Leviathan Wakes

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 channels.

“What brings you,” Sematimba said, leaning against a thin steel railing and gesturing at the tunnel, “to the navel of the Belt, the glory and power that is Eros?”

“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 inner planets, and that was a problem, but they were serious as hell. They broke heads, but they kept the peace. These new assholes? Most corrupt bunch of thugs I’ve ever worked for. I don’t think the board of governors is going to renew when the contract’s up. I didn’t say that, but it’s true.”

“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 running the playhouse? You aren’t here looking for work.”

“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 connected to something. Kind of big.”

“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 tunnel, an alarm blared. Only security, not the earsplitting ditone of an environmental alert. Sematimba looked down the tunnel as if squinting would let him see through the press of people, bicycles, and food carts.

“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.