The Dragon's Path

  “Naomi, check Amos,” Holden croaked, his throat aching with the effort. “Alex, report.”

  “The Donnie went up behind us, Cap. Guess the marines didn’t hold. She’s gone,” Alex said in a subdued voice.

  “The six attacking ships?”

  “I haven’t seen any sign of them since the explosion. I’d guess they’re toast.”

  Holden nodded to himself. Summary roadside justice, indeed. Boarding a ship was one of the riskiest maneuvers in naval combat. It was basically a race between the boarders rushing to the engine room and the collective will of those who had their fingers on the self-destruct button. After even one look at Captain Yao, Holden could have told them who’d lose that race.

  Still. Someone had thought it was worth the risk.

  Holden pulled his straps off and floated over to Amos. Naomi had opened an emergency kit and was cutting the mechanic’s suit off with a pair of heavy scissors. The hole had been punched out by a jagged end of Amos’ broken tibia when the suit had pushed against it at twelve g.

  When she’d finished cutting the suit away, Naomi blanched at the mass of blood and gore that Amos’ lower leg had turned into.

  “What do we do?” Holden asked.

  Naomi just stared at him, then barked out a harsh laugh.

  “I have no idea,” she said.

  “But you—” Holden started. She talked right over him.

  “If he were made of metal, I’d just hammer him straight and then weld everything into place,” she said.

  “I—”

  “But he isn’t made out of ship parts,” she continued, her voice rising into a yell, “so why are you asking me what to do?”

  Holden held up his hands in a placating gesture.

  “Okay, got it. Let’s just stop the bleeding for now, all right?”

  “If Alex gets killed, are you going to ask me to fly the ship too?”

  Holden started to answer and then stopped. She was right. Whenever he didn’t know what to do, he handed off to Naomi. He’d been doing it for years. She was smart, capable, usually unflappable. She’d become a crutch, and she’d been through all the same trauma he had. If he didn’t start paying attention, he’d break her, and he needed not to do that.

  “You’re right. I’ll take care of Amos,” he said. “You go up and check on Kelly. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Naomi stared at him until her breathing slowed, then said, “Okay,” and headed to the crew ladder.

  Holden sprayed Amos’ leg with coagulant booster and wrapped it in gauze from the first aid kit. Then he called up the ship’s database on the wall terminal and did a search on compound fractures. He was reading it with growing dismay when Naomi called.

  “Kelly’s dead,” she said, her voice flat.

  Holden’s stomach dropped, and he gave himself three breaths to get the panic out of his voice.

  “Okay. I’ll need your help setting this bone. Come on back down. Alex? Give me half a g of thrust while we work on Amos.”

  “Any particular direction, Cap?” Alex asked.

  “I don’t care, just give me half a g and stay off the radio till I say so.”

  Naomi dropped back down the ladder well as the gravity started to come up.

  “It looks like every rib on the left side of Kelly’s body was broken,” she said. “Thrust g probably punctured all his organs.”

  “He had to know that was going to happen,” Holden said.

  “Yeah.”

  It was easy to make fun of the marines when they weren’t listening. In Holden’s navy days, making fun of jarheads was as natural as cussing. But four marines had died getting him off the Donnager, and three of them had made a conscious decision to do so. Holden promised himself that he’d never make fun of them again.

  “We need to pull the bone straight before we set it. Hold him still, and I’ll pull on his foot. Let me know when the bone has retracted and lined up again.”

  Naomi started to protest.

  “I know you’re not a doctor. Just best guess,” Holden said.

  It was one of the most horrible things Holden had ever done. Amos woke up screaming during the procedure. He had to pull the leg out twice, because the first time the bones didn’t line up, and when he let go, the jagged end of the tibia popped back out the hole in a spray of blood. Fortunately, Amos passed out after that and they were able to make the second attempt without the screaming. It seemed to work. Holden sprayed the wound down with antiseptics and coagulants. He stapled the hole closed and slapped a growth-stimulating bandage over it, then finished up with a quick-form air-cast and an antibiotic patch on the mechanic’s thigh.

  Afterward he collapsed onto the deck and gave in to the shakes. Naomi climbed into her couch and sobbed. It was the first time Holden had ever seen her cry.

  Holden, Alex, and Naomi floated in a loose triangle around the crash couch where Lieutenant Kelly’s body lay. Below, Amos was in a heavily sedated sleep. The Tachi drifted through space toward no particular destination. For the first time in a long time, no one followed.

  Holden knew the other two were waiting for him. Waiting to hear how he was going to save them. They looked at him expectantly. He tried to appear calm and thoughtful. Inside, he panicked. He had no idea where to go. No idea what to do. Ever since they’d found the Scopuli, everywhere that should have been safe had turned into a death trap. The Canterbury, the Donnager. Holden was terrified of going anywhere, for fear that it would be blown up moments later.

  Do something, a mentor of a decade earlier said to his young officers. It doesn’t have to be right, it just has to be something.

  “Someone is going to investigate what happened to the Donnager,” Holden said. “Martian ships are speeding to that spot as we speak. They’ll already know the Tachi got away, because our transponder is blabbing our survival to the solar system at large.”

