LEVIATHAN WAKES

“Okay, give me a minute,” she said, then set to work on it.

Miller leaned back in his chair again, letting out another heavy sigh.

“So,” Holden said. “Did you know Julie before this? Naomi seems to think finding her dead like that really knocked you for a loop.”

Miller shook his head slowly. “You get a case like that, you look into whoever it is. You know, personal stuff. Read their e-mail. Talk to the people they know. You get a picture.”

Miller stopped talking and rubbed his eyes with his thumbs. Holden didn’t push him, but he started talking again anyway.

“Julie was a good kid,” Miller said as if he were confessing something. “She flew a mean racing ship. I just… I wanted to get her back alive.”

“It’s got a password,” Naomi said, holding up the terminal. “I could hack the hardware, but I’d have to open the case.”

Miller reached out and said, “Let me give it a try.”

Naomi handed the terminal to him, and he tapped a few characters on the screen and handed it back.

“Razorback,” Naomi said. “What’s that?”

“It’s a sled,” Miller replied.

“Is he talking to us?” Amos said, pointing his chin at Miller. “ ’Cause there’s no one else here, but I swear half the time I don’t know what the fuck he’s on about.”

“Sorry,” Miller said. “I’ve been working more or less solo. Makes for bad habits.”

Naomi shrugged and went back to work with Holden and Miller now looking over her shoulders.

“She’s got a lot of stuff on here,” Naomi said. “Where to start?”

Miller pointed at a text file simply labeled notes sitting on the terminal’s desktop.

“Start there,” he said. “She’s a fanatic about putting things in the right folders. If she left that on the desktop, it means she wasn’t sure where it went.”

Naomi tapped on the document to open it up. It expanded into a loosely organized collection of text that read like someone’s diary.

First off, get your shit together. Panic doesn’t help. It never helps. Deep breaths, figure this out, make the right moves. fear is the mind-killer. Ha. Geek.

Shuttle Pros:

No reactor, just batteries. V. low radiation.

Supplies for eight

Lots of reaction mass

Shuttle Cons:

No Epstein, no torch

Comm not just disabled, but physically removed (feeling a little paranoid about leaks, guys?)

Closest transit is Eros. Is that where we were going? Maybe go someplace else? On just teakettle, this is gonna be a slow boat. Another transit adds seven more weeks. Eros, then.

I’ve got the Phoebe bug, no way around it. Not sure how, but that brown shit was everywhere. It’s anaerobic, must have touched some. Doesn’t matter how, just work the problem.

I just slept for THREE WEEKS. Didn’t even get up to pee. What does that?

I’m so fucked.

Things you need to remember:

* BA834024112

* Radiation kills. No reactor on this shuttle, but keep the lights off. Keep the e-suit on. Video asshat said this thing eats radiation. Don’t feed it.

* Send up a flag. Get some help. You work for the smartest people in the system. They’ll figure something out.

* Stay away from people. Don’t spread the bug. Not coughing up the brown goo yet. No idea when that starts.

* Keep away from bad guys-as if you know who they are. Fine. So keep away from everyone. Incognito is my name. Hmm. Polanski?

Damn. I can feel it. I’m hot all the time, and I’m starving. Don’t eat. Don’t feed it. Feed a cold, starve a flu? Other way around? Eros is a day out, and then help is on the way. Keep fighting.

Safe on Eros. Sent up the flag. Hope the home office is watching. Head hurts. Something’s happening on my back. Lump over my kidneys. Darren turned into goo. Am I going to be a suit full of jelly?

Sick now. Things coming out of my back and leaking that brown stuff everywhere. Have to take the suit off. If you read this, don’t let anyone touch the Brown stuff. Burn me. I’m burning up.

Naomi put the terminal down, but no one spoke for a moment. Finally, Holden said, “Phoebe bug. Anyone have an idea?”

“There was a science station on Phoebe,” Miller said. “Inner planets place, no Belters allowed. It got hit. Lots of dead people, but… ”

“She talks about being on a shuttle,” Naomi said. “The Scopuli didn’t have a shuttle.”

“There had to be another ship,” Alex said. “Maybe she got the shuttle off it.”

“Right,” Holden said. “They got on another ship, they got infected with this Phoebe bug, and the rest of the crew… I don’t know. Dies?”

“She gets out, not realizing she’s infected till she’s on the shuttle,” Naomi continued. “She comes here, she sends up the flag to Fred, and she dies in that hotel room of the infection.”

“Not, however, turned to goo,” Holden said. “Just really badly… I don’t know. Those tubes and bone spurs. What kind of disease does that?”

The question hung in the air. Again no one spoke. Holden knew they were all thinking the same thing. They hadn’t touched anything in the flophouse room. Did that mean they were safe from it? Or did they have the Phoebe bug, whatever the hell it was? But she’d said anaerobic. Holden was pretty sure that meant you couldn’t get it by breathing it in the air. Pretty sure…

“Where do we go from here, Jim?” Naomi asked.

“How about Venus?” Holden said, his voice higher and tighter than he’d expected. “Nothing interesting happening on Venus.”

“Seriously,” Naomi said.

“Okay. Seriously, I think Miller there lets his cop friend know the story, and then we get the hell off of this rock. It’s got to be a bioweapon, right? Someone steals it off a Martian science lab, seeds this shit in a dome, a month later every human being in the city is dead.”

Amos interrupted with a grunt.

“There’s some holes in that, Cap’n,” Amos said. “Like what the fuck does that have to do with taking down the Cant and the Donnager?”