Leviathan Wakes (49 page)

“Roger,” came Alex’s lazy drawl.

“You finding anything?” Holden asked Miller on their private channel.

“Nothing unexpected,” Miller said. “You?”

“Yeah, actually. Take a look.”

Miller pushed himself to the screen Holden had been working. Holden pulled himself back into the station and started pulling up feeds.

“I was thinking that someone had to go last,” Holden said. “I mean, there had to be someone who was the least sick when whatever it was got loose. So I went through the directory to see what activity was going on before the system went dead.”

“And?”

“There’s a whole bunch of activity that looks like it happened a couple days before the system shutdown, and then nothing for two solid days. And then a little spike. A lot of accessed files and system diagnostics. Then someone hacked the override codes to blow atmosphere.”

“It was Julie, then.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Holden said. “But one of the feeds she accessed was… Shit, where is it? It was right… Oh. Here. Watch this.”

The screen blinked, controls dropping to standby, and a high-res emblem, green and gold, came up. The corporate logo of Protogen, with a slogan Miller hadn’t seen before.
First. Fastest. Furthest.

“What’s the time stamp on the file?” Miller asked.

“The original was created about two years ago,” Holden said. “This copy was burned eight months ago.”

The emblem faded, and a pleasant-faced man sitting at a desk took its place. He had dark hair, with just a scattering of gray at the temples, and lips that seemed used to smiling. He nodded at the camera. The smile didn’t reach his eyes, which were as empty as a shark’s.

Sociopath,
Miller thought.

The man’s lips began moving soundlessly. Holden said, “Shit,” and hit a switch to have the audio transmitted to their suits. He rewound the video feed and started it over.

“Mr. Dresden,” the man said. “I would like to thank you and the members of the board for taking the time to review this information. Your support, both financial and otherwise, has been absolutely essential to the incredible discoveries we’ve seen on this project. While my team has been point man, as it were, Protogen’s tireless commitment to the advancement of science has made our work possible.

“Gentlemen, I will be frank. The Phoebe protomolecule has exceeded all our expectations. I believe it represents a genuinely game-changing technological breakthrough. I know that these kinds of corporate presentations are prone to hyperbole. Please understand that I have thought about this carefully and chosen my words: Protogen can become the most important and powerful entity in the history of the human race. But it will require initiative, ambition, and bold action.”

“He’s talking about killing people,” Miller said.

“You’ve seen this already?” Holden said.

Miller shook his head. The feed changed. The man faded out, and an animation took his place. A graphic representation of the solar system. Orbits marked in wide swaths of color showed the plane of the ecliptic. The virtual camera swirled out from the inner planets, where Mr. Dresden and board members presumably were, and out toward the gas giants.

“For those of you on the board unfamiliar with the project, eight years ago, the first manned landing was made on Phoebe,” the sociopath said.

The animation zoomed in toward Saturn, rings and planet flying past in a triumph of graphic design over accuracy.

“A small ice moon, the assumption was that Phoebe would eventually be mined for water, much like the rings themselves. The Martian government commissioned a scientific survey more out of a sense of bureaucratic completeness than from expectation of economic gain. Core samples were taken, and when silicate anomalies raised flags, Protogen was approached as cosponsor of a long-term research facility.”

The moon itself—Phoebe—filled the frame, turning slowly to show all sides like a prostitute at a cheap brothel. It was a crater-marked lump, indistinguishable from a thousand other asteroids and planetesimals Miller had seen.

“Given Phoebe’s extra-ecliptical orbit,” the sociopath went on, “one theory has been that it was a body that originated in the Kuiper belt and had been captured by Saturn when it happened to pass through the solar system. The existence of complex silicon structures within the interior ice, along with suggestions of impact-resistant structures within the architecture of the body itself, have forced us to reevaluate this.

“Using analyses proprietary to Protogen and not yet shared with the Martian team, we have determined beyond any credible doubt that what you are seeing now is not a naturally formed planetesimal, but a weapon. Specifically, a weapon designed to
carry its payload through the depths of interplanetary space and deliver it safely onto Earth two and one third billion years ago, when life itself was in its earliest stages. And the payload, gentlemen, is this.”

The display clicked to a graphic that Miller couldn’t quite parse. It looked like the medical text of a virus, but with wide, looping structures that were at once beautiful and improbable.

“The protomolecule first caught our interest for its ability to maintain its primary structure in a wide variety of conditions through secondary and tertiary changes. It also showed an affinity for carbon and silicon structures. Its activity suggested it was not in itself a living thing, but a set of free-floating instructions designed to adapt to and guide other replicating systems. Animal experiments suggest that its effects are not exclusive to simple replicators, but are, in fact, scalable.”

“Animal tests,” Miller said. “What, they dumped it on a cat?”

“The initial implication of this,” the sociopath went on, “is that a larger biosphere exists, of which our solar system is only a part, and that the protomolecule is an artifact of that environment. That alone, I think you must agree, would revolutionize human understanding of the universe. Let me assure you, it’s small beer. If accidents of orbital mechanics had not captured Phoebe, life as we know it would not presently exist. But something else would. The earliest cellular life on Earth would have been hijacked. Reprogrammed along lines contained within the structure of the protomolecule.”

The sociopath reappeared. For the first time, smile lines appeared around his eyes, like a parody of themselves. Miller felt a visceral hatred growing in his gut and knew himself well enough to recognize it for what it was. Fear.

