Part 9 (1/2)
”I also still have bourbon if we need anesthetic for this operation.”
”It may get there,” Holden replied, then drank off the rest of his coffee to give himself time. No matter how much Fred had aged over the last half decade, Holden found himself still intimidated by the man. It was hard to broach topics Fred might take offense to.
”More?” Fred asked, pointing at his empty cup. Holden declined with a shake of his head.
”So there's that radical extremist faction of the OPA that you were telling me about,” Holden said.
”I don't think -”
”They've had at least two public attacks. One on Martian interests, and one on Earth itself.”
”Both of which failed.”
”Maybe,” Holden said. ”But we're a.s.suming we know what their goals were, and that seems like a bad a.s.sumption to make. Maybe blowing up a big chunk of a Martian s.h.i.+pyard and forcing the UN home fleet to fire a bunch of missiles at an ancient freighter are wins to them.”
”Okay,” Fred said with a grudging nod. ”Fair enough.”
”But there's a third leg to this. Sure, the radicals think Earth and Mars will abandon them once the new worlds are colonized, but that means the colonists themselves are part of the problem.”
”Agreed.”
”So, what if this radical OPA wing decides that in addition to blowing up some of the inner planets' s.h.i.+t, they can send a message by taking out some colony s.h.i.+ps?”
”Well,” Fred said, speaking slowly as though he were working out the answer as he said it, ”the big problem with that is the location of the attacks.”
”Because they happen on the other side of the gates.”
”Exactly,” Fred continued. ”If s.h.i.+ps were getting nuked as they pa.s.sed through the Belt, that would be one thing. But on the other side of the gates? Who has access there? Unless you're thinking the s.h.i.+ps were sabotaged in some way. A bomb with a really long fuse?”
”There's another alternative,” Holden said.
”No, there isn't,” Fred replied, antic.i.p.ating his next argument.
”Fred, look, I know you don't want to think you've got people working against your interests on Medina. Doctoring records, maybe. Shutting off sensors when there're things they don't want people to see. And I get why that's hard to swallow.”
”Medina is central to our long-term plans,” Fred said, his words hard as iron. ”I've placed all of my very best and most loyal people on that station. If the radicals have a fifth column there, then it means that I can't trust anyone in my organization. I might as well pack it up and retire.”
”There are thousands of people on Medina, I doubt you can vouch for every one of them personally.”
”No, but the people running the station are my people. The most loyal I have. There's no way something like this could be going on without their knowledge and cooperation.”
”That's a scary thought.”
”It means I don't own Medina Station,” Fred said. ”It means that the most violent, hard-line, extremist faction of our group controls the choke point of the entire galaxy.”
”So,” Holden said, ”how would one go about finding that out?”
Fred leaned back in his chair with a sigh and gave Holden a sad smile. ”You know what I think? I think you're bored, and lonely, and looking for a distraction. Don't dismantle the organization I spent a lifetime building to give yourself something to do.”
”But s.h.i.+ps are missing. Even if it isn't Medina taking them, something is. I don't know that we can just ignore that and hope it goes away.”
”Fix your own s.h.i.+p, Jim. Fix your s.h.i.+p and get your crew back together. This thing with the missing s.h.i.+ps isn't your job.”
”Thanks for the coffee,” Holden said, standing up to leave.
”You're not going to drop it, are you?”
”What do you think?”
”I think,” Fred said, ”that if you break any of my stuff, you get to pay for it.”
”Noted,” Holden said with a grin. ”I'll keep you in the loop.”
As he walked out the door, he could picture Miller smiling and saying, You can tell you've found a really interesting question when n.o.body wants you to answer it.
Chapter Nine: Naomi.
Once upon a time there had been a Belter girl named Naomi Nagata, and now there was a woman. Even though the difference between the two had been created a day, an hour, a minute at a time, the Venn diagram of the two almost didn't overlap. What could be cut away, she'd cut years ago. What remained did so in spite of her efforts. For the most part, she could work around them.
”Enjoy your stay on Ceres,” the customs agent said, his eyes already flicking to the man standing behind her. She nodded, smiling politely through the spill of her hair, and walked out into the wide corridors of the s.p.a.ceport. Another face among the millions.
Ceres Station was the biggest city in the Belt. Six million people, more or less, in a hollowed asteroid hundreds of kilometers in diameter. She'd heard that the port traffic alone could add as many as a million transient bodies on a given day. For most of her life, it had been the symbol of inner planetary colonialism. The tower of the enemy on native Belter ground.
