The Dragon’s Path

by Abraham Daniel

  “Because of Trask?”

  “That and you’ve got a great ass, sir. My point is we flew together for four years and more. And I would have come along with you any day of that if you’d asked me.”

  “I didn’t know,” Holden said. He sounded a little strangled.

  “You didn’t ask. You always had your sights set someplace else. And, honestly, I think Belter women just put you off. Until the Cant… Until it was just the five of us. I’ve seen you looking at me. I know exactly what those looks mean, because I spent four years on the other side of them. But I only got your attention when I was the only female on board, and that’s not good enough for me.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “No, sir, you don’t. That’s my point. I’ve watched you seduce a lot of women, and I know how you do it. You get fixed on her, you get excited by her. Then you convince yourself that the two of you have some kind of special connection, and by the time you believe it, she usually thinks it’s true too. And then you sleep together for a while, and the connection gets a little faded. One or the other of you says something like professional or appropriate boundaries or starts worrying what the crew will think, and the whole thing slides away. Afterwards they still like you. All of them. You do it all so well they don’t even feel like they get to hate you for it.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is. And until you figure out that you don’t have to love everyone you bed down with, I’m never going to know whether you love me or just want to bed down. And I won’t sleep with you until you know which it is. The smart money isn’t on love.”

  “I was just—”

  “If you want to sleep with me,” Naomi said, “be honest. Respect me enough for that. Okay?”

  Miller coughed. He hadn’t meant to, hadn’t even been aware he was going to. His belly went tight, his throat clamped down, and he coughed wet and deep. Once he started, it was hard to stop. He sat up, eyes watering from the effort. Holden was lying back on his bed. Naomi sat on the next bed over, smiling like there had been nothing to overhear. Holden’s monitors showed an elevated heart rate and blood pressure. Miller could only hope the poor bastard hadn’t gotten an erection with the catheter still in.

  “Hey, Detective,” Naomi said. “How’re you feeling?”

  Miller nodded.

  “I’ve felt worse,” he said. Then, a moment later: “No. I haven’t. But I’m all right. How bad was it?”

  “You’re both dead,” Naomi said. “Seriously, we had to override the triage filters on both of you more than once. The expert system kept clicking you over into hospice care and shooting you full of morphine.”

  She said it lightly, but he believed her. He tried to sit up. His body still felt terribly heavy, but he didn’t know if it was from weakness or the ship thrust. Holden was quiet, jaw clamped tight. Miller pretended not to notice.

  “Long-term estimates?”

  “You’re both going to need to be checked for new cancers every month for the rest of your lives. The captain has a new implant where his thyroid used to be, since his real one was pretty much cooked down. We had to take out about a foot and a half of your small bowel that wouldn’t stop bleeding. You’re both going to bruise easy for a while, and if you wanted kids, I hope you have some sperm in a bank someplace, because all your little soldiers have two heads now.”

  Miller chuckled. His monitors blinked into alarm mode and then back out.

  “You sound like you trained as a med tech,” he said.

  “Nope. Engineer. But I’ve been reading the printouts every day, so I’ve got the lingo down. I wish Shed was still here,” she said, and sounded sad for the first time.

  That was the second time someone had mentioned Shed. There was a story there, but Miller let it drop.

  “Hair going to fall out?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” Naomi said. “The system shot you full of the drugs that are supposed to stop that, but if the follicles die, they die.”

  “Well. Good thing I’ve still got my hat. What about Eros?”

  Naomi’s false light tone failed her.

  “It’s dead,” Holden said from his bed, turning to look at Miller. “I think we were the last ship out. The station isn’t answering calls, and all the automatic systems have it in a quarantine lockdown.”

  “Rescue ships?” Miller asked, and coughed again. His throat was still sore.

  “Not going to happen,” Naomi said. “There were a million and a half people on station. No one has the resources to put into that kind of rescue op.”

  “After all,” Holden said, “there’s a war on.”

  The ship system dimmed the lights for night. Miller lay on his bed. The expert system had shifted his treatment regimen into a new phase, and for the past three hours, he’d alternated between spiking fevers and teeth-chattering chills. His teeth and the nail beds of his fingers and toes ached. Sleep wasn’t an option, so he lay in the gloom and tried to pull himself together.

  He wondered what his old partners would have made of his behavior on Eros. Havelock. Muss. He tried to imagine them in his place. He’d killed people, and he’d done it cold. Eros had been a kill box, and when the people in charge of the law wanted you dead, the law didn’t apply anymore. And some of the dead assholes had been the ones who’d killed Julie.

  So. Revenge killing. Was he really down to revenge killing? That was a sad thought. He tried to imagine Julie sitting beside him the way Naomi had with Holden. It was like she’d been waiting for the invitation. Julie Mao, who he’d never really known. She raised a hand in greeting.

  And what about us? he asked her as he looked into her dark, unreal eyes. Do I love you, or do I just want to love you so bad I can’t tell the difference?

  “Hey, Miller,” Holden said, and Julie vanished. “You awake?”

  “Yeah. Can’t sleep.”

  “Me either.”

  They were silent for a moment. The expert system hummed. Miller’s left arm itched under its cast as the tissue went through another round of forced regrowth.

