Leviathan Wakes (72 page)

“Miller—”

“The thing is, we were treating this like a rock. Now everyone knows that’s a little simplistic, but it’s going to take people time to adjust. Navies are still going to be thinking of this thing like a billiard ball when it’s really a rat.”

He was talking too fast. The words spilling out of him in a rush. If he didn’t give her room, she wouldn’t talk. He wouldn’t have to hear what she had to say. He wouldn’t have to keep her from talking him down.

“It’s going to have structure. Engines or control centers. Something. If I truck this thing inside, get it close to whatever coordinates the thing, I can break it. Turn it back into a billiard ball. Even if it’s just for a little while, that gives the rest of you a chance.”

“I figured,” she said. “It makes sense. It’s the right thing to do.”

Miller chuckled. A particularly solid impact tocked against the ship beneath him, the vibration of it jarring his bones. Gas started venting out of the new hole. The station was moving faster.

“Yeah,” he said. “Well.”

“I was talking to Amos,” she said. “You need a dead man’s switch. So that if something happens, the bomb still goes off. If you have the access codes…?”

“I do.”

“Good. I’ve got a routine you can put on your hand terminal. You’ll need to keep your finger on the select button. If you go away for five seconds, it sends the go signal. If you want, I can upload it to you.”

“So I have to wander around the station with my finger mashed on a button?”

Naomi’s tone made it an apology. “They might take you out
with a head shot. Or wrestle you down. The longer the gap, the more chance for the protomolecule to disable the bomb before it goes off. If you need more, I can reprogram it.”

Miller looked at the bomb resting on its cart just outside the ship’s airlock. Its readouts all glowed green and gold. His sigh briefly fogged the inside of his helmet.

“Yeah, no. Five is good. Upload the routine. Am I going to need to tweak it, or is there a simple place I can put the arm-and-fire string?”

“There’s a setup section,” Naomi said. “It prompts you.”

The hand terminal chirped, announcing the new file. Miller accepted it, ran it. It was easy as keying in a door code. Somehow he felt that arming fusion bombs to detonate around him should have been more difficult.

“Got it,” he said. “We’re good to go. I mean, I still have to move this bastard, but other than that. How fast am I accelerating on this thing, anyway?”

“Eventually it will be faster than the
Roci
can go. Four g and ramping up with no sign of easing off the throttle.”

“Can’t feel it at all,” he said.

“I’m sorry about before,” Naomi said.

“It was a bad situation. We did what we had to do. Same as always.”

“Same as always,” she echoed.

They didn’t speak for a few seconds.

“Thanks for the trigger,” Miller said. “Tell Amos I appreciate it.”

He cut the connection before she could answer. Long goodbyes weren’t anyone’s strong suit. The bomb rested in the handcart, magnetic clamps in place and a wide woven-steel belt around the whole mess. He moved slowly across the metallic surface of the port docks. If the cart lost its grip on Eros, he wouldn’t be strong enough to hold it back. Of course, if one of the increasingly frequent strikes hit him, it would be a lot like getting shot, so waiting around wasn’t a good solve either. He put both dangers out of his
mind and did the work. For ten nervous minutes, his suit smelled of overheating plastic. All the diagnostics showed within the error bars, and by the time the recyclers cleared it, his air supply still looked good. Another little mystery he wasn’t going to solve.

The abyss above him shone with unflickering stars. One of the dots of light was Earth. He didn’t know which one.

The service hatch had been tucked in a natural outcropping of stone, the raw-ferrous cart track like a ribbon of silver in the darkness. Grunting, Miller hauled the cart and the bomb and his own exhausted body up around the curve, and spin gravity once again pressed down on his feet instead of stretching his knees and spine. Light-headed, he keyed in the codes until the hatch opened.

Eros lay before him, darker than the empty sky.

He ran the hand terminal connection through the suit, calling Holden for what he expected was the last time.

“Miller,” Holden said almost immediately.

“I’m heading in now,” he said.

