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“I did,” Miller said.
“When the time comes, I will hand-feed you to the wolves as the first chip I offer. I won’t protect you.”
“Wouldn’t ask you to protect me,” Miller said.
“Even if it meant being a Belter ex-cop in an Earth-side prison?”
It was a euphemism, and they both knew it. You belong with me, Julie said. And so what did it matter, really, how he got there?
“I’ve got no regrets,” he said, and half a breath later was shocked to discover it was almost true. “If there’s a judge out there who wants to ask me about something, I’ll answer. I’m looking for a job here, not protection.”
Fred sat in his chair, eyes narrow and thoughtful. Miller leaned forward in his seat.
“You’ve got me in a hard position,” Fred said. “You’re saying all the right things. But I have a hard time trusting that you’d follow through. Keeping you on the books would be risky. It could undermine my position in the peace negotiations.”
“It’s a risk,” Miller said. “But I’ve been on Eros and Thoth station. I flew on the Rocinante with Holden and his crew. When it comes to analysis of the protomolecule and how we got into this mess, there isn’t anyone in a better position to give you information. You can argue I knew too much. That I was too valuable to let go.”
“Or too dangerous.”
“Sure. Or that.”
They were silent for a moment. On the Nauvoo, a bank of lights glittered in a gold-and-green test pattern and then went dark.
“Security consultant,” Fred said. “Independent. I won’t give you a rank.”
I’m too dirty for the OPA, Miller thought with a glow of amusement.
“If it comes with my own bunk, I’ll take it,” he said. It was only until the war was over. After that, he was meat for the machine. That was fine. Fred leaned back. His chair hissed softly into its new configuration.
“All right,” Fred said. “Here’s your first job. Give me your analysis. What’s my biggest problem?”
“Containment,” Miller said.
“You think I can’t keep the information about Thoth station and the protomolecule quiet?”
“Of course you can’t,” Miller said. “For one thing, too many people already know. For another thing, one of them’s Holden, and if he hasn’t already broadcast the whole thing on every empty frequency, he will soon. And besides that, you can’t make a peace deal without explaining what the hell’s going on. Sooner or later, it has to come out.”
“And what do you advise?”
For a moment, Miller was back in the darkness, listening to the gibbers of the dying station. The voices of the dead calling to him from across the vacuum.
“Defend Eros,” he said. “All sides are going to want samples of the protomolecule. Locking down access is going to be the only way you get yourself a seat at that table.”
Fred chuckled.
“Nice thought,” he said. “But how do propose we defend something the size of Eros Station if Earth and Mars bring their navies to bear?”
It was a good point. Miller felt a tug of sorrow. Even though Julie Mao—his Julie—was dead and gone, it felt like disloyalty to say it.
“Then you have to get rid of it,” he said.
“And how would I do that?” Fred said. “Even if we studded the thing with nukes, how would we be sure that no little scrap of the thing would make its way to a colony or down a well? Blowing that thing up would be like blowing dandelion fluff into the breeze.”
Miller had never seen a dandelion, but he saw the problem. Even the smallest portion of the goo filling Eros might be enough to start the whole evil experiment over again. And the goo thrived on radiation; simply cooking the station might hurry the thing along its occult path rather than end it. To be sure that the protomolecule on Eros never spread, they’d need to break everything on the station down to its constituent atoms…
“Oh,” Miller said.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. You’re not going to like this.”
“Try me.”
“Okay. You asked. You drive Eros into the sun.”
“Into the sun,” Fred said. “Do you have any idea how much mass we’re talking about here?”
Miller nodded to the wide, clear expanse of window, to the construction yards beyond it. To the Nauvoo.
“Big engines on that thing,” Miller said. “Get some fast ships out to the station, make sure no one can get in before you get there. Run the Nauvoo into Eros Station. Knock it sunward.”
Fred’s gaze turned inward as he planned, calculated.
“Got to make sure no one gets into it until it hits corona. That’ll be hard, but Earth and Mars are both just as interested in keeping the other guy from having it as in getting it themselves.”
I’m sorry I couldn’t do better, Julie, he thought. But it’ll be a hell of a funeral.
Fred’s breath grew slow and deep, his gaze flickering as if he were reading something in the air that only he could see. Miller didn’t interrupt, even when the silence got heavy. It was almost a minute later that Fred let out a short, percussive breath.
“The Mormons are going to be pissed,” he said.
Chapter Forty-Five: Holden
Naomi talked in her sleep. It was one of a dozen things Holden hadn’t known about her before tonight. Even though they’d slept in crash couches a few feet apart on many occasions, he’d never heard it. Now, with her face against his bare chest, he could feel her lips move and the soft, punctuated exhalations of her words. He couldn’t hear what she was saying.
She also had a scar on her back, just above her left buttock. It was three inches long and had the uneven edges and rippling that came from a tear rather than a slice. Naomi would never get herself knifed in a bar fight, so it had to have come on the job. Maybe she had been climbing through tight spaces in the engine room when the ship maneuvered unexpectedly. A competent plastic surgeon could have made it invisible in one visit. That she hadn’t bothered and clearly didn’t care was another thing he had learned about her tonight.
She stopped murmuring and smacked her lips a few times, then said, “Thirsty.”
Holden slid out from under her and headed for the kitchen, knowing that this was the obsequiousness that always accompanied a new lover. For the next couple of weeks, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from fulfilling every whim Naomi might have. It was a behavior some men carried at the genetic level, their DNA wanting to make sure that first time wasn’t just a fluke.
