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 out that 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."
Another crowd of people poured out of a branch corridor, heading for the reassuring presence of the police and the bright casino lights. Holden found it difficult not to be swept along with the crowd. A man with two enormous suitcases bumped into Naomi, almost knocking her down. Holden grabbed her hand.
"What's the alternative?" he asked Miller.
Miller glanced up and down the corridor, seeming to measure the flow of people. He nodded at a yellow-and-black-striped hatch down a small maintenance corridor.
"That one," he said. "It's marked HIGH VOLTAGE, so the guys sweeping for stragglers won't bother with it. It's not the kind of place citizens hide."
"Can you get that door open quickly?" Holden said, looking at Amos.
"Can I break it?"
"If you need to."
"Then sure," Amos said, and began pushing his way through the crowd toward the maintenance hatch. At the door, he pulled out his multi-tool and popped off the cheap plastic housing for the card reader. After he twisted a couple of wires together, the hatch slid open with a hydraulic hiss.
"Ta-da," Amos said. "The reader won't work anymore, so anyone who wants in comes in."
"Let's worry about that if it happens," Miller replied, then led them into the dimly lit passageway beyond.
The service corridor was filled with electrical cable held together with plastic ties. It stretched through the dim red light for thirty or forty feet before falling into gloom. The light came from LEDs mounted on the metal bracing that sprouted from the wall every five feet or so to hold the cable up. Naomi had to duck to enter, her frame about four centimeters too tall for the ceiling. She put her back to the wall and slid down onto her haunches.
"You'd think they'd make the maintenance corridors tall enough for Belters to work in," she said irritably.
Holden touched the wall almost reverently, tracing a corridor identification number carved right into the stone.
"The Belters who built this place weren't tall," he said. "These are some of the main power lines. This tunnel goes back to the first Belt colony. The people who carved it grew up in gravity."
Miller, who also had to duck his head, sat on the floor with a grunt and popping knees.
"History lesson later," he said. "Let's figure a way off this rock."
Amos, studying the bundles of cable intently, said over his shoulder, "If you see a frayed spot, don't touch it. This thick fucker right here is a couple million volts. That'd melt your shit down real good."
Alex sat down next to Naomi, grimacing when his butt hit the cold stone floor.
"You know," he said, "if they decide to seal up the station, they might pump all the air outta these maintenance corridors."
"I get it," Holden said loudly. "It's a shitty and uncomfortable hiding spot. You have my permission to now shut up about that."
He squatted down across the corridor from Miller and said, "Okay, Detective. Now what?"
"Now," Miller said, "we wait for the sweep to pass us by, and get behind it, try to get to the docks. The folks in the shelters are easy to avoid. Shelters are up deep. Trick's going to be getting through the casino levels."
"Can't we just use these maintenance passages to move around?" Alex asked.
Amos shook his head. "Not without a map, we won't. You get lost in here, you're in trouble," he said.
Ignoring them, Holden said, "Okay, so we wait for everyone to move to the radiation shelters and then we leave."
Miller nodded at him, and then the two men sat staring at each other for a moment. The air between them seemed to thicken, the silence taking on a meaning of its own. Miller shrugged like his jacket itched.
"Why do you think a bunch of Ceres mobsters are moving everyone to radiation shelters when there's no actual radiation danger?" Holden finally said. "And why are the Eros cops letting them?"
"Good questions," Miller said.
"If they were using these yahoos, it helps explain why their attempted kidnapping at the hotel went so poorly. They don't seem like pros."
"Nope," Miller said. "That's not their usual area of expertise."
"Would you two be quiet?" Naomi said.
For almost a minute they were.
"It'd be really stupid," Holden said, "to go take a look at what's going on, wouldn't it?"
"Yes. Whatever's going on at those shelters, you know that's where all the guards and patrols will be," Miller said.
"Yeah," Holden said.
"Captain," Naomi said, a warning in her voice.
"Still," Holden said, talking to Miller, "you hate a mystery."
"I do at that," Miller replied with a nod and a faint smile. "And you, my friend, are a damn busybody."
