149: TOWER

The four of us storm up the hill, Tinera in the lead. The Hylarans picking through the scene are mostly strangers, but we recognise Elenna and Celti; Elenna inspecting a piece of wreckage, expression neutral, and Celti standing with arms folded, grim, eyes flicking from person to person. His eyes alight on us as we approach and he gives us a stiff, courteous nod.

“Captain. Crew. I don’t suppose you have any explanation for this?”

“We’ve been in our quarters,” Tinera says. “What’s going on? Are we suspects?”

“No more than anyone else. The most logical reason to do something like this would be to cut off communication with the ship, and if you didn’t want to talk to the ship, you just wouldn’t. Besides, the only criminals we’ve had running about so far, you didn’t seem aware of.”

Most of us leave the obvious conclusion unsaid, but Tinera’s not one for caution. The says, “If I understand the politics correctly, the people who wouldn’t want us contacting the ship about what we saw yesterday are your people.”

Celti tilts his head. “Do you really want to do this right now?”

“I can’t think of a better – ”

“We’re only interested in the truth, sir,” Captain Klees says, stepping forward. “I’m sure you all have a… procedure for this sort of thing. Is there anything we can do to help?”

“Frankly, you can best help by staying out of the way. Someone locked Elenna in the supervisor booth last night and started dismantling the tower on top of kem. By the time ke’d run through the underground to get help, they’d done rather a lot of damage.” He gestures at the wreckage around us. “A lot of which isn’t going to be easy to replace, and we’d like to know who and why as soon as possible. So unless you have anything useful to add to the investigation, I’d recommend just letting us sort it out.” Kes eyes narrow and ke stares angrily into the middle distance. “Someone is going into Time Out for a long time over this. There might even be a Dunce Cap involved.”

“Are you okay?” the Friend asks Elenna.

“Mm?” Elenna looks up from the fragment of metal in kes hands. “They took this one down after the first, and the ones over there down before the fire. Horribly disorganised. I’m starting to think the fire was an accident.”

“Did they hurt you?”

“What? No. They just barred the door. I was right in the middle of sorting out the schedule for a supply drop, too. I hope the ship keeps to the schedule. They’re sending us sunflower seeds! And algal cultures.”

“Well then, whatever happens,” I say, “you’ll always have sunflowers and algal cultures.”

Elenna nods, and frowns up at the tower. “This is going to take some finesse to repair.”

“It’s doable,” Celti says. “The engineers say they can reuse most of the materials; we don’t need to tip off Antarctica by asking for replacements. But the big dish is too big for our metal printers. We’ll need to start up the forge.”

“How long?” I ask.

Celti shrugs. “We haven’t needed anyone on the forge since before the famine. Mama needs to train someone new for it. The engineers have sent someone and they think maybe seven or eight days at the worst, three at the best, go get everything made. Seven or eight assumes slow training and some mistakes, so hopefully they can do it faster. Getting it rigged up is another big job, they say, if they don’t want to risk dropping it. Maybe a day to get everything hooked up? But most of the small stuff can be remade and hooked up while working on the big one, if making it takes a long time.”

“So probably between four and eight days to get everything back in proper working order.”

“Probably, yeah.”

“The crew on the ship are going to freak out if we go dark for that long,” Tinera points out.

“Can we expect any trouble?”

“Trouble? What? No! How would they even – ”

“If they think we’ve hurt you, they could drop explosives on the camp and kill everyone. Plenty of things on a ship that can explode.”

“They’re absolutely not going to do that,” Captain Klees says firmly, loud enough for the various shocked eavesdroppers around us to hear. “They’ll just assume radio trouble and wait, the same as we did approaching the planet. They’re astronauts, not an army! Nobody wants to cause any trouble with anyone here.”

I’m running the numbers, trying to figure out what’s going on. So far as I can tell, there are three potential groups of Hylarans in the disagreement over the ship – Max and Hive’s group, who are pro-terraformation and want to work with the ship despite the fears a foreign onslought brings; Celti’s group, who want a return to the status quo that’s no longer possible; and Confused and Terrified Civilians, who are, in the nature of confused and terrified civilians, unpredictable. Hive has shown a tendency to making big, illegal moves with the seed scattering stunt, but there’s simply no reason for the pro-terraformation group to do this. It might be panicked random civilian action, but pulling this off without getting caught would need some pretty coordinated activity, especially with Alenna mid-broadcast and alerted as soon as something goes wrong. The only likely suspects are Celti’s group.

