James Corey - Babylon's Ashes

“Who’s there?” Prax said through the closed door.

“Dr. Praxidike Meng?” a man’s muffled voice asked.

“Yes,” Prax said. “Who is it?”

“Security,” the voice said. “Please open the door.”

Which security? Prax wanted to ask. Ganymede Station security or Free Navy? But it was too late now. If it was Station, it made sense to open the door. If it was Free Navy, it wouldn’t stop them if he didn’t. What he was going to do next was the same either way.

“Of course,” he said, then swallowed.

The uniforms of the two men in the hall were gray and blue. Station security. The relief that flooded his bloodstream was evidence of how frightened he’d been. How frightened he always was these days.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

The morgue smelled like a lab. The chemical reek of the phenol soap bit at his sinuses. The throbbing hum of the high-use air filters. The clinical lights. It reminded him of his years at upper university. He’d taken a cadaver lab then too. The body he’d dissected had been suffused in preservative fluids, though. Not as fresh. And it had been in better condition.

“The identification’s solid,” one of the security people said. “Metrics and markers sync up. ID matches. But you know how it is. No relatives on the station, and the union has rules.”

“Does it?” Prax asked. He meant the question honestly, but when he said it out loud, the words took on nuances he hadn’t intended. Can a union still matter when there’s barely a government any longer? Are there still rules? The security man grimaced.

“It’s the way we’ve always done it,” he said, and Prax heard the defensiveness in the man’s voice. The hint of anger. As if Prax was responsible for all the changes they were suffering.

Karvonides lay on the table, her modesty maintained by a black rubber sheet. Her expression was calm. The wounds on her neck and the side of her head were complicated and ugly, but the lack of fresh blood gave the illusion that they weren’t serious. They’d shot her four times. He wondered if the others from her meeting were in other rooms, on other tables, waiting for other witnesses.

“I’ll attest,” he said.

“Thank you,” the other security man said, and held out a hand terminal. Prax took it, pressed his palm to the plate. It chirped when it was done recording him, a weirdly cheerful sound, given the circumstances. Prax handed it back. He looked at the dead woman’s face, waiting to understand what he felt about her. He had the sense that he should cry, but he didn’t feel like it. In his mind, she’d become evidence not of a crime but of what the world had become. Her death wasn’t the beginning of an investigation, but the conclusion of one. The data was unambiguous. What happens when you stand up? You’re cut down.

“Can we ask you a few questions about the deceased, Dr. Meng?”

“Of course.”

“How long have you known her?”

“Two and a half years.”

“In what capacity?”

“She was a researcher in my labs. Hmm. I’ll have to make sure her datasets get collected. Can I make a note of that? Or do I need to wait until the interrogation’s done?”

“This isn’t an interrogation, sir. You go right ahead.”

“Thank you.” Prax pulled up his hand terminal and put an entry on his list for the morning. He thought at first there was something wrong with the display, but it was only his hand trembling. He shoved the terminal back in his pocket. “Thank you,” he said again.

“Do you have any idea who might have done this to her? Or why?”

The Free Navy did this to her , Prax thought. They did it because she was trying to stand against them. She was doing that because people are suffering and starving and dying that might not have to, and she had it in her power to make a difference. They found out, and they killed her. The way they’d kill me if I made things uncomfortable for them .

He looked into the security man’s inquiring eyes. The way they’d kill you too , he thought.

“Anything you can offer on the question, sir? Even something small might help.”

“No,” Prax said. “I don’t have any idea.”

Chapter Fourteen: Filip

The docks of Ceres Station ran, roughly speaking, along its equator in a wide belt of titanium and ceramic and steel. The dwarf planet’s movement made docking difficult, but once the clamps took hold, ships had the advantage of the 0.3g of spin gravity even with the drive off and cold. And with the radius of spin as big as it was, the Coriolis should have been negligible. The Pella should have felt like it was under a moderate burn and nothing more, but something kept bothering Filip. A sense that the ship was wrong, or that he was.

Twice, he snuck into the medical bay and had diagnostics run, then deleted the results after he read them. They didn’t show anything anyway. But maybe he was just so used to life under thrust that the trace of sideways impulse was enough to unsettle him. Or maybe it was only that the ship was empty except for him. A small, gnawing part of his mind kept suggesting it had something to do with the man he’d shot, but that didn’t make any sense. Along with his father, he’d killed billions. Shooting one man—one that didn’t even die—was nothing to him. It had to be the Coriolis.

His father had made it very clear that Filip’s universe stopped at the airlock. The Pella and everything in it was his the same as it always was, but Ceres Station was worse than vacuum. Fair or unfair, Filip was banned from the station for life. It was the deal Marco had struck with the OPA governor, Dawes. The others would be an active part of the evacuation, but Filip could only watch. And so he walked the corridors, went up and down the lift, slept, ate, exercised, and waited while just on the other side of the airlock, all the people he knew best stripped Ceres Station to the studs. He’d have been part of the effort if he could. Maybe that was all it was. Maybe it was just the fact that he’d been left behind and relaxing while the others did the work didn’t sit well with him. That seemed more likely than Coriolis. Or the man he’d shot.

The truth was, he didn’t remember much of the event. He’d been out with maybe a dozen Free Navy and some local fringe and hangers-on. According to the old laws he was still too young to be in the bars and brothels, but he was Filip Inaros and no one had suggested he leave. There had been music. He’d danced with a local girl, admired her tattoos, bought her drinks. And he’d kept up with her too, drink for drink. She’d liked him, he could tell. And if the music had been too loud for them to talk, that didn’t matter. He could tell.

Her interest hadn’t been about him so much as about the story of who he was. The son of Marco Inaros. Karal had warned him. Marco had warned him. Some people would be attracted to what they thought he was. He had to be careful always to remember who his family was. Not let himself be baited or seduced. The Free Navy had the power now, but there were still people on Ceres who were more than half loyal to the old ways.

Our enemies, at least you know where they stand , his father had said when they arrived at Ceres. There’s nothing you can trust less than half-Belters . Marco hadn’t said it straight out, but he’d meant Filip’s mother and all the people like her. Belters who’d let themselves be turned away from the Belt and the condescending Fred Johnson Earthers who pretended to care about them. Moderate OPA was just another way to say traitor . So Filip had known not to trust the girl, even while he was drinking with her. Drinking too much with her. When she’d left without telling him, he’d felt humiliated and angry. And then something had happened, he couldn’t quite put together, and he’d been carted off by Ceres security and his father called. Which had been humiliating again.