  “No it ain’t,” Alex said.

  “Explain that, Mr. Kamal.”

  “This is a torpedo bomber. You think they want a nice transponder signal to lock on to when they’re makin’ runs on an enemy capital ship? Naw, there’s a handy switch up in the cockpit that says ‘transponder off.’ I flipped it before we flew out. We’re just another moving object out of a million like us.”

  Holden was silent for two long breaths.

  “Alex, that may be the single greatest thing anyone has ever done, in the history of the universe,” he said.

  “But we can’t land, Jim,” Naomi said. “One, no port is going to let a ship with no transponder signal anywhere near them, and two, as soon as they make us out visually, the fact that we’re a Martian warship will be hard to hide.”

  “Yep, that’s the downside,” Alex agreed.

  “Fred Johnson,” Holden said, “gave us the network address to get in touch with him. I’m thinking that the OPA might be the one group that would let us land our stolen Martian warship somewhere.”

  “It ain’t stolen,” Alex said. “It’s legitimate salvage now.”

  “Yeah, you make that argument to the MCRN if they catch us, but let’s try and make sure they don’t.”

  “So, we just wait here till Colonel Johnson gets back to us?” Alex asked.

  “No, I wait. You two prep Lieutenant Kelly for burial. Alex, you were MCRN. You know the traditions. Do it with full honors and record it in the log. He died to get us off that ship, and we’re going to accord him every respect. As soon as we land anywhere, we’ll bounce the full record to MCRN command so they can do it officially.”

  Alex nodded. “We’ll do it right, sir.”

  Fred Johnson replied to his message so fast that Holden wondered if he’d been sitting at his terminal waiting for it. Johnson’s message consisted only of coordinates and the word tightbeam. Holden aimed the laser array at the specified location—it was the same one Fred had beamed his first message from—then turned on his mic and said, “Fred?”

  The coordinates given were more than eleven light-mi
nutes away. Holden prepared to wait twenty-two minutes for his answer. Just to have something to do, he fed the location up to the cockpit and told Alex to fly in that direction at one g as soon as they’d finished with Lieutenant Kelly.

  Twenty minutes later the thrust came up and Naomi climbed the ladder. She’d stripped off her vacuum suit and was wearing a red Martian jumpsuit that was half a foot too short for her and three times too big around. Her hair and face looked clean.

  “This ship has a head with a shower. Can we keep it?” she said.

  “How’d it go?”

  “We took care of him. There’s a decent-sized cargo bay down by engineering. We put him there until we can find some way to send him home. I turned off the environment in there, so he’ll stay preserved.”

  She held out her hand and dropped a small black cube into his lap.

  “That was in a pocket under his armor,” she said.

  Holden held up the object. It looked like some sort of data-storage device.

  “Can you find out what’s on it?” he asked.

  “Sure. Give me some time.”

  “And Amos?”

  “Blood pressure’s steady,” Naomi said. “That’s got to be a good thing.”

  The comm console beeped at them, and Holden started the playback.

  “Jim, news of the Donnager has just started hitting the net. I admit I am extremely surprised to be hearing from you,” said Fred’s voice. “What can I do for you?”

  Holden paused a moment while he mentally prepared his response. Fred’s suspicion was palpable, but he’d sent Holden a keyword to use for exactly that reason.

  “Fred. While our enemies have become ubiquitous, our list of friends has grown kind of short. In fact, you’re pretty much it. I am in a stolen—”

  Alex cleared his throat.

  “A salvaged MCRN gunboat,” Holden went on. “I need a way to hide that fact. I need somewhere to go where they won’t just shoot me down for showing up. Help me do that.”

  It was half an hour before the reply came.

  “I’ve attached a datafile on a subchannel,” Fred said. “It’s got your new transponder code and directions on how to install it. The code will check out in all the registries. It’s legitimate. It’s also got coordinates that will get you to a safe harbor. I’ll meet you there. We have a lot to talk about.”

  “New transponder code?” Naomi said. “How does the OPA get new transponder codes?”

  “Hack the Earth-Mars Coalition’s security protocols or get a mole in the registry office,” Holden said. “Either way, I think we’re playing in the big league now.”

  Chapter Sixteen: Miller

  Miller watched the feed from Mars along with the rest of the station. The podium was draped in black, which was a bad sign. The single star and thirty stripes of the Martian Congressional Republic hung in the background not once, but eight times. That was worse.

  “This cannot happen without careful planning,” the Martian president said. “The information they sought to steal would have compromised Martian fleet security in a profound and fundamental way. They failed, but at the price of two thousand and eighty-six Martian lives. This aggression is something the Belt has been preparing for years at the least.”

  The Belt, Miller noticed. Not the OPA—the Belt.