"It's been said."
"Goddamn it," Naomi said quietly.
"What is it, Boss?" Amos asked.
"These two just broke our getaway plan," Naomi replied. Then she said to Holden, "You guys are going to be very bad for each other and, by extension, us."
"No," Holden replied. "You aren't coming along. You stay here with Amos and Alex. Give us" - he looked at his terminal - "three hours to go look and come back. If we aren't here - "
"We leave you to the gangsters and the three of us get jobs on Tycho and live happily ever after," Naomi said.
"Yeah," Holden said with a grin. "Don't be a hero."
"Wouldn't even consider it, sir."
Holden crouched in the shadows outside the maintenance hatch and watched as Ceres mobsters dressed in police riot gear led the citizens of Eros away in small groups. The PA system continued to declare the possibility of radiological danger and exhorted the citizens and guests of Eros to cooperate fully with emergency personnel. Holden had selected a group to follow and was getting ready to move when Miller placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Wait," Miller said. "I want to make a call."
He quickly dialed up a number on his hand terminal, and after a few moments, a flat gray Network Not Available message appeared.
"Phone is down?" Holden asked.
"That's the first thing I'd do, too," Miller replied.
"I see," Holden said even though he really didn't.
"Well, I guess it's just you and me," Miller said, then took the magazine out of his gun and began reloading it with cartridges he pulled out of his coat pocket.
Even though he'd had enough of gunfights to last him the rest of his life, Holden took out his gun and checked the magazine as well. He'd replaced it after the shoot-out in the hotel, and it was full. He racked it and put it back in the waistband of his pants. Miller, he noticed, kept his out, holding it close to his thigh, where his coat mostly covered it.
It wasn't difficult following the groups up through the station toward the inner sections where the radiation shelters were. As long as they kept moving in the same direction as the crowds, no one gave them a second look. Holden made a mental note of the many corridor intersections where men in riot gear stood guard. It would be much tougher coming back down.
When the group they were following eventually stopped outside a large metal door marked with the ancient radiation symbol, Holden and Miller slipped off to the side and hid behind a large planter filled with ferns and a couple of stunted trees. Holden watched the fake riot cops order everyone into the shelter and then seal the door behind them with the swipe of a card. All but one of them left, the remaining one standing guard outside the door.
Miller whispered, "Let's ask him to let us in."
"Follow my lead," Holden replied, then stood up and began walking toward the guard.
"Hey, shithead, you supposed to be in a shelter or in the casino, so get the fuck back to your group," the guard said, his hand on the butt of his gun.
Holden held up his hands placatingly, smiled, and kept walking. "Hey, I lost my group. Got mixed up somehow. I'm not from here, you know," he said.
The guard pointed down the corridor with the stun baton in his left hand.
"Go that way till you hit the ramps down," he said.
Miller seemed to appear out of nowhere in the dimly lit corridor, his gun already out and pointed at the guard's head. He thumbed off the safety with an audible click.
"How about we just join the group already inside?" he said. "Open it up."
The guard looked at Miller out of the corners of his eyes, not turning his head at all. His hands went up, and he dropped the baton.
"You don't want to do that, man," the fake cop said.
"I kind of think he does," Holden said. "You should do what he says. He's not a very nice person."
Miller pushed the barrel of his gun against the guard's head and said, "You know what we used to call a 'no-brainer' back at the station house? It's when a shot to the head actually blows the entire brain out of someone's skull. It usually happens when a gun is pressed to the victim's head right about here. The gas's got nowhere to go. Pops the brain right out through the exit wound."
"They said not to open these up once they'd been sealed, man," the guard said, speaking so fast he ran all the words together. "They were pretty serious about that."
"This is the last time I ask," Miller said. "Next time I just use the card I took off your body."
Holden turned the guard around to face the door and pulled the handgun out of the man's belt holster. He hoped all Miller's threats were just threats. He suspected they weren't.
"Just open the door, and we'll let you go, I promise," Holden said to the guard.
