The Dragon’s Path (91 page)

Twenty minutes later the thrust came up and Naomi climbed the ladder. She’d stripped off her vacuum suit and was wearing a red Martian jumpsuit that was half a foot too short for her and three times too big around. Her hair and face looked clean.

“This ship has a head with a shower. Can we keep it?” she said.

“How’d it go?”

“We took care of him. There’s a decent-sized cargo bay down by engineering. We put him there until we can find some way to send him home. I turned off the environment in there, so he’ll stay preserved.”

She held out her hand and dropped a small black cube into his lap.

“That was in a pocket under his armor,” she said.

Holden held up the object. It looked like some sort of data-storage device.

“Can you find out what’s on it?” he asked.

“Sure. Give me some time.”

“And Amos?”

“Blood pressure’s steady,” Naomi said. “That’s got to be a good thing.”

The comm console beeped at them, and Holden started the playback.

“Jim, news of the
Donnager
has just started hitting the net. I admit I am extremely surprised to be hearing from you,” said Fred’s voice. “What can I do for you?”

Holden paused a moment while he mentally prepared his response. Fred’s suspicion was palpable, but he’d sent Holden a keyword to use for exactly that reason.

“Fred. While our enemies have become
ubiquitous,
our list of friends has grown kind of short. In fact, you’re pretty much it. I am in a stolen—”

Alex cleared his throat.

“A
salvaged
MCRN gunboat,” Holden went on. “I need a way to hide that fact. I need somewhere to go where they won’t just shoot me down for showing up. Help me do that.”

It was half an hour before the reply came.

“I’ve attached a datafile on a subchannel,” Fred said. “It’s got your new transponder code and directions on how to install it. The code will check out in all the registries. It’s legitimate. It’s also got coordinates that will get you to a safe harbor. I’ll meet you there. We have a lot to talk about.”

“New transponder code?” Naomi said. “How does the OPA get new transponder codes?”

“Hack the Earth-Mars Coalition’s security protocols or get a mole in the registry office,” Holden said. “Either way, I think we’re playing in the big league now.”

M
iller watched the feed from Mars along with the rest of the station. The podium was draped in black, which was a bad sign. The single star and thirty stripes of the Martian Congressional Republic hung in the background not once, but eight times. That was worse.

“This cannot happen without careful planning,” the Martian president said. “The information they sought to steal would have compromised Martian fleet security in a profound and fundamental way. They failed, but at the price of two thousand and eighty-six Martian lives. This aggression is something the Belt has been preparing for years at the least.”

The Belt, Miller noticed. Not the OPA—the Belt.

“In the week since first news of that attack, we have seen thirty incursions into the security radius of Martian ships and bases, including Pallas Station. If those refineries were to be lost, the
economy of Mars could suffer irreversible damage. In the face of an armed, organized guerrilla force, we have no choice but to enforce a military cordon on the stations, bases, and ships of the Belt. Congress has delivered new orders to all naval elements not presently involved in active Coalition duty, and it is our hope that our brothers and sisters of Earth will approve joint Coalition maneuvers with the greatest possible speed.

“The new mandate of the Martian navy is to secure the safety of all honest citizens, to dismantle the infrastructures of evil presently hiding in the Belt, and bring to justice those responsible for these attacks. I am pleased to say that our initial actions have resulted in the destruction of eighteen illegal warships and—”

Miller turned off the feed. That was it, then. The secret war was out of the closet. Papa Mao had been right to want Julie out, but it was too late. His darling daughter was going to have to take her chances, just like everyone else.

At the very least, it was going to mean curfews and personnel tracking all through Ceres Station. Officially, the station was neutral. The OPA didn’t own it or anything else. And Star Helix was an Earth corporation, not under contractual or treaty obligation to Mars. At best, Mars and the OPA would keep their fight outside the station. At worst, there would more riots on Ceres. More death.

No, that wasn’t true. At worst, Mars or the OPA would make a statement by throwing a rock or a handful of nuclear warheads at the station. Or by blowing a fusion drive on a docked ship. If things got out of hand, it would mean six or seven million dead people and the end of everything Miller had ever known.

Odd that it should feel almost like relief.

For weeks, Miller had known. Everyone had known. But it hadn’t actually happened, so every conversation, every joke, every chance interaction and semi-anonymous nod and polite moment of light banter on the tube had seemed like an evasion. He couldn’t fix the cancer of war, couldn’t even slow down the spread, but at least he could admit it was happening. He stretched, ate his last
bite of fungal curds, drank the dregs of something not entirely unlike coffee, and headed out to keep peace in wartime.

Muss greeted him with a vague nod when he got to the station house. The board was filled with cases—crimes to be investigated, documented, and dismissed. Twice as many entries as the day before.

“Bad night,” Miller said.

“Could be worse,” Muss said.

“Yeah?”

“Star Helix could be a Mars corporation. As long as Earth stays neutral, we don’t have to actually be the Gestapo.”

“And how long you figure that’ll last?”

“What time is it?” she asked. “Tell you what, though. When it does come down, I need to make a stop up toward the core. There was this one guy back when I was rape squad we could never quite nail.”

“Why wait?” Miller asked. “We could go up, put a bullet in him, be back by lunch.”

“Yeah, but you know how it is,” she said. “Trying to stay professional. Anyway, if we did that, we’d have to investigate it, and there’s no room on the board.”

Miller sat at his desk. It was just shoptalk. The kind of over-the-top deadpan you did when your day was filled with underage whores and tainted drugs. And still, there was a tension in the station. It was in the way people laughed, the way they held themselves. There were more holsters visible than usual, as if by showing their weapons they might be made safe.

