The Dragon’s Path (138 page)

“Huh, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I’ll send the codes along,” said Miller, his voice no longer distant, but holding back a laugh. Like a man about to tell the punch line of a really good joke. “But I can’t really help you with the techs.”

“Shit, Miller, you pissed those people off, too?”

Miller did laugh now, a free, soft sound that someone who wasn’t piling on g could afford. If there was a punch line, Holden had missed it.

“Yeah,” Miller said. “Probably. But that’s not why I can’t get them for you. I’m not on the ship with them.”

“What?”

“I’m still on Eros.”

W
hat do you mean you’re on Eros?” Holden said.

“Pretty much that,” Miller said, covering his growing sense of shame with a casual tone of voice. “Hanging upside down outside the tertiary docks, where we moored one of the ships. Feel like a freaking bat.”

“But—”

“Funny thing, too. I didn’t feel it when the thing moved. You’d think accelerating like that, it would have thrown me off or squashed me flat, one or the other. But there was nothing.”

“Okay, hold on. We’re coming to get you.”

“Holden,” Miller said. “Just stop it, all right?”

The silence didn’t last more than a dozen seconds, but it carried a wealth of meaning.
It’s not safe to bring the
Rocinante
to Eros,
and
I came here to die,
and
Don’t make this harder than it is.

“Yeah, I just… ” Holden said. And then: “Okay. Let me… let
me coordinate with the technicians. I’ll… Jesus. I’ll let you know what they say.”

“One thing, though,” Miller said. “You’re talking about deflecting this sonofabitch? Just keep in mind it’s not a rock anymore. It’s a ship.”

“Right,” Holden said. And a moment later: “Okay.”

The connection dropped with a tick. Miller checked his oxygen supply. Three hours in-suit, but he could head back to his little ship and refill it well before that. So Eros was moving, was it? He still didn’t feel it, but watching the curved surface of the asteroid, he could see micro-asteroids, all coming from the same direction, bouncing off. If the station kept accelerating, they’d start coming more often, more powerfully. He’d need to stay in the ship.

He turned his hand terminal back to the Eros feed. The station beneath him was chirping and muttering, long slow vowel sounds radiating out from it like recorded whale song. After the angry words and static, the voice of Eros sounded peaceful. He wondered what kind of music Diogo’s friends would be making out of this. Slow dancing didn’t seem like their style. An annoying itch settled in the small of his back, and he shifted in his suit, trying to rub it away. Almost without his noticing it, he grinned. And then laughed. A wave of euphoria passed into him.

There was alien life in the universe, and he was riding on it like a tick on a dog. Eros Station had moved of its own free will and by mechanisms he couldn’t begin to imagine. He didn’t know how many years it had been since he’d been overwhelmed by awe. He’d forgotten the feeling. He raised his arms to his sides, reaching out as if he could embrace the endless dark vacuum below him.

Then, with a sigh, he turned back toward the ship.

Back in the protective shell, he took off the vac suit and hooked the air supply to the recyclers to charge up. With only one person to care for, even low-level life support would have it ready to go within the hour. The ship batteries were still almost fully charged. His hand terminal chimed twice, reminding him that it was once again time for the anti-cancer meds. The ones he’d earned the last
time he’d been on Eros. The ones he’d be on for the rest of his life. Good joke.

The fusion bombs were in the ship’s cargo hold: gray square boxes about half again as long as they were tall, like bricks in a mortar of pink adhesive foam. It took Miller twenty minutes of searching through storage lockers to find a can of solvent that still had charge in it. The thin spray from it smelled like ozone and oil, and the stiff pink foam melted under it. Miller squatted beside the bombs and ate a ration bar that tasted convincingly like apples. Julie sat beside him, her head resting weightlessly on his shoulder.