The guard nodded and moved up to the door, then slid his card through it and punched in a number on the keypad. The heavy blast door slid open. Beyond it, the room was even darker than the corridor outside. A few emergency LEDs glowed a sullen red. In the faint illumination, Holden could see dozens... hundreds of bodies scattered across the floor, unmoving.
"Are they dead?" Holden asked.
"I don't know nothing about - " the guard said, but Miller cut him off.
"You go in first," Miller said, and pushed the guard forward.
"Hold on," Holden said. "I don't think it's a good idea to just charge in here."
Three things happened at once. The guard took four steps forward and then collapsed on the floor. Miller sneezed once, loudly, and then started to sway drunkenly. And both Holden's and Miller's hand terminals began an angry electric buzzing.
Miller staggered back and said, "The door... "
Holden hit the button and the door slid shut again.
"Gas," Miller said, then coughed. "There's gas in there."
While the ex-cop leaned against the corridor wall and coughed, Holden took out his terminal to shut off the buzzing. But the alarm flashing on its screen wasn't an air-contamination alert. It was the venerable three wedge shapes pointing inward. Radiation. As he watched, the symbol, which should have been white, shifted through an angry orange color to dark red.
Miller was looking at his too, his expression unreadable.
"We've been dosed," Holden said.
"I've never actually seen the detector activate," Miller said, his voice rough and faint after his coughing fit. "What does it mean when the thing is red?"
"It means we'll be bleeding from our rectums in about six hours," Holden said. "We have to get to the ship. It'll have the meds we need."
"What," Miller said, "the fuck... is going on?"
Holden grabbed Miller by the arm and led him back down the corridor toward the ramps. Holden's skin felt warm and itchy. He didn't know if it was radiation burn or psychosomatic. With the amount of radiation he'd just taken, it was a good thing he had sperm tucked away in Montana and on Europa.
Thinking that made his balls itch.
"They nuke the station," Holden said. "Hell, maybe they just pretend to nuke it. Then they drag everyone down here and toss them into radiation shelters that are only radioactive on the inside. Gas them to keep them quiet."
"There are easier ways to kill people," Miller said, his breathing coming in ragged gasps as they ran down the corridor.
"So it has to be more than that," Holden said. "The bug, right? The one that killed that girl. It... fed on radiation."
"Incubators," Miller said, nodding in agreement.
They arrived at one of the ramps to the lower levels, but a group of citizens led by two fake riot cops were coming up. Holden grabbed Miller and pulled him to one side, where they could hide in the shadow of a closed noodle shop.
"So they infected them, right?" Holden said in a whisper, waiting for the group to pass. "Maybe fake radiation meds with the bug in it. Maybe that brown goo just spread around on the floor. Then whatever was in the girl, Julie - "
He stopped when Miller walked away from him straight at the group that had just come up the ramp.
"Officer," said Miller to one of the fake cops.
They both stopped, and one of them said, "You supposed to be - "
Miller shot him in the throat, right below his helmet's faceplate. Then he swiveled smoothly and shot the other guard in the inside of the thigh, just below the groin. When the man fell backward, yelling in pain, Miller walked up and shot him again, this time in the neck.
A couple of the citizens started screaming. Miller pointed his gun at them and they got quiet.
"Go down a level or two and find someplace to hide," he said. "Do not cooperate with these men, even though they're dressed like police. They do not have your best interests at heart. Go."
The citizens hesitated, then ran. Miller took a few cartridges out of his pocket and began replacing the three he'd fired. Holden started to speak, but Miller cut him off.
"Take the throat shot if you can. Most people, the faceplate and chest armor don't quite cover that gap. If the neck is covered, then shoot the inside of the thigh. Very thin armor there. Mobility issue. Takes most people down in one shot."
Holden nodded, as though that all made sense.
"Okay," Holden said. "Say, let's get back to the ship before we bleed to death, right? No more shooting people if we can help it." His voice sounded calmer than he felt.
Miller slapped the magazine back into his gun and chambered a round.
"I'm guessing there's a lot more people need to be shot before this is over," he said. "But sure. First things first."
