Part 13 (1/2)
He called the number Avasarala had used, and a sculpted young man with a perfect haircut, pale skin, and gigantic teeth appeared. He looked like an expensive store mannequin. ”Secretary Avasarala's office.”
”Gimme Chrissie, kid, and make it snappy.”
The mannequin was stunned into silence for two long breaths. ”I'm sorry, but the secretary can't -”
”Kid,” Amos said with a smirk, ”I just called on her private line, right? My name is Amos Burton.” A lie, but one he'd told often enough it had become a sort of truth. ”I work for James Holden. I bet if you don't tell her I'm on the line right now that you're applying for basic by the end of the day.”
”One moment please,” the mannequin said and then the screen displayed the blue-and-white logo of the UN.
”Burton,” Chrisjen Avasarala said, appearing on the screen less than thirty seconds later. ”Why the f.u.c.k are you still on my planet?”
”Getting ready to leave, chief, but figured I got one more person to check in on before I go.”
”Was it me? Because I don't like you enough to consider that charming. I have a flight to Luna waiting on the pad for me so I can go do f.u.c.king party arrangements before the Martian prime minister arrives.”
”They make you do that?”
”I do everything, and every second I talk to you costs ten thousand dollars.”
”Really?”
”No, I just made that number up. But I f.u.c.king hate flying to Luna so I've been putting it off to finish other work anyway. Do you need a ride? If it gets you off my planet, I can give you a ride. What? Did I say something funny?”
”Naw, just reminded me of somebody,” Amos said. ”Anyway, I get the feeling this is the only trip down the well I'm ever going to take.”
”I'm crushed,” she said.
”Since I'm here, I figured anything I might want to do, better do it now. Anyone I wanted to see, you know,” Amos continued. ”Where did you guys wind up locking Peaches away?”
”Peaches?”
”The Mao girl. Clarissa. She flew with us for a few months back after she stopped trying to kill the captain. And I have to admit, she grew on me a little.”
”You f.u.c.ked your prisoner?” Avasarala said, her expression evenly divided between amus.e.m.e.nt and disgust.
”Nah,” Amos said. ”I don't tend to do that with people I like.”
Chapter Thirteen: Holden.
The systems that the gate network had opened up were scattered across what everyone was pretty sure was the Milky Way galaxy. Cartography was still working out their relative locations, but even the initial findings put some of the new systems tens of thousands of light-years from Earth and with some distinct weirdness about time and location. Confronted by such unimaginably vast distances, it was easy to forget how much s.p.a.ce was in just one solar system. Until you tried to find something in it.
Legally, any s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p on the move had to register a flight plan and run an active transponder. That made s.h.i.+ps traveling from place to place relatively easy to track. And with a transponder pinging away so you knew where to point your telescope, an active drive was visible from across the solar system. But s.h.i.+ps would power down for repairs in dock, so transponders disappeared off the grid all the time. s.h.i.+ps were decommissioned, so a transponder might go black and never return for entirely legitimate reasons. Newly commissioned s.h.i.+ps showed up with brand-new names and s.h.i.+ps that were sold registered name changes. Some were cobbled together from sc.r.a.p, some were built in s.h.i.+pyards, some were salvaged. And all of it was happening scattered across roughly one hundred quintillion square kilometers of s.p.a.ce, give or take a few quadrillion. And that was only if you ignored that s.p.a.ce had a third dimension.
So, seventeen s.h.i.+ps had vanished going through ring gates, and if Holden was right, they were probably back in the home system with new names. In theory, there was a path to the information he wanted, but unless he was interested in spending several hundred lifetimes sifting through the raw data, he'd need help.
Specifically, he needed a computer plowing through a number of different ma.s.sive databases on new s.h.i.+ps, decommissioned s.h.i.+ps, sold s.h.i.+ps, repaired s.h.i.+ps, and lost s.h.i.+ps, looking for anything that didn't add up. Even with a good computer and very smart data sorting software, it was what a programmer would call a nontrivial task.
And, unfortunately, the best software engineer that Holden knew had flown off to parts unknown and wasn't answering his messages. He didn't have the skills to do it himself, the time to learn them, or a crew to do it for him. What he had, was money.
After his s.h.i.+ft working with Sakai's people on the Roci refit, Holden called up Fred yet again. ”Fred, hey, I have a software problem. Can I hire some of your programming wonks for a short-term gig?”
”Your s.h.i.+p need an update?” Fred asked. ”Or is this something that will p.i.s.s me off?”
”Something that'll p.i.s.s you off. So, who's available for custom script writing?”
Paula Gutierrez had the elongated body and slightly oversized head of a low-g childhood. Her smile was sharp and professional. She was a freelance software engineer who'd taken a six-month consulting job on Tycho five years before and then just stayed on the station picking up the odd bit of piecework. On Holden's hand terminal, her wide face filled the screen with dark bushy eyebrows and blindingly white teeth.
”So, that's what I'm looking for, and I need it as fast as possible,” Holden said after laying out his requirements. ”Doable?”
”Very,” Paula said. ”Tycho keeps all the traffic databases mirrored local, so don't even have to sweat the lag. Gonna cost you for speed, though.”
”Cost me what?”
”Fifteen hundred an hour, ten hours minimum. Know up front I don't argue about billing and I don't give discounts.”
”That,” Holden said, ”sounds like a lot.”
”That's because I've got you over a barrel and I'm gouging the s.h.i.+t out of you.”
”Okay, how soon will I start seeing output?”
Paula shrugged with her eyebrows, then looked down at something off camera. ”Call it twenty hours from now before you start getting data sent to you. Want me to collate or stream it as it comes in?”
”Send it straight to me, please. Going to ask me why I want it?”
Paula laughed. ”I never do.”
Monica was renting a small suite of rooms on the visitors' level of Tycho. They were expensive, and to Holden's surprise, not any nicer than the company quarters Fred had set aside for his crew. Not many companies treated their own as well as they treated guests. But courtesy dictated that he act like the rooms were something special to make Monica feel good about the investment, so he made impressed noises at the open s.p.a.ces and quality of the furnis.h.i.+ngs.
”So what did Fred say?” Monica asked once he took a seat at her dining table and sipped at the tea she'd made.
”He doesn't think there's much to go on, honestly.”
”I mean about using the protomolecule sample to try and get in touch with Detective Miller.”
”Yeah,” Holden replied, putting the tea back on the table and pus.h.i.+ng it away. The first sip had left his tongue feeling scalded and rough. ”I mentioned that but only so he'd know he had a leak somewhere. That was always a nonstarter as an investigation tool. No one's letting that s.h.i.+t out of its bottle anytime soon.”
”Then I'm wasting my time here, is what you're saying.”
”No,” Holden said. ”Not at all. I think the missing s.h.i.+p thing is legitimate. I just don't think it's an alien conspiracy. It's much more likely to be a.s.sociated with this hard-line OPA wing. I'm looking into it, if that's a story you want to pursue.”
Monica spun her hand terminal around on the tabletop, already impatient with him for changing the subject. ”I made my name with the story on the Behemoth. Aliens and wormhole gates and a protomolecule ghost that only talked to the most famous person in the solar system. I don't think my follow-up to that can be Humans Still s.h.i.+tty to Each Other. Lacks panache.”
”So, is this about finding those missing s.h.i.+ps? Or is it about finding another batch of alien weirdness to make you more famous?”
”That sounded awfully judgmental for a guy who's managed to shoehorn himself into every major news piece for the last six years.”