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“First, fastest, furthest,” Miller replied.
“Yeah.”
“Guys,” Naomi said, “you should come down here. I think I’ve got something.”
Chapter Thirty-Five: Holden
I’ve found the comm logs,” Naomi said as Holden and Miller drifted into the room behind her.
Holden put a hand on her shoulder, pulled it back, and hated that he’d pulled back. A week earlier she’d have been fine with a simple gesture of affection like that, and he wouldn’t have been afraid of her reaction. He regretted the new distance between them only slightly less than he would have regretted not saying anything at all. He wanted to tell her that.
Instead, he said, “Find anything good?”
She tapped the screen and pulled up the log.
“They were hard-core about comm discipline,” she said, pointing at the long list of dates and times. “Nothing ever went out on radio, everything was tightbeam. And everything was doublespeak, lots of obvious code phrases.”
Miller’s mouth moved inside his helmet. Holden tapped on his face shield. Miller rolled his eyes in disgust and then chinned the comm link to the general channel.
“Sorry. Don’t spend a lot of time in suits,” he said. “What’ve we got that’s good?”
“Not much. But the last communication was in plain English,” she said, then tapped the last line on the list.
THOTH STATION
CREW DEGENERATING. PROJECTING 100% CASUALTIES. MATERIALS SECURED. STABILIZING COURSE AND SPEED. VECTOR DATA TO FOLLOW. EXTREME CONTAMINATION HAZARD FOR ENTRY TEAMS.
CPT. HIGGINS
Holden read it several times, imagining Captain Higgins watching the infection spread through his crew, helpless to stop it. His people vomiting all over in a vacuum-sealed metal box, even one molecule of the substance on your skin a virtual death sentence. Black filament-covered tendrils erupting from their eyes and mouths. And then that… soup that covered the reactor. He let himself shudder, grateful that Miller wouldn’t see it through the atmosphere suit.
“So this Higgins fella realizes his crew is turning into vomit zombies and sends a last message to his bosses, right?” Miller said, breaking into Holden’s reverie. “What’s this stuff about vector data?”
“He knew they’d all be dead, so he was letting his people know how to catch the ship,” Holden replied.
“But they didn’t, because it’s here, because Julie took control and flew it somewhere else,” Miller said. “Which means they’re looking for it, right?”
Holden ignored that and put his hand back on Naomi’s shoulder with what he hoped was companionable casualness.
“We have tight beam messages and the vector info,” he said. “Are they all going to the same place?”
“Sort of,” she said, nodding with her right hand. “Not the same place, but all to what appear to be points in the Belt. But based on the changes in direction and the times they were sent, to one point in the Belt that is moving around, and not in a stable orbit either.”
“A ship, then?”
Naomi gave another nod.
“Probably,” she said. “I’ve been playing with the locations, and I can’t find anything in the registry that looks likely. No stations or inhabited rocks. A ship would make sense. But—”
Holden waited for Naomi to finish, but Miller leaned forward impatiently.
“But what?” he said.
“But how did they know where it would be?” she replied. “I have no incoming comms in the log. If a ship was moving around randomly in the Belt, how’d they know where to send these messages?”
Holden squeezed her shoulder, lightly enough that she probably didn’t even feel it in the heavy environment suit, then pushed off and allowed himself to drift toward the ceiling.
“So it’s not random,” he said. “They had some sort of map of where this thing would be at the time they sent the laser comms. Could be one of their stealth ships.”
Naomi turned around in her chair to look up at him.
“Could be a station,” she said.
“It’s the lab,” Miller broke in. “They’re running an experiment on Eros, they need the white coats nearby.”
“Naomi,” Holden said. “ ‘Materials secured.’ There’s a safe in the captain’s quarters that’s still locked down. Think you can get it open?”
Naomi gave a one-handed shrug.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe. Amos could probably blast it open with some of the explosives we found in that big box of weapons.”
Holden laughed.
“Well,” he said. “Since it’s probably full of little vials of nasty alien viruses, I’m going to nix the blasting option.”
Naomi shut down the comm log and pulled up a general ship’s systems menu.
“I can look around and see if the computer has access to the safe,” she said. “Try to open it that way. It might take some time.”
“Do what you can,” Holden said. “We’ll get out of your hair.”
Holden pushed himself off the ceiling and over to the ops compartment hatch, then pulled himself through, into the corridor beyond. A few moments later, Miller followed. The detective planted his feet on the deck with magnetic boots, then stared at Holden, waiting.
Holden floated down to the deck next to him.
“What do you think?” Holden asked. “Protogen being the whole thing? Or is this another one where it looks like them, so it isn’t?”
Miller was silent for the space of two long breaths.
“This one smells like the real thing,” Miller said. He sounded almost grudging.
Amos pulled himself up the crew ladder from below, dragging a large metal case behind him.
“Hey, Cap’n,” he said. “I found a whole case of fuel pellets for the reactor in the machine shop. We’ll probably want to take these with us.”
“Good work,” Holden said, holding up one hand to let Miller know to wait. “Go ahead and take those across. Also, I need you to work up a plan for scuttling this ship.”
“Wait, what?” Amos said. “This thing is worth a jillion bucks, Captain. Stealth missile ship? The OPA would sell their grandmothers for this thing. And six of those tubes still have fish in them. Capital-ship busters. You could slag a small moon with those. Forget their grannies, the OPA would pimp their daughters for that gear. Why the f**k would we blow it up?”
