LEVIATHAN WAKES

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.”

“But the OPA isn’t,” Miller said.

“We have the resources to do this right,” Dawes said with a nod. “Mao is one of ours. The Scopuli was one of ours.”

“And the Scopuli was the bait that killed the Canterbury,” Miller said. “And the Canterbury was the bait that killed the Donnager. So why exactly would anyone be better off having you be the only ones looking into something you might have done?”

“You think we nuked the Canterbury,” Dawes said. “The OPA, with its state-of- the-art Martian warships?”

“It got the Donnanger out where it could be attacked. As long as it was with the fleet, it couldn’t have been boarded.”

Dawes looked sour.

“Conspiracy theories, Mr. Miller,” he said. “If we had cloaked Martian warships, we wouldn’t be losing.”

“You had enough to kill the Donnanger with just six ships.”

“No. We didn’t. Our version of blowing up the Donnager is a whole bunch of tramp prospectors loaded with nukes going on a suicide mission. We have many, many resources. What happened to the Donnager wasn’t part of them.”

The silence was broken only by the hum of the air recycler. Miller crossed his arms.

“But… I don’t understand,” he said. “If the OPA didn’t start this, who did?”

“That is what Juliette Mao and the crew of the Scopuli can tell us,” Shaddid said. “Those are the stakes, Miller. Who and why and please Christ some idea of how to stop it.”

“And you don’t want to find them?” Miller said.

“I don’t want you to,” Dawes said. “Not when someone else can do it better.”

Miller shook his head. It was going too far, and he knew it. On the other hand, sometimes going too far could tell you something too.

“I’m not sold,” he said.

“You don’t have to be sold,” Shaddid said. “This isn’t a negotiation. We aren’t bringing you in to ask you for a goddamn favor. I am your boss. I am telling you. Do you know those words? Telling. You.”

“We have Holden,” Dawes said.

“What?” Miller said at the same time Shaddid said, “You’re not supposed to talk about that.”

Dawes raised an arm toward Shaddid in the Belt’s physical idiom of telling someone to be quiet. To Miller’s surprise, she did as the OPA man said.

“We have Holden. He and his crew didn’t die, and they are or are about to be in OPA custody. Do you understand what I’m saying, Detective? Do you see my point? I can do this investigation because I have the resources to do it. You can’t even find out what happened to your own riot gear.”

It was a slap. Miller looked at his shoes. He’d broken his word to Dawes about dropping the case, and the man hadn’t brought it up until now. He had to give the OPA operative points for that. Added to that, if Dawes really did have James Holden, there was no chance of Miller’s getting access to the interrogation.

When Shaddid spoke, her voice was surprisingly gentle.

“There were three murders yesterday. Eight warehouses got broken into, probably by the same bunch of people. We’ve got six people in hospital wards around the station with their nerves falling apart from a bad batch of bathtub pseudoheroin. The whole station’s jumpy,” she said. “There’s a lot of good you can do out there, Miller. Go catch some bad guys.”

“Sure, Captain,” Miller said. “You bet.”

Muss leaned against his desk, waiting for him. Her arms were crossed, her eyes as bored looking at him as they had been looking at the corpse of Dos Santos pinned to the corridor wall.

“New asshole?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“It’ll grow closed. Give it time. I got us one of the murders. Mid-level accountant for Naobi-Shears got his head blown off outside a bar. It looked fun.”

Miller pulled up his hand terminal and took in the basics. His heart wasn’t in it.

“Hey, Muss,” he said. “I got a question.”

“Fire away.”

“You’ve got a case you don’t want solved. What do you do?”

His new partner frowned, tilted her head, and shrugged.

“I hand it to a fish,” she said. “There was a guy back in crimes against children. If we knew the perp was one of our informants, we’d always give it to him. None of our guys ever got in trouble.”

“Yeah,” Miller said.

“For that matter, I need someone to take the shitty partner, I do the same thing,” Muss went on. “You know. Someone no one else wants to work with? Got bad breath or a shitty personality or whatever, but he needs a partner. So I pick the guy who maybe he used to be good, but then he got a divorce. Started hitting the bottle. Guy still thinks he’s a hotshot. Acts like it. Only his numbers aren’t better than anyone else’s. Give him the shit cases. The shit partner.”

Miller closed his eyes. His stomach felt uneasy.

“What did you do?” he asked.

“To get assigned to you?” Muss said. “One of the seniors made the moves on me and I shot him down.”

“So you got stuck.”

“Pretty much. Come on, Miller. You aren’t stupid,” Muss said. “You had to know.”

He’d had to know that he was the station house joke. The guy who used to be good. The one who’d lost it.

No, actually he hadn’t known that. He opened his eyes. Muss didn’t look happy or sad, pleased at his pain or particularly distressed by it. It was just work to her. The dead, the wounded, the injured. She didn’t care. Not caring was how she got through the day.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have turned him down,” Miller said.

“Ah, you’re not that bad,” Muss said. “And he had back hair. I hate back hair.”

“Glad to hear it,” Miller said. “Let’s go make some justice.”

* * *

“You’re drunk,” the asshole said.

“’M a cop,” Miller said, stabbing the air with his finger. “Don’t fuck with me.”

“I know you’re a cop. You’ve been coming to my bar for three years. It’s me. Hasini. And you’re drunk, my friend. Seriously, dangerously drunk.”

Miller looked around him. He was indeed at the Blue Frog. He didn’t remember having come here, and yet here he was. And the asshole was Hasini after all.

“I… ” Miller began, then lost his train of thought.

“Come on,” Hasini said, looping an arm around him. “It’s not that far. I’ll get you home.”

“What time is it?” Miller asked.

“Late.”

The word had a depth to it. Late. It was late. All the chances to make things right