A pair of death-slugs were climbing the side of the tower toward a teardrop-shaped window. The plastic that had been stretched across the opening had a few small rips in it, so Holden knocked the slugs off the wall with his shovel and then kicked them away. He rinsed the toxic slime off his boot in a muddy puddle.
The rain had lessened to a drizzle, which was good, but the temperature had continued to drop, which was bad. While the overall light level didn’t change much with the constant cloud cover, Holden had started noticing the day-to-night transition by the appearance of frost on the walls of the tower. It wasn’t dangerously cold yet, but it would get worse. Pretty soon the survivors would be adding hypothermia to their list of unpleasant ways to die.
He bit his tongue until it bled and continued his slow trudge around the tower.
He heard Murtry before he saw him. A quiet, ghostly voice drifting out of the gray rain that gradually resolved into a man-shaped spot slightly darker than the space around it.
“— immediate action. They’ve escalated. We’ll have an argument that we acted with restraint until —” Murtry was saying, but stopped when he heard Holden approaching.
“What are you doing out here?” Holden asked. Murtry was still blind. It was dangerous for him to be wandering around outside. The ground, where it wasn’t puddles, was a slick clay that could take someone off their feet in a heartbeat. And the numbers of slugs driven to the surface by the water had Holden wondering if Ilus was a hollow ball filled with poisonous worms.
“Minding my business, Captain,” Murtry said, not quite looking in Holden’s direction.
“Meaning I should do the same?”
“Glad you followed that.”
The two men stood for a long moment. Far above them, their crews were probably shooting at each other right now. They were enemies, and they weren’t. Some part of Holden’s sleep-deprived, half-broken mind still wanted to make peace with Murtry and the RCE. Or at least didn’t want the man’s death on his conscience.
“It’s dangerous out here,” Holden said, keeping his own voice even and calm.
“That makes it different how?” Again, the clenched jaw cutting off the last word with a snap. His anger gave Holden a thin sliver of hope. Maybe Naomi had gotten out. He needed to talk to Alex.
“I can’t let you get killed on my watch,” Holden said.
“I appreciate your concern.”
It all felt vaguely ridiculous, tap-dancing around the issue. They both knew what was happening. He felt like they were playing poker and only pretending they couldn’t see each other’s hand.
“Can I help you back inside?” Holden asked.
“I have some business to finish up here,” Murtry replied with a meaningless smile.
“When we find your corpse later, I’m going to tell everyone I warned you.”
“If I die,” Murtry said, his smile becoming a shade more genuine, “I’ll try to leave a note saying it wasn’t your fault.”
He signaled the end of the conversation by turning away and mumbling into his hand terminal. Holden left him and immediately called Alex.
“Kind of busy here, Cap,” the pilot said without preamble.
“Tell me we’re busy because you’ve rescued Naomi and everything is going perfectly. Is she on the ship?”
There was a long pause as Alex noisily exhaled into the microphone. “So, that part where I went to rescue Naomi? Yeah. I sent Basia.”
Holden spun on his heel to look back at Murtry. The RCE security chief was still talking on his hand terminal. “We sent the prisoner to rescue another prisoner? If that hasn’t already worked, I think I may be watching Murtry order their executions right now.”
“No no,” Alex said in a rush. “It did kind of go to shit, but the radio chatter I’m gettin’ makes me think Naomi’s fine. In fact, I think she might be escaping on her own and savin’ Basia.”
Holden couldn’t help but laugh. Murtry’s head swiveled, looking for the source of the laughter with blind eyes. “Sounds about right. Where are they now?”
“It’s a little confusin’, actually,” Alex said. “I’ve definitely got Basia’s IFF pinging away outside the Israel. But there’re a bunch of other suits out there. So it’s complicated.”
“Can you, you know, ask?”
“Yeah, no. Basia switched channels on me without leavin’ the old channel open. Not a guy who’s done a lot of tactical comm drills, I’m guessing. I’m hoping one of them starts talking to me so I can get the new frequencies.”
Holden watched Murtry, probably using his radio to coordinate the pursuit of Naomi and whoever else she was with now. He fought down a sudden urge to walk over to the man, knock him to the ground, take his terminal, and demand to know what the hell was going on.
And then he stopped fighting.
Murtry had just started to turn toward him, frowning at the sound of his approaching steps, when Holden yanked the terminal out of his hand and shoved him to the muddy ground.
“Stay down there or I’ll beat you unconscious,” he told the RCE man. Holding the terminal to his ear he said, “Who’s on the other end of this?”
“Who the fuck is this? Where’s Murtry?”
“I’m standing on him right now,” Holden said. “So if you’re part of the team that’s chasing Naomi Nagata, you should stop.”
