James Corey - Nemesis Games

By the end of the evening, he had three, and he sent messages to each of them, then requested a connection to Bobbie. A few seconds later, she appeared on his screen. Wherever she was, it wasn’t the hospital. She had on a shirt with a green collar instead of the blue patient’s gown, and her hair had been washed and braided back.

“Alex,” she said. “Sorry about my brother. He means well, but he’s kind of a dick.”

“Everybody’s related to someone,” he said. “You wind up at his place or your own?”

“Neither one,” she said. “I need to hire a cleanup crew to get the blood off my floor, and I’m doing a solid security audit to figure out how they got in.”

“Yeah. Wouldn’t feel safe until that’s done,” Alex agreed.

“Right? And if there is a follow-up attack, I’m sure as hell not staying where it’s going to catch Ben and his wife in the crossfire. I popped for a hotel room. They’ve got their own security, and I can pay for extra surveillance.”

Min’s voice rose in the background, calling for calm. There was laughter in her tones, and he heard it echoed in the protests of her children. A tightness like a hand closed over his heart. He hadn’t thought about a follow-up attack. He should have.

“They got a spare room at that hotel?” he asked.

“Probably. You want me to find out?”

“Nah, I’ll just pack up and head over, if that’s all right. They don’t, someone will.” And whoever it is, it won’t be Min , he thought but didn’t say. “I got a few people I thought I’d try chatting up in the next few days. See if anything seems likely.”

“I really appreciate this, Alex,” Bobbie said. “We should talk about how to manage that safely. I don’t want you walking into a trap.”

“Wouldn’t make me happy either. Also, you don’t have access to a ship, do you?”

Bobbie blinked at the non sequitur. “What kind of ship?”

“Something small and fast,” Alex said. “May need to get out to the Belt, take a gander at something for Holden.”

“Well, actually, yeah,” Bobbie said. “Avasarala gave me the old racing pinnace we took from Jules-Pierre Mao back in the day. It’s pretty much just been sucking dock fees, but I could probably get it polished up.”

“You’re kiddin’. She gave you the Razorback ?”

“Not kidding. I think it was her way of paying me without actually paying me. She’d probably be confused that I haven’t sold it yet. Why? What’s up?”

“I’ll let you know when I hear more,” Alex said. “Maybe something, maybe nothing.”

But either way , he thought, it’ll get you and me both where it’s hard as hell to have someone make a follow-up attack.

Chapter Sixteen: Holden

The security footage from Tycho Station covered almost all of the public spaces. The wide, open common corridors, the thinner access ways. Gantries and maintenance corridors. It seemed like the only places the eyes of station security didn’t reach were the businesses and personal quarters. Even the storage lockers and tool shops had cameras logging whoever went in or out. It should have made things easy. It didn’t.

“This has got to be it,” Holden said, tapping a finger against the screen. Under his nail, Monica’s doorway opened. Two people came out. They wore light blue jumpsuits with no signs or insignia, dark, close-fitting caps, and work gloves. The crate they wheeled between them was the same formed plastic and ceramic that food and environmental services used to transport biological materials: raw fungal matter to be textured and flavored, then the foods that were made from them, and – when needed – the processed fecal remains taken back as substrate for the fungus. Magnetic clamps held it to the cart, and the indicator on the side showed it was sealed. It was big enough, maybe, to hold a woman. Or a woman’s body.

They’d gone in an hour earlier. Monica had gone in twenty minutes before. Whatever happened, she had to have been in that box.

Fred, scowling and hunched over, marked the crate as an item of interest and put a follow order on it. Holden couldn’t tell what the older man was thinking, but his eyes were flat with anger. Anger and something else.

“You recognize them?” Holden asked.

“They’re not in the system.”

“Then how did they get on the station?”

Fred glanced at him. “Working on that.”

“Right. Sorry.”

On-screen, the two men – Holden was pretty sure they were both men – took the crate to a maintenance corridor, the trace clicking over from camera to camera automatically. In the narrower space, the crate bumped against the walls and tried to bind up where the corridor turned.

“Doors and corners,” Holden said.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

The security trace showed men and cart entering a warehouse. Pallets of similar crates filled the space. The men guided the cart to a half-filled one, unlocked the clamps, and hauled the crate up and onto the pallet with its siblings. Fred split the display, holding the trace on the cart, but adding one to each of the two men. One panel showed the storage space; the other followed the two figures out to the common corridors.

In the warehouse, a pair of mech drivers came, logged in from lunch, and resumed the task of piling on crates. In the common corridor, the two men went into a lavatory and didn’t come out. The trace on them flickered forward until the green border that marked a live feed framed the images. A short call to the warehouse manager verified that the two men hadn’t holed up there; they’d just disappeared. The cart, still going through the older records, was buried in among others just like it. Fred advanced the feed. Mech drivers came and went. Pallets filled and were piled on top of each other.

“Present status,” Fred said, and the security feed skipped forward without moving away from the warehouse camera. Whatever had been in the crate was still there.

“Well,” Fred said, rising to his feet, “this is about to turn into an unpleasant day. You coming?”

The environmental controls in the warehouse showed no anomalies, but Holden couldn’t help imagining he smelled something under the oil and ozone. A smell like death. The mech driver was a fresh-faced young woman with straight brown hair the same color as her skin. Her expression as she moved the crates back out from the pallet spoke of excitement and curiosity and barely constrained dread. With every crate that came off, Holden’s gut went tighter. Monica had told him that involving other people in his investigation was dangerous. He couldn’t help thinking that whatever they found in the next few minutes was going to be his fault.

And so fixing it would be his responsibility. Assuming it could be fixed.

“That’s the one,” Fred said to the mech driver. “Put it over here.”

She maneuvered the container to the empty decking. Its magnetic clamps engaged with a deep thump. The indicator still showed that it was sealed. Even if Monica had been put into the thing alive, her air would have run out hours ago. The mech backed away, settling onto titanium and ceramic haunches. Fred stepped forward, lifted his hand terminal, and tapped in an override. The indicator on the crate shifted. Fred flipped open the lid.

The smell was rich and organic. Holden had a sudden powerful memory of being fourteen at his family compound on Earth. Mother Sophie had kept an herb garden by the kitchen, and when she’d turned the dirt before planting, it smelled just like this. The crate was filled to the brim with the soft, crumbling beige of raw fungal protein. Fred leaned forward, pressing his hand deep. Looking for a hidden body. When he pulled his arm back, dust clung to it up to the elbow. He shook his head no. It was an Earth gesture.