“I know where Thoth Station is,” Miller said.
“You know what?”
Miller nodded.
“Where the hell did you get that?”
Miller grinned. “If I gave you that information and it got out, a good man would get killed,” he said. “You see how that works?”
It struck Miller as he, Holden, and Naomi waited for Fred that he knew an awful lot of inner planets types fighting against the inner planets. Or at least not for them. Fred, supposedly a high-ranking OPA member. Havelock. Three-quarters of the crew of the Rocinante. Juliette Mao.
It wasn’t what he would have expected. But maybe that was shortsighted. He was seeing the thing the way Shaddid and Protogen did. There were two sides fighting-that was true enough-but they weren’t the inner planets versus the Belters. They were the people who thought it was a good idea to kill people who looked or acted differently against the people who didn’t.
Or maybe that was a crap analysis too. Because given the chance to put the scientist from the Protogen pitch, the board of directors, and whoever this Dresden piece of shit was into an airlock, Miller knew he’d agonize about it for maybe half a second after he blew them all into vacuum. Didn’t put him on the side of angels.
“Mr. Miller. What can I do for you?”
Fred. The Earther OPA. He wore a blue button-down shirt and a nice pair of slacks. He could have been an architect or a mid-level administrator for any number of good, respectable corporations. Miller tried to imagine him coordinating a battle.
“You can convince me that you’ve really got what it takes to kill the Protogen station,” Miller said. “Then I’ll tell you where it is.”
Fred’s eyebrows rose a millimeter.
“Come into my office,” Fred said.
Miller went. Holden and Naomi followed. When the doors closed behind them, Fred was the first to speak.
“I’m not sure exactly what you want from me. I’m not in the habit of making my battle plans public knowledge.”
“We’re talking about storming a station,” Miller said. “Something with damn good defenses and maybe more ships like the one that killed the Canterbury. No disrespect intended, but that’s a pretty tall order for a bunch of amateurs like the OPA.”
“Ah, Miller?” Holden said. Miller held up a hand, cutting him off.
“I can give you the directions to Thoth Station,” Miller said. “But if I do that and it turns out you haven’t got the punch to see this through, then a lot of people die and nothing gets resolved. I’m not up for that.”
Fred cocked his head, like a dog hearing an unfamiliar sound. Naomi and Holden shared a glance that Miller couldn’t parse.
“This is a war,” Miller said, warming to the subject. “I’ve worked with the OPA before, and frankly you folks are a lot better at little guerrilla bullshit than at coordinating anything real. Half of the people who claim to speak for you are crackpots who happened to have a radio nearby. I see you’ve got a lot of money. I see you’ve got a nice office. What I don’t see-what I need to see-is that you’ve got what it takes to bring these bastards down. Taking out a station isn’t a game. I don’t care how many simulations you’ve run. This is real now. If I’m going to help you, I need to know you can handle it.”
There was a long silence.
“Miller?” Naomi said. “You know who Fred is, right?”
“The Tycho mouthpiece for the OPA,” Miller said. “That doesn’t draw a whole lot of water with me.”
“He’s Fred Johnson,” Holden said.
Fred’s eyebrows rose another millimeter. Miller frowned and crossed his arms.
“Colonel Frederick Lucius Johnson,” Naomi said, clarifying.
Miller blinked. “The Butcher of Anderson Station?” he said.
“The same,” Fred said. “I have been talking with the central council of the OPA. I have a cargo ship with more than enough troops to secure the station. Air support is a state-of-the-art Martian torpedo bomber.”
“The Roci?” Miller said.
“The Rocinante,” Fred agreed. “And while you may not believe it, I actually know what I’m doing.”
Miller looked at his feet, then up toward Holden.
“That Fred Johnson?” he said.
“I thought you knew,” Holden said.
“Well. Don’t I feel like the flaming idiot,” Miller said.
“It’ll pass,” Fred said. “Was there anything else you wanted to demand?”
