Leviathan Wakes

“Any questions?” Shaddid said in a voice that implied there ought not be.

Who’s going to pay Star Helix? Miller thought. What laws are we enforcing? What does Earth know that makes walking away from the biggest port in the Belt the smart move?

Who’s going to negotiate your peace treaty now?

Muss, seeing Miller’s gaze, smiled.

“Guess we’re hosed,” Miller said.

“Had to happen,” Muss agreed. “I better go. Got a stop to make.”

“Up at the core?”

Muss didn’t answer, because she didn’t have to. Ceres didn’t have laws. It had police. Miller headed back to his hole. The station hummed, the stone beneath him vibrating from the countless docking clamps and reactor cores, tubes and recyclers and pneumatics. The stone was alive, and he’d forgotten the small signs that proved it. Six million people lived here, breathed this air. Fewer than in a middle-sized city on Earth. He wondered if they were expendable.

Had it really gone so far that the inner planets would be willing to lose a major station? It seemed like it had if Earth was abandoning Ceres. The OPA would step in, whether it wanted to or not. The power vacuum was too great. Then Mars would call it an OPA coup. Then… Then what? Board it and put it under martial law? That was the good answer. Nuke it into dust? He couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that either. There was just too much money involved. Docking fees alone would fuel a small national economy. And Shaddid and Dawes — much as he hated it — were right. Ceres under Earth contract had been the best hope for a negotiated peace.

Was there someone on Earth who didn’t want that peace? Someone or something powerful enough to move the glacial bureaucracy of the United Nations to take action?

“What am I looking at, Julie?” he said to the empty air. “What did you see out there that’s worth Mars and the Belt killing each other?”

The station hummed to itself, a quiet, constant sound too soft for him to hear the voices within it.

* * *

Muss didn’t come to work in the morning, but there was a message on his system telling him she’d be in late. “Cleanup” was her only explanation.

To look at it, nothing about the station house had changed. The same people coming to the same place to do the same thing. No, that wasn’t true. The energy was high. People were smiling, laughing, clowning around. It was a manic high, panic pressed through a cheesecloth mask of normalcy. It wasn’t going to last.

They were all that separated Ceres from anarchy. They were the law, and the difference between the survival of six million people and some mad bastard forcing open all the airlocks or poisoning the recyclers rested on maybe thirty thousand people. People like him. Maybe he should have rallied, risen to the occasion like the rest of them. The truth was the thought made him tired.

Shaddid marched by and tapped him on the shoulder. He sighed, rose from his chair, and followed her. Dawes was in her office again, looking shaken and sleep deprived. Miller nodded to him. Shaddid crossed her arms, her eyes softer and less accusing than he’d become used to.

“This is going to be tough,” she said. “We’re facing something harder than anything we’ve had to do before. I need a team I can trust with my life. Extraordinary circumstances. You understand that?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I got it. I’ll stop drinking, get myself together.”

“Miller. You’re not a bad person at heart. There was a time you were a pretty good cop. But I don’t trust you, and we don’t have time to start over,” Shaddid said, her voice as near to gentle as he had ever heard it. “You’re fired.”

Chapter Nineteen: Holden

Fred stood alone, hand outstretched, a warm and open smile on his broad face. There were no guards with assault rifles behind him. Holden shook Fred’s hand and then started laughing. Fred smiled and looked confused but let Holden keep a grip on his hand, waiting for Holden to explain what was so funny.

“I’m sorry, but you have no idea how pleasant this is,” Holden said. “This is literally the first time in over a month that I’ve gotten off a ship without it blowing up behind me.”

Fred laughed with him now, an honest laugh that seemed to originate somewhere in his belly.

After a moment the man said, “You’re quite safe here. We are the most protected station in the outer planets.”

“Because you’re OPA?” Holden asked.

Fred shook his head.

“No. We make campaign contributions to Earth and Mars politicians in amounts that would make a Hilton blush,” he said. “If anyone blows us up, half the UN assembly and all of the Martian Congress will be howling for blood. It’s the problem with politics. Your enemies are often your allies. And vice versa.”