“Sure,” he said. “I don’t see why not.”
“About that dead cat thing…”
“Yeah?”
“A lot of people have underestimated Jim over the last few years,” Naomi said. “A lot of them aren’t with us anymore.”
“A threat?”
“A heads-up not to make the same mistake your boss is making. I like you.”
~
Putting the relief supplies together was easy. Everyone on board had been waiting for a chance to do something. Food, fresh water, polyfiber blankets, and medical supplies – including a box of oncocidals with Holden’s name on the top – filled the shuttle’s hold until there was hardly room to close the door. Havelock found himself watching the sensors, waiting for the clouds to thin enough for the one tiny light of First Landing to show through. It was a shock to remember that those lights weren’t going to shine again. That they were gone. Havelock hadn’t been there. He’d never been to the surface of New Terra at all, and still the idea of the one human settlement being wiped away bothered him.
“This is shuttle two requesting permission to drop,” the pilot said, her voice a slow drawl.
“Captain Marwick here. Permission’s given. Godspeed.”
Havelock watched his display as the shuttle’s thrusters went bright, driving it away from the Israel and down. The danger was turbulence in the lower atmosphere. Even if there were evil winds in the outer layers, the air was so thin there, the shuttle would be able to shrug them off. When it got down to the clouds, Havelock told himself, the real danger would begin.
The shuttle dropped, its body becoming only a light spot against the darker gray of the clouds. The sensor data feed from it looked fine. The turbulence was worse than Havelock had expected, but not so bad as he’d feared. The farther down it went, though —
The data signal dropped. Havelock switched over to visual in time to see the shuttle’s bright flare fade. A puff of smoke a few kilometers higher showed where it had detonated. The shock of it, the horror, was like being punched in the gut. He barely noticed the flickering of the lights in the Israel or the stuttering whine of the air recyclers restarting.
“Havelock?” the prisoner said. “Havelock, what’s happening? Did something go wrong? Why’s everything rebooting?”
He ignored her, leaning close to his terminal screen. The shuttle was dead, falling to the distant ground of New Terra in a hundred flaming bits. But there was something in the images. A barely visible line that passed through the cloud of smoke and debris where it had died. Something had shot the shuttle down. His first thought was the Barbapiccola. His second was the Rocinante. He pulled up the orbital tracking, trying to find how the enemy ships had taken action, but the only thing that intersected the line at the moment when the shuttle died was one of New Terra’s dozen tiny moons…
His mouth went dry. He heard the emergency Klaxon sounding for the first time, though he realized now it had been going for a while. Since the shuttle exploded, he thought. He assumed. Naomi Nagata was shouting at him, trying to get his attention, trying to get him to talk to her. He put a priority connection request through to Captain Marwick. For five long seconds, the captain didn’t respond.
“It was the planet,” Havelock said. “The shuttle. It was shot down by something on one of those moons.”
“I saw that,” Marwick said.
“What the hell was it? Some kind of alien weapon? Did the planet blowing up turn on some kind of defense grid?”
“Couldn’t say.”
“I need everything we have on that. All the sensor data. Everything. I need it sent back to Earth, and I need it ready for Murtry and the science team. I’m giving blanket permission for anyone on the crew to see it. Any information we can get – anything – is our top priority.”
“Might not be our top,” the captain said. “My plate’s a bit full right now, but as soon as I’ve a spare moment —”
“This isn’t a request,” Havelock shouted.
When Marwick spoke again, his voice was cool. “I’m thinking you might not have yet noted that we’re on battery power, sir?”
“We’re… we’re what?”
“On battery power. Backup, as you might say.”
Havelock looked around his office. It was like seeing it for the first time. His desk, the weapon locker, the cells. Naomi looking out at him with an expression of barely restrained alarm.
“Did… did it shoot us too?”
“Not so far as I can see. No new holes through the hull, certainly.”
“Then what’s going on?”
“Our reactor’s down,” Marwick said. “And it seems it won’t restart.”
Chapter Thirty-Three: Basia
“What does that mean?” Basia asked.
Well,” Alex said, “it’s complicated, but these little pellets of fuel get injected into a magnetic bottle where a bunch of lasers fire. That makes the atoms in the fuel fuse, and it releases a lot of energy.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“No,” Alex said. “Well, maybe a little. What exactly are you asking?”
“If our reactor is off-line, does that mean we’ll crash? Is the ship broken? Is it just us? What does it mean?”
“Hold your horses,” Alex said. He was sitting in his pilot’s chair doing complicated things with his control panel. “Yeah,” he finally said, dragging the word out into a long sigh. “Reactors are off-line on the Israel and the Barb. That’s a lot worse for them than it is for us.”
“Felcia – my daughter is on the Barbapiccola. Is she in danger?”
Alex started working on his panel again, his fingers tapping out commands faster than Basia could follow. He clucked his tongue as he worked. The clucking while Basia waited for an answer made him want to scream and choke the laconic pilot.
“Well,” Alex drawled out, then tapped one last control and a graphic display of Ilus with swirling lines around it appeared. “Yeah, the Barb’s orbit is decaying —”
“The ship is crashing?” Basia yelled at him.
“Wouldn’t say crashing, but we’ve all been keeping pretty low, with bringing up ore and all. Most times adding a little velocity’s just the way you do it, but —”
“We have to go get her!”
“Ease down! Let me finish,” Alex yelled back, patting the air in a placating gesture that made Basia want to punch him in his face. “The orbit’s always decaying, but it won’t be dangerous for days. Maybe longer, depending on how long they can run the maneuvering thrusters on battery power. Felcia’s not in any danger right now.”