“No,” Miller said. And then: “Yes. I want to be part of the ground assault. When we take that station crew, I want to be there.”
“Are you sure?” Fred said. “ ‘Taking out a station isn’t a game.’ What makes you think you have what it takes?”
Miller shrugged.
“One thing it takes is the coordinates,” Miller said. “I have got those.”
Fred laughed. “Mr. Miller. If you’d like to go down to this station and have whatever’s waiting for us down there try to kill you along with the rest of us, I won’t stand in your way.”
“Thanks,” Miller said. He pulled up his hand terminal and sent the plaintext coordinates to Fred. “There you go. My source is solid, but he’s not working from firsthand data. We should confirm before we commit.”
“I’m not an amateur,” Colonel Fred Johnson said, looking at the file. Miller nodded, adjusted his hat, and walked out. Naomi and Holden flanked him. When they reached the wide, clean public hallway, Miller looked to his right, catching Holden’s eyes.
“Really, I thought you knew,” Holden said.
Eight days later, the message came. The cargo ship Guy Molinari had arrived, full up with OPA soldiers. Havelock’s coordinates had been verified. Something was sure as hell out there, and it appeared to be collecting the tightbeamed data from Eros. If Miller wanted to be part of this, the time had come to move out.
He sat in his quarters in the Rocinante for what was likely the last time. He realized with a little twinge, equal parts surprise and sorrow, that he was going to miss the place. Holden, for all his faults and Miller’s complaints, was a decent guy. In over his head and only half aware of the fact, but Miller could think of more than one person who fit that bill. He was going to miss Alex’s odd, affected drawl and Amos’ casual obscenity. He was going to wonder if and how Naomi ever worked things out with her captain.
Leaving was a reminder of things he’d already known: that he didn’t know what would come next, that he didn’t have much money, and that while he was sure he could get back from Thoth station, where and how he went from there was going to be improvisation. Maybe there would be another ship he could sign on with. Maybe he’d have to take a contract and save up some money to cover his new medical expenses.
He checked the magazine in his gun. Packed his spare clothes into the small, battered pack he’d taken on the transport from Ceres. Everything he owned still fit in it.
He turned off the lights and made his way down the short corridor toward the ladder-lift. Holden was in the galley, twitching nervously. The dread of the coming battle was already showing in the corners of the man’s eyes.
“Well,” Miller said. “Here we go, eh?”
“Yep,” Holden said.
“It’s been a hell of a ride,” Miller said. “Can’t say it’s all been pleasant, but… ”
“Yeah.”
“Tell the others I said goodbye,” Miller said.
“Will do,” Holden said. Then, as Miller moved past him toward the lift: “So assuming we all actually live through this, where should we meet up?”
Miller turned.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“Yeah, I know. Look, I trust Fred or I wouldn’t have come here. I think he’s honorable, and he’ll do the right thing by us. That doesn’t mean I trust the whole OPA. After we get this thing done, I want the whole crew together. Just in case we need to get out in a hurry.”
Something painful happened under Miller’s sternum. Not a
sharp pain, just a sudden ache. His throat felt thick. He coughed to clear it.
“As soon as we get the place secure, I’ll get in touch,” Miller said.
“Okay, but don’t take too long. If Thoth Station has a whorehouse left standing, I’m going to need help prying Amos out of it.”
Miller opened his mouth, closed it, and tried again.
“Aye, aye, Captain,” he said, forcing a lightness into his voice.
“Be careful,” Holden said.
Miller left, pausing in the passageway between ship and station until he was sure he’d stopped weeping, and then making his way to the cargo ship and the assault.
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Holden
The Rocinante hurtled through space like a dead thing, tumbling in all three axes. With the reactor shut down and all the cabin air vented, it radiated neither heat nor electromagnetic noise. If it weren’t for its speeding toward Thoth station significantly faster than a rifle shot, the ship would be indistinguishable from the rocks in the Belt. Nearly half a million kilometers behind it, the Guy Molinari screamed the Roci’s innocence to anyone who would listen, and fired its engines in a long slow deceleration.
