The Dragon’s Path (134 page)

“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.

E
ven 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 rec
ognition software. They might just ignore the
Roci,
thinking she was a Belter gas runner that happened 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.”

There was a static-filled pause, followed by “
Rocinante.
Leave our flight path immediately. If you do not begin moving away from Eros at best possible speed, you will be fired upon.”

The voice was young. An aging corvette with the tedious task of following an asteroid-mapping ship around wouldn’t be a much sought after command. The captain was probably a lieutenant without patrons or prospects. He’d be inexperienced, but he might see a confrontation as an opportunity to prove himself to his superiors. And that made the next few moments treacherous to navigate.

“Sorry,” said Holden. “Still don’t know your call sign, or your name. But I can’t do what you want. In fact, I can’t let anyone land on Eros. I’m going to need you to stop approaching the station.”

“
Rocinante,
I don’t think you—”

Holden took control of the
Roci
’s targeting system and began painting the approaching corvette with its targeting laser.

“Let me explain what’s happening here,” he said. “Right now, you’re looking at your sensors, and you’re seeing what looks like a thrown-together gas freighter that’s giving your ship-recognition software fits. And all of a sudden, meaning
right now,
it’s painting you with a state-of-the-art target-acquisition system.”

“We don’t—”

“Don’t lie. I know that’s what’s happening. So here’s the deal. Despite how it looks, my ship is newer, faster, tougher, and better armed than yours. The only way for me to really prove that is to open fire, and I’m hoping not to do that.”

“Are you threatening me,
Rocinante
?” the young voice on Holden’s headset said, its tone hitting just the right notes of arrogance and disbelief.

“You? No,” said Holden. “I’m threatening the big, fat, slow-
moving, and unarmed ship you’re supposed to be protecting. You keep flying toward Eros, and I will unload everything I’ve got at it. I guarantee we will blow that flying science lab out of the sky. Now, it’s possible you might get us while we do it, but by then your mission is screwed anyway, right?”