“Wait. Look, there’s a way we might be able to get an automated cart. If the
Roci
—”

“Yeah, but you know how it is. I’m already here. And we don’t know how fast this sonofabitch can go. We’ve got a problem we need to fix. This is how we do it.”

Holden’s hope had been weak, anyway. Pro forma. A gesture and, Miller thought, maybe even heartfelt. Trying to save everyone, right to the last.

“I understand,” Holden finally said.

“Okay. So once I’ve broken whatever the hell I find in there…?”

“We’re working on ways to annihilate the station.”

“Good. I’d hate to go through the trouble for nothing.”

“Is there… Is there anything you want me to do? After?”

“Nah,” Miller said, and then Julie was at his side, her hair floating around her like they were underwater. She glowed in more starlight than was actually there. “Wait. Yes. A couple things. Julie’s parents. They run Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile. They knew
the war was going start before it did. They’ve got to have links to Protogen. Make sure they don’t get away with it. And if you see them, tell them I’m sorry I didn’t find her in time.”

“Right,” Holden said.

Miller squatted in the darkness. Was there anything else? Shouldn’t there be more? A message to Havelock, maybe? Or Muss. Or Diogo and his OPA friends? But then there would have to be something to say.

“Okay,” Miller said. “That’s it, then. It was good working with you.”

“I’m sorry it came down this way,” Holden said. It wasn’t an apology for what he’d done or said, for what he’d chosen and refused.

“Yeah,” Miller said. “But what can you do, right?”

It was as close to goodbye as either of them could get. Miller shut the connection, brought up the script Naomi had sent him, and enabled it. While he was at it, he turned the Eros feed back on.

A soft hushing sound, like fingernails scratching down an endless sheet of paper. He turned on the cart’s lights, the dark entrance of Eros brightening to industrial gray, shadows scattering to the corners. His imagined Julie stood in the glare like it was a spotlight, the glow illuminating her and all the structures behind her at the same time, the remnant of a long dream, almost over.

He took off the brakes, pushed, and went inside Eros for the last time.

H
olden knew that humans could tolerate extremely high g-forces over short durations. With proper safety systems, professional daredevils had sustained impacts in excess of twenty-five g’s and survived. The human body deformed naturally, absorbed energy in soft tissues, and diffused impacts across larger areas.

He also knew that the problem with extended exposure to high g was that the constant pressure on the circulatory system would begin exposing weaknesses. Have a weak spot in an artery that could turn into an aneurysm in forty years? A few hours at seven g might just pop it open now. Capillaries in the eyes started to leak. The eye itself deformed, sometimes causing permanent damage. And then there were the hollow spaces, like the lungs and digestive tract. You piled on enough gravity, and they collapsed.

And while combat ships might maneuver at very high g for
short durations, every moment spent under thrust multiplied the danger.

Eros didn’t need to shoot anything at them. It could just keep speeding up until their bodies exploded under the pressure. His console was showing five g, but even as he watched, it shifted to six. They couldn’t keep this up. Eros was going to get away. There was nothing he could do about it.

But he still didn’t order Alex to stop accelerating.

As if Naomi were reading his mind,
WE CAN’T KEEP THIS UP POPPED UP
on his console, her user ID in front of the text.

FRED’S WORKING ON IT. THEY MIGHT NEED US TO BE WITHIN RANGE OF EROS WHEN THEY COME UP WITH A PLAN
, he replied. Even moving his fingers the millimeters necessary to use the controls built into his chair for exactly this reason was painfully difficult.

WITHIN RANGE FOR WHAT? NAOMI TYPED
.

Holden didn’t answer. He had no idea. His blood was burning with drugs to keep him awake and alert even while his body was being crushed. The drugs had the contradictory effect of making his brain run at double speed while not allowing him to actually think. But Fred would come up with something. Lots of smart people were thinking about it.

And Miller.

Miller was lugging a fusion bomb through Eros right now. When your enemy had the tech advantage, you came at him as low-tech as you could get. Maybe one sad detective pulling a nuclear weapon on a wagon would slip through their defenses. Naomi had said they weren’t magic. Maybe Miller could make it and give them the opening they needed.

