Leviathan Wakes

“All right. Can you find your girl in less than”—Holden had the Rocido a revised time of impact for the incoming missiles—“twenty-seven hours?”

“Why? What happens in twenty-seven hours?”

“Earth fired her entire interplanetary nuclear arsenal at Eros a few hours ago. We just turned the transponders on in the five freighters you parked on the surface. The missiles are targeting them. The Rociis guessing twenty-seven hours to impact based on the current acceleration curve. The Martian and UN navies are on their way to sterilize the area after detonation. Make sure nothing survives or slips the net.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah,” Holden said with a sigh. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I’ve had a lot going on, and it sort of slipped my mind.”

There was another long silence on the line.

“You can stop them,” Miller said. “Shut down the transponders.”

Holden spun his chair around to face Naomi. Her face had the same what did he just say?look that he knew was on his own. She pulled the suit’s medical data over to her console, then called up the Roci’s medical expert system and began ru

“Not a chance, Miller. This is our last shot. If we blow this one, Eros can orbit the Earth, spraying brown goo all over it. No way we take that risk.”

“Look,” Miller said, his tone alternating between the earlier pleading and a growing frustration. “ Julie is in here.If I can find her, a way to talk to her, I can stop this without the nukes.”

“What, ask the protomolecule to pretty please not infect the Earth, when that was what it was designed to do? Appeal to its better nature?”

Miller paused for a moment before speaking again.

“Look, Holden, I think I know what’s going on here. This thing was intended to infect single-celled organisms. The most basic forms of life, right?”

Holden shrugged, then remembered there was no video feed and said, “Okay.”

“That didn’t work, but it’s a smart bastard. Adaptive. It got into a human host, a complex multicelled organism. Aerobic. Huge brain. Nothing like what it was built for. It’s been improvising ever since. That mess on the stealth ship? That was its first try. We saw what it was doing with Julie in that Eros bathroom. It was learning how to work with us.”

“Where are you going with this?” Holden said. There was no time pressure yet, with the missiles still more than a day away, but he couldn’t quite keep the impatience out of his voice.

“All I’m saying is Eros now isn’t what the protomolecule’s designers pla

“Wait,” Holden said.

“She’s not attacking Earth, she’s going home. For all we know, she’s not heading for Earth at all. Luna, maybe. She grew up there. The protomolecule piggybacked on her structure, her brain. And so she infected it as much as it infected her. If I can make her understand what’s really going on, then maybe I can negotiate with her.”

“How do you know that?”

“Call it a hunch,” Miller said. “I’m good with hunches.”

Holden whistled, the entire situation doing a flip-flop in his head. The new perspective was dizzying.

“But the protomolecule still wants to obey its program,” Holden said. “And we have no idea what that is.”

“I can damn sure tell you it isn’t wiping humans out. The things that shot Phoebe at us two billion years ago didn’t know what the hell humans were. Whatever it wants to do needed biomass, and it’s got that now.”

Holden couldn’t stop himself from snorting at that.

“So, what? They don’t mean us any harm? Seriously? You think if we explain that we’d rather not have it land on Earth, then it will just agree and go somewhere else?”

“Not it,” Miller said. “Her.”

Naomi looked up at Holden, shaking her head. She wasn’t seeing anything organic wrong with Miller either.

“I’ve been working this case for, shit, almost a year,” Miller said. “I’ve climbed into her life, read her mail, met her friends. I know her. She’s about as independent as a person can be, and she loves us.”

“Us?” Holden asked.

“People. She loves humans. She gave up being the little rich girl and joined the OPA. She backed the Belt because it was the right thing to do. No way she kills us if she knows that’s what’s happening. I just need to find a way to explain. I can do this. Give me a chance.”

Holden ran a hand through his hair, grimacing at the accumulating grease. A day or two at high g was not conducive to regular showering.

“Can’t do it,” Holden said. “Stakes are too high. We’re going ahead with the plan. I’m sorry.”

“She’ll beat you,” Miller said.

“What?”

“Okay, maybe she won’t. You’ve got a shitload of firepower. But the protomolecule’s figured out how to get around inertia. And Julie? She’s a fighter, Holden. If you take her on, my money’s on her.”

Holden had seen the video of Julie fighting off her attackers on board the stealth ship. She’d been methodical and ruthless in her own defense. She’d fought without giving quarter. He’d seen the wildness in her eyes when she felt trapped and threatened. Only her attackers’ combat armor had kept her from doing a lot more damage before they took her down.

Holden felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up at the idea of Eros actually fighting. So far it had been content to run from their clumsy attacks. What happened when it went to war?

“You could find her,” Holden said, “and use the bomb.”

“If I can’t get through to her,” Miller said, “that’s my deal. I’ll find her. I’ll talk to her. If I can’t get through, I’ll take her out, and you can turn Eros into a cinder. I’m fine with that. But you have to give me time to try it my way first.”

Holden looked at Naomi looking back at him. Her face was pale. He wanted to see the answer in her expression, to know what he should do based on what she thought. He didn’t. It was his call.

“Do you need more than twenty-seven hours?” Holden finally asked.

He heard Miller exhale loudly. There was gratitude in his voice that was, in its own way, worse than the pleading had been.

“I don’t know. There are a couple thousand kilometers of tu

“And you know that if this doesn’t work, you’ll have to kill her. Yourself and Julie?”

“I know.”

Holden had the Rocicalculate how long it would take Eros to reach the Earth at the current rate of acceleration. The missiles from Earth were covering the distance a lot faster than Eros was. The IPBMs were just overpowered Epstein drives with nuclear bombs riding up front. Their acceleration limits were the functional limits of the Epstein drive itself. If the missiles didn’t arrive, it would still take nearly a week for Eros to get to Earth, even if it kept a constant rate of acceleration.

There was some flexibility in there.

“Hold on, let me work something out here,” Holden said to Miller, then muted the co