AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Loud and clear, Cap,” Amos said. If Holden had asked him to get a cup of coffee, Amos would have sounded exactly the same.
Fred was still staring at him incredulously.
“Don’t force this issue, Fred,” Holden said.
“If you think you can threaten me, you’re mistaken,” Fred said, his voice flat and frightening.
Miller laughed.
“Something funny?” Fred said.
“That wasn’t a threat,” Miller replied.
“No? What would you call it?”
“An accurate report of the world,” Miller said. He stretched slowly as he talked. “If it was Alex on board, he might think the captain was trying to intimidate someone, maybe back down at the last minute. Amos, though? Amos will absolutely shoot his way free, even if it means he goes down with the ship.”
Fred scowled, and Miller shook his head.
“It’s not a bluff,” Miller said. “Don’t call it.”
Fred’s eyes narrowed, and Holden wondered if he’d finally gone too far with the man. He certainly wouldn’t be the first person Fred Johnson had ordered shot. And he had Miller standing right next to him. The unbalanced detective would probably shoot him at the first hint someone thought it was a good idea. It shook Holden’s confidence in Fred that Miller was even here.
Which made it a little more surprising when Miller saved him.
“Look,” the detective said. “Fact is, Holden is the best person to carry that shit around until you decide what to do with it.”
“Talk me into it,” Fred said, his voice still tight with anger.
“Once Eros goes up, he and the Roci are going to have their asses hanging in the breeze. Someone might be angry enough to nuke him just on general principles.”
“And how does that make the sample safer with him?” Fred asked, but Holden had understood Miller’s point.
“They might be less inclined to blow me up if I let them know that I’ve got the sample and all the Protogen notes,” he said.
“Won’t make the sample safer,” Miller said. “But it makes the mission more likely to work. And that’s the point, right? Also, he’s an idealist,” Miller continued. “Offer Holden his weight in gold and he’ll just be offended you tried to bribe him.”
Naomi laughed. Miller glanced at her, a small shared smile at the corner of his mouth, then turned back to Fred.
“Are you saying he can be trusted and I can’t?” Fred said.
“I was thinking more about the crew,” Miller said. “Holden’s got a small bunch, and they do what he says. They think he’s righteous, so they are too.”
“My people follow me,” Fred said.
Miller’s grin was weary and unassailable.
“There’s a lot of people in the OPA,” he said.
“The stakes are too high,” Fred said.
“You’re kind of in the wrong career for safe,” Miller said. “I’m not saying it’s a great plan. Just you won’t get a better one.”
Fred’s slitted eyes glittered with equal parts frustration and rage. His jaw worked silently for a moment before he spoke.
“Captain Holden? I’m disappointed with your lack of trust after all I’ve done for you and yours.”
“If the human race still exists a month from now, I’ll apologize,” Holden said.
“Get your crew out to Eros before I change my mind.”
Holden rose, nodded to Fred, and left. Naomi walked at his side.
“Wow, that was close,” she said under her breath.
Once they’d left the office, Holden said, “I think Fred was half a second from ordering Miller to shoot me.”
“Miller’s on our side. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
Chapter Forty-Six: Miller
Miller had known when he’d taken Holden’s side against his new boss that there were going to be consequences. His position with Fred and the OPA was tenuous to start with, and pointing out that Holden and his crew were not only more dedicated but also more trustworthy than Fred’s people wasn’t the thing you did when you were kissing up. That it was the truth only made it worse.
He’d expected some kind of payback. He would have been naive not to.
“Rise up, O men of God, in one united throng,” the resisters sang. “Bring in the days of bro-ther-hood, and end the night of wrong… ”
Miller took off his hat and ran fingers through his thinning hair. It wasn’t going to be a good day.
The interior of the Nauvoo showed more patchwork and process than its hull suggested. Two kilometers long, its designers had built it as more than a huge ship. The great levels stacked one atop the other; alloy girders worked organically with what would have been pastoral meadows. The structure echoed the greatest cathedrals of Earth and Mars, rising up through empty air and giving both thrust-gravity stability and glory to God. It was still metal bones and woven agricultural substrate, but Miller could see where it was all heading.
A generation ship was a statement of overarching ambition and utter faith. The Mormons had known that. They’d embraced it. They’d constructed a ship that was prayer and piety and celebration all at the same time. The Nauvoo would be the greatest temple mankind had ever built. It would shepherd its crew through the uncrossable gulfs of interstellar space, humanity’s best hope of reaching the stars
Or it would have been, if not for him.
“You want us to gas them, Pampaw?” Diogo asked.
Miller considered the resisters. At a guess, there might have been two hundred of them strung in linked chains across the access paths and engineering ducts. Transport lifts and industrial waldoes stood idle, their displays dark, their batteries shorted.
“Yeah, probably should,” Miller sighed.
The security team—his security team—numbered fewer than three dozen. Men and women more unified by the OPA-issued armbands than by their training, experience, loyalties, or politics. If the Mormons had chosen violence, it would have been a bloodbath. If they’d put on environment suits, the protest would have lasted hours. Days, possibly. Instead, Diogo gave the signal, and three minutes later, four small comets arced out into the null-g space, wavering on their tails of NNLP-alpha and tetrahydrocannabinol.
It was the kindest, gentlest riot control device in the arsenal. Any of the protesters with compromised lungs could still be in trouble, but within half an hour, all of them would be relaxed into near stupor and high as a kite. NNLPa and THC wasn’t a combination Miller had ever used on Ceres. If they’d tried to stock it, it would have been stolen for office parties. He tried to take some comfort in the thought. As if it would make up for the lifetimes of dreams and labor he was taking away.
