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“Sure. Give me some time.”
“And Amos?”
“Blood pressure’s steady,” Naomi said. “That’s got to be a good thing.”
The comm console beeped at them, and Holden started the playback.
“Jim, news of the Do
Holden paused a moment while he mentally prepared his response. Fred’s suspicion was palpable, but he’d sent Holden a keyword to use for exactly that reason.
“Fred. While our enemies have become ubiquitous,our list of friends has grown kind of short. In fact, you’re pretty much it. I am in a stolen-”
Alex cleared his throat.
“A salvagedMCRN gunboat,” Holden went on. “I need a way to hide that fact. I need somewhere to go where they won’t just shoot me down for showing up. Help me do that.”
It was half an hour before the reply came.
“I’ve attached a datafile on a subcha
“New transponder code?” Naomi said. “How does the OPA get new transponder codes?”
“Hack the Earth-Mars Coalition’s security protocols or get a mole in the registry office,” Holden said. “Either way, I think we’re playing in the big league now.”
Chapter Sixteen: Miller
Miller watched the feed from Mars along with the rest of the station. The podium was draped in black, which was a bad sign. The single star and thirty stripes of the Martian Congressional Republic hung in the background not once, but eight times. That was worse.
“This ca
The Belt, Miller noticed. Not the OPA-the Belt.
“In the week since first news of that attack, we have seen thirty incursions into the security radius of Martian ships and bases, including Pallas Station. If those refineries were to be lost, the economy of Mars could suffer irreversible damage. In the face of an armed, organized guerrilla force, we have no choice but to enforce a military cordon on the stations, bases, and ships of the Belt. Congress has delivered new orders to all naval elements not presently involved in active Coalition duty, and it is our hope that our brothers and sisters of Earth will approve joint Coalition maneuvers with the greatest possible speed.
“The new mandate of the Martian navy is to secure the safety of all honest citizens, to dismantle the infrastructures of evil presently hiding in the Belt, and bring to justice those responsible for these attacks. I am pleased to say that our initial actions have resulted in the destruction of eighteen illegal warships and-”
Miller turned off the feed. That was it, then. The secret war was out of the closet. Papa Mao had been right to want Julie out, but it was too late. His darling daughter was going to have to take her chances, just like everyone else.
At the very least, it was going to mean curfews and perso
No, that wasn’t true. At worst, Mars or the OPA would make a statement by throwing a rock or a handful of nuclear warheads at the station. Or by blowing a fusion drive on a docked ship. If things got out of hand, it would mean six or seven million dead people and the end of everything Miller had ever known.
Odd that it should feel almost like relief.
For weeks, Miller had known. Everyone had known. But it hadn’t actually happened, so every conversation, every joke, every chance interaction and semi-anonymous nod and polite moment of light banter on the tube had seemed like an evasion. He couldn’t fix the cancer of war, couldn’t even slow down the spread, but at least he could admit it was happening. He stretched, ate his last bite of fungal curds, drank the dregs of something not entirely unlike coffee, and headed out to keep peace in wartime.
Muss greeted him with a vague nod when he got to the station house. The board was filled with cases-crimes to be investigated, documented, and dismissed. Twice as many entries as the day before.
“Bad night,” Miller said.
“Could be worse,” Muss said.
“Yeah?”
“Star Helix could be a Mars corporation. As long as Earth stays neutral, we don’t have to actually be the Gestapo.”
“And how long you figure that’ll last?”
“What time is it?” she asked. “Tell you what, though. When it does come down, I need to make a stop up toward the core. There was this one guy back when I was rape squad we could never quite nail.”
“Why wait?” Miller asked. “We could go up, put a bullet in him, be back by lunch.”
“Yeah, but you know how it is,” she said. “Trying to stay professional. Anyway, if we did that, we’d have to investigate it, and there’s no room on the board.”
Miller sat at his desk. It was just shoptalk. The kind of over-the-top deadpan you did when your day was filled with underage whores and tainted drugs. And still, there was a tension in the station. It was in the way people laughed, the way they held themselves. There were more holsters visible than usual, as if by showing their weapons they might be made safe.
“You think it’s the OPA?” Muss asked. Her voice was lower now.
“That killed the Do
“Some of them are. From what I heard, there’s more than one OPA these days. The old-school guys don’t know a goddamn thing about any of this. All shitting their pants and trying to track down the pirate casts that are claiming credit.”
“So they can do what?” Miller asked. “You can shut down every loudmouth caster in the Belt, it won’t change a thing.”
“If there’s a schism in the OPA, though… ” Muss looked at the board.
If there was a schism within the OPA, the board as they saw it now was nothing. Miller had lived through two major gang wars. First when the Loca Greiga displaced and destroyed the Aryan Flyers, and then when the Golden Bough split. The OPA was bigger, and meaner, and more professional than any of them. That would be civil war in the Belt.
“Might not happen,” Miller said.
Shaddid stepped out of her office, her gaze sweeping the station house. Conversations dimmed. Shaddid caught Miller’s eye. She made a sharp gesture. Get in the office.
“Busted,” Muss said.
In the office, Anderson Dawes sat at ease on one of the chairs. Miller felt his body twitch as that information fell into place. Mars and the Belt in open, armed conflict. The OPA’s face on Ceres sitting with the captain of the security force.
So that’s how it is, he thought.
“You’re working the Mao job,” Shaddid said as she took her seat. Miller hadn’t been offered the option of sitting, so he clasped his hands behind him.
“You assigned it to me,” he said.
“And I told you it wasn’t a priority,” she said.
“I disagreed,” Miller said.
Dawes smiled. It was a surprisingly warm expression, especially compared to Shaddid’s.
“Detective Miller,” Dawes said. “You don’t understand what’s happening here. We are sitting on a pressure vessel, and you keep swinging a pickax at it. You need to stop that.”