  “You doing okay?” Miller asked.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” Holden said sharply.

  “You killed that guy,” Miller said. “Back on the station. You shot him. I mean, I know you shot at guys before that. Back at the hotel. But right at the end there, you actually hit somebody in the face.”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “You good with that?”

  “Sure,” Holden said, too quickly.

  The air recyclers hummed, and the blood pressure cuff on Miller’s good arm squeezed him like a hand. Holden didn’t speak, but when Miller squinted, he could see the elevated blood pressure and the uptick in brain activity.

  “They always made us take time off,” Miller said.

  “What?”

  “When we shot someone. Whether they died or not, they always made us take a leave of absence. Turn in our weapon. Go talk to the headshrinker.”

  “Bureaucrats,” Holden said.

  “They had a point,” Miller said. “Shooting someone does something to you. Killing someone… that’s even worse. Doesn’t matter that they had it coming or you didn’t have a choice. Or maybe a little difference. But it doesn’t take it away.”

  “Seems like you got over it, though.”

  “Maybe,” Miller said. “Look. All that I said back there about how you kill someone? About how leaving them alive wasn’t doing them any favors? I’m sorry that happened.”

  “You think you were wrong?”

  “I wasn’t. But I’m still sorry it happened.”

  “Okay.”

  “Jesus. Look, I’m saying it’s good that it bothers you. It’s good that you can’t stop seeing it or hearing it. That part where it haunts you some? That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

  Holden was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was gray as stone.

  “I’ve killed people before, you know. But they were blips in a radar track. I—”
>
  “It’s not the same, is it?” Miller said.

  “No, it isn’t,” Holden replied. “Does this go away?”

  Sometimes, Miller thought.

  “No,” he said. “Not if you’ve still got a soul.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “One other thing?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I know it’s none of my business, but I really wouldn’t let her put you off. So you don’t understand sex and love and women. Just means you were born with a cock. And this girl? Naomi? She seems like she’s worth putting a little effort into it. You know?”

  “Yeah,” Holden said. Then: “Can we never talk about that again?”

  “Sure.”

  The ship creaked and gravity shifted a degree to Miller’s right. Course correction. Nothing interesting. Miller closed his eyes and tried to will himself to sleep. His mind was full of dead men and Julie and love and sex. There was something Holden had said about the war that was important, but he couldn’t make the pieces fit. They kept changing. Miller sighed, shifted his weight so that he blocked one of his drainage tubes and had to shift back to stop the alarm.

  When the blood pressure cuff fired off again, it was Julie holding him, pulling herself so close her lips brushed his ear. His eyes opened, his mind seeing both the imaginary girl and the monitors that she would have blocked if she’d really been there.

  I love you too, she said, and I will take care of you.

  He smiled at seeing the numbers change as his heart raced.

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Holden

  For five more days, Holden and Miller lay on their backs in sick bay while the solar system burned down around them. The reports of Eros’ death ran from massive ecological collapse brought about by war-related supply shortages, to covert Martian attack, to secret Belt bioweapon laboratory accident. Analysis from the inner planets had it that the OPA and terrorists like them had finally shown how dangerous they could be to innocent civilian populations. The Belt blamed Mars, or the maintenance crews of Eros, or the OPA for not stopping it.

  And then a group of Martian frigates blockaded Pallas, a revolt on Ganymede ended in sixteen dead, and the new government of Ceres announced that all ships with Martian registry docked on station were being commandeered. The threats and accusations, all set to the constant human background noise of war drums, moved on. Eros had been a tragedy and a crime, but it was finished, and there were new dangers popping up in every corner of human space.

  Holden turned off his newsfeed, fidgeted in his bunk, and tried to wake Miller up by staring at him. It didn’t work. The massive radiation exposure had failed to give him superpowers. Miller began to snore.

  Holden sat up, testing the gravity. Less than a quarter g. Alex wasn’t in a hurry, then. Naomi was giving him and Miller time to heal before they arrived at Julie’s magical mystery asteroid.

  Shit.

  Naomi.

  The last few times she’d come into sick bay had been awkward. She never brought the subject of his failed romantic gesture back up, but he could feel a barrier between them now that filled him with regret. And every time she left the room, Miller would look away from him and sigh, which just made it worse.

  But he couldn’t avoid her forever, no matter how much he felt like an idiot. He swung his feet off the edge of the bed and pressed down on the floor. His legs felt weak but not rubbery. The soles of his feet hurt, but quite a bit less than nearly everything else on his body. He stood up, one hand still on the bed, and tested his balance. He wobbled but remained upright. Two steps reassured him that walking was possible in the light gravity. The IV tugged at his arm. He was down to just one bag of something a faint blue. He had no idea what it was, but after Naomi’s description of how close to death he’d come, he figured it must be important. He pulled it off the wall hook and held it in his left hand. The room smelled like antiseptic and diarrhea. He was happy to be leaving.

  “Where you going?” Miller asked, his voice groggy.

  “Out.” Holden had the sudden, visceral memory of being fifteen.

  “Okay,” Miller said, then rolled onto his side.

