“I spent a month in a rad shelter once,” Alex said as they pushed through the thickening crowd. “Ship I was on had magnetic containment drop. Automatic cutoffs failed, and the reactor kept runnin’ for almost a second. Melted the engine room. Killed five of the crew on the next deck up before they knew we had a problem, and it took them three days to carve the bodies free of the melted decking for burial. The rest of us wound up eighteen to a shelter for thirty-six days while a tug flew to get us.”

“Sounds great,” Holden said.

“End of it, six of ’em got married, and the rest of us never spoke to each other again,” Alex said.

Ahead of them, someone shouted. It wasn’t in alarm or even anger, really. Frustration. Fear. Exactly the things Miller didn’t want to hear.

“That may not be our big problem,” Miller said, but before he could explain, a new voice cut in, drowning out the emergency-response loop.

“Okay, everybody! We’re Eros security, que no? We got an emergency, so you do what we tell you and nobody gets hurt.”

About time,Miller thought.

“So here’s the rule,” the new voice said. “Next asshole who pushes anyone, I’m going to shoot them. Move in an orderly fashion. First priority: orderly. Second priority is move! Go, go, go!”

At first nothing happened. The knot of human bodies was tied too tightly for even the most heavy-handed crowd control to free quickly, but a minute later, Miller saw some heads far ahead of him in the tunnel start to shift, then move away. The air in the tunnel was thickening and the hot plastic smell of overloaded recyclers reached him just as the clot came free. Miller’s breath started coming easier.

“Do they have hard shelters?” a woman behind them asked her companion, and then was swept away by the currents. Naomi plucked Miller’s sleeve.

“Do they?” she asked.

“They should, yes,” Miller said. “Enough for maybe a quarter million, and essential personnel and medical crews would get first crack at them.”

“And everyone else?” Amos said.

“If they survive the event,” Holden said, “station personnel will save as many people as they can.”

“Ah,” Amos said. Then: “Well, fuck that. We’re going for the Roci,right?”

“Oh, hell yes,” Holden said.

Ahead of them, the fast-shuffling crowd in their tunnel was merging with another flow of people from a lower level. Five thick-necked men in riot gear were waving people on. Two of them were pointing guns at the crowd. Miller was more than half tempted to go up and slap the little idiots. Pointing guns at people was a lousy way to avoid panic. One of the security men was also far too wide for his gear, the Velcro fasteners at his belly reaching out for each other like lovers at the moment of separation.

Miller looked down at the floor and slowed his steps, the back of his mind suddenly and powerfully busy. One of the cops swung his gun out over the crowd. Another one-the fat guy-laughed and said something in Korean.

What had Sematimba said about the new security force? All bluster, no balls. A new corporation out of Luna. Belters on the ground. Corrupt.

The name. They’d had a name. CPM. Carne Por la Machina.Meat for the machine. One of the gun-wielding cops lowered his weapon, swept off his helmet, and scratched violently behind one ear. He had wild black hair, a tattooed neck, and a scar that went from one eyelid down almost to the joint of his jaw.

Miller knew him. A year and a half ago, he’d arrested him for assault and racketeering. And the equipment-armor, batons, riot guns-also looked hauntingly familiar. Dawes had been wrong. Miller had been able to find his own missing equipment after all.

Whatever this was, it had been going on a long time before the Canterburyhad picked up a distress call from the Scopuli.A long time before Julie had vanished. And putting a bunch of Ceres Station thugs in charge of Eros crowd control using stolen Ceres Station equipment had been part of the plan. The third phase.

Ah,he thought. Well. That can’t be good.

Miller slid to the side, letting as many bodies as he plausibly could fill the space between him and the gunmen dressed as police.

“Get down to the casino level,” one of the gunmen shouted over the crowd. “We’ll get you into the radiation shelters from there, but you’ve got to get to the casino level!”

Holden and his crew hadn’t noticed anything odd. They were talking among themselves, strategizing about how to get to their ship and what to do once they got there, speculating about who might have attacked the station and where Julie Mao’s twisted, infected corpse might be headed. Miller fought the impulse to interrupt them. He needed to stay calm, to think things through. They couldn’t attract attention. He needed the right moment.

The corridor turned and widened. The press of bodies lightened a little bit. Miller waited for a dead zone in the crowd control, a space where none of the fake security men could see them. He took Holden by the elbow.

“Don’t go,” he said.

What do you mean, don’t go?” Holden asked, yanking his elbow out of Miller’s grasp. “Somebody just nuked the station. This has escalated beyond our capacity to respond. If we can’t get to the Roci,we’re doing whatever they tell us to until we can.”

Miller took a step back and put up his hands; he was clearly doing his best to look nonthreatening, which just pissed Holden off even more. Behind him, the riot cops were motioning the people milling in the corridors toward the casinos. The air echoed with the electronically amplified voices of the police directing the crowds and the buzz of anxious citizens. Over it all, the public-address system told everyone to remain calm and cooperate with emergency personnel.

“See that bruiser over there in the police riot gear?” Miller said. “His name is Gabby Smalls. He supervises a chunk of the Golden Bough protection racket on Ceres. He also runs a little dust on the side, and I suspect he’s tossed more than a few people out airlocks.”

Holden looked at the guy. Wide shoulders, thick gut. Now that Miller pointed him out, there was something about him that didn’t seem right for a cop.

“I don’t get it,” Holden said.

“A couple months ago, when you started a bunch of riots by saying Mars blew up your water hauler, we found out-”

“I never said-”

“- found outthat most of the police riot gear on Ceres was missing. A few months before that, a bunch of our underworld muscle went missing. I just found out where both of them are.”

Miller pointed at the riot-gear-equipped Gabby Smalls.

“I wouldn’t go wherever he’s sending people,” he said. “I really wouldn’t.”

A thin stream of people bumped past.

“Then where?” Naomi asked.

“Yeah, I mean, if the choice is radiation or mobsters, I gotta go with the mobsters,” Alex said, nodding emphatically at Naomi.

Miller pulled out his hand terminal and held it up so everyone could see the screen.

“I’ve got no radiation warnings,” he said. “Whatever happened outside isn’t a danger on this level. Not right now. So let’s just calm down and make the smart move.”

Holden turned his back on Miller and motioned to Naomi. He pulled her aside and said in a quiet voice, “I still think we go back to the ship and get out of here. Take our chances getting past these mobsters.”

“If there’s no radiation danger, then I agree,” she said with a nod.

“I disagree,” Miller said, not even pretending he hadn’t been eavesdropping. “To do that we have to walk through three levels of casino filled with riot gear and thugs. They’re going to tell us to get in one of those casinos for our own protection. When we don’t, they’ll beat us unconscious and throw us in anyway. For our own protection.”