“I didn’t shoot that fucker fast enough,” Miller said aloud.
He could have given us the stars.
A new voice broke in. A human voice shaking with rage.
“Antichrist!”
Miller blinked, returning to reality, and thumbed off the Eros feed. A prisoner transport wound its lazy way through the dock, a dozen Mormon technicians bound to its restraint poles. One was a young man with a pocked face and hatred in his eyes. He was staring at Miller.
“You’re the Antichrist, you vile excuse for a human! God knows you! He’ll remember you!”
Miller tipped his hat as the prisoners ambled by.
“Stars are better off without us,” he said, but too softly for anyone but Julie to hear.
A dozen tugs flew before the Nauvoo, the web of nanotubule tethers invisible at this distance. All Miller saw was the great behemoth, as much a part of Tycho Station as the bulkheads and air, shift in its bed, shrug, and begin to move. The tugs’ drive flares lit the interior space of the station, flickering in their perfectly choreographed duties like Christmas lights, and a nearly subliminal shudder passed through the deep steel bones of Tycho. In eight hours, the Nauvoo would be far enough out that the great engines could be brought online without endangering the station with their exhaust plume. It might be more than two weeks after that before it reached Eros.
Miller would beat it there by eighty hours.
“Oi, Pampaw,” Diogo said. “Done-done?”
“Yeah,” Miller said with a sigh. “I’m ready. Let’s get everyone together.”
The boy grinned. In the hours since the commandeering of the Nauvoo, Diogo had added bright red plastic decorations to three of his front teeth. It was apparently deeply meaningful in the youth culture of Tycho Station, and signified prowess, possibly sexual. Miller felt a moment’s relief that he wasn’t hot-bunking at the boy’s place anymore.
Now that he was running security ops for the OPA, the irregular nature of the group was clearer to him than ever. There had been a time when he’d thought the OPA might be something that could take on Earth or Mars when it came to a real war. Certainly, they had more money and resources than he’d thought. They had Fred Johnson. They had Ceres now, for as long as they could hold it. They’d taken on Thoth Station and won.
And yet the same kids he’d gone on the assault with had been working crowd control at the Nauvoo, and more than half of them would be on the demolitions ship when it left for Eros. It was the thing that Havelock would never understand. For that matter, it was the thing Holden would never understand. Maybe no one who had lived with the certainty and support of a natural atmosphere would ever completely accept the power and fragility of a society based in doing what needed doing, in becoming fast and flexible, the way the OPA had. In becoming articulated.
If Fred couldn’t build himself a peace treaty, the OPA would never win against the discipline and unity of an inner planet navy. But they would also never lose. War without end.
Well, what was history if not that?
And how would having the stars change anything?
As he walked to his apartment, he opened a channel request on his hand terminal. Fred Johnson appeared, looking tired but alert.
“Miller,” he said.
“We’re getting ready to ship out if the ordinance is ready.”
“It’s loading now,” Fred replied. “Enough fissionable material to keep the surface of Eros unapproachable for years. Be careful with it. If one of your boys goes down for a smoke in the wrong place, we aren’t going to be able to replace the mines. Not in time.”
Not you’ll all be dead. The weapons were precious, not the people.
“Yeah, I’ll watch it,” Miller said.
“The Rocinante’s already on its way.”
That wasn’t something Miller needed to know, so there was some other reason Fred had mentioned it. His carefully neutral tone made it something like an accusation. The only controlled sample of protomolecule had left Fred’s sphere of influence.
“We’ll get out there to meet her in plenty of time to keep anybody off of Eros,” Miller said. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
On the tiny screen, it was hard to tell how genuine Fred’s smile was.
“I hope your friends are really up for this,” he said.
Miller felt something odd. A little hollowness just below his breastbone.
“They aren’t my friends,” he said, keeping his tone of voice light.
“No?”
“I don’t exactly have friends. It’s more I’ve got a lot of people I used to work with,” he said.