Either way, Holden had to be there, even if it was just to see.

FRED
, Naomi typed to him.

Holden opened the connection. Fred looked to him like a man suppressing a grin.

“Holden,” he said. “How are you guys holding up?”

SIX G’S. SPIT IT OUT
.

“Right. So it turns out that the UN cops have been ripping Protogen’s network apart, looking for clues as to what the hell’s been going on. Guess who showed up as public enemy number one for the Protogen bigwigs? Yours truly. Suddenly all is forgiven, and Earth welcomes me back into her warm embrace. The enemy of my enemy thinks I am a righteous bastard.”

GOODY. MY SPLEEN IS COLLAPSING. HURRY UP.

“The idea of Eros crashing into Earth is bad enough. Extinction-level event, even if it’s just a rock. But the UN people have been watching the Eros feeds, and it’s scaring the shit out of them.”

AND
.

“Earth is preparing to launch her entire ground-based nuclear arsenal.
Thousands
of nukes. They’re going to vaporize that rock. The navy will intercept what’s left after the initial attack and sterilize that entire area of space with constant nuclear bombardment. I know it’s a risk, but it’s what we have.”

Holden resisted the urge to shake his head. He didn’t want to wind up with one cheek stuck to the chair permanently.

EROS DODGED THE
NAUVOO
. IT’S GOING SIX G’S RIGHT NOW, AND ACCORDING TO NAOMI, MILLER FEELS NO ACCELERATION. WHATEVER IT’S DOING, IT DOESN’T HAVE THE SAME INERTIAL LIMITATIONS WE HAVE. WHAT’S TO STOP IT FROM JUST DODGING AGAIN? AT THESE SPEEDS, THE MISSILES WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO TURN AROUND AND CATCH IT. AND WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TARGETING ON? EROS DOESN’T REFLECT RADAR ANYMORE.

“That’s where you come in. We need you to try bouncing a laser off of it. We can use the
Rocinante
’s targeting system to guide the missiles in.”

I HATE TO BREAK IT TO YOU, BUT WE’LL BE OUT OF THIS GAME LONG BEFORE THOSE MISSILES SHOW. WE CAN’T KEEP UP. WE CAN’T GUIDE THE MISSILES IN FOR YOU. AND ONCE WE LOSE VISUAL, NO ONE WILL BE ABLE TO TRACK WHERE EROS IS.

“You might have to put it on autopilot,” Fred said.

Meaning
You might all have to die in the seats you’re in right now.

I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO DIE A MARTYR AND ALL, BUT WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THE ROCI CAN BEAT THIS THING ON ITS OWN? I’M NOT KILLING MY CREW BECAUSE YOU CAN’T COME UP WITH A GOOD PLAN
.

Fred leaned toward the screen, his eyes narrowing. For the first time, Fred’s mask slipped and Holden saw the fear and helplessness behind it.

“Look, I know what I’m asking, but you know the stakes. This is what we have. I didn’t call you to hear how it won’t work. Either help or give up. Right now devil’s advocate is just another name for asshole.”

I’m crushing myself to death, probably doing permanent damage, just because I
wouldn’t
give up, you bastard. So sorry I didn’t sign my crew up to die the minute you said to do it.

Having to type everything out had the advantage of restraining emotional outbursts. Instead of ripping into Fred for questioning his commitment, Holden just typed
LET ME THINK ABOUT IT
and cut the connection.

The optical tracking system watching Eros flashed a warning to him that the asteroid was increasing speed again. The giant sitting on his chest added a few pounds as Alex pushed the
Rocinante
to keep up. A flashing red indicator informed Holden that because of the duration they’d spent at the current acceleration, he could expect as much as 12 percent of the crew to stroke out. It would go up. Enough time, and it would reach 100 percent. He tried to remember the
Roci
’s maximum theoretical acceleration. Alex had already flown it at twelve g briefly when they’d left the
Donnager.
The actual limit was one of those trivial numbers, a way to brag about something your ship would never really do. Fifteen g, was it? Twenty?