The Dragon’s Path (114 page)

Up close, the ship that had killed the
Scopuli
and stolen its crew looked like a shark. It was long and lean and utterly black, almost impossible to see against the backdrop of space with the naked eye. Its radar-deflecting curves gave it an aerodynamic look almost always lacking in space-going vessels. It made Holden’s skin crawl, but it was beautiful.

“Motherfucker,” Amos said under his breath as the crew clustered in the cockpit of the
Rocinante
to look at it.

“The
Roci
doesn’t even see it, Cap,” Alex said. “I’m pourin’ ladar into it, and all we see is a slightly warmer spot on the asteroid.”

“Like Becca saw just before the
Cant
died,” Naomi said.

“Her shuttle’s been launched, so I’m guessin’ this is the right
stealth ship someone left tied to a rock,” Alex added. “Case there’s more than one.”

Holden tapped his fingers on the back of Alex’s chair for a moment as he floated over the pilot’s head.

“It’s probably full of vomit zombies,” Holden finally said.

“Want to go see?” said Miller.

“Oh yeah,” Holden said.

T
he environment suit was better than Miller was used to. He’d only done a couple walks outside during his years on Ceres, and the Star Helix equipment had been old back then: thick corrugated joints, separable air-supply unit, gloves that left his hands thirty degrees colder than the rest of his body. The
Rocinante
’s suits were military and recent, no bulkier than standard riot gear, with integrated life support that could probably keep fingers warm after a hand got shot off. Miller floated, one hand on a strap in the airlock, and flexed his fingers, watching the sharkskin pattern of the knuckle joints.

It didn’t feel like enough.

“All right, Alex,” Holden said. “We’re in place. Have the
Roci
knock for us.”

A deep, rumbling vibration shook them. Naomi put a hand against the airlock’s curved wall to steady herself. Amos shifted
forward to take point, a reactionless automatic rifle in his hands. When he bent his neck, Miller could hear the vertebrae cracking through his radio. It was the only way he could have heard it; they were already in vacuum.

“Okay, Captain,” Alex said. “I’ve got a seal. The standard security override isn’t working, so give me a second… to… ”

“Problem?” Holden said.

“Got it. I’ve got it. We have a connection,” Alex said. Then, a moment later: “Ah. It doesn’t look like there’s much to breathe over there.”

“Anything?” Holden asked.

“Nope. Hard vacuum,” Alex said. “Both her lock doors are open.”

“All right, folks,” Holden said, “keep an eye on your air supply. Let’s go.”

Miller took a long breath. The external airlock went from soft red to soft green. Holden slid it open, and Amos launched forward, the captain just behind him. Miller gestured to Naomi with a nod.
Ladies first.

The connecting gantry was reinforced, ready to deflect enemy lasers or slow down slugs. Amos landed on the other ship as the hatch to the
Rocinante
closed behind them. Miller had a moment’s vertigo, the ship before them suddenly clicking from
ahead
to
down
in his perception, as if they were falling into something.

“You all right?” Naomi asked.

Miller nodded, and Amos passed into the other ship’s hatch. One by one, they went in.

The ship was dead. The lights coming off their environment suits played over the soft, almost streamlined curves of the bulkheads, the cushioned walls, the gray suit lockers. One locker was bent out of shape, like someone or something had forced its way out from within. Amos pushed off slow. Under normal circumstances, hard vacuum would have been assurance enough that nothing was about to jump out at them. Right now, Miller figured it was only even money.

“Whole place is shut down,” Holden said.

“Might be backups in the engine room,” Amos said.

“So the ass end of the ship from here,” Holden said.

“Pretty much.”

“Let’s be careful,” Holden said.

“I’m heading up to ops,” Naomi said. “If there’s anything running off battery, I can—”

“No, you aren’t,” Holden said. “We aren’t splitting up the group until we know what we’re looking at. Stay together.”

Amos moved down, sinking into the darkness. Holden pushed off after him. Miller followed. He couldn’t tell from Naomi’s body language whether she was annoyed or relieved.

The galley was empty, but signs of struggle showed here and there. A chair with a bent leg. A long, jagged scratch down the wall where something sharp had flaked the paint. Two bullet holes set high along one bulkhead where a shot had gone wide. Miller put a hand out, grabbed one of the tables, and swung slowly.

“Miller?” Holden said. “Are you coming?”

“Look at this,” Miller said.

The dark spill was the color of amber, flaky and shining like glass in his flashlight beam. Holden hovered closer.

“Zombie vomit?” Holden said.

“Think so.”

“Well. I guess we’re on the right ship. For some value of right.”

The crew quarters hung silent and empty. They went through each of them, but there were no personal markings—no terminals, no pictures, no clues to the names of the men and women who had lived and breathed and presumably died on the ship. Even the captain’s cabin was indicated only by a slightly larger bunk and the face of a locked safe.

There was a massive central compartment as high and wide as the hull of the
Rocinante,
the darkness dominated by twelve huge cylinders encrusted with narrow catwalks and scaffolds. Miller saw Naomi’s expression harden.

“What are they?” Miller asked.

“Torpedo tubes,” she said.

“
Torpedo
tubes?” he said. “Jesus
Christ,
how many are they packing? A million?”

“Twelve,” she said. “Just twelve.”

“Capital-ship busters,” Amos said. “Built to pretty much kill whatever you’re aiming at with the first shot.”

“Something like the
Donnager?
” Miller asked.

Holden looked back at him, the glow of his heads-up display lighting his features.

“Or the
Canterbury,
” he said.

The four of them passed between the wide black tubes in silence.

