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“Just need to give the techs some room,” Miller said, and together they waded into their own men, pushing them back. How many battles, all through history, fell apart at moments like this? he wondered. The victory all but delivered until allied forces started tripping over each other. The welder popped to life behind him, the heat pressing at his back like a hand even in armor.
At the edge of the crowd, automatic weapons gurgled and choked.
“How’s it going back there?” Miller shouted over his shoulder.
The woman didn’t answer. Hours seemed to pass, though it couldn’t have been more than five minutes. The haze of hot metal and aerosolized plastic filled the air.
The welding torch turned off with a pop. Over his shoulder, Miller saw the bulkhead sag and shift. The tech placed a card-thin jack into the gap between plates, activated it, and stood back. The station around them groaned as a new set of pressures and strains reshaped the metal. The bulkhead opened.
“Come on,” Miller shouted, then tucked his head and moved through the new passageway, up a carpeted ramp, and into the ops center. A dozen men and women looked up from their stations, eyes wide with fear.
“You’re under arrest!” Miller shouted as the OPA soldiers boiled in around him. “Well, no you’re not, but… shit. Put your hands up and back away from the controls!”
One of the men—tall as a Belter, but built solid as a man in full gravity—sighed. He wore a good suit, linen and raw silk, without the lines and folds that spoke of computer tailoring.
“Do what they say,” the linen suit said. He sounded peeved, but not frightened.
Miller’s eyes narrowed.
“Mr. Dresden?”
The suit raised a carefully shaped eyebrow, paused, and nodded.
“Been looking for you,” Miller said.
Fred walked into the ops center like he belonged there. With a tighter set of the shoulders and a degree’s shift of the spine, the master engineer of Tycho Station was gone, and the general was in his place. He looked over the ops center, sucking in every detail with a flicker of his eyes, then nodded at one of the senior OPA techs.
“All locked down, sir,” the tech said. “The station’s yours.”
Miller had almost never been present to witness another man’s moment of absolution. It was such a rare thing, and so utterly private that it approached the spiritual. Decades ago, this man—younger, fitter, not as much gray in his hair—had taken a space station, wading up to his knees in the gore and death of Belters, and Miller saw the barely perceptible relaxation in his jaw, the opening of his chest that meant that burden had lifted. Maybe it wasn’t gone, but it was near enough. It was more than most people managed in a lifetime.
He wondered what it would feel like if he ever got the chance.
“Miller?” Fred said. “I hear you’ve got someone we’d like to talk to.”
Dresden unfolded from his chair, ignoring the sidearms and assault weapons as if such things didn’t apply to him.
“Colonel Johnson,” Dresden said. “I should have expected that a man of your caliber would be behind all this. My name is Dresden.”
He handed Fred a matte black business card. Fred took it as if by reflex but didn’t look at it.
“You’re the one responsible for this?”
Dresden gave him a chilly smile and looked around before he answered.
“I’d say you’re responsible for at least part of it,” Dresden said. “You’ve just killed quite a few people who were simply doing their jobs. But maybe we can dispense with the moral finger-pointing and get down to what actually matters?”
Fred’s smile reached all the way to his eyes.
“And what exactly would that be?”
“Negotiating terms,” Dresden replied. “You are a man of experience. You understand that your victory here puts you in an untenable position. Protogen is one of the most powerful corporations on Earth. The OPA has attacked it, and the longer you try to hold it, the worse the reprisals will be.”
“Is that so?”
“Of course it is,” Dresden said, waving Fred’s tone away with a dismissing hand. Miller shook his head. The man genuinely didn’t understand what was going on. “You’ve taken your hostages. Well, here we are. We can wait until Earth sends a few dozen battleships and negotiate while you look down the barrels, or we can end this now.”
“You’re asking me… how much money I want to take my people and just leave,” Fred said.
“If money’s what you want,” Dresden said with a shrug. “Weapons. Ordinance. Medical supplies. Whatever it is you need to prosecute your little war and get this over with quickly.”
“I know what you did on Eros,” Fred said quietly.
Dresden chuckled. The sound made Miller’s flesh crawl.
“Mr. Johnson,” Dresden said. “Nobody knows what we did on Eros. And every minute I have to spend playing games with you is one I can’t use more productively elsewhere. I will swear this: You are in the best bargaining position right now that you will ever have. There is no incentive for you to draw this out.”
“And you’re offering?”
Dresden spread his hands. “Anything you like and amnesty besides. As long as it gets you out of here and lets us return to our work. We both win.”
Fred laughed. It was mirthless.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You’ll give me all the kingdoms of the Earth if I just bow down and do one act of worship for you?”
Dresden cocked his head. “I don’t know the reference.”
Chapter Forty-One: Holden
The Rocinante docked with Thoth station on the last gasps from her maneuvering thrusters. Holden felt the station’s docking clamps grab the hull with a thud, and then gravity returned at a low one-third g. The close detonation of a plasma warhead had torn off the outer door of the crew airlock and flooded the chamber with superheated gas, effectively welding it shut. That meant they’d be using the cargo airlock at the stern of the ship and spacewalking over to the station.
That was fine; they were still in their suits. The Roci had more holes now than the air cycling system could keep up with, and their shipboard O2 supply had been vented into space by the same explosion that killed the airlock.
Alex dropped from the cockpit, face hidden by his helmet, his belly unmistakable even in his atmosphere suit. Naomi finished locking her station and powering down the ship, then joined Alex, and the three of them climbed down the crew ladder to the ship’s aft. Amos was waiting there, buckling an EVA pack onto his suit and charging it with compressed nitrogen from a storage tank. The mechanic had assured Holden that the EVA maneuvering pack had enough thrust to overcome the station’s spin and get them back up to an airlock.
