James Corey - Leviathan Wakes

“We’ll get there,” Miller said, smiling at the angry mob. “We’ll get there.”

The face he expected floated to the front. Shirtless. The big man, blood covering his hands and splattered on his cheek. The seed crystal of the riot.

“That one?” Gelbfish asked, and Miller knew that a tiny infrared dot was painting Shirtless’ forehead even as he glowered at Miller and the uniforms behind him.

“No,” Miller said. “That’ll only set the rest of them off.”

“So what do we do?” Brown said.

It was a hell of a question.

“Sir,” Gelbfish said. “The big fucker’s got an OPA tattoo on his left shoulder.”

“Well,” Miller said, “if you do have to shoot him, start there.”

He stepped forward, tying his terminal into the local system, overriding the alert. When he spoke, his voice boomed from the overhead speakers.

“This is Detective Miller. Unless you all want to be locked up as accessories to murder, I suggest you disperse now.” Muting the microphone in his terminal, he said to Shirtless, “Not you, big fella. Move a muscle and we shoot you.”

Someone in the crowd threw a wrench, the silver metal arcing low through the air toward Miller’s head. He almost stepped out of the way, but the handle caught him across the ear. His head filled with the deep sound of bells, and the wet of blood tracked down his neck.

“Hold fire,” Miller shouted. “Hold your fire.”

The crowd laughed, as if he’d been talking to them. Idiots. Shirtless, emboldened, strode forward. The steroids had distended his thighs so badly that he waddled. Miller turned the mic on his terminal back on. If the crowd was watching them face each other down, they weren’t breaking things. It wasn’t spreading. Not yet.

“So. Friend. You only kick helpless people to death, or can anybody join in?” Miller asked, his voice conversational but echoing out of the dock speakers like a pronouncement from God.

“The fuck you barking, Earth dog?” Shirtless said.

“Earth?” Miller said, chuckling. “I look like I grew up in a gravity well to you? I was born on this rock.”

“Inners kibble you, bitch,” Shirtless said. “You they dog.”

“You think?”

“Fuckin’ dui,” Shirtless said. Fucking true. He flexed his pectorals. Miller suppressed the urge to laugh.

“So killing that poor bastard was for the good of the station?” Miller said. “The good of the Belt? Don’t be a chump, kid. They’re playing you. They want you to act like a bunch of stupid riotboys so they have a reason to shut this place down.”

“ Schrauben sie sie weibchen, ” Shirtless said in Belter-inflected gutter German, leaning forward.

Okay, second time I’ve been called a bitch, Miller thought.

“Kneecap him,” Miller said. Shirtless’ legs blew out in twin sprays of crimson and he went down howling. Miller walked past his writhing body, stepping toward the mob.

“You’re taking your orders from this pendejo ?” he said. “Listen to me, we all know what’s coming. We know dance starting, now, like pow, right? They fucked tu agua, and we all know the answer. Out an airlock, no?”

He could see it in their faces: the sudden fear of the snipers, then the confusion. He pressed on, not giving them time to think. He switched back to the lower-level lingo, the language of education, authority.

“You know what Mars wants? They want you, doing this. They want this piece of shit here to make sure that everyone looks at Belters and thinks we’re a bunch of psychopaths who tear up their own station. They want to tell themselves we’re just like them. Well, we aren’t. We’re Belters, and we take care of our own.”

He picked a man at the edge of the mob. Not as pumped as Shirtless, but big. He had an OPA split circle on his arm.

“You,” Miller said. “You want to fight for the Belt?”

“Dui,” the man said.

“I bet you do. He did too,” Miller said, jerking a thumb back at Shirtless. “But now he’s a cripple, and he’s going down for murder. So we’ve already lost one. You see? They’re turning us against each other. Can’t let them do that. Every one of you I have to arrest or cripple or kill, that’s one less we have when the day comes. And it’s coming. But it’s not now. You understand?”

The OPA man scowled. The mob drew back from him, making space. Miller could feel it like a current against him. It was shifting.

“Day’s coming, hombre,” the OPA man said. “You know your side?”

The tone was a threat, but there was no power behind it. Miller took a slow breath. It was over.

“Always the side of the angels,” he said. “Why don’t you all go back to work? Show’s over here, and we’ve all got plenty that needs doing.”

Momentum broken, the mob fell apart. First one and two peeling off from the edges, and then the whole knot untying itself at once. Five minutes after Miller had arrived, the only signs that anything had happened were Shirtless mewling in a pool of his own blood, the wound on Miller’s ear, and the body of the woman fifty good citizens had stood by and watched be beaten to death. She was short and wearing the flight suit of a Martian freight line.

Only one dead. Makes it a good night, Miller thought sourly.

He went to the fallen man. The OPA tattoo was smeared red. Miller knelt.

“Friend,” he said. “You are under arrest for the murder of that lady over there, whoever the hell she is. You are not required to participate in questioning without the presence of an attorney or union representative, and if you so much as look at me wrong, I’ll space you. Do we understand each other?”

From the look in the man’s eyes, Miller knew they did.

Holden could drink coffee at half a g. Actually sit and hold a mug under his nose and let the aroma drift up. Sip it slowly and not burn his tongue. Drinking coffee was one of the activities that didn’t make the transition to microgravity well, but at half a g, it was fine.

So he sat and tried very hard to think about coffee and gravity in the silence of the Knight ’s tiny galley. Even the normally talkative Alex was quiet. Amos had set his big handgun on the table and was staring at it with frightening concentration. Shed was asleep. Naomi was sitting across the room, drinking tea and keeping one eye on the wall panel next to her. She’d routed ops to it.

As long as he kept his mind on his coffee, he didn’t have to think about Ade giving one last gasp of fear and then turning into a glowing vapor.

Alex ruined it by speaking.

“At some point, we need to decide where we’re goin’,” he said.

Holden nodded, took a sip of his coffee, and closed his eyes. His muscles vibrated like plucked strings, and his peripheral vision was dappled with points of imaginary light. The first twinges of the post-juice crash were starting, and it was going to be a bad one. He wanted to enjoy these last few moments before the pain hit.

“He’s right, Jim,” Naomi said. “We can’t just fly in a big circle at half a g forever.”

Holden didn’t open his eyes. The darkness behind his lids was bright and active and mildly nauseating.

“We aren’t waiting forever,” he said. “We’re waiting fifty minutes for Saturn Station to call me back and tell me what to do with their ship. The Knight is still P and K property. We’re still employees. You wanted me to call for help, I called for help. Now we are waiting to see what that looks like.”

“Shouldn’t we start flying toward Saturn Station, then, Boss?” Amos asked, directing his question at Naomi.

Alex snorted.

“Not on the Knight ’s engine. Even if we had the fuel for that trip, which we don’t, I don’t want to sit in this can for the next three months,” he said. “Naw, if we’re goin’ somewhere, it’s gotta be the Belt or Jupiter. We’re as close to exactly between ’em as you can get.”