“Protogen is in a position to take sole possession of not only the first technology of genuinely extraterrestrial origin, but also a prefabricated mechanism for the manipulation of living systems and the first clues as to the nature of the larger—I will call it
galactic
—biosphere. Directed by human hands, the applications
of this are limitless. I believe that the opportunity now facing not only us but life itself is as profound and transformative as anything that has ever happened. And, further, the control of this technology will represent the base of all political and economic power from now on.

“I urge you to consider the technical details I have outlined in the attached. Moving quickly to understand the programming, mechanism, and intent of the protomolecule, as well as its direct application to human beings, will mark the difference between a Protogen-led future and being left behind. I urge immediate and decisive action to take exclusive control of the protomolecule and move forward with large-scale testing.

“Thank you for your time and attention.”

The sociopath smiled again, and the corporate logo reappeared.
First. Fastest. Furthest.
Miller’s heart was racing.

“Okay. All right,” he said. And then: “Fuck
me.
”

“Protogen, protomolecule,” Holden said. “They had no idea what it does, but they slapped their label on it like they’d made it. They found an alien weapon, and all they could think to do was
brand
it.”

“There’s reason to think these boys are pretty impressed with themselves,” Miller replied with a nod.

“Now, I’m not a scientist or anything,” Holden said, “but it seems to me like taking an
alien supervirus
and dropping it into a space station would be a bad idea.”

“It’s been two years,” Miller said. “They’ve been doing tests. They’ve been… I don’t know what the hell they’ve been doing. But Eros is what they decided on. And everyone knows what happened on Eros. The other side did it. No research and recovery ships because they’re all fighting each other or guarding something. The war? It’s a distraction.”

“And Protogen is doing… what?”

“Seeing what their toy does when you take it out for a spin is my guess,” Miller said.

They were silent for a long moment. Holden spoke first.

“So you take a company that seems to be lacking an institutional conscience, that has enough government research contracts to almost be a privately run branch of the military. How far will they go for the holy grail?”

“First, fastest, furthest,” Miller replied.

“Yeah.”

“Guys,” Naomi said, “you should come down here. I think I’ve got something.”

I
’ve found the comm logs,” Naomi said as Holden and Miller drifted into the room behind her.

Holden put a hand on her shoulder, pulled it back, and hated that he’d pulled back. A week earlier she’d have been fine with a simple gesture of affection like that, and he wouldn’t have been afraid of her reaction. He regretted the new distance between them only slightly less than he would have regretted not saying anything at all. He wanted to tell her that.

Instead, he said, “Find anything good?”

She tapped the screen and pulled up the log.

“They were hard-core about comm discipline,” she said, pointing at the long list of dates and times. “Nothing ever went out on radio, everything was tightbeam. And everything was doublespeak, lots of obvious code phrases.”

Miller’s mouth moved inside his helmet. Holden tapped on his
face shield. Miller rolled his eyes in disgust and then chinned the comm link to the general channel.

“Sorry. Don’t spend a lot of time in suits,” he said. “What’ve we got that’s good?”

“Not much. But the last communication was in plain English,” she said, then tapped the last line on the list.

Holden read it several times, imagining Captain Higgins watching the infection spread through his crew, helpless to stop it. His people vomiting all over in a vacuum-sealed metal box, even one molecule of the substance on your skin a virtual death sentence. Black filament-covered tendrils erupting from their eyes and mouths. And then that… soup that covered the reactor. He let himself shudder, grateful that Miller wouldn’t see it through the atmosphere suit.

“So this Higgins fella realizes his crew is turning into vomit zombies and sends a last message to his bosses, right?” Miller said, breaking into Holden’s reverie. “What’s this stuff about vector data?”

“He knew they’d all be dead, so he was letting his people know how to catch the ship,” Holden replied.

“But they didn’t, because it’s here, because Julie took control and flew it somewhere else,” Miller said. “Which means they’re looking for it, right?”

Holden ignored that and put his hand back on Naomi’s shoulder with what he hoped was companionable casualness.

“We have tight beam messages and the vector info,” he said. “Are they all going to the same place?”

“Sort of,” she said, nodding with her right hand. “Not the same place, but all to what appear to be points in the Belt. But based on the changes in direction and the times they were sent, to one point in the Belt that is moving around, and not in a stable orbit either.”

“A ship, then?”

Naomi gave another nod.

“Probably,” she said. “I’ve been playing with the locations, and I can’t find anything in the registry that looks likely. No stations or inhabited rocks. A ship would make sense. But—”

Holden waited for Naomi to finish, but Miller leaned forward impatiently.

“But what?” he said.

“But how did they know where it would be?” she replied. “I have no incoming comms in the log. If a ship was moving around randomly in the Belt, how’d they know where to send these messages?”

Holden squeezed her shoulder, lightly enough that she probably didn’t even feel it in the heavy environment suit, then pushed off and allowed himself to drift toward the ceiling.

“So it’s not random,” he said. “They had some sort of map of where this thing would be at the time they sent the laser comms. Could be one of their stealth ships.”

Naomi turned around in her chair to look up at him.

“Could be a station,” she said.

“It’s the lab,” Miller broke in. “They’re running an experiment on Eros, they need the white coats nearby.”

“Naomi,” Holden said. “ ‘Materials secured.’ There’s a safe in the captain’s quarters that’s still locked down. Think you can get it open?”