It wasn’t out of control yet, but it was ramping up. Another few incidents and it wouldn’t matter how it had started. It wouldn’t matter what the stakes were. Mars knew the Belt couldn’t win, and the Belt knew it had nothing to lose. It was a recipe for death on a scale humanity had never seen.
And, like Ceres, there wasn’t much Miller could do about that either. But he could find James Holden, find out what had happened to the Scopuli, follow the leads back to Julie Mao. He was a detective. It was what he did.
As he packed up his hole, throwing out the collected detritus that grew over decades like a crust, he talked to her. He tried to explain why he’d given up everything to find her. After his discovery of the Rocinante, he could hardly avoid the word quixotic.
His imaginary Julie laughed or was touched. She thought he was a sad, pathetic little man, since just tracking her down was the nearest to a purpose in life he could find. She dressed him down as being a tool of her parents. She wept and put her arms around him. She sat with him in some almost unimaginable observation lounge and watched the stars.
He fit everything he had into a shoulder bag. Two changes of clothes, his papers, his hand terminal. A picture of Candace from back in better days. All the hard copy of Julie’s case he’d made before Shaddid wiped his partition, including three pictures of Julie. He thought that everything he’d lived through should have added up to more, and then changed his mind. It was probably about right.
He spent one last day ignoring the curfew, making his rounds of the station, saying goodbye to the few people he felt he might miss or might miss him. To his surprise, Muss, who he found at a tense and uncomfortable police bar, actually teared up and hugged him until his ribs ached from it.
He booked passage on a transport to Tycho. His bunk ran him a quarter of his remaining funds. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that he had to find Julie pretty damn quick or find a job to support him through the investigation. But it hadn’t happened yet, and the universe wasn’t stable enough anymore to make long-range planning more than a sour joke.
As if to prove the point, his terminal chimed as he was in the line to board the transport.
“Hey, partner,” Havelock said. “That favor you needed? I got a bite. Your package just put in a flight plan for Eros. I’m sending the public-access data attached. I’d get you the good stuff, but these Protogen guys are tight. I mentioned you to the recruiter and she seemed interested. So let me know, right? Talk to you soon.”
Eros.
Great.
Miller nodded at the woman behind him, stepped out of line, and walked to the kiosk. By the time a screen was open, they were calling final boarding for the Tycho transport. Miller turned in his ticket, got a nominal refund, and spent a third of what he still had in his account for a ticket to Eros. Still, it could have been worse. He could have been on the way before he got word. He had to start thinking about it as good luck, not bad.
The passage confirmation came through with a chime like a gently struck triangle.
“I hope I’m right about this,” he said to Julie. “If Holden’s not there, I’m gonna feel pretty stupid.”
In his mind, she smiled ruefully.
Life is risk, she said.
Chapter Twenty-One: Holden
Ships were small. Space was always at a premium, and even on a monster like the Donnager, the corridors and compartments were cramped and uncomfortable. On the Rocinante, the only rooms where Holden could spread out his arms without touching two walls were the galley and the cargo bay. No one who flew for a living was claustrophobic, but even the most hardened Belt prospector could recognize the rising tension of being ship-bound. It was the ancient stress response of the trapped animal, the subconscious knowledge that there was literally nowhere to go that you couldn’t see from where you were already standing. Getting off the ship at port was a sudden and sometimes giddying release of tension.
It often took the form of a drinking game.
Like all professional sailors, Holden had sometimes ended long flights by drinking himself into a stupor. More than once he’d wandered into a brothel and left only when they threw him out with an emptied account, a sore groin, and a prostate as dry as the Sahara desert. So when Amos staggered into his room after three days on station, Holden knew exactly what the big mechanic felt like.
Holden and Alex were sharing the couch and watching a newsfeed. Two talking heads were discussing the Belter actions with words like criminal, terrorist, and sabotage. The Martians were “peacekeepers.” It was a Martian news channel. Amos snorted and collapsed on the couch. Holden muted the screen.
“Having a good shore leave, sailor?” Holden asked with a grin.
“I’ll never drink again,” Amos groaned.
“Naomi’s comin’ over with some chow she got at that sushi place,” Alex said. “Nice raw fish wrapped in fake seaweed.”
Amos groaned again.
“That’s not nice, Alex,” Holden said. “Let the man’s liver die in peace.”
The door to the suite slid open again, and Naomi came in carrying a tall stack of white boxes.
“Food’s here,” she said.
Alex opened all the boxes and started handing around small disposable plates.
“Every time it’s your turn to get food, you get salmon rolls. It shows a lack of imagination,” Holden said as he began putting food on his plate.
“I like salmon,” Naomi replied.
The room got quiet as people ate; the only sounds were the clack of plastic chopsticks and the wet squish of things being dipped in wasabi and soy. When the food was gone, Holden wiped his eyes, made runny by the heat in his sinuses, and leaned his chair all the way back. Amos used one of his chopsticks to scratch under the cast on his leg.
“You guys did a pretty good job setting this,” he said. “It’s the thing on my body that hurts the least right now.”
Naomi grabbed the remote off Holden’s armrest and turned the volume back on. She began spooling through the different feeds. Alex closed his eyes and slid down on the loveseat, lacing his fingers across his belly and sighing contentedly. Holden felt a sudden and irrational annoyance at his crew for being so comfortable.
“Everyone had enough of sucking on Fred’s teat yet?” he said. “I know I have.”
“What the f**k are you talking about?” Amos said, shaking his head. “I’m just getting started.”
“I mean,” Holden said, “how long are we going to hang around on Tycho, drinking and whoring and eating sushi on Fred’s expense account?”