  The sick bay hatch was four meters from the central ladder, and Holden covered the ground with a slow, careful shuffle, his paper booties making a whispery scuffing sound on the fabric-covered metal floor. The ladder itself defeated him. Even though ops was only one deck up, the three-meter climb might as well have been a thousand. He pressed the button to call the lift, and a few seconds later, the floor hatch slid open and the lift climbed through with an electric whine. Holden tried to hop on but managed only a sort of slow-motion fall that ended with his clutching the ladder and kneeling on the lift platform. He stopped the lift, pulled himself upright, and started it again, then rode it up to the next deck in what he hoped was a less beaten and more captain-like pose.

  “Jesus, Captain, you still look like shit,” Amos said as the lift came to a stop. The mechanic was sprawled across two chairs at the sensor stations and munching on what looked like a strip of leather.

  “You keep saying that.”

  “Keeps bein’ true.”

  “Amos, don’t you have work to do?” Naomi said. She was sitting at one of the computer stations, watching something flash by on the screen. She didn’t look up when Holden came onto the deck. That was a bad sign.

  “Nope. Most boring ship I ever worked, Boss. She don’t break, she don’t leak, she don’t even have an annoying rattle to tighten down,” Amos replied as he sucked down the last of his snack and smacked his lips.

  “There’s always mopping,” Naomi said, then tapped out something on the screen in front of her. Amos looked from her to Holden and back again.

  “Oh, that reminds me. I better get down to the engine room and look at that… thing I’ve been meaning to look at,” Amos said, and jumped to his feet. “’Scuse me, Cap.”

  He squeezed past Holden, hopped on the lift, and rode it sternward. The deck hatch closed behind him.

  “Hey,” Holden said to Naomi once Amos was gone.

  “Hey,” she said without turning around. That wasn’t good either. When she’d sent Amos away, he’d hoped she wanted to talk. It didn’t look like it. Holden sighed and shuffled over to the chair next to her. He collapsed into it, his legs tingling like he’d run a kilometer instead of just walking twenty-odd steps. Naomi had left her hair down, and it hid her face from him. Holden wanted to brush it back but was afraid she’d snap his elbow with Belter kung fu if he tried.

  “Look, Naomi,” he started, but she ignored him and hit a button on her panel. He stopped when Fred’s face appeared on the display in front of her.

  “Is that Fred?” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything even more idiotic to say.

  “You should see this. Got it from Tycho a couple hours ago on the tightbeam after I sent them an update on our status.”

  Naomi tapped the play button and Fred’s face sprang to life.

  “Naomi, sounds like you guys have had a tough time of it. The air’s full of chatter on the station shutdown, and the supposed nuclear explosion. No one knows what to make of it. Keep us informed. In the meantime, we managed to hack open that data cube you left here. I don’t think it’ll help much, though. Looks like a bunch of sensor data from the Donnager, mostly EM stuff. We’ve tried looking for hidden messages, but my smartest people can’t find anything. I’m passing the data along to you. Let me know if you find anything. Tycho out.”

  The screen went blank.

  “What does the data look like?” Holden asked.

  “It’s just what the man said,” Naomi said. “EM sensor data from the Donnager during the pursuit by the six ships, and the battle itself. I’ve dug through raw stuff, looking for anything hidden inside, but for the life of me, I can’t find a thing. I’ve even had the Roci digging through the data for the last couple hours, looking for patterns. She has really good software for that sort of thing. But so far, nothing.”

  She tappe
d on the screen again and the raw data began spooling past faster than Holden could follow. In a small window inside the larger screen, the Rocinante’s pattern-recognition software worked to find meaning. Holden watched it for a minute, but his eyes quickly unfocused.

  “Lieutenant Kelly died for this data,” he said. “He left the ship while his mates were still fighting. Marines don’t do that unless it matters.”

  Naomi shrugged and pointed at the screen with resignation.

  “That’s what was on his cube,” she said. “Maybe there’s something steganographic, but I don’t have another dataset to compare it to.”

  Holden began tapping on his thigh, his pain and romantic failures momentarily forgotten.

  “So let’s say that this data is all that it is. There’s nothing hidden. What would this information mean to the Martian navy?”

  Naomi leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes in thought, one finger twisting and untwisting a curl of hair by her temple.

  “It’s mostly EM data, so lots of engine-signature stuff. Drive radiation is the best way to keep track of other ships. So that tells you where which ships were during the fight. Tactical data?”

  “Maybe,” Holden said. “Would that be important enough to send Kelly out with?”

  Naomi took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “Me either.”

  Something tapped at the edge of his conscious mind, asking to be let in.

  “What was that thing with Amos all about?” he said.

  “Amos?”

  “Him showing up at the airlock with two guns when we arrived,” he said.

  “There was some trouble on our trip back to the ship.”

  “Trouble for who?” Holden asked. Naomi actually smiled at that.

  “Some bad men didn’t want us to hack the lockdown on the Roci. Amos talked it over with them. You didn’t think it was because we were waiting for you, did you, sir?”

  Was there a smile in her voice? A hint of coyness? Flirtation? He stopped himself from grinning.

  “What did the Roci say about the data when you ran it?” Holden asked.