
“That makes sense,” Murtry said.
“Plus which they hate null g. The autodoc’s been pumping out antinausea drugs like there’s no tomorrow. I’m surprised we aren’t just putting that shit in the water at this point.”
Murtry’s smile was perfunctory. Havelock wanted to float the idea of a second colony. Maybe something in the temperate zone near a river and a beach. The kind of place someone might, for example, string up a hammock. It would let the expedition’s crew get working, and the problems with the squatters could work themselves out without putting anyone else in harm’s way. The words hovered at the back of Havelock’s throat, but he didn’t say them out loud. He already knew the arguments against it. You treated a tumor when it was small, before it spread. He could even hear it in his boss’s voice. Havelock cracked his knuckles.
“The shuttle?” Murtry asked.
Havelock looked over his shoulder, even though he knew the office was empty apart from him. When he spoke, his voice was quieter.
“I got some pushback because it meant halving the supply schedule, but people got over it. I thought of having the hold stacked with high-density ceramics for shrapnel, and putting in a few pallets of the geology survey’s shaped charges, but I don’t have anything that’s going to make a bigger explosion than the shuttle’s reactor would. I’ve taken out all the safety overrides the way you asked, though. Physical and software. Honestly, it’s a little scary going on it anymore, just knowing that it could go off.”
“And the controls.”
“The standard protocols are all stripped out. You can fly it or I can. Anyone else is talking to a brick.”
“Good man.”
“Captain Marwick’s not happy about it.”
“He’ll cope,” Murtry said. “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”
“And we have the ship’s drive,” Havelock said. “If we pointed the Israel’s ass at the Barbapiccola and fired it up, we could slag it.”
“Right range, we could take out the Rocinante too,” Murtry said. “Except that they could say the same, and they’ve got missiles. No, we’re just getting ready for contingencies. Which brings me to the point. I’ve got the solution to one of your problems.”
“Sir?”
“All those bored scientists. We’ve lost a lot of the security team, and we’re in a more hostile environment than we’d expected. I need you to do some cross training.”
“You mean hire them into security?”
“Nothing official,” Murtry said. “But if we had a dozen people who were familiar with the riot gear and had some practice in low g, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings.”
Havelock nodded. “A militia, then.”
“I established that we’re in de facto control of First Landing. Holden thinks he’s some kind of fucking Solomon. I’m fine letting him go with it for now, but when the time comes, we may need to put boots on the ground here. Or on the Barbapiccola. I’m happy if we don’t, but I want the option. Can you do that?”
“Let me look into it,” Havelock said. “I’m pretty sure it would mean bending corporate policy. The home office is pretty touchy about liability.”