The man on the other end said, “Comms is compromised, switch to two-alpha,” and the connection dropped. Someone who’d spent some time training on tactical comms, it seemed.
“Alex,” Holden said. “I’ve disrupted their command channel. Go get our people.”
“Not a problem, boss. The situation has clarified some. I’ve got three comin’ aboard.”
“Who’s the third?”
“About to go find out. Alex out.”
Murtry pushed himself to his knees with a grunt, frowning at a spot just over Holden’s left shoulder. “Tough guy when your opponent is blind.”
“We’re working on fixing that,” Holden replied, tossing the man’s hand terminal to the ground next to him. “You feel free to come look me up after.”
“I will,” Murtry said. The RCE security chief picked himself up and began carefully walking toward the alien tower’s entrance.
When he was far enough away he wouldn’t hear, Holden said, “Looking forward to it.” He was surprised to find that was true. When Murtry disappeared around the corner of the tower, Holden began his slow trudge the other direction.
His earbud crackled to life and Amos said, “Cap? That doctor is looking for you.”
“Lucia or Elvi?”
“The cute one.”
“Lucia or Elvi?”
“The one not married to our prisoner.”
“Tell Elvi I’ll be there after this pass around the tower,” Holden said and killed the connection.
A few minutes later he rounded the last corner, bringing the tower entrance into sight. Elvi was waiting for him there, her face set in a deep frown.
“It didn’t work,” Holden said.
“What?”
“The oncocidals. My medicine. It’s not working.”
“What?” Elvi replied, “Why do you say that? What happened?”
“You’re frowning.”
“Oh. No. I was just thinking that the membrane-bound proteins in our cells must have some sort of functional sites in common with the local life, even though as far as I can tell, they’re totally different proteins. The oncocidals are having a similar effect on mitotic division even though our amino acid groups barely overlap. It’ll take decades to figure that one out.”
“So let’s pretend I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Holden said.
“It’s working,” Elvi said, and her frown shifted into a brilliant smile. “The microorganism’s cell replication is failing. The colonies are breaking down and the light-scattering effect is going too. I can almost read again, if the font’s big enough.”
Holden felt a rush of relief tha
t immediately turned into a wave of dizziness. He collapsed against the wall of the tower, taking long slow breaths to keep from passing out. A few meters away, a slug crawled along the wall toward him. He started to poke it off the wall with his shovel, then realized he’d lost it somewhere and he couldn’t feel his hands.
“Are you okay?” Elvi asked, reaching out tentatively with one hand to find him. “Your respiration sounds funny.”
“Passing out,” Holden said between long breaths. “How long until everyone can see again?”
“We need to get you inside,” Elvi replied, throwing his left arm around her shoulders and guiding him to the door. “I think you’ve been awake for something like four days.”
“It’s okay,” Holden said. “I took a lot of speed. How long?”
Elvi stopped, throwing her other arm around his waist to hold him up. It was both a relief and, if he were being honest, a little unflattering how quickly every bit of sexual tension had been drained from their interactions. He was giddy and sleep-deprived enough he almost asked her what had changed. Fortunately, she spoke first.
“Not sure. The dead organism isn’t refracting light like the live ones do. Most of the loss of vision came from that, not from actual blockages. We’ll still have some floaties in our eyes for a while, but…”
“So, that means soon?”
Elvi got him in the doorway and over to a pile of blankets. She gently lowered him until he was lying flat on his back. “Yes, soon I should think. Hours, maybe. Days at the most.”
“How did you know these blankets were here?”
“We laid this out as a sleeping location for you three days ago,” Elvi said with a smile and patted his cheek. “You were just too stubborn to use it.”
“Thank you.”
“We have a small privacy tent too,” she replied, pulling on something by his feet. A thin sleeve of material sprang up and along the length of his body, completely covering him.
“Thank you,” Holden said again, his eyes closing against his will. He could already feel the impending sleep as a tingling in his extremities. “Wake me up in about a year. Oh, and make sure Murtry doesn’t kill me until then.”
“Why would he do that?” Elvi asked.
“We’re kind of at war,” Holden said. Unconsciousness washed into him, sleep pulling him down into the endless void.
“So,” a voice said right next to his ear, “we really need to get a move on.”
“Miller,” Holden said, not opening his eyes, “if you make me get up, I swear I will find a way to murder you.”
“You did your bit here,” Miller continued, undeterred. “Now you need to come with me and do the other thing. And I’m not sure how much time we’ve got. So, upsy daisy.”
Holden forced his eyes open and looked to his side. Miller was inside the tent with him, but also too large to be in the tent with him. The overlapping images sent a spike of pain through his head so he closed them again. “Where are we going?”
