It was inhuman. It was impersonal and cold and as empty as vacuum. The hunk of flesh on that corridor wall had been a real man with passions and fears, just like anyone else. Miller wanted to wonder what it said about him that he could ignore that fact so easily, but the truth was he knew. He sent the message and tried not to dwell on the pain it was about to cause.
The board was thick. The incident count was twice what it should have been.
Then he corrected himself:
It didn’t make his next task any easier.
Shaddid was in her office.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“I need to make some requisitions for interrogation transcripts,” he said. “But it’s a little irregular. I was thinking it might be better if it came through you.”
Shaddid sat back in her chair.
“I’ll look at it,” she said. “What are we trying to get?”
Miller nodded, as if by signaling
“Jim Holden. The Earther from the
“You have a case that goes back to the
“Yeah,” he said. “Seems like I do.”
“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me now.”
“It’s the side job. Julie Mao. I’ve been looking into it… ”
“I saw your report.”
“So you know she’s associated with the OPA. From what I’ve found, it looks like she was on a freighter that was doing courier runs for them.”
“You have proof of that?”
“I have an OPA guy that said as much.”
“On the record?”
“No,” Miller said. “It was informal.”
“And it tied into the Martian navy killing the
“She was on the
“And you think there’s something in there that’ll help you?”
“Won’t know until I see it,” Miller said. “But if Julie wasn’t on that freighter, then someone had to take her off.”
Shaddid’s smile didn’t reach her eyes.
“And you would like to ask the Martian navy to please hand over whatever they got from Holden.”
“If he saw something on that boat, something that’ll give us an idea what happened to Julie and the other-”
“You aren’t thinking this through,” Shaddid said. “The Mars Navy killed the
“We can’t be sure… ”
“And even if I could get a full record of what they said as each toenail got ripped off, it would do you exactly no good, Miller. The Martian navy isn’t going to ask about the
“Is that Star Helix’s official stand?” Miller asked. The words were barely out of his mouth before he saw they’d been a mistake. Shaddid’s face closed down like a light going out. Now that he’d said it, he saw the implied threat he’d just made.
“I’m just pointing out the source reliability issue,” Shaddid said. “You don’t go to the suspect and ask where they think you should look next. And the Juliette Mao retrieval isn’t your first priority.”
“I’m not saying it is,” Miller said, chagrined to hear the defensiveness in his voice.
“We have a board out there that’s full and getting fuller. Our first priorities are safety and continuity of services. If what you’re doing isn’t directly related to that, there are better things for you to be doing.”
“This war-”
“Isn’t our job,” Shaddid said. “Our job is Ceres. Get me a final report on Juliette Mao. I’ll send it through channels. We’ve done what we could.”
“I don’t think-”
“I do,” Shaddid said. “We’ve done what we could. Now stop being a pussy, get your ass out there, and catch bad guys. Detective.”
“Yes, Captain,” Miller said.
Muss was sitting at Miller’s desk when he got back to it, a cup in her hand that was either strong tea or weak coffee. She nodded toward his desktop monitor. On it, three Belters-two men and one woman-were coming out of a warehouse door, an orange plastic shipping container carried between them. Miller raised his eyebrows.
“Employed by an independent gas-hauling company. Nitrogen, oxygen. Basic atmospherics. Nothing exotic. Looks like they had the poor bastard in one of the company warehouses. I’ve sent forensics over to see if we can get any blood splatters for confirmation.”
“Good work,” Miller said.
Muss shrugged.
“Where are the perps?” Miller asked.
“Shipped out yesterday,” she said. “Flight plan logs them as headed for Io.”
“Io?”
“Earth-Mars Coalition central,” Muss said. “Want to put any money on whether they actually show up there?”
“Sure,” Miller said. “I’ll lay you fifty that they don’t.”
Muss actually laughed.
“I’ve put them on the alert system,” she said. “Anyplace they land, the locals will have a heads-up and a tracking number for the Dos Santos thing.”
“So case closed,” Miller said.
“Chalk another one up for the good guys,” Muss agreed.
The rest of the day was hectic. Three assaults, two of them overtly political and one domestic. Muss and Miller cleared all three from the board before the end of shift. There would be more by tomorrow.
After he clocked out, Miller stopped at a food cart near one of the tube stations for a bowl of vat rice and textured protein that approximated teriyaki chicken. All around him on the tube, normal citizens of Ceres read their newsfeeds and listened to music. A young couple half a car up from him leaned close to each other, murmuring and giggling. They might have been sixteen. Seventeen. He saw the boy’s wrist snake up under the girl’s shirt. She didn’t protest. An old woman directly across from Miller slept, her head lolling against the wall of the car, her snores almost delicate.
These people were what it was all about, Miller told himself. Normal people living small lives in a bubble of rock surrounded by hard vacuum. If they let the station turn into a riot zone, let order fail, all these lives would get turned into kibble like a kitten in a meat grinder. Making sure it didn’t happen was for people like him, Muss, even Shaddid.
