“The Rocinanteis definitely the right ship, then, but that didn’t answer my question. Why?”

Fred turned his back to Holden and looked at the view screen. The nose of the Nauvoowas just vanishing from sight. The view turned to the flat, star-speckled black of forever.

“I need to pick someone up on Eros,” he said. “Someone important. I’ve got people who can do it, but the only ships we’ve got are light freighters and a couple of small shuttles. Nothing that can make the trip quickly enough or have a hope of running away if trouble starts.”

“Does this person have a name? I mean, you keep saying you don’t want to fight, but the other unique thing about my ship is that it’s the only one here with guns. I’m sure the OPA has a whole list of things they’d like blown up.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“Nope.”

Fred turned back around and gripped the back of his chair. His knuckles were white. Holden wondered if he’d gone too far.

“Look,” Holden said, “you talk a good game about peace and trials and all that. You disavow the pirate casts. You have a nice station filled with nice people. I have every reason to believe you are what you say you are. But we’ve been here three days, and the first time you tell me about your plans, you ask to borrow my ship for a secret mission. Sorry. If I’m part of this, I get full access; no secrets. Even if I knew for a fact, which I don’t, that you had nothing but good intentions, I still wouldn’t go along with the cloak-and-dagger bullshit.”

Fred stared at him for a few seconds, then came around his chair and sat down. Holden found he was tapping his fingers on his thigh nervously and forced himself to stop. Fred’s eyes flicked down at Holden’s hand and then back up. He continued to stare.

Holden cleared his throat.

“Look, you’re the big dog here. Even if I didn’t know who you used to be, you’d scare the shit out of me, so don’t feel the need to prove it. But no matter how scared I am, I’m not backing down on this.”

Fred’s hoped-for laughter didn’t come. Holden tried to swallow without gulping.

“I bet every captain you ever flew under thought you were a gigantic pain in the ass,” Fred said finally.

“I believe my record reflects that,” Holden said, trying to hide his relief.

“I need to fly to Eros and find a man named Lionel Polanski, and then bring him back to Tycho.”

“That’s only a week out if we push,” Holden said, doing the math in his head.

“The fact that Lionel doesn’t actually exist complicates the mission.”

“Yeah, okay. Now I’m confused,” Holden agreed.

“You wanted in?” Fred said, the words taking on a quiet ferocity. “Now you’re in. Lionel Polanski exists only on paper, and owns things that Mr. Tycho doesn’t want to own. Including a courier ship called the Scopuli.”

Holden leaned forward in his chair, his face intense.

“You now have my undivided attention,” he said.

“The nonexistent owner of the Scopulichecked into a flophouse on one of the shit levels of Eros. We only just got the message. We have to work on the assumption that whoever got the room knows our operations intimately, needs help, and can’t ask for it openly.”

“We can leave in an hour,” Holden said breathlessly.

Fred held up his hands in a gesture that was surprisingly Belter for an Earth man.

“When,” Fred asked, “did this turn into youleaving?”

“I won’t loan my ship, but I’ll definitely rent it out. My crew and I were talking about getting jobs, actually. Hire us. Deduct whatever’s fair for services you’ve already rendered.”

“No,” Fred said. “I need you.”

“You don’t,” Holden replied. “You need our depositions. And we’re not going to sit here waiting a year or two for sanity to reign. We’ll all do video depositions, sign whatever affidavits you want us to as to their authenticity, but we’re leaving to find work one way or the other. You might as well make use of it.”

“No,” Fred said. “You’re too valuable to take risks with your lives.”

“What if I throw in the data cube the captain of the Donnagerwas trying to liberate?”

The silence was back, but it had a different feel to it.

“Look,” Holden said, pressing on. “You need a ship like the Roci.I’ve got one. You need a crew for her. I’ve got that too. And you’re as hungry to know what’s on that cube as I am.”

“I don’t like the risk.”

“Your other option is to throw us in the brig and commandeer the ship. There’s some risks in that too.”

Fred laughed. Holden felt himself relax.

“You’ll still have the same problem that brought you here,” Fred said. “Your ship looks like a gunship, no matter what its transponder is saying.”

Holden jumped up and grabbed a piece of paper from Fred’s desk. He started writing on it with a pen snatched from a decorative pen set.

“I’ve been thinking about that. You’ve got full manufacturing facilities here. And we’re supposed to be a light gas freighter. So,” he said as he sketched a rough outline of the ship, “we weld on a bunch of empty compressed-gas storage tanks in two bands around the hull. Use them to hide the tubes. Repaint the whole thing. Weld on a few projections to break up the hull profile and hide us from ship-recognition software. It’ll look like shit and screw up the aerodynamics, but we won’t be near atmo anytime soon. It’ll look exactly like what it is: something a bunch of Belters slapped together in a hurry.”

He handed the paper to Fred. Fred began laughing in earnest, either at the terrible drawing or at the absurdity of the whole thing.

“You could give a pirate a hell of a surprise,” he said. “If I do this, you and your crew will record my depositions and hire on as an independent contractor for errands like the Eros run and appear on my behalf when the peace negotiations start.”

“Yes.”

“I want the right to outbid anyone else who tries to hire you. No contracts without my counteroffer.”

Holden held out his hand, and Fred shook it.

“Nice doing business with you, Fred.”

As Holden left the office, Fred was already on the comm with his machine-shop people. Holden pulled out his portable terminal and called up Naomi.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Pack up the kids, we’re going to Eros.”

Chapter Twenty-Two: Miller

  The people-mover to Eros was small, cheap, and overcrowded. The air recyclers had the plastic-and-resin smell of long-life industrial models that Miller associated with warehouses and fuel depots. The lights were cheap LEDs tinted a false pink that was supposed to flatter the complexion but instead made everyone look like undercooked beef. There were no cabins, only row after row of formed laminate seating and two long walls with five-stacks of bunks that the passengers could hot-swap. Miller had never been on a cheapjack transport before, but he knew how they worked. If there was a fight, the ship’s crew would pump riot gas into the cabin, knock everyone out, and put anyone who’d been in the scuffle under restraint. It was a draconian system, but it did tend to keep passengers polite. The bar was always open and the drinks were cheap. Not long ago Miller would have found that enticing.

Instead, he sat on one of the long seats, his hand terminal open. Julie’s case file—what he had reconstructed of it—glowed before him. The picture of her, proud and smiling, in front of the Razorback,the dates and records, her jiu jitsu training. It seemed like very little, considering how large the woman had grown in his life.

A small newsfeed crawled down the terminal’s left side. The war between Mars and the Belt escalated, incident after incident, but the secession of Ceres Station was the top news. Earth was taken to task by Martian commentators for failing to stand united with its fellow inner planet, or at least for not handing over the Ceres security contract to Mars. The scattershot reaction of the Belt ran the gamut from pleasure at seeing Earth’s influence fall back down the gravity well, to strident near-panic at the loss of Ceres’ neutrality, to conspiracy theories that Earth was fomenting the war for its own ends.