There had been a few times that Miller had flirted with faith. Most had been when he was young and trying out everything. Then when he was older, wiser, more worn, and in the crushing pain of the divorce. He understood the longing for a greater being, a huge and compassionate intelligence that could see everything from a perspective that dissolved the pettiness and evil and made everything all right. He still felt that longing. He just couldn’t convince himself it was true.

And still, maybe there was something like a plan. Maybe the universe had put him in the right place at the right time to do the thing that no one else would do. Maybe all the pain and suffering he’d been through, all the disappointments and soul-crushing years wallowing through the worst that humanity had to offer up, had been meant to bring him here, to this moment, when he was ready to die if it bought humanity a little time.

It would be pretty to think so,
Julie said in his mind.

“It would,” he agreed with a sigh. At the sound of his voice, the vision of her vanished, just another daydream.

The bombs were heavier than he’d remembered. Under a full g, he wouldn’t have been able to move them. At only one-third, it was a struggle, but possible. An agonizing centimeter at a time, he dragged one of them onto a handcart and hauled it to the airlock. Eros, above him, sang to itself.

He had to rest before he tackled the hard work. The airlock was thin enough that only the bomb or he could fit through at a time.
He climbed on top of it to get out the outer airlock door, then had to lift the bomb out with straps he rigged from cargo netting. And once out, it had to be tethered to the ship with magnetic clamps to keep Eros’ spin from slinging it out into the void. After he’d pulled it out and strapped it to the cart, he stopped to rest for half an hour.

There were more impacts now, a rough sign that Eros was indeed accelerating. Each one a rifle shot, capable of bouncing clean through him or the ship behind him if bad luck sent it in the right direction. But the odds were low of one of the occasional rocks lining up a killing shot with his tiny antlike figure crawling across the surface. Once Eros cleared the Belt, they’d stop, anyway. Was Eros leaving the Belt? He realized he had no idea where Eros was going. He’d assumed it was Earth. Holden would know by now, probably.

His shoulders ached a little from his efforts, but not badly. He worried that he’d overloaded the cart. Its wheels were stronger than his mag boots, but they could still be overcome. The asteroid above him lurched once, a new and unsettling motion that didn’t repeat. His hand terminal cut off the Eros feed, alerting him that he had an incoming connection. He looked at it, shrugged, and let the call come through.

“Naomi,” he said before she could speak. “How’ve you been doing?”

“Hey,” she said.

The silence between them stretched.

“You talked to Holden, then?”

“I did,” she said. “He’s still talking about ways to get you off that thing.”

“He’s a good guy,” Miller said. “Talk him out of it for me, okay?”

The silence hung long enough that Miller started to get uncomfortable.

“What are you doing there?” she asked. As if there were an answer for that. As if all his life could be summarized in answer
to one simple question. He danced around what she meant and replied only to what she’d said.

“Well, I’ve got a nuclear bomb strapped to a cargo wagon. I’m hauling it over to the access hatch and taking it into station.”

“Miller—”

“The thing is, we were treating this like a rock. Now everyone knows that’s a little simplistic, but it’s going to take people time to adjust. Navies are still going to be thinking of this thing like a billiard ball when it’s really a rat.”

He was talking too fast. The words spilling out of him in a rush. If he didn’t give her room, she wouldn’t talk. He wouldn’t have to hear what she had to say. He wouldn’t have to keep her from talking him down.

“It’s going to have structure. Engines or control centers. Something. If I truck this thing inside, get it close to whatever coordinates the thing, I can break it. Turn it back into a billiard ball. Even if it’s just for a little while, that gives the rest of you a chance.”

“I figured,” she said. “It makes sense. It’s the right thing to do.”

Miller chuckled. A particularly solid impact tocked against the ship beneath him, the vibration of it jarring his bones. Gas started venting out of the new hole. The station was moving faster.

“Yeah,” he said. “Well.”

“I was talking to Amos,” she said. “You need a dead man’s switch. So that if something happens, the bomb still goes off. If you have the access codes…?”