In the machine and fabrication shops, the signs of violence were more pronounced. There was blood on the floor and walls, along with wide swaths of the glassy gold resin that had once been vomit. A uniform lay in a ball. The cloth had been wadded and soaked in something before the cold of space had frozen it. Habits formed from years of walking through crime scenes put a dozen small things in place: the pattern of scratches on the floor and lift doors, the spatter of blood and vomit, the footprints. They all told the story.

“They’re in engineering,” Miller said.

“Who?” Holden said.

“The crew. Whoever was on the ship. All except that one,” he said, gesturing at half a footprint that led toward the lift. “You see how her footprints are over the top of everything else. And there, where she stepped in that blood, it was already dry. Flaked instead of smearing.”

“How you know it was a girl?” Holden asked.

“Because it was Julie,” Miller said.

“Well, whoever’s in there, they’ve been sucking vacuum for a long time,” Amos said. “Want to go see?”

No one said yes, but they all floated forward. The hatch stood open. If the darkness beyond it seemed more solid, more ominous, more
personal
than the rest of the dead ship had, it was only Mill
er’s imagination playing tricks. He hesitated, trying to summon up the image of Julie, but she wouldn’t come.

Floating into the engineering deck was like swimming into a cave. Miller saw the other flashlights playing over walls and panels, looking for live controls, or else controls that could come alive. He aimed his own beam into the body of the room, the dark swallowing it.

“We got batteries, Cap’n,” Amos said. “And… looks like the reactor got shut down. Intentional.”

“Think you can get it back up?”

“Want to run some diagnostics,” Amos said. “There could be a reason they shut it off, and I don’t want to find out the hard way.”

“Good point.”

“But I can at least get us… some… come
on,
you bastard.”

All around the deck, blue-white lights flared up. The sudden brilliance blinded Miller for a half second. His vision returned with a sense of growing confusion. Naomi gasped, and Holden yelped. Something in the back of Miller’s own mind started to shriek, and he forced it into silence. It was just a crime scene. They were only bodies.

Except they weren’t.

The reactor stood before him, quiescent and dead. All around it, a layer of human flesh. He could pick out arms, hands with fingers splayed so wide they hurt to look at. The long snake of a spine curved, ribs fanning out like the legs of some perverse insect. He tried to make what he was seeing make sense. He’d seen men eviscerated before. He knew that the long, ropy swirl to the left of the thing were intestines. He could see where the small bowel widened to become a colon. The familiar shape of a skull looked out at him.

But then, among the familiar anatomy of death and dismemberment, there were other things: nautilus spirals, wide swaths of soft black filament, a pale expanse of something that might have been skin cut by a dozen gill-like vents, a half-formed limb that looked equally like an insect and a fetus without being either one.
The frozen, dead flesh surrounded the reactor like the skin of an orange. The crew of the stealth ship. Maybe of the
Scopuli
as well.

All but Julie.

“Yeah,” Amos said. “This could take a little longer than I was thinking, Cap.”

“It’s okay,” Holden said. His voice on the radio sounded shaky. “You don’t have to.”

“It’s no trouble. As long as none of
that
freaky shit broke the containment, reactor should boot up just fine.”

“You don’t mind being around… it?” Holden said.

“Honest, Cap’n, I’m not thinking about it. Give me twenty minutes, I’ll tell you if we got power or if we have to patch a line over from the
Roci.
”

“Okay,” Holden said. And then again, his voice more solid: “Okay, but don’t touch any of that.”

“Wasn’t going to,” Amos said.

They floated back out through the hatch, Holden and Naomi and Miller coming last.

“Is that… ” Naomi said, then coughed and started again. “Is that what’s happening on Eros?”

“Probably,” Miller said.

“Amos,” Holden said. “Do you have enough battery power to light up the computers?”

There was a pause. Miller took a deep breath, the plastic-and-ozone scent of the suit’s air system filling his nose.

“I think so,” Amos said dubiously. “But if we can get the reactor up first… ”

“Bring up the computers.”

“You’re the captain, Cap’n,” Amos said. “Have it to you in five.”

In silence, they floated up—back—to the airlock, and past it to the operations deck. Miller hung back, watching the way Holden’s trajectory kept him near Naomi and then away from her.

Protective and head-shy both, Miller thought. Bad combination.

Julie was waiting in the airlock. Not at first, of course. Miller
slid back into the space, his mind churning through everything he’d seen, just like it was a case. A normal case. His gaze drifted toward the broken locker. There was no suit in it. For a moment, he was back on Eros, in the apartment where Julie had died. There had been an environment suit there. And then Julie was there with him, pushing her way out of the locker.

What were you doing there?
he thought.

“No brig,” he said.

“What?” Holden said.

“I just noticed,” Miller said. “Ship’s got no brig. They aren’t built to carry prisoners.”

Holden made a low agreeing grunt.

“Makes you wonder what they were planning to do with the crew of the
Scopuli,
” Naomi said. The tone of her voice meant she didn’t wonder at all.

“I don’t think they were,” Miller said slowly. “This whole thing… they were improvising.”

“Improvising?” Naomi said.

“Ship was carrying an infectious something or other without enough containment to contain it. Taking on prisoners without a brig to hold ’em in. They were making this up as they went along.”

“Or they had to hurry,” Holden said. “Something happened that made them hurry. But what they did on Eros must have taken months to arrange. Maybe years. So maybe something happened at the last minute?”

“Be interesting to know what,” Miller said.

Compared to the rest of the ship, the ops deck looked peaceful. Normal. The computers had finished their diagnostics, screens glowing placidly. Naomi went to one, holding the back of the chair with one hand so the gentle touch of her fingers against the screen wouldn’t push her backward.