LEVIATHAN WAKES

The economics of the Belt had moved on. Ceres Station had spun up with newer docks, more industrial backing, more people. The commerce of shipping moved to Ceres, while Eros remained a center of ship manufacture and repair. The results were as predictable as physics. On Ceres, a longer time in dock meant lost money, and the berth fee structure reflected that. On Eros, a ship might wait for weeks or months without impeding the flow of traffic. If a crew wanted a place to relax, to stretch, to get away from one another for a while, Eros was the port of call. And with the lower docking fees, Eros Station found other ways to soak money from its visitors: Casinos. Brothels. Shooting galleries. Vice in all its commercial forms found a home in Eros, its local economy blooming like a fungus fed by the desires of Belters.

A happy accident of orbital mechanics put Miller there half a day ahead of the Rocinante.He walked through the cheap casinos, the opioid bars and sex clubs, the show fight areas where men or women pretended to beat one another senseless for the pleasure of the crowds. Miller imagined Julie walking with him, her sly smile matching his own as he read the great animated displays. RANDOLPH MAK, HOLDER OF THE BELT FREEFIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP FOR SIX YEARS, AGAINST MARTIAN KIVRIN CARMICHAEL IN A FIGHT TO THE DEATH!

Surely not fixed,Julie said drily in his mind.

Wonder which one’s going to win,he thought, and imagined her laughing.

He’d stopped at a noodle cart, two new yens’ worth of egg noodles in black sauce steaming in their cone, when a hand clapped on his shoulder.

“Detective Miller,” a familiar voice said. “I think you’re outside your jurisdiction.”

“Why, Inspector Sematimba,” Miller said. “As I live and breathe. You give a girl the shakes, sneaking up like that.”

Sematimba laughed. He was a tall man, even among Belters, with the darkest skin Miller had ever seen. Years before, Sematimba and Miller had coordinated on a particularly ugly case. A smuggler with a cargo of designer euphorics had broken with his supplier. Three people on Ceres had been caught in the crossfire, and the smuggler had shipped out for Eros. The traditional competitiveness and insularity of the stations’ respective security forces had almost let the perp slip away. Only Miller and Sematimba had been willing to coordinate outside the corporate cha

“What brings you,” Sematimba said, leaning against a thin steel railing and gesturing at the tu

“Following up on a lead,” Miller said.

“There’s nothing good here,” Sematimba said. “Ever since Protogen pulled out, things have been going from bad to worse.”

Miller sucked up a noodle.

“Who’s the new contract?” he asked.

“CPM,” Sematimba said.

“Never heard of them.”

“ Carne Por la Machina,” Sematimba said, and pulled a face: exaggerated bluff masculinity. He thumped his breast and growled, then let the imitation go and shook his head. “New corporation out of Luna. Mostly Belters on the ground. Make themselves out to be all hard core, but they’re mostly amateurs. All bluster, no balls. Protogen was i

“I’ve got an old partner signed up with Protogen,” Miller said.

“They’re not bad,” Sematimba said. “Almost wish I’d picked them in the divorce, you know?”

“Why didn’t you?” Miller asked.

“You know how it is. I’m from here.”

“Yeah,” Miller said.

“So. You didn’t know who was ru

“Nope,” Miller said. “I’m on sabbatical. Doing some travel for myself these days.”

“You’ve got money for that?”

“Not really. But I don’t mind going on the cheap. For a while, you know. You heard anything about a Juliette Mao? Goes by Julie?”

Sematimba shook his head.

“Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile,” Miller said. “Came up the well and went native. OPA. It was an abduction case.”

“Was?”

Miller leaned back. His imagined Julie raised her eyebrows.

“It’s changed a little since I got it,” Miller said. “May be co

“How big are we talking about?” Sematimba said. All trace of jocularity had vanished from his expression. He was all cop now. Anyone but Miller would have found the man’s empty, almost angry face intimidating.

“The war,” Miller said. Sematimba folded his arms.

“Bad joke,” he said.

“Not joking.”

“I consider us friends, old man,” Sematimba said. “But I don’t want any trouble around here. Things are unsettled as it stands.”

“I’ll try to stay low-profile.”

Sematimba nodded. Down the tu

“I’d better go look,” he said with an air of resignation. “Probably some of my fellow officers of the peace breaking windows for the fun of it.”

“Great to be part of a team like that,” Miller said.

“How would you know?” Sematimba said with a smile. “If you need something… ”

“Likewise,” Miller said, and watched the cop wade into the sea of chaos and humanity. He was a large man, but something about the passing crowd’s universal deafness to the alarm’s blare made him seem smaller. A stone in the ocean,the phrase went. One star among millions.

Miller checked the time, then pulled up the public docking records. The Rocinanteshowed as on schedule. The docking berth was listed. Miller sucked down the last of his noodles, tossed the foam cone with the thin smear of black sauce into a public recycler, found the nearest men’s room, and when he was done there, trotted toward the casino level.

The architecture of Eros had changed since its birth. Where once it had been like Ceres-webworked tu

Which was exactly what Miller needed.

The tube station that arrived from the port had six wide doors, which emptied to the casino floor. Miller 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 Rocinantehad 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, gri

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.