“For about eight hours. Duarte was able to give me a solid alibi, though, so I’m not in prison.”
“Small favors. And your friend? Fermín?”
“Apparently his terminal’s not on the network. I don’t know if he killed the guy or if whoever killed the guy killed him or… anything. I don’t know anything.” He drank again, more deeply this time. “I may not be good at this whole investigation thing.”
“I’m not much better,” Bobbie said. “Mostly I’ve just been shaking the trees and seeing what falls out. So far the only thing I’m really sure about is that something’s going on.”
“And that people are willing to kill each other over it,” Alex said.
“And now that the MPs are involved, they’re going to lock down the investigation like it was fissionable. I’m not going to be able to do a damned thing.”
“Amateur detective hour does seem to be pretty much over,” Alex agreed. “I mean, I can still ask around.”
“You did more than enough,” Bobbie said. “I shouldn’t have gotten you into this in the first place. I just don’t like disappointing the old lady.”
“I can respect that. But I do kind of wish I knew what was going on.”
“Me too.”
Alex finished his drink, the ice clicking against his teeth. He had a pleasant warmth in his belly. He looked at Bobbie, saw her looking back at him.
“You know,” he said slowly, “just because everything’s shut down here, it doesn’t mean everything’s shut down everywhere.”
Bobbie blinked. Her shrug was noncommittal, but there was a gleam in her eyes. “You’re thinking about that backwater asteroid Holden was asking about?”
“You’ve got a ship. There’s nothing we can do here,” Alex said. “Seems like someth
ing we could do.”
“Anyone shot at us, at least we’d see it coming,” Bobbie said, her nonchalance radiating a kind of excitement. Or perhaps it was the alcohol and the prospect of being in a pilot’s chair again making Alex see what he wanted to see.
“We could go,” he said. “Take a look. Probably it’s nothing.”
Chapter Eighteen: Holden
The construction sphere of Tycho Station glittered around Holden, brighter than stars. Ships hung in their berths in all states of undress, the Rocinante just one among many. Other ships hung in the center, awaiting clearance to leave. The sparks of welding rigs and the white plumes of maneuvering thrusters blinked into and out of existence like fireflies. The only sound he heard was his own breath, the only smell the too-clean scent of bottled air. The dirty green-gray EVA suit had TYCHO SECURITY stenciled on the arm in orange, and the rifle in his hand had come from Fred’s weapons locker.
Station security was on high alert, Drummer and her teams all set to watch each other on the assumption – and Holden was too painfully aware that it wasn’t anything more – that if there was a dissident faction within them, they’d be outnumbered by the ones loyal to Fred. When they’d started out from the airlock, Holden had turned on the security system. It highlighted slightly over a thousand possible sniper’s nests. He’d turned it off again.
Fred floated ahead of him strapped into a bright yellow salvage mech. The rescue-and-recovery kit looked like a massive backpack slung across the mech’s shoulders. A burst of white gas came from the mech’s left side, and Fred drifted elegantly to the right. For a moment, Holden’s brain interpreted the dozens of shipping containers clustered in the empty space outside the massive warehouse bays as being below them, as if he and Fed were divers in a vast airless sea; then they flipped and he was rising up toward them feetfirst. He turned the HUD back on, resetting its display priorities, and one container took on a green overlay. The target. Monica Stuart’s prison, or else her tomb.
“How’re you doing back there?” Fred asked in his ear.
“I’m solid,” Holden said, then curled his lip in annoyance and turned his mic on. “I’m solid except that this isn’t my usual suit of armor. The controls on this thing are all just a little bit wrong.”
“Keep you from dying if they start shooting at us.”
“Sure, unless they’re good at it.”
“We can hope they’re bad,” Fred said. “Get ready. I’m heading in.”
As soon as they’d identified the container, Holden had thought they’d send out a mech, haul it into a bay, and open it. He hadn’t thought about the possibility of booby traps until Fred pointed it out. The container’s data showed awaiting pickup, but the frame that should have said what ship it was slated for was garbled. The image from Monica’s feed didn’t show anything beyond the access door. For all they knew, she could be sitting on tanks of acetylene and oxygen wired to the same circuit as the docking clamps. What they knew for certain was that the main doors were bolted and sealed. But even those could be wired to a trigger. The lowest-risk option, according to Fred, was to cut a hole into the visible doorframe and send someone in to take a look. And the only someone he was sure he could trust was Holden.
Fred positioned himself in front of the container’s doors, and the mech’s massive arm reached back and plucked the r-and-r pack loose. Fred unpacked it with a speed and efficiency of movement that made it seem like something he did all the time. The thin plastic emergency airlock, a single-use cutting torch, two emergency pressure suits, a distress beacon, and a small, sealed crate of medical supplies all took their places in the vacuum around him like they’d been hooked in place. Holden had spent enough years bucking ice to admire how little drift each piece of equipment had.
“Wish me luck,” Fred said.
“Don’t blow up,” Holden replied. Fred’s mic cut out on his chuckle, and the mech’s arms swung into motion with a surgical speed and precision. The welding torch bloomed, slicing through the metal while a sealant foam injector followed to keep the air in the box from venting. Holden opened a connection to the lab and the captured image from Monica’s feed. A brightness like a star shone there.