“You put a lot of faith in Holden,” Fred said, making it almost a question. A challenge, at least. Miller smiled, knowing that Fred would be just as unsure if his was genuine.
“Not faith. Judgment,” he said.
Fred coughed out a laugh.
“And that’s why you don’t have friends, friend.”
“Part of it,” Miller said.
There was nothing more to say. Miller dropped the connection. He was almost at his hole, anyway.
It was nothing much. An anonymous cube on the station with even less personality to it than his place back on Ceres. He sat on his bunk, checked his terminal for the status of the demolitions ship. He knew that he should just go up to the docks. Diogo and the others were assembling, and while it wasn’t likely that the drug haze of the pre-mission parties would allow them all to arrive on time, it was at least possible. He didn’t even have that excuse.
Julie sat in the space behind his eyes. Her legs were folded under her. She was beautiful. She’d been like Fred and Holden and Havelock. Someone born in a gravity well who came to the Belt by choice. She’d died for her choice. She’d come looking for help and killed Eros by doing it. If she’d stayed there, on that ghost ship…
She tilted her head, her hair swinging against the spin gravity. There was a question in her eyes. She was right, of course. It would have slowed things down, maybe. It wouldn’t have stopped them. Protogen and Dresden would have found her eventually. Would have found it. Or gone back and dug up a fresh sample. Nothing would have stopped them.
And he knew-knew the way he knew he was himself-that Julie wasn’t like the others. That she’d understood the Belt and Belters, and the need to push on. If not for the stars, at least close to them. The luxury available to her was something Miller had never experienced, and never would. But she’d turned away. She’d come out here, and stayed even when they were going to sell her racing pinnace. Her childhood. Her pride.
That was why he loved her.
When Miller reached the dock, it was clear something had happened. It was in the way the dockworkers held themselves and the looks half amusement and half pleasure, on their faces. Miller signed in and crawled through the awkward Ojino-Gouch-style airlock, seventy years out of date and hardly larger than a torpedo tube, into the cramped crew area of the Talbot Leeds. The ship looked like it had been welded together from two smaller ships, without particular concern for design. The acceleration couches were stacked three deep. The air smelled of old sweat and hot metal. Someone had been smoking marijuana recently enough that the filters hadn’t cleared it out yet. Diogo was there along with a half dozen others. They all wore different uniforms, but they also all had the OPA armband.
“Oi, Pampaw! Kept top bunk a dir.”
“Thanks,” Miller said. “I appreciate that.”
Thirteen days. He was going to spend thirteen days sharing this tiny space with the demolitions crew. Thirteen days pressed into these couches, with megatons of fission mines in the ship’s hold. And yet the others were all smiling. Miller hauled himself up to the acceleration couch Diogo had saved for him, and pointed to the others with his chin.
“Someone have a birthday?”
Diogo gave an elaborate shrug.
“Why’s everyone in such a good fucking mood?” Miller said, more sharply than he’d intended. Diogo took no offense. He smiled
his great red-and-white teeth.
“Audi-nichts?”
“No, I haven’t heard, or I wouldn’t be asking,” Miller said.
“Mars did the right thing,” Diogo said. “Got the feed off Eros, put two and two, and-”
The boy slammed a fist into his open palm. Miller tried to parse what he was saying. They’d attacked Eros? They’d taken on Protogen?
Ah. Protogen. Protogen and Mars. Miller nodded. “The Phoebe science station,” he said. “Mars quarantined it.”
“Fuck that, Pampaw. Autoclaved it, them. Moon is gone. Dropped enough nukes on it to split it subatomic.”
They better have, Miller thought. It wasn’t a big moon. If Mars had really destroyed it and there was any protomolecule left on a hunk of ejecta…
“Tu sabez?” Diogo said. “They’re on our side now. They get it. Mars-OPA alliance.”
“You don’t really think that,” Miller said.
“Nah,” Diogo said, just as pleased with himself in admitting that the hope was fragile at best and probably false. “But don’t hurt to dream, que no?”
