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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.”
