“They’re connected,” Holden said. Every word came out slow. Every thought. It was like the shock had dropped his mind in resistance gel. “The attack on the prime minister. This. They’re connected, aren’t they?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Fred said. “Probably.”

“This is what they were planning. Your dissident OPA faction,” Holden said. “Tell me you didn’t know about this. Tell me you’re not part of it.”

Fred sighed and turned to him. The weariness in his expression was vast. “Fuck you.”

“Yeah. Okay. Just had to ask.” And then a moment later, “Holy shit.”

On the newsfeed, images of Earth’s upper atmosphere showed the strike like a bruise. The cloud of dust was smearing off to the west as the planet turned under it. The dust plume would keep widening until it covered the whole northern hemisphere – and maybe more – but for now it was just a blackness. His mind kept bouncing off the image, rejecting it. His family was on Earth – his mothers and his fathers and the land he’d grown up on. He hadn’t been back in too long, and now —

He couldn’t finish the thought.

“We have to get in front of this,” Fred said, to himself as much as Holden. “We have to —”

A communication request popped onto the side of the screen, and Fred accepted it. Drummer’s face filled a small window.

“Sir, we have a problem,” she said. “One of the ships we’ve got parked out there waiting to dock just put target locks on the main engines and the upper habitation ring.”

“Defense grid up?”

“That’s the problem, sir. We’re seeing —”

The door of the office opened. The three people who came in wore Tycho Station security uniforms. One carried a large duffel bag; the other two had instruments in their hands that Holden struggled to make sense of. Strange hand terminals, or some sort of compact tool.

Or, guns.