“I do.”

“Good. I’ve got a routine you can put on your hand terminal. You’ll need to keep your finger on the select button. If you go away for five seconds, it sends the go signal. If you want, I can upload it to you.”

“So I have to wander around the station with my finger mashed on a button?”

Naomi’s tone made it an apology. “They might take you out
with a head shot. Or wrestle you down. The longer the gap, the more chance for the protomolecule to disable the bomb before it goes off. If you need more, I can reprogram it.”

Miller looked at the bomb resting on its cart just outside the ship’s airlock. Its readouts all glowed green and gold. His sigh briefly fogged the inside of his helmet.

“Yeah, no. Five is good. Upload the routine. Am I going to need to tweak it, or is there a simple place I can put the arm-and-fire string?”

“There’s a setup section,” Naomi said. “It prompts you.”

The hand terminal chirped, announcing the new file. Miller accepted it, ran it. It was easy as keying in a door code. Somehow he felt that arming fusion bombs to detonate around him should have been more difficult.

“Got it,” he said. “We’re good to go. I mean, I still have to move this bastard, but other than that. How fast am I accelerating on this thing, anyway?”

“Eventually it will be faster than the
Roci
can go. Four g and ramping up with no sign of easing off the throttle.”

“Can’t feel it at all,” he said.

“I’m sorry about before,” Naomi said.

“It was a bad situation. We did what we had to do. Same as always.”

“Same as always,” she echoed.

They didn’t speak for a few seconds.

“Thanks for the trigger,” Miller said. “Tell Amos I appreciate it.”

He cut the connection before she could answer. Long goodbyes weren’t anyone’s strong suit. The bomb rested in the handcart, magnetic clamps in place and a wide woven-steel belt around the whole mess. He moved slowly across the metallic surface of the port docks. If the cart lost its grip on Eros, he wouldn’t be strong enough to hold it back. Of course, if one of the increasingly frequent strikes hit him, it would be a lot like getting shot, so waiting around wasn’t a good solve either. He put both dangers out of his
mind and did the work. For ten nervous minutes, his suit smelled of overheating plastic. All the diagnostics showed within the error bars, and by the time the recyclers cleared it, his air supply still looked good. Another little mystery he wasn’t going to solve.

The abyss above him shone with unflickering stars. One of the dots of light was Earth. He didn’t know which one.

The service hatch had been tucked in a natural outcropping of stone, the raw-ferrous cart track like a ribbon of silver in the darkness. Grunting, Miller hauled the cart and the bomb and his own exhausted body up around the curve, and spin gravity once again pressed down on his feet instead of stretching his knees and spine. Light-headed, he keyed in the codes until the hatch opened.

Eros lay before him, darker than the empty sky.

He ran the hand terminal connection through the suit, calling Holden for what he expected was the last time.

“Miller,” Holden said almost immediately.

“I’m heading in now,” he said.

“Wait. Look, there’s a way we might be able to get an automated cart. If the
Roci
—”

“Yeah, but you know how it is. I’m already here. And we don’t know how fast this sonofabitch can go. We’ve got a problem we need to fix. This is how we do it.”

Holden’s hope had been weak, anyway. Pro forma. A gesture and, Miller thought, maybe even heartfelt. Trying to save everyone, right to the last.

“I understand,” Holden finally said.

“Okay. So once I’ve broken whatever the hell I find in there…?”

“We’re working on ways to annihilate the station.”

“Good. I’d hate to go through the trouble for nothing.”

“Is there… Is there anything you want me to do? After?”

“Nah,” Miller said, and then Julie was at his side, her hair floating around her like they were underwater. She glowed in more starlight than was actually there. “Wait. Yes. A couple things. Julie’s parents. They run Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile. They knew
the war was going start before it did. They’ve got to have links to Protogen. Make sure they don’t get away with it. And if you see them, tell them I’m sorry I didn’t find her in time.”