“You don’t think?” Miller said, and lay back.
The acceleration gel was too stiff to conform to his body at the dock’s one-third g, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. He checked the news on his hand terminal, and indeed someone in the Martian navy had made a judgment call. It was a lot of ordinance to use, especially in the middle of a shooting war, but they’d expended it. Saturn had one fewer moon, one more tiny, unformed, filamentous ring-if there was even enough matter left from the detonations to form that. It looked to Miller’s unpracticed eye as if the explosions had been designed to drop debris into the protective and crushing gravity of the gas giant.
It was foolish to think it meant the Martian government wouldn’t want samples of the protomolecule. It was naive to pretend that any organization of that size and complexity was univocal about anything, much less something as dangerous and transforming as this.
But still.
Perhaps it was enough just knowing that someone on the other side of the political and military divide had seen the same evidence they had seen and drawn the same conclusions. Maybe it left room for hope. He switched his hand terminal back to the Eros feed. A strong throbbing sound danced below a cascade of noise. Voices rose and fell and rose again. Data streams spewed into one another, and the pattern-recognition servers burned every spare cycle making something from the resultant mess. Julie took his hand, the dream so convincing he could almost pretend he felt it.
You belong with me, she said.
As soon as it’s over, he thought. It was true he kept pushing back the end point of the case. First find Julie, then avenge her, and now destroy the project that had claimed her life. But after that was accomplished, he could let go.
He just had this one last thing he needed to do.
Twenty minutes later, the Klaxon sounded. Thirty minutes later, the engines kicked on, pressing him into the acceleration gel at a joint-crushing high-g burn for thirteen days, with one-g breaks for biological function every four hours. And when they were done, the half-trained jack-of-all-trades crew would be handling nuclear mines capable of annihilating them if they screwed it up.
But at least Julie would be there. Not really, but still.
It didn’t hurt to dream.
Chapter Forty-Seven: Holden
Even the wet cellulose taste of reconstituted artificial scrambled eggs was not enough to ruin Holden’s warm, self-satisfied glow. He shoveled the faux eggs into his mouth, trying not to grin. Sitting at his left around the galley table, Amos ate with lip-smacking enthusiasm. To Holden’s right, Alex pushed the limp eggs around on his plate with a piece of equally fake toast. Across the table, Naomi sipped a cup of tea and looked at him from under her hair. He stifled the urge to wink at her.
They’d talked about how to break the news to the crew but hadn’t come to any consensus. Holden hated to hide anything. Keeping it secret made it seem dirty or shameful. His parents had raised him to believe that sex was something you did in private not because it was embarrassing, but because it was intimate. With five fathers and three mothers, the sleeping arrangements were always complex at his house, but the discussions about who was bedding with whom were never hidden from him. It left him with a strong aversion to hiding his own activities.
Naomi, on the other hand, thought they shouldn’t do anything to upset the fragile equilibrium they’d found, and Holden trusted her instincts. She had an insight into group dynamics that he often lacked. So, for now, he was following her lead.
Besides, it would have felt like boasting, and that would have been rude.
Keeping his voice neutral and professional, he said, “Naomi, can you pass the pepper?”
Amos’ head snapped up, and he dropped his fork on the table with a loud clatter.
“Holy shit, you guys are doing it!”
“Um,” Holden said. “What?”
“Something’s been screwy ever since we got back on the Roci, but I couldn’t figure. But that’s it! You guys are finally playing hide the weasel.”
Holden blinked twice at the big mechanic, unsure of what to say. He glanced at Naomi for support, but her head was down, and her hair completely covered her face. Her shoulders were shaking in silent laughter.
“Jesus, Cap,” Amos said, a grin on his wide face. “It fucking took you long enough. If she’d been throwing herself at me like that, I’d have been neck deep in that shit.”
“Uh,” Alex said, looking shocked enough that it was clear he hadn’t shared Amos’ insights. “Wow.”