Outside the s.p.a.ceport proper, the corridors were warm bordering on hot, the entropic load of the city trapped by the thermos-bottle vacuum of s.p.a.ce. Moisture thickened the air, and the smell of bodies and dried p.i.s.s was like seeing an old friend's smile. Three-meter-high screens shouted advertis.e.m.e.nts for machine rigs one second and high fas.h.i.+on the next, their clamor only a thread in the constant, roaring symphony of voices and carts and machinery. A public newsfeed was showing images of fighting somewhere on Earth. Another little insurgent cult or traditional ethnic conflict calling for its due in blood again, important only because it was on Earth. Even for Belters who'd called the float their home for generations, Earth carried a symbolic load. The mother of humanity with her boot firmly on Belter necks. On the screen, a pale-skinned man with blood sheeting down from a scalp wound held up a book. Probably a holy book. He was shouting, his mouth squared by rage. Kill as many people in the Belt, and it wouldn't have been news. Even now.
She turned spinward, looking for a food kiosk serving something appealing. There were the usual corporate products, the same at any station. Now that the OPA ran Ceres, there were also other options. Dhejet and egg curry, cow-style noodle bowl, red kibble. The foods of her childhood. Belter foods. The kitchen on the Rocinante had been designed by someone in the Martian Navy, and the food stocks it accepted were always nouris.h.i.+ng, usually good, and sometimes excellent. But they weren't her food.
She opted for red kibble from a scarred kiosk with adhesive from generations of nightclub flyers caking its sides. It came in a brown pressed-shred container that fit in her left palm with a plastic spatula like a flattened spoon to eat with. The first bite filled her mouth with c.u.min and her mind with dust-covered memory. For a moment, she was in her bunk on Tio Kriztec's s.h.i.+p, huddled over the white ceramic bowl she had loved then and forgotten for years, eating quietly while the others sang in the galley. She couldn't have been more than six at the time, but the memory was fresh and bright. She took another bite, savoring it. As she did, she saw the man following her.
He was thin, even for a native. His hair, a dirty gray that flowed back from his head like the folded wings of a bird. He stood maybe fifteen meters away, watching the newsfeed with an air of mild boredom. She couldn't have said what drew her attention to him and left her certain that he was there because of her. Something about the casual way he didn't look toward her, maybe, or the angle of his stance.
Naomi turned spinward again, moving quickly without running, forcing him to keep up. As she walked, she scanned the crowd around her. If she was right, there might be others working in a team. She slid easily through the gaps in the press of bodies, finding the places that opened for a moment as people crossed her path and each other's. She had spent six months on Ceres when she was thirteen and between s.h.i.+ps, but the station was still a long way from home territory for her. She did her best, making for a side corridor that she was almost certain ran between the wider pathways.
And maybe she was wrong. Maybe the man, whoever he was, had just happened to be there when she was feeling particularly anxious. She didn't look back until her side corridor rejoined the larger flow of foot traffic from the next gate over. She took the ground in at a glance, and found the place she needed. A currency-changing booth four meters away with opaque privacy walls made a little s.p.a.ce in the flow of people like a stone in a river. Without pausing, she walked to the dead s.p.a.ce at its far side and leaned against it, her shoulder blades taking in the cool of the metal. The air was thick enough that she was sweating a little, a dampness at her collarbone and the fringes of her hair. She made herself small and un.o.btrusive, and counted slowly backward from a hundred.
At thirty-two, Wings hurried past her, his chin high, scanning the crowd before him. The bright metallic taste of fear filled her mouth, and she turned back into the booth, and then past it the other way, down the corridor she'd just left. As she retraced her steps, her mind raced through possibilities. Marco had finally decided to end their standoff, and the threat to Filip had been bait for the trap. Or the security forces had been waiting all this time, and she was about to get caught at last. Or someone who'd watched the newsfeeds from Ilus too much had decided to stalk her. Or Marco was just sending his men to check up on her. The last wasn't least likely.
Back in the main corridor, she flagged down a cart and paid for a trip up three levels to an open park. The woman driving the cart didn't look at her twice, which was a relief. Naomi sat back against the hard formed plastic and finished her kibble. The tires hissed against the decking as they took the ramp up, closer to the center of spin and farther from the port.
”Go du-es someplace precise?” the driver asked.
”Don't know where I'm going,” Naomi said. ”Know when I'm there.”