“Got a train to catch. Find the back room with the weird pillar in the middle. You guys are using the space for storage. I’ll meet you there.”
“I hate you so, so much,” Holden said, but there was no reply. He risked opening one eye, and saw Miller was gone. When he opened the tent, Elvi was sitting next to it looking worried.
“Who were you talking to?”
“Ghost of Christmas past,” Holden said, forcing himself to sit up. “Where’s Amos?”
“He’s been spending a lot of time with Wei. I think they’re both in the next room.”
“Help me up,” Holden said, holding out one arm. Elvi climbed to her feet and pulled on it, and he somehow managed to stand without falling over. “My heart is racing. It’s not supposed to do that.”
“You’re full of fatigue toxins and amphetamines. I’m not surprised you’re having hallucinations.”
“My hallucinations are of the alien mind control variety,” Holden said, and took a few unsteady steps toward the next room.
“Can you hear what you’re saying?” Elvi asked, coming with him and keeping one hand under his elbow. “You’re really starting to worry me.”
Holden turned, straightened up, and took one long breath. Then he removed Elvi’s hand from his arm and said in as steady a voice as he could manage, “I need to go somewhere and turn off the defense network so our friends don’t fall out of space and die. I need you to go back to work on the sight problem. Thank you for your help.”
Elvi looked unconvinced, but Holden waited her out and she eventually headed off toward the area of the tower given over to lab work.
In the next room, Amos and Wei were sitting next to a low plastic table, eating ration bars and drinking distilled water out of an old whiskey bottle.
“Got a minute?” Holden asked him, and when Amos nodded he added, “Alone?”
Wei said nothing, but hopped to her feet and left the room, hands in the air in front of her to keep from running into a wall.
“What’s the word, Cap?” Amos asked. He took another bite of the protein bar and grimaced. It smelled like oil and paper.
“We got Naomi back,” Holden said in a whisper, not sure how far away Wei might have gone. “She’s on the Roci.”
“Yeah, I heard,” Amos said with a grin. “Chandra was telling me.”
“Chandra?”
“Wei,” Amos said. “She’s working for the wrong people, but she’s all right.”
“Okay. Murtry’s pissed about the rescue.”
“Yeah, but fuck him.”
“I also,” Holden continued, “may have shoved him down and stolen his hand terminal.”
“Stop making me fall in love with you, Cap, we both know it can’t go anywhere.”
“The point,” Holden said, “is that he might try to take it out on people here. I need you looking after everyone. Especially Lucia and Elvi. They’ve been the two most helpful to us, so he may try to punish us through them.”
“Not so afraid of the blind guy,” Amos said. “Even when I’m one too.”
“That’s about to end. Elvi says the drugs are working. People will be getting their sight back in hours or days.”
“Cap, is this a problem you’d like me to solve?” Amos asked, cocking thumb and forefinger like a gun. “Because that can just happen.”
“No. No escalations. I already did enough damage knocking Murtry around. I’ll pay for that when the time comes, but you only do what you have to in order to protect these people when I’m gone.”
“Okay,” Amos said. “You got it. And what do you mean, when you’re gone?”
Holden sat down on the plastic table with a thump and rubbed at eyes that were as dry as steel bearings. The planet was one big ball of humidity, yet he somehow managed to have dry itchy eyes. “I have to go with Miller. He says there’s a thing that might turn off the alien artifacts, which would get the Roci flying again and pretty much solve all of our problems.”
Amos frowned. Holden could see the big mechanic’s face twitching as he formulated questions and then abandoned them without speaking. Finally he just said, “Okay. I’ll keep an eye out here.”
“Be here when I get back, big man,” Holden said and clapped Amos on the shoulder.
“Last man standing,” Amos replied with another grin. “It’s in my job description.”
It took Holden a few minutes to find the storage room with the oddly shaped pillar in the middle, but when he did the only person in it was Miller. The detective frowned out a what-took-you-so-long look and Holden flipped him off.
Miller turned away and walked toward the pillar, disappearing into it like a ghost walking through a wall. A few seconds later, the pillar split down the middle without a sound and opened up into a steep ramp heading down into darkness.
“Was this always here?” Holden asked. “Because if it was, and you’d told us about it, it might have saved a few lives when the storm came.”
“If you’d been where I could talk to you,
I might have,” Miller said with a Belter shrug of the hands. “You did pretty well without me. Now get down the ramp. We’re late as it is.”
The ramp dropped nearly fifty meters into the ground and ended at a metallic wall. Miller touched it and the wall, in spite of having no visible seams or joints, irised open.
“All aboard,” Miller said. “This is our ride.”