Nemesis Games

Holden put his terminal on the table, angled up to record his face, and said, “Alex. Hey, hope things are going well out there, and that Bobbie is good. So, I’ve been looking into this thing with missing ships? And there’s a suspicious hit out at 434 Hungaria. Any chance you have access to a ship? If you need to rent one, feel free to pull the funds from my account. I’d like you to go see if a ship named the Pau Kant is sitting out there parked and dark. Specs on the transponder code attached to this message.”

He put all the information he had on the Pau and its most recent location from the Mars control records into a file. It wasn’t much to go on, and it felt like a long shot, but Alex would enjoy the flight and Holden was willing to foot the bill so he didn’t feel too bad about asking.

He was pretty sure the burst of energy that came from having made progress would be short-lived, but he wanted to share his success and felt wide-awake, so he called Monica. He got her voice mail. He left her a message to call him back, slurped down the last of his cold and nasty noodles, and immediately fell asleep on his couch.

The next morning he wasn’t on the duty roster to work on the Roci, and Monica hadn’t called him back, so he called again. No answer. On his way to breakfast he dropped by her apartment, but she wasn’t there either. She’d been a little miffed at him, but he didn’t think she’d bail on the whole missing ship story without saying anything. He made another call.

“Tycho security,” a young male voice said.

“Hey, this is Jim Holden. I’m checking on a visiting journalist, Monica Stuart. Has she left the station?”

“One sec. No. Records list her as still on board. Her apartment is —”

“Yeah, actually? I’m at her apartment right now and she’s not answering here or on her hand terminal.”

“My records show that her terminal hasn’t connected to Tychonet since early yesterday.”

“Huh,” Holden said, frowning at her door. The quiet on the other side had taken on an ominous feel. What if they decide to get rid of the guy with the light? He wasn’t the only one who fit that description. “So she hasn’t so much as paid for a sandwich in over a day. That strikes me as not good.”

“Want me to send a team?”

“Please do that.”

By the time the security team arrived and opened the door to Monica’s apartment, Holden was expecting the worst. He wasn’t disappointed. The rooms had been methodically searched. Monica’s clothes and personal effects were scattered across the floor. The hand terminal she used for interviews had been crushed under someone’s heel, but the screen still flickered when Holden touched it. The team found no traces of blood, which was about the only positive sign.

Holden called Fred while the team finished their forensic sweep. “It’s me,” he said as soon as the OPA chief answered. “You’ve got a bigger problem than radicals on Medina.”

“Really?” Fred said, his voice weary. “And what is that?”

“You’ve got them on Tycho.”

Chapter Fourteen: Naomi

Terryon Lock was supposed to be a new kind of place in the emptiness of the Jovian system. A Belter home world, they figured. Modular, so it could grow or contract at need. Outside the control of Earth or Mars or anybody. A free city in space, with its own governance, its own environmental controls. Naomi had seen the plans when they first spilled out over the networks. Rokku had them printed on thin plastics and stuck to the walls of the ship. Terryon Lock was the new Jerusalem until the security forces at Ganymede shut it down. No colonies without permission. No homes. No safe havens, not even if they built it themselves.

She hadn’t even been pregnant when it happened. She didn’t know that it would define her.

Filip was eight months old when the Augustín Gamarra died. The Gamarra had left Ceres Station, burning for a Coalition Navy research station on Oshima with a payload of organics and hydroponic equipment. Ten hours out, burning at a leisurely one-quarter g, the ship’s magnetic bottle lost containment, spilling the fusion core into the ship. For a fraction of a second, the Gamarra had been as bright as the sun and two hundred thirty-four people died. No wreckage survived, and the official investigation into the event had never been closed because no conclusion could be reached. Accident or sabotage. Mischance or murder.