James Corey - Nemesis Games

Holden almost started his reply off by asking for a report on the ex-wife situation, but the little Naomi voice that now lived in his head said Don’t be nosey , so instead he replied, “Thanks for checking in. Give Bobbie my best. The Roci ’s still months from ready, so take your time.”

He sat for a minute trying to think of something else to say, then just cut the dead air off the end of the message and sent it. It was strange how a person could be so vitally important in your life, and yet you had nothing to say to them when they weren’t sharing the same air. Normally, he and Alex would talk about the ship, about the other two crew members, about jobs. With them all split up and the Roci in dry dock, there wasn’t much left to say that wasn’t a personal invasion. Thinking about that looked like the beginning of a long dark road to bitter loneliness, so he decided to go investigating instead.

He kind of wished he had a hat.

“Back so soon?” Fred said when Holden was ushered into his office by one of the OPA leader’s minions. “I know my coffee is good, but…”

Holden grabbed a chair and stretched out while Fred puttered with the coffee maker. “So Monica Stuart is on Tycho.”

“Yeah. You think someone like that lands on this station without me knowing about it?”

“No,” Holden admitted. “But do you know why she’s here?”

The coffee maker started hissing to itself, and the office was filled with a rich, bitter smell. While the coffee brewed, Fred leaned over his desk tapping on the terminal. “Something with missing ships, right? That’s what our intel team says.”

“Have your people looked into it at all?”

“Honestly? No. I’d heard rumblings about it, but we’re buried here. Every ship with a functioning Epstein is heading through for the gates. We’ve got our hands full keeping them from running into each other going through the rings. Most of them are going into unexplored systems with no other ships or stations. We don’t hear back from a few, sort of seems like the obvious thing happening.”

Holden accepted a steaming mug from Fred with a grateful nod and took a sip. The old man’s coffee didn’t disappoint. “I get that,” Holden said after another drink. “And I think her theory on it is pretty far-fetched, but it’s the kind of thing that will get public traction if we don’t find a better answer first.”

“She has a theory already?”

“She thinks it’s the protomolecule. The robots and tech waking up on Ilus is her one datapoint.”

“You told me that was a onetime thing,” Fred said, frowning over his coffee mug. When he spoke again his words blew steam in front of them, like a whisp of dragon breath. “Is Miller back?”

“No, he’s not back. As far as I know, there isn’t an active protomolecule culture in existence in the universe. But —”

“But I’ve got the inactive stuff you gave me.”

“Right, and Monica knows about it somehow,” Holden said.

Fred’s frown only deepened at that. “I’ve got a leak somewhere.”

“Yeah, you totally do, but that isn’t the part that worries me.”

Fred’s eyebrows went up in a nonverbal question.

“Monica,” Holden continued, “has decided that we should take out the goo and use it like some sort of Ouija board to summon the ghost of Miller.”

“But that’s stupid,” Fred said.

“Right? So I think we should exhaust all other possibilities before we leap right to tinkering with alien viruses.”

“First time for everything, I guess,” Fred said, only lightly coating the words in sarcasm. “You have alternate theories?”

“I do,” Holden said, “but you won’t like it.”

“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 assuming we know what their goals were, and that seems like a bad assumption to make. Maybe blowing up a big chunk of a Martian shipyard 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’ shit, they can send a message by taking out some colony ships?”

“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 ships were getting nuked as they passed 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 ships were sabotaged in some way. A bomb with a really long fuse?”

“There’s another alternative,” Holden said.

“No, there isn’t,” Fred replied, anticipating 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 ships 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 ship, Jim. Fix your ship and get your crew back together. This thing with the missing ships 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.”