There’s no reason to take out Eros. It’s not particularly important to the war when you hold it up to Ceres or Ganymede or the shipyard at Callisto. And if you wanted it dead, there’re easier ways. Blow a big fusion bomb on the surface, and crack it like an egg.”
“It’s not a military base, but it is a shipping hub,” Naomi said. “And, unlike Ceres, it’s not under OPA control.”
“They’re shipping her out, then,” Holden said. “They’re taking their sample out to infect whatever their original target was, and once they’re off the station, there’s no way we’re going to stop it.”
Miller shook his head. Something about the chain of logic felt wrong. He was missing something. His imaginary Julie appeared across the room, but her eyes were dark, black filaments pouring down her cheeks like tears.
The vibration was a slight, small thing, less than a transport tube’s braking stutter. A few plates rattled; the coffee in Naomi’s cup danced in a series of concentric circles. Everyone in the hotel went silent with the sudden shared dread of thousands of people made aware of their fragility in the same moment.
“Oh-kay,” Amos said. “The fuck was that?” and the emergency Klaxons started blaring.
“Or possibly stage three is something else,” Miller said over the noise.
The public-address system was muddy by its nature. The same voice spoke from consoles and speakers that might have been as close as a meter from each other or as far out as earshot would take them. It made every word reverberate, a false echo. Because of that, the voice of the emergency broadcast system enunciated very carefully, each word bitten off separately.
“Attention, please. Eros Station is in emergency lockdown. Proceed immediately to the casino level for radiological safety confinement. Cooperate with all emergency personnel. Attention, please. Eros station is in emergency lockdown… ”
And on in a loop that would continue, if no one coded in the override, until every man, woman, child, animal, and insect on the station had been reduced to dust and humidity. It was the nightmare scenario, and Miller did what a lifetime on pressurized rocks had trained him to do. He was up from the table, in the corridor, and heading down toward the wider passages, already clogged with bodies. Holden and his crew were on his heels.
“That was an explosion,” Alex said. “Ship drive at the least. Maybe a nuke.”
“They are going to kill the station,” Holden said. There was a kind of awe in his voice. “I never thought I’d miss the part where they just blew up the ships I was on. But now it’s stations.”
“They didn’t crack it,” Miller said.
“You’re sure of that?” Naomi asked.
“I can hear you talking,” Miller said. “That tells me there’s air.”
“There are airlocks,” Holden said. “If the station got holed and the locks closed down… ”
A woman pushed hard against Miller’s shoulder, forcing her way forward. If they weren’t damn careful, there was going to be a stampede. This was too much fear and not enough space. It hadn’t happened yet, but the impatient movement of the crowd, vibrating like molecules in water just shy of boiling, made Miller very uncomfortable.
“This isn’t a ship,” Miller said. “It’s a station. This is rock we’re on. Anything big enough to get to the parts of the station with atmosphere would crack the place like an egg. A great big pressurized egg.”
The crowd was stopped, the tunnel full. They were going to need crowd control, and they were going to need it fast. For the first time since he’d left Ceres, Miller wished he had a badge. Someone pushed into Amos’ side, then backed away through the press when the big guy growled.
“Besides,” Miller said, “it’s a rad hazard. You don’t need air loss to kill everyone in the station. Just burn a few quadrillion spare neutrons through the place at C, and there won’t be any trouble with the oxygen supply.”
“Cheerful fucker,” Amos said.
“They build stations inside of rocks for a reason,” Naomi said. “Not so easy to force radiation through this many meters of rock.”
“I spent a month in a rad shelter once,” Alex said as they pushed through the thickening crowd. “Ship I was on had magnetic containment drop. Automatic cutoffs failed, and the reactor kept runnin’ for almost a second. Melted the engine room. Killed five of the crew on the next deck up before they knew we had a problem, and it took them three days to carve the bodies free of the melted decking for burial. The rest of us wound up eighteen to a shelter for thirty-six days while a tug flew to get us.”
“Sounds great,” Holden said.
“End of it, six of ’em got married, and the rest of us never spoke to each other again,” Alex said.
Ahead of them, someone shouted. It wasn’t in alarm or even anger, really. Frustration. Fear. Exactly the things Miller didn’t want to hear.
“That may not be our big problem,” Miller said, but before he could explain, a new voice cut in, drowning out the emergency-response loop.
“Okay, everybody! We’re Eros security,
“So here’s the rule,” the new voice said. “Next asshole who pushes anyone, I’m going to shoot them. Move in an orderly fashion. First priority: orderly. Second priority is
At first nothing happened. The knot of human bodies was tied too tightly for even the most heavy-handed crowd control to free quickly, but a minute later, Miller saw some heads far ahead of him in the tunnel start to shift, then move away. The air in the tunnel was thickening and the hot plastic smell of overloaded recyclers reached him just as the clot came free. Miller’s breath started coming easier.
“Do they have hard shelters?” a woman behind them asked her companion, and then was swept away by the currents. Naomi plucked Miller’s sleeve.
“Do they?” she asked.
“They should, yes,” Miller said. “Enough for maybe a quarter million, and essential personnel and medical crews would get first crack at them.”
“And everyone else?” Amos said.
“If they survive the event,” Holden said, “station personnel will save as many people as they can.”
“Ah,” Amos said. Then: “Well, fuck that. We’re going for the
“Oh, hell yes,” Holden said.
Ahead of them, the fast-shuffling crowd in their tunnel was merging with another flow of people from a lower level. Five thick-necked men in riot gear were waving people on. Two of them were pointing guns at the crowd. Miller was more than half tempted to go up and slap the little idiots. Pointing guns at people was a lousy way to avoid panic. One of the security men was also far too wide for his gear, the Velcro fasteners at his belly reaching out for each other like lovers at the moment of separation.
Miller looked down at the floor and slowed his steps, the back of his mind suddenly and powerfully busy. One of the cops swung his gun out over the crowd. Another one-the fat guy-laughed and said something in Korean.
What had Sematimba said about the new security force? All bluster, no balls. A new corporation out of Luna. Belters on the ground. Corrupt.
The name. They’d had a name. CPM.
Miller knew him. A year and a half ago, he’d arrested him for assault and racketeering. And the equipment- armor, batons, riot guns-also looked hauntingly familiar. Dawes had been wrong. Miller had been able to find his own missing equipment after all.
Whatever this was, it had been going on a long time before the
