gas storage tanks in two bands around the hull. Use them to hide the tubes. Repaint the whole thing. Weld on a few projections to break up the hull profile and hide us from ship-recognition software. It’ll look like shit and screw up the aerodynamics, but we won’t be near atmo anytime soon. It’ll look exactly like what it is: something a bunch of Belters slapped together in a hurry.”
He handed the paper to Fred. Fred began laughing in earnest, either at the terrible drawing or at the absurdity of the whole thing.
“You could give a pirate a hell of a surprise,” he said. “If I do this, you and your crew will record my depositions and hire on as an independent contractor for errands like the Eros run and appear on my behalf when the peace negotiations start.”
“Yes.”
“I want the right to outbid anyone else who tries to hire you. No contracts without my counteroffer.”
Holden held out his hand, and Fred shook it.
“Nice doing business with you, Fred.”
As Holden left the office, Fred was already on the comm with his machine-shop people. Holden pulled out his portable terminal and called up Naomi.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Pack up the kids, we’re going to Eros.”
Chapter Twenty-Two: Miller
The people-mover to Eros was small, cheap, and overcrowded. The air recyclers had the plastic-and-resin smell of long-life industrial models that Miller associated with warehouses and fuel depots. The lights were cheap LEDs tinted a false pink that was supposed to flatter the complexion but instead made everyone look like undercooked beef. There were no cabins, only row after row of formed laminate seating and two long walls with five-stacks of bunks that the passengers could hot-swap. Miller had never been on a cheapjack transport before, but he knew how they worked. If there was a fight, the ship’s crew would pump riot gas into the cabin, knock everyone out, and put anyone who’d been in the scuffle under restraint. It was a draconian system, but it did tend to keep passengers polite. The bar was always open and the drinks were cheap. Not long ago Miller would have found that enticing.
Instead, he sat on one of the long seats, his hand terminal open. Julie’s case file-what he had reconstructed of it-glowed before him. The picture of her, proud and smiling, in front of the
A small newsfeed crawled down the terminal’s left side. The war between Mars and the Belt escalated, incident after incident, but the secession of Ceres Station was the top news. Earth was taken to task by Martian commentators for failing to stand united with its fellow inner planet, or at least for not handing over the Ceres security contract to Mars. The scattershot reaction of the Belt ran the gamut from pleasure at seeing Earth’s influence fall back down the gravity well, to strident near-panic at the loss of Ceres’ neutrality, to conspiracy theories that Earth was fomenting the war for its own ends.
Miller reserved judgment.
“I always think of pews.”
Miller looked over. The man sitting next to him was about Miller’s age; the fringe of gray hair, the soft belly. The man’s smile told Miller the guy was a missionary, out in the vacuum saving souls. Or maybe it was the name tag and Bible.
“The seats, I mean,” the missionary said. “They always make me think of going to church, the way they’re all lined up, row after row. Only instead of a pulpit, we have bunk beds.”
“Our Lady of Sleeping Through It,” Miller said, knowing he was getting drawn into conversation but unable to stop himself. The missionary laughed.
“Something like that,” he said. “Do you attend church?”
“Haven’t in years,” Miller said. “I was a Methodist when I was anything. What flavor are you selling?”
The missionary lifted his hands in a gesture of harmlessness that went back to the African plains of the Pleistocene.
“I’m just going back to Eros from a conference on Luna,” he said. “My proselytizing days are long behind me.”
“I didn’t think those ever ended,” Miller said.
“They don’t. Not officially. But after a few decades, you come to a place where you realize that there’s really no difference between trying and not trying. I still travel. I still talk to people. Sometimes we talk about Jesus Christ. Sometimes we talk about cooking. If someone is ready to accept Christ, it doesn’t take much effort on my part to help them. If they aren’t, no amount of hectoring them does any good. So why try?”
“Do people talk about the war?” Miller asked.
“Often,” the missionary said.
“Anyone make sense of it?”
“No. I don’t believe war ever does. It’s a madness that’s in our nature. Sometimes it recurs; sometimes it subsides.”
“Sounds like a disease.”
“The herpes simplex of the species?” the missionary said with a laugh. “I suppose there are worse ways to think of it. I’m afraid that as long as we’re human, it will be with us.”
Miller looked over at the wide, moon-round face.
“As long as we’re human?” he said.
“Some of us believe that we shall all eventually become angels,” the missionary said.
“Not the Methodists.”
“Even them, eventually,” the man said, “but they probably won’t go first. And what brings you to Our Lady of Sleeping Through It?”
Miller sighed, sitting back against the unyielding chair. Two rows down, a young woman shouted at two boys to stop jumping on the seats and was ignored. A man behind them coughed. Miller took a long breath and let it out slowly.
“I was a cop on Ceres,” he said.
“Ah. The change of contract.”
“That,” Miller said.
“Taking up work on Eros, then?”
“More looking up an old friend,” Miller said. Then, to his own surprise, he went on. “I was born on Ceres. Lived there my whole life. This is the… fifth? Yeah, fifth time I’ve been off station.”
“Do you plan to go back?”
“No,” Miller said. He sounded more certain that he’d known. “No, I think that part of my life is pretty much over.”
“That must be painful,” the missionary said.
Miller paused, letting the comment settle. The man was right; it should have been painful. Everything he’d ever had was gone. His job, his community. He wasn’t even a cop anymore, his checked-in-luggage handgun notwithstanding. He would never eat at the little East Indian cart at the edge of sector nine again. The receptionist at the station would never nod her greeting to him as he headed in for his desk again. No more nights at the bar with the other cops, no more off-color stories about busts gone weird, no more kids flying kites in the high tunnels. He probed himself like a doctor searching for inflammation. Did it hurt here? Did he feel the loss there?
He didn’t. There was only a sense of relief so profound it approached giddiness.
“I’m sorry,” the missionary said, confused. “Did I say something funny?”