With the radio off, Holden couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he’d helped write the warning, so it echoed in his head anyway. Warning! Accidental detonation on the cargo ship Guy Molinari has broken large cargo container free. Warning to all ships in its path: Container is traveling at high speed and without independent control. Warning!
There had been some discussion about not broadcasting at all. Because Thoth was a black station, they’d be using only passive sensors. Scanning every direction with radar or ladar would light them up like a Christmas tree. It was possible that with its reactor off, the Rocinante could sneak up on the station without being noticed. But Fred had decided that if they were somehow spotted, it would be suspicious enough to probably warrant an immediate counterattack. So instead of playing it quiet, they’d decided to play it loud and count on confusion to help them.
With luck the Thoth Station security systems would scan them and see that they were in fact a big chunk of metal flying on an unchanging vector and lacking apparent life support, and ignore them just long enough to let them get close. From far away, the stations’ defense systems might be too much for the Roci. But up close, the maneuverable little ship could dart around the station and cut it to pieces. All their cover story needed to do was buy them time while the station’s security team tried to figure out what was going on.
Fred, and by extension everyone in the assault, was betting that the station wouldn’t fire until they were absolutely certain they were under attack. Protogen had gone to a lot of trouble to hide their research lab in the Belt. As soon as they launched their first missile, their anonymity was lost forever. With the war going on, monitors would pick up the fusion torch trails and wonder what was up. Firing a weapon would be Thoth Station’s last resort.
In theory.
Sitting alone inside the tiny bubble of air contained in his helmet, Holden knew that if they were wrong, he’d never even realize it. The Roci was flying blind. All radio contact was down. Alex had a mechanical timepiece with a glow-in-the-dark face, and a to-the-second schedule memorized. They couldn’t beat Thoth at high-tech, so they were flying as low-tech as you could get. If they’d missed their guess and the station fired on them, the Roci would be vaporized without warning. Holden had once dated a Buddhist who said that death was merely a different state of being, and people only feared the unknown that lay behind that transition. Death without warning was preferable, as it removed all fear.
He felt he now had the counterargument.
To keep his mind busy, he ran through the plan again. When they were practically close enough to spit on Thoth station, Alex would fire up the reactor and do a braking maneuver at nearly ten g’s. The Guy Molinari would begin spraying radio static and laser clutter at the station to confuse its targeting package for the few moments the Roci would need to come around on an attack vector. The Roci would engage the station’s defenses, disabling anything that could hurt the Molinari, while the cargo ship moved in to breach the station’s hull and drop off her assault troops.
There were any number of things wrong with this plan.
If the station decided to fire early, just in case, the Roci could die before the fight even started. If the station’s targeting system could cut the Molinari’s static and laser clutter, they might begin firing while the Roci was still getting into position. And even if all that worked perfectly, there was still the assault team, cutting their way into the station and fighting corridor to corridor to the nerve center to take control. Even the inner planets’ best marines were terrified of breaching actions, and for good reason. Moving through unfamiliar metal hallways without cover while the enemy ambushed you at every intersection was a good way to get a lot of people killed. In training simulations back in the Earth navy, Holden had never seen the marines do better than 60 percent casualties. And these weren’t inner planet marines with years of training and state-of-the-art equipment. They were OPA cowboys with whatever gear they could scrape together at the last minute.
But even that wasn’t what really worried Holden.
What really worried him was the large, slightly-warmer-than-space area just a few dozen meters above Thoth station. The Molinari had spotted it and warned them before cutting them loose. Having seen the stealth ships before, no one on the Roci doubted that this was another one.
