Leviathan Wakes

It was all going to hell. The pirate casts from the OPA calling for war. The burgeoning guerrilla actions. All of it. The time was coming that Mars wasn’t going to ignore them anymore. And when Mars took action, it wouldn’t matter if Earth followed suit. It would be the first real war in the Belt. The catastrophe was coming, and neither side seemed to understand how vulnerable they were. And there was nothing — not one single goddamned thing — that he could do to stop it. He couldn’t even slow it down.

Julie Mao grinned at him from the still frame, her pinnace behind her. Attacked, the man had said. There was nothing about it in her record. Might have been a mugging. Might have been something worse. Miller had known a lot of victims, and he put them into three categories. First there were the ones who pretended nothing had happened, or that whatever it was didn’t really matter. That was well over half the people he talked to. Then there were the professionals, people who took their victimization as permission to act out any way they saw fit. That ate most of the rest.

Maybe 5 percent, maybe less, were the ones who sucked it up, learned the lesson, and moved on. The Julies. The good ones.

His door chimed three hours after his official shift was over. Miller stood up, less steady on his feet than he’d expected. He counted the bottles on the table. There were more than he’d thought. He hesitated for a moment, torn between answering the door and throwing the bottles into the recycler. The door chimed again. He went to open it. If it was someone from the station, they expected him to be drunk, anyway. No reason to disappoint.

The face was familiar. Acne-pocked, controlled. The OPA armband from the bar. The one who’d had Mateo Judd killed.

The cop.

“Evening,” Miller said.

“Detective Miller,” the pocked man said. “I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. I was hoping we could try again.”

“Right.”

“May I come in?”

“I try not to take strange men home,” Miller said. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Anderson Dawes,” the pocked man said. “I’m the Ceres liaison for the Outer Planets Alliance. I think we can help each other. May I come in?”

Miller stood back, and the pocked man — Dawes — stepped inside. Dawes took in the hole for the space of two slow breaths, then sat as if the bottles and the stink of old beer were nothing to comment on. Silently cursing himself and willing a sobriety he didn’t feel, Miller sat across from him.

“I need a favor from you,” Dawes said. “I’m willing to pay for it. Not money, of course. Information.”

“What do you want?” Miller asked.

“Stop looking for Juliette Mao.”

“No sale.”

“I’m trying to keep the peace, Detective,” Dawes said. “You should hear me out.”

Miller leaned forward, elbows on the table. Mr. Serene Jiu Jitsu Instructor was working for the OPA? The timing of Dawes’ visit seemed to be saying so. Miller filed that possibility away but said nothing.

“Mao worked for us,” Dawes said. “But you’d guessed that.”

“More or less. You know where she is?”

“We don’t. We are looking for her. And we need to be the ones to find her. Not you.”

Miller shook his head. There was a response, the right thing to say. It was rattling in the back of his head, and if he just didn’t feel quite so fuzzy…

“You’re one of them, Detective. You may have lived your whole life out here, but your salary is paid by an inner planet corporation. No, wait. I don’t blame you. I understand how it is. They were hiring and you needed the work. But… we’re walking on a bubble right now. The Canterbury. The fringe elements in the Belt calling for war.”

“Phoebe Station.”

“Yes, they’ll blame us for that too. Add a Luna corporation’s prodigal daughter…”

“You think something’s happened to her.”

“She was on the Scopuli,” Dawes said, and when Miller didn’t immediately respond, he added, “The freighter that Mars used as bait when they killed the Canterbury.”

Miller thought about that for a long moment, then whistled low.

“We don’t know what happened,” Dawes said. “Until we do, I can’t have you stirring up the water. It’s muddy enough now.”

“And what information are you offering?” Miller asked. “That’s the trade, right?”

“I’ll tell you what we find. After we find her,” Dawes said. Miller chuckled, and the OPA man went on. “It’s a generous offer, considering who you are. Employee of Earth. Partner of an Earther. Some people would think that was enough to make you the enemy too.”

“But not you,” Miller said.

“I think we’ve got the same basic goals, you and I. Stability. Safety. Strange times make for strange alliances.”

“Two questions.”

Dawes spread his arms, welcoming them.

“Who took the riot gear?” Miller asked.

“Riot gear?”

“Before the Canterbury died, someone took our riot gear. Maybe they wanted to arm soldiers for crowd control. Maybe they didn’t want our crowds controlled. Who took it? Why?”

“It wasn’t us,” Dawes said.

“That’s not an answer. Try this one. What happened to the Golden Bough Society?”

Dawes looked blank.