Naomi stopped laughing and wiped tears away from the corners of her eyes.
“Busted,” she said.
“Look. Guys, it’s important that you know this doesn’t affect our-” Holden said, but Amos cut him off with a snort.
“Hey, Alex,” Amos said.
“Yo,” Alex replied.
“XO boning the captain going to make you a really shitty pilot?”
“Don’t believe it will,” Alex said with a grin, exaggerating his drawl.
“And, oddly enough, I don’t feel the need to be a lousy mechanic.”
Holden tried again. “I think it’s important that-”
“Cap’n?” Amos continued, ignoring him. “Consider that no one gives a fuck, it won’t stop us from doing our jobs, and just enjoy it, since we’ll probably all be dead in a few days anyway.”
Naomi started laughing again.
“Fine,” she said. “I mean, everyone knows I’m only doing it to get a promotion. Oh, wait, right. Already the second-in-command. Hey, can I be captain now?”
“No,” Holden said, laughing. “It’s a shit job. I’d never ask you to do it.”
Naomi grinned and shrugged. See? I’m not always right. Holden glanced at Alex, who was looking at him with genuine affection, clearly happy about the idea of him and Naomi together. Everything seemed right.
Eros spun like a potato-shaped top, its thick skin of rock hiding the horrors inside. Alex brought them in close to do a thorough scan of the station. The asteroid swelled on Holden’s screen until it looked close enough to touch. At the other ops station, Naomi swept the surface with ladar, looking for anything that might pose a danger to the Tycho freighter crews, still a few days behind. On Holden’s tactical display, the UNN science ship continued to flare in a braking maneuver toward Eros, its escort right beside it.
“Still not talking, huh?” Holden asked.
Naomi shook her head, then tapped on her screen and sent the comm’s monitoring information to his workstation.
“Nope,” she said. “But they see us. They’ve been bouncing radar off of us for a couple hours now.”
Holden tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair and thought about the choices. It was possible that the hull modifications Tycho had made to the Roci were fooling the Earth corvette’s recognition software. They might just ignore the Roci, thinking she was a Belter gas runner that happene
d to be hanging around. But the Roci was running without a transponder, which made her illegal no matter what hull configuration she was showing. That the corvette wasn’t trying to warn off a ship that was running dark made him nervous. The Belt and the inner planets were in a shooting war. A Belter ship with no identification was hanging around Eros while two Earth ships flew toward it. No way any captain with half a brain would just ignore them.
The corvette’s silence meant something else.
“Naomi, I have a feeling that corvette is going to try and blow us up,” Holden said with a sigh.
“It’s what I’d do,” she replied.
Holden tapped one last complicated rhythm on his chair, then put his headset on.
“All right, I guess I make the first overture, then,” he said.
Not wishing to make their conversation public, Holden targeted the Earther corvette with the Rocinante’s laser array and signaled a generic linkup request. After a few seconds, the link established light went green, and his earplugs began to hiss with faint background static. Holden waited, but the UN ship offered no greeting. They wanted him to speak first.
He flicked off his mic, switching to the shipwide comm.
“Alex, get us moving. One g for now. If I can’t bluff this guy, it’ll be a shooting match. Be ready to open her up.”
“Roger,” drawled Alex. “Goin’ on the juice, just in case.”
Holden glanced over at Naomi’s station, but she’d already switched to her tactical screen and had the Roci plotting firing solutions and jamming tactics on the two approaching ships. Naomi had been in only one battle, but she was reacting now like a seasoned veteran. He smiled at her back, then turned around before she had time to realize he was staring.
“Amos?” he said.
“Locked down and shipshape down here, Cap. The Roci’s pawing at the turf. Let’s go kick some ass.”
Let’s hope we don’t have to, Holden thought.
He turned his mic back on.
“This is Captain James Holden of the Rocinante, calling the captain of the approaching United Nations Navy corvette, call sign unknown. Please respond.”
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