LEVIATHAN WAKES

accepted a drink from a tired-looking woman in a G-string and bared breasts and found a screen to stand at that afforded him a view of all six doors. The crew of the Rocinante had no choice but to come through one of those. He checked his hand terminal. The docking logs showed the ship had arrived ten minutes earlier. Miller pretended to sip his drink and settled in to wait.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Holden

The casino level of Eros was an all-out assault on the senses. Holden hated it.

“I love this place,” Amos said, grinning.

Holden pushed his way through a knot of drunk middle-aged gamblers, who were laughing and yelling, to a small open space near a row of pay-by-the-minute wall terminals.

“Amos,” he said, “we’ll be going to a less touristy level, so watch our backs. The flophouse we’re looking for is in a rough neighborhood.”

Amos nodded. “Gotcha, Cap.”

While Naomi, Alex, and Amos blocked him from view, Holden reached behind his back to adjust the pistol that pulled uncomfortably on his waistband. The cops on Eros were pretty uptight about people walking around with guns, but there was no way he was going to “Lionel Polanski” unarmed. Amos and Alex were both carrying too, though Amos kept his in the right pocket of his jacket and his hand never left it. Only Naomi flatly refused to carry a gun.

Holden led the group toward the nearest escalators, with Amos, casting the occasional glance behind, in the rear. The casinos of Eros stretched for three seemingly endless levels, and even though they moved as quickly as possible, it took half an hour to get away from the noise and crowds. The first level above was a residential neighborhood and disorientingly quiet and neat after the casino’s chaos and noise. Holden sat down on the edge of a planter with a nice array of ferns in it and caught his breath.

“I’m with you, Captain. Five minutes in that place gives me a headache,” Naomi said, and sat down next to him.

“You kidding me?” Amos said. “I wish we had more time. Alex and I took almost a grand off those fish at the Tycho card tables. We’d probably walk out of here fucking millionaires.”

“You know it,” Alex said, and punched the big mechanic on the shoulder.

“Well, if this Polanski thing turns out to be nothing, you have my permission to go make us a million dollars at the card tables. I’ll wait for you on the ship,” Holden said.

The tube system ended at the first casino level and didn’t start again until the level they were on. You could choose not to spend your money at the tables, but they made sure you were punished for doing so. Once the crew had climbed into a car and started the ride to Lionel’s hotel, Amos sat down next to Holden.

“Somebody’s following us, Cap,” he said conversationally. “Wasn’t sure till he climbed on a couple cars down. Behind us all through the casinos too.”

Holden sighed and put his face in his hands.

“Okay, what’s he look like?” he said.

“Belter. Fifties, or maybe forties with a lot mileage. White shirt and dark pants. Goofy hat.”

“Cop?”

“Oh yeah. But no holster I can see,” Amos said.

“All right. Keep an eye on him, but no need to get too worried. Nothing we’re doing here is illegal,” Holden said.

“You mean, other than arriving in our stolen Martian warship, sir?” Naomi asked.

“You mean our perfectly legitimate gas freighter that all the paperwork and registry data says is perfectly legitimate?” Holden replied with a thin smile. “Yeah, well, if they’d seen through that, they would have stopped us at the dock, not followed us around.”

An advertising screen on the wall displayed a stunning view of multicolored clouds rippling with flashes of lightning, and encouraged Holden to take a trip to the amazing dome resorts on Titan. He’d never been to Titan. Suddenly he wanted to go there very much. A few weeks of sleeping late, eating in fine restaurants, and lying on a hammock, watching Titan’s colorful atmosphere storm above him sounded like heaven. Hell, as long as he was fantasizing, he threw in Naomi walking over to his hammock with a couple of fruity-looking drinks in her hands.

She ruined it by talking.

“This is our stop,” she said.

“Amos, watch our friend, see if he gets off the train with us,” Holden said as he got up and headed to the door.

After they got off and walked a dozen steps down the corridor, Amos whispered, “Yep,” at his back. Shit. Well, definitely a tail, but there wasn’t really any reason not to go ahead and check up on Lionel. Fred hadn’t asked them to do anything with whoever was pretending to be the Scopuli’s owner. They couldn’t very well be arrested for knocking on a door. Holden whistled a loud and jaunty tune as he walked, to let his crew and whoever was following them know he wasn’t worried about a thing.

He stopped when he saw the flophouse.

It was dark and dingy and exactly the sort of place where people got mugged or worse. Broken lights created dark corners, and there wasn’t a tourist in sight. He turned to give Alex and Amos meaningful looks, and Amos shifted his hand in his pocket. Alex reached under his coat.

The lobby was mostly empty space, with a pair of couches at one end next to a table covered with magazines. A sleepy-looking older woman sat reading one. Elevators were recessed into the wall at the far end, next to a door marked STAIRS. In the middle was the check-in desk, where, in lieu of a human clerk, a touch screen terminal let guests pay for their rooms.

Holden stopped next to the desk and turned around to look at the woman sitting on the couch. Graying hair, but good features and an athletic build. In a flophouse like this, that probably meant a prostitute reaching the end of her shelf life. She pointedly ignored his stare.

“Is our tail still with us?” Holden asked in a quiet voice.

“Stopped outside somewhere. Probably just watching the door now,” Amos replied.

Holden nodded and hit the inquiry button on the check-in screen. A simple menu would let him send a message to Lionel Polanski’s room, but Holden exited the system. They knew Lionel was still checked in, and Fred had given them the room number. If it was someone playing games, no reason to give him a heads-up before Holden knocked on the door.

“Okay, he’s still here, so let’s-” Holden said, and then stopped when he saw the woman from the couch standing right behind Alex. He hadn’t heard or seen her approach.

“You need to come with me,” she said in a hard voice. “Walk to the stairwell slowly, stay at least three meters ahead of me the entire time. Do it now.”

“Are you a cop?” Holden asked, not moving.

“I’m the person with the gun,” she said, a small weapon appearing like magic in her right hand. She pointed it at Alex’s head. “So do what I say.”

Her weapon was small and plastic and had some kind of battery pack. Amos pulled his heavy slug thrower out and aimed it at her face.

“Mine’s bigger,” he said.

“Amos, don’t-” was all Naomi had time to say before the stairwell door burst open and half a dozen men and women armed with compact automatic weapons came into the room, yelling at them to drop their guns.

Holden started to put his hands up when one of them opened fire, the weapon coughing out rounds so fast it sounded like someone ripping construction paper; it was impossible to hear the separate shots. Amos threw himself to the floor. A line of bullet holes stitched across the chest of the woman with the taser, and she fell backward with a soft, final sound.

Holden grabbed Naomi by one hand and dragged her behind the check-in desk. Someone in the other group was yelling, “Cease fire! Cease fire!” but Amos was already shooting back from his position, prone on the floor. A