Fighting the station would be bad enough, even up close, where most of the station’s advantages were lost. But Holden didn’t look forward to dodging torpedo fire from a missile frigate at the same time. Alex had assured him that if they could get in close enough to the station, they could keep the frigate from firing at them for fear of damaging Thoth, and that the Roci’s greater maneuverability would make it more than a match for the larger and more heavily armed ship. The stealth frigates were a strategic weapon, he’d said, not a tactical one. Holden hadn’t said, Then why do they have one here?
Holden moved to glance down at his wrist, then snorted with frustration in the pitch black of the ops deck. His suit was powered down, chronometers and lights both. The only system on in his suit was air circulation, and that was strictly mechanical. If something got fouled up with it, no little warning lights would come on; he’d just choke and die.
He glanced around the dark room and said, “Come on, how much longer?”
As if in answer, lights began flickering on through the cabin. There was a burst of static in his helmet; then Alex’s drawling voice said, “Internal comms online.”
Holden began flipping switches to bring the rest of the systems back up.
“Reactor,” he said.
“Two minutes,” Amos replied from the engine room.
“Main computer.”
“Thirty seconds to reboot,” Naomi said, and waved at him from across the ops deck. The lights had come up enough for them to see each other.
“Weps?”
Alex laughed with something like genuine glee over the comm.
“Weapons are coming online,” he said. “As soon as Naomi gives me back the targeting comp, we’ll be cocked, locked, and ready to rock.”
Hearing everyone check in after the long and silent darkness of their approach reassured him. Being able to look across the room and see Naomi working at her tasks eased a dread he hadn’t even realized he’d been feeling.
“Targeting should be up now,” Naomi said.
“Roger that,” Alex replied. “Scopes are up. Radar, up. Ladar, up-Shit, Naomi, you seeing this?”
“I see it,” Naomi said. “Captain, getting engine signatures from the stealth ship. They’re powering up too.”
“We expected that,” Holden said. “Everyone stay on task.”
“One minute,” Amos said.
Holden turned on his console and pulled up his tactical display. In the scope, Thoth Station turned in a lazy circle whi
le the slightly warm spot above it got hot enough to resolve a rough hull outline.
“Alex, that doesn’t look like the last frigate,” Holden said. “Does the Roci recognize it yet?”
“Not yet, Cap, but she’s workin’ on it.”
“Thirty seconds,” Amos said.
“Getting ladar searches from the station,” Naomi said. “Broadcasting chatter.”
Holden watched on his screen as Naomi tried to match the wavelength the station was using to target them, and began spraying the station with their own laser comm array to confuse the returns.
“Fifteen seconds,” Amos said.
“Okay, buckle up, kids,” Alex said. “Here comes the juice.”
Even before Alex had finished saying it, Holden felt a dozen pinpricks as his chair pumped him full of drugs to keep him alive during the coming deceleration. His skin went tight and hot, and his balls crawled up into his belly. Alex seemed to be speaking in slow motion.
“Five… four… three… two… ”
He never said one. Instead, a thousand pounds sat on Holden’s chest and rumbled like a laughing giant as the Roci’s engine slammed on the brakes at ten g’s. Holden thought he could actually feel his lungs scraping the inside of his rib cage as his chest did its best to collapse. But the chair pulled him into a soft gel-filled embrace, and the drugs kept his heart beating and his brain processing. He didn’t black out. If the high-g maneuvering killed him, he’d be wide awake and lucid for the entire thing.
His helmet filled with the sound of gurgling and labored breathing, only some of which was his own. Amos managed part of a curse before his jaw was clamped shut. Holden couldn’t hear the Roci shuddering with the strain of her course change, but he could feel it through the seat. She was tough. Tougher than any of them. They’d be long dead before the ship pulled enough g’s to hurt itself.
When relief came, it came so suddenly that Holden almost vomited. The drugs in his system stopped that too. He took a deep breath and the cartilage of his sternum clicked painfully back into place.
“Check in,” he muttered. His jaw hurt.
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