“You think it’s the OPA?” Muss asked. Her voice was lower now.

“That killed the
Donnager,
you mean? Who else could? Plus which, they’re taking credit for it.”

“Some of them are. From what I heard, there’s more than one OPA these days. The old-school guys don’t know a goddamn thing about any of this. All shitting their pants and trying to track down the pirate casts that are claiming credit.”

“So they can do what?” Miller asked. “You can shut down every loudmouth caster in the Belt, it won’t change a thing.”

“If there’s a schism in the OPA, though… ” Muss looked at the board.

If there was a schism within the OPA, the board as they saw it now was nothing. Miller had lived through two major gang wars. First when the Loca Greiga displaced and destroyed the Aryan Flyers, and then when the Golden Bough split. The OPA was bigger, and meaner, and more professional than any of them. That would be civil war in the Belt.

“Might not happen,” Miller said.

Shaddid stepped out of her office, her gaze sweeping the station house. Conversations dimmed. Shaddid caught Miller’s eye. She made a sharp gesture.
Get in the office.

“Busted,” Muss said.

In the office, Anderson Dawes sat at ease on one of the chairs. Miller felt his body twitch as that information fell into place. Mars and the Belt in open, armed conflict. The OPA’s face on Ceres sitting with the captain of the security force.

So that’s how it is, he thought.

“You’re working the Mao job,” Shaddid said as she took her seat. Miller hadn’t been offered the option of sitting, so he clasped his hands behind him.

“You assigned it to me,” he said.

“And I told you it wasn’t a priority,” she said.

“I disagreed,” Miller said.

Dawes smiled. It was a surprisingly warm expression, especially compared to Shaddid’s.

“Detective Miller,” Dawes said. “You don’t understand what’s happening here. We are sitting on a pressure vessel, and you keep swinging a pickax at it. You need to stop that.”

“You’re off the Mao case,” Shaddid said. “Do you understand that? I am officially removing you from that investigation as of right now. Any further investigation you do, I will have you disciplined for working outside your caseload and misappropriating
Star Helix resources. You will return any material on the case to me. You will wipe any data you have in your personal partition. And you’ll do it before the end of shift.”

Miller’s brain spun, but he kept his face impassive. She was taking Julie away. He wasn’t going to let her. That was a given. But it wasn’t the first issue.

“I have some inquiries in process… ” he began.

“No, you don’t,” Shaddid said. “Your little letter to the parents was a breach of policy. Any contact with the shareholders should have come through me.”

“You’re telling me it didn’t go out,” Miller said. Meaning
You’ve been monitoring me.

“It did not,” Shaddid said.
Yes, I have. What are you going to do about it?

And there wasn’t anything he could do.

“And the transcripts of the James Holden interrogation?” Miller said. “Did those get out before… ”

Before the
Donnanger
was destroyed, taking with it the only living witnesses to the
Scopuli
and plunging the system into war? Miller knew the question sounded like a whine. Shaddid’s jaw tensed. He wouldn’t have been surprised to hear teeth cracking. Dawes broke the silence.

“I think we can make this a little easier,” he said. “Detective, if I’m hearing you right, you think we’re burying the issue. We aren’t. But it’s not in anyone’s interests that Star Helix be the one to find the answers you’re looking for. Think about it. You may be a Belter, but you’re working for an Earth corporation. Right now, Earth is the only major power without an oar in the water. The only one who can possibly negotiate with all sides.”

“And so why wouldn’t they want to know the truth?” Miller said.

“That isn’t the problem,” Dawes said. “The problem is that Star Helix and Earth can’t appear to be involved one way or the other. Their hands need to stay clean. And this issue leads outside your contract. Juliette Mao isn’t on Ceres, and maybe there was a time
you could have jumped a ship to wherever you found her and done the abduction. Extradition. Extraction. Whatever you want to call it. But that time has passed. Star Helix is Ceres, part of Ganymede, and a few dozen warehouse asteroids. If you leave that, you’re going into enemy territory.”

“But the OPA isn’t,” Miller said.

“We have the resources to do this right,” Dawes said with a nod. “Mao is one of ours. The
Scopuli
was one of ours.”

“And the
Scopuli
was the bait that killed the
Canterbury,
” Miller said. “And the
Canterbury
was the bait that killed the
Donnager.
So why exactly would anyone be better off having you be the only ones looking into something you might have done?”

“You think we nuked the
Canterbury,
” Dawes said. “The OPA, with its state-of-the-art Martian warships?”

“It got the
Donnanger
out where it could be attacked. As long as it was with the fleet, it couldn’t have been boarded.”

Dawes looked sour.

“Conspiracy theories, Mr. Miller,” he said. “If we had cloaked Martian warships, we wouldn’t be losing.”

“You had enough to kill the
Donnanger
with just six ships.”

“No. We didn’t. Our version of blowing up the
Donnager
is a whole bunch of tramp prospectors loaded with nukes going on a suicide mission. We have many, many resources. What happened to the
Donnager
wasn’t part of them.”

The silence was broken only by the hum of the air recycler. Miller crossed his arms.

“But… I don’t understand,” he said. “If the OPA didn’t start this, who did?”

“That is what Juliette Mao and the crew of the
Scopuli
can tell us,” Shaddid said. “Those are the stakes, Miller. Who and why and please Christ some idea of how to stop it.”

“And you don’t want to find them?” Miller said.

“I don’t want
you
to,” Dawes said. “Not when someone else can do it better.”

Miller shook his head. It was going too far, and he knew it. On
the other hand, sometimes going too far could tell you something too.