But Celti looks genuinely upset, and so far as I know, has a lot of respect for law and proper procedure. Celti himself might be innocent – I remember how shocked and surprised Max had been when Hive pulled the stunt with the seeds. There are players here we haven’t met and don’t know much about, and frankly, I’m not sure how influential the players we do know are within their little groups. Max has a certain amount of clout with Celti’s side, being somebody who suffered the worst in the very famine that stands as their worst fear, and was able to become our liaison with that influence – I have no idea what Max’s standing in their own group is. Similarly, Celti is a Leader, with the respect of and influence over the community as a whole under regular conditions – I have no idea if he has respect and influence among his anti-Courageous compatriots specifically.

And there are three hundred and eighty eight players in this that we know nothing about. Some of them are children, and presumably uninvolved, but. Still.

Max and Hive come striding up the hill. Hive has a sort of vacant look about them, gazing at the tower like they’re looking at something else. Max looks thoughtful a moment.

“Well,” Max says in a light tone, “at least the timing of this isn’t too bad.” The glance at us, the ground crew. “Are you all alright? Nobody went for you, did they? Where’s Tal?”

“At the computer,” Captain Klees says. “It’s Tal’s natural habitat. No, nobody approached us. We didn’t know anything was happening until we saw the tower.”

“Good. Sorry I haven’t touched base with you today. There was…” they gesture at the tower. “And then I had to sign Hiveand the others out of Time Out.”

“Are you okay?” the Friend asks Hive, who blinks blearily at it.

“They’ll be fine in a day or two,” Max says dismissively. They eye the tower again. “The excitement just doesn’t stop, huh? What’s the repair time?”

“You’re awfully chipper about this development,” Celti notes.

“Well, it’s not that big a problem, is it? We have the next handful of drops queued up already, right? They can go ahead without further communication of they need to. I can’t imagine that replacing the communication dish can take that long, so if we’re lucky we might be back on track with no delays at all. Even if there are delays, we’ve got time. And if this kind of thing is going to happen, it’s better that it happens early rather than when they start dropping people.”

“It could very well happen again when they start dropping people.”

“Oh, no, we’ll have caught the perpetrators by then. Anything good in the next drop, Elenna?”

“Sunflower seeds,” Elenna says, not looking up from the wreckage.

“Sunflowers? Real, actual sunflowers?!”

“Once we grow the seeds, yeah.”

“What else does this tower do?” I ask. “Aside from talk to the ship?”

“Weather monitoring, mostly,” Elenna says. “And materials port monitoring. The Vault.”

“We’ve got the backup Vault systems up and guarded,” Celti says, directing a glare at Hive. “So if this is some plan to sabotage the – ”

“We were in Time Out!” Hive snaps, seeming to properly clock the situation for the first time. “Your people have a lot more to gain from this than us!”

“My supporters have shown respect for the law! The only ones running about like this have been – ”

“Hey, hey!” Max cuts in. “I think we can all agree that nobody standing here right now is likely to have done anything, so why don’t we all take this as an opportunity for discussion instead of yelling at each other? I feel like a coffee. Anyone want to come and grab a coffee?”

“I have work to do he – ”

“I know you, Celti; you’ve been standing around looking important for hours. Either haul scrap metal or come have a coffee. You too, Elenna.”

“Why?”

“You were on duty when it happened, right?”

So the eight of us, four Courageous crew and four Hylarans, trudge our way back down the hill and for the central meeting area. The clouds clear a little high above us, letting straight sunshine through for the first time since we’ve landed. I squint up to the sky, trying to see if I can spot the Courageous up there somewhere. I can’t.

“That’s good,” Elenna notes, pointing up.

“Sunshine is nice,” I agree.

Elenna makes a little sound of disagreement in kes throat. “The ship will be able to see the ground. They’ll see the radio tower and know why we’re not talking.”

Also a good point. Hard to know whether the information will make them feel better or worse about the situation. I hope they’re looking right now, seeing us walk across the sands, completely fine and unharmed.

We don’t get much done in the central meeting area. We sip coffee, go over what we already know for a couple of minutes, learn nothing. The conversation quickly turns to light pleasantries and gossip about people I don’t know, thick enough with local slang that I barely understand it. But it’s immediately obvious, glancing about the room, that making any progress on the tower mystery isn’t the point of this meeting. The point is to be here. The point is to have the anti-contact community leader and the pro-contact famine martyr and the terraforming radical and the mutually agreed upon neutral contact and the strangers from space sitting at a table together, drinking coffee, making pleasant conversation. Not to learn anything, but to tell others.

We can get along in this and move forward like reasonable people. If you attacked the tower in any of our names, we’re not with you. We’re going to find you, we’re going to handle this properly.

And when we do, none of us will stand up for you.