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“You need anything, sir?” the waiter asked. He didn’t look any older than the kids on the grass. Miller shook his head.
Five days had passed since Star Helix pulled its contract. The governor of Ceres was gone, smuggled out on a transport before the news had gone wide. The Outer Planets Alliance had a
The second day, he’d gotten through the hangover. The third, he’d gotten bored. All through the station, security forces were making the kind of display he’d expected, preemptive peacekeeping. The few political rallies and protests ended fast and hard, and the citizens of Ceres didn’t much care. Their eyes were on their monitors, on the war. A few locals with busted heads getting thrown into prison without charges were beneath notice. And Miller was personally responsible for none of it.
The fourth day, he’d checked his terminal and discovered that 80 percent of his docking log requests had come through before Shaddid had shut his access down. Over a thousand entries, any one of which could be the only remaining lead to Julie Mao. So far, no Martian nukes were on their way to crack Ceres. No demands of surrender. No boarding forces. It could all change in a moment, but until it did, Miller was drinking coffee and auditing ship records, about one every fifteen minutes. Miller figured that if Holden was the last ship in the log, he’d find him in about six weeks.
The Adrianopole,a third-gen prospector, had docked at Pallas within the arrival window. Miller checked the open registration, frustrated again at how little information was there compared to the security databases. Owned by Strego Anthony Abramowitz. Eight citations for substandard maintenance, ba
The Badass Motherfucker,a freight hauler doing a triangle between Luna, Ganymede, and the Belt. Owned by MYOFB Corporation out of Luna. A query to the public bases at Ganymede showed it had left the port there at the listed time and just hadn’t bothered to file a flight plan. Miller tapped the screen with a fingernail. Not exactly how he’d fly under the radar. Anyone with authority would roust that ship just for the joy of doing it. He deleted the entry.
His terminal chimed. An incoming message. Miller flipped over to it. One of the girls on the commons shrieked and the others laughed. A sparrow flew past, its wings humming in the constant recycler-driven breeze.
Havelock looked better than when he’d been on Ceres. Happier. The dark circles were gone from his eyes, and the shape of his face had subtly softened, as if the need to prove himself in the Belt had changed his bones and now he was falling back into his natural form.
“Miller!” the recording said. “I heard about Earth cutting Ceres just before I got your message. Bad luck. I’m sorry to hear Shaddid fired you. Between the two of us, she’s a pompous idiot. The rumor I’ve heard is Earth is doing everything it can to stay out of the war, including giving up any station that it’s expecting to be a point of contention. You know how it is. You’ve got a pit bull on one side of you and a rottweiler on the other, first thing you do is drop your steak.”
Miller chuckled.
“I’ve signed on with Protogen security, big-company private army bullshit. But the pay is worth putting up with their delusions of grandeur. The contract’s supposed to be on Ganymede, but with the crap going on right now, who knows how it’ll really play out? Turns out Protogen’s got a training base in the Belt. I’d never heard about it, but it’s supposed to be quite the gymnasium. I know they’re hiring on, and I’d be happy to put in a word for you. Just let me know, and I’ll get you together with the induction recruiter, get you off that damned rock.”
Havelock smiled.
“Take care of yourself, partner,” the Earther said. “Keep in touch.”
Protogen. Pinkwater. Al Abbiq. Small corporate security forces that the big transorbital companies used as private armies and mercenary forces to rent out as needed. A
It had been years since he’d tried to find work. He’d assumed that particular struggle was behind him, that he was going to die working the Ceres Station security contract. Now that events had thrown him out, everything had an odd floating feeling. Like the gap between getting hit and feeling the pain. He needed to find another job. He needed to do more than send a couple messages out to his old partners. There were employment firms. There were bars on Ceres that would hire an ex-cop for a bouncer. There were gray markets that would take anyone capable of giving them a veneer of legality.
The last thing that made sense was to sit around, ogling girls in the park and chasing down leads on a case that he hadn’t been meant to follow up on in the first place.
The Dagonhad come into Ceres just a little ahead of the arrival window. Owned by the Glapion Collective, who were, he was pretty sure, an OPA front. That made it a good fit. Except the flight plan had been put in just a few hours after the Do
The Rocinante,owned by Silencieux Courant Holdings out of Luna, was a gas hauler that had landed at Tycho just hours before the end of the arrival window. Silencieux Courant was a medium-sized corporate entity with no obvious ties to the OPA, and the flight plan from Pallas was plausible. Miller put his fingertip over the delete key, then paused. He sat back.
Why was a gas hauler going between Pallas and Tycho? Both stations were gas consumers.Flying from consumer to consumer without hitting a supply in the middle was a good way to not cover your docking fees. He put in a request for the flight plan that had taken the Rocinanteto Pallas from wherever it had been before, then sat back to wait. If the records were cached in the Ceres servers, the request shouldn’t take more than a minute or two. The notification bar estimated an hour and a half, so that meant the request was getting forwarded to the docking systems at Pallas. It hadn’t been in the local backup.
Miller stroked his chin; five days of stubble had almost reached the begi
“That you, Holden?” Miller said to the screen. “You out tilting at windmills?”
“Sir?” the waiter said, but Miller waved him away.
There were hundreds of entries still to be looked at and dozens at least in his second-look folder. Miller ignored them, staring at the entry from Tycho as if by sheer force of will he could make more information appear on the screen. Then, slowly, he pulled up the message from Havelock, hit the respond key, and looked into the tiny black pinprick of the terminal’s camera.
“Hey, partner,” he said. “Thanks for the offer. I may take you up on it, but I’ve got some kinks I need to work out before I jump. You know how it is. If you can do me a favor, though… I need to keep track of a ship, and I’ve only got the public databases to work from, plus which Ceres may be at war with Mars by now. Who knows, you know? Anyway, if you can put a level one watch on any flight plans for her, drop me a note if anything comes up… I’d buy you a drink sometime.”