The thing that had been Miller didn’t answer. Holden sighed, hoped, and waited.
Ilus had lost some of its strangeness. The moonless sky still felt too dark, but no darker than a new moon on earth. His nose had become accustomed to the planet’s strange scents. Now it just smelled like night and the aftermath of rain. His growing familiarity was both comforting and sad. Humans would go out to the thousand worlds of the gate network. They would settle down in little towns like First Landing, then spread out and build farms and cities and factories, because that’s what humans did. And in a few centuries, most of those worlds would be very similar to Earth. The frontier would give way to the civilizations that followed it. Remaking it in the image of their original home.
Holden had grown up in the Montana district of North America. A region filled with nostalgia for lost frontiers. It had held out against urban creep longer than most places in the former United States. The people there clung to their farms and ranches even when those things stopped making economic sense. And because of that, Holden couldn’t help but feel the allure of the untamed place. The romantic notion of sights no one else had seen. Ground no one else had walked.
This new frontier would last throughout Holden’s lifetime. Conquering and taming a thousand-plus planets was the work of generations, no matter how much of a head start the protomolecule’s masters had given them. But in his heart, Holden knew that conquered and tamed they would be. And then there would be a thousand Earths with steel-and-glass cities covering them. Holden felt a shadow of that distant future’s loss of mystery as though it were his own.
In the moonless black sky, a star moved too quickly. One of the ships. The Israel or the Barbapiccola. The Rocinante was too small and too black to reflect the light. Did the people up there think about how momentous what they were all doing was? Holden worried that they didn’t. That the strangeness had already become normal, like the night scents of Ilus. That all they saw now was the conflict to be won and the treasure to be harvested.
With a sigh, Holden turned back toward the town and started walking. Amos would be wondering where he was. Carol, the town administrator, had asked for an after-dinner meeting so he needed to track her down too. A fat, dog-shaped thing with a bullfrog’s head walked in front of him and made a sound like boots crunching on gravel. Mimic lizards, the locals called them. They were sort of scaled like a lizard, but to Holden the limbs looked all wrong. Holden took out his hand terminal and used it to shine a faint light on the creature. It blinked up at him and made the gravel noise again.
“You’d be a good pet if you didn’t vomit your stomach up periodically,” Holden said, crouching down to get a better look at the creature. It croaked back at him. Nothing like the words he’d used, but a surprisingly good imitation of his voice and tones. He wondered if the animals could be taught to speak words like a parrot.
The terminal in his hand buzzed. The lizard skittered away, buzzing back at him over its shoulder.
“Holden here.”
“Yeah, Cap,” Alex said. “I got some bad news.”
“Bad like the zero-g toilet on the Roci is out of order, or bad like I should be looking at the sky for incoming missile trails?”
“Well…” Alex started, and then took a long breath. Holden looked up at the sky. Just stars.
“You’ve scared me now. Spit it out.”
“Naomi,” Alex started, and Holden felt his heart drop. “She was out installing the remote cutout on the shuttle, and they were doin’ some kind of group exercise on the outside of the Israel and they spotted her. Just dumb luck, really.”
“What happened? Is she okay?” Please be okay.
“They got her, Cap,” Alex said. Holden felt his chest go empty.
“Got her. Like, shot her?”
“Oh! No. Captured. She’s not hurt. The security guy on the Israel called to make sure I knew she was unharmed. But they’re callin’ it sabotage, and they locked her up.”
“Fuck,” Holden said, able to breathe again. He knew who’d have authorized that. Murtry. And now that the RCE security chief had a big bargaining chip he’d go all-in. “Does anyone else know?”
“Well, Amos called up looking for her a minute ago —”
Holden didn’t hear the rest of what Alex said, because he was already running toward town. The longer he ran without hearing gunfire, the more hopeful he became that Amos had realized the sensitivity of the situation, had decided to wait and consult with his captain before taking any action. He hoped Amos wasn’t already on the radio with the Israel and a pistol held to Murtry’s head demanding Naomi’s safe return.
He was half right.
When he burst into Murtry’s security office he found the RCE security chief pressed to one wall with Amos’ left hand around his throat and a pistol against his forehead. At least no one had called the Israel with demands. Likely because Amos didn’t have a free hand to dial.
In addition to Murtry and Amos, four RCE security personnel stood around the room with drawn sidearms pointed at Amos’ back. One of them, a raven-haired woman named Wei, said, “Drop the gun or we’ll shoot.”
“Okay,” Amos said with a shrug. “Blast away, sweetie. I guarantee I take this piece of shit with me. I’m good. You good?” He leaned closer to Murtry, punctuating the question with a jab of the pistol against his forehead. A little trickle of blood had started to run down Murtry’s face from the force of the barrel pressed against it.
Murtry smiled. “Keep barking, dog. We both know there’s no bite coming. You shoot me, she’s dead.”
“You won’t know,” Amos said.
“Don’t, Amos,” Holden ordered.
“Oh, do,” Murtry said, the words almost a whisper.
Holden held his breath, sure the next thing they heard would be a gunshot. Amos surprised him by not firing. Instead he leaned in even farther until his nose was touching Murtry’s and said, “I’m gonna kill you.”
“When?” Murtry replied.
“That is exactly the question that should stay on your mind,” Amos said and let the man go.
Holden started breathing again with a gasp. “I’ve got this, Amos.”
The big mechanic holstered his gun, to Holden’s relief, but made no move to leave.
“Seriously. I’ve got it. I need you to go back to the rooms and get on the line with Alex. Get me a full report. I’ll be back there in a minute.”