  “In the week since first news of that attack, we have seen thirty incursions into the security radius of Martian ships and bases, including Pallas Station. If those refineries were to be lost, the economy of Mars could suffer irreversible damage. In the face of an armed, organized guerrilla force, we have no choice but to enforce a military cordon on the stations, bases, and ships of the Belt. Congress has delivered new orders to all naval elements not presently involved in active Coalition duty, and it is our hope that our brothers and sisters of Earth will approve joint Coalition maneuvers with the greatest possible speed.

  “The new mandate of the Martian navy is to secure the safety of all honest citizens, to dismantle the infrastructures of evil presently hiding in the Belt, and bring to justice those responsible for these attacks. I am pleased to say that our initial actions have resulted in the destruction of eighteen illegal warships and—”

  Miller turned off the feed. That was it, then. The secret war was out of the closet. Papa Mao had been right to want Julie out, but it was too late. His darling daughter was going to have to take her chances, just like everyone else.

  At the very least, it was going to mean curfews and personnel tracking all through Ceres Station. Officially, the station was neutral. The OPA didn’t own it or anything else. And Star Helix was an Earth corporation, not under contractual or treaty obligation to Mars. At best, Mars and the OPA would keep their fight outside the station. At worst, there would more riots on Ceres. More death.

  No, that wasn’t true. At worst, Mars or the OPA would make a statement by throwing a rock or a handful of nuclear warheads at the station. Or by blowing a fusion drive on a docked ship. If things got out of hand, it would mean six or seven million dead people and the end of everything Miller had ever known.

  Odd that it should feel almost like relief.

  For weeks, Miller had known. Everyone had known. But it hadn’t actually happened, so every conversation, every joke, every chance interaction and semi-anonymous nod and polite moment of light banter on the tube had seemed like an evasion. He couldn’t fix the cancer of war, couldn’t even slow down the spread, but at least he could admit it was happening. He stretched, ate his last bite of fungal curds, drank the dregs of something not entirely unlike coffee, and headed out to keep peace in wartime.

  Muss greeted him with a vague nod when he got to the station house. The board was filled with cases—crimes to be investigated, documented, and dismissed. Twice as many entries as the day before.

  “Bad night,” Miller said.

  “Could be worse,” Muss said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Star Helix could be a Mars corporation. As long as Earth stays neutral, we don’t have to actually be the Gestapo.”

  “And how long you figure that’ll last?”

  “What time is it?” she asked. “Tell you what, though. When it does come down, I need to make a stop up toward the core. There was this one guy back when I was rape squad we could never quite nail.”

  “Why wait?” Miller asked. “We could go up, put a bullet in him, be back by lunch.”

  “Yeah, but you know how it is,” she said. “Trying to stay professional. Anyway, if we did that, we’d have to investigate it, and there’s no room on the board.”

  Miller sat at his desk. It was just shoptalk. The kind of over-the-top deadpan you did when your day was filled with underage whores and tainted drugs. And still, there was a tension in the station. It was in the way people laughed, the way they held themselves. There were more holsters visible than usual, as if by showing their weapons they might be made safe.

  “You think it’s the OPA?” Muss asked. Her voice was lower now.

  “That killed the Donnager, you mean? Who else could? Plus which, they’re taking credit for it.”

  “Some of them are. From what I heard, there’s more than one OPA these days. The old-school guys don’t know a goddamn thing about any of this. All shitting their pants and trying to track down the pirate casts that are claiming credit.”

  “So they can do what?” Miller asked. “You can shut down every loudmouth caster in the Belt, it won’t change a thing.”

  “If there’s a schism in the OPA, though… ” Muss looked at the board.

  If there was a schism within the OPA, the board as they saw it now was nothing. Miller had lived through two major gang wars. First when the Loca Greiga displaced and destroyed the Aryan Flyers, and then when the Golden Bough split. The OPA was bigger, and meaner, and more professional than any of them. That would be civil war in the Belt.

  “Might not happen,” Miller said.

  Shaddid stepped out of her office, her gaze sweeping the station h
ouse. Conversations dimmed. Shaddid caught Miller’s eye. She made a sharp gesture. Get in the office.

  “Busted,” Muss said.

  In the office, Anderson Dawes sat at ease on one of the chairs. Miller felt his body twitch as that information fell into place. Mars and the Belt in open, armed conflict. The OPA’s face on Ceres sitting with the captain of the security force.

  So that’s how it is, he thought.

  “You’re working the Mao job,” Shaddid said as she took her seat. Miller hadn’t been offered the option of sitting, so he clasped his hands behind him.

  “You assigned it to me,” he said.

  “And I told you it wasn’t a priority,” she said.

  “I disagreed,” Miller said.

  Dawes smiled. It was a surprisingly warm expression, especially compared to Shaddid’s.

  “Detective Miller,” Dawes said. “You don’t understand what’s happening here. We are sitting on a pressure vessel, and you keep swinging a pickax at it. You need to stop that.”

  “You’re off the Mao case,” Shaddid said. “Do you understand that? I am officially removing you from that investigation as of right now. Any further investigation you do, I will have you disciplined for working outside your caseload and misappropriating Star Helix resources. You will return any material on the case to me. You will wipe any data you have in your personal partition. And you’ll do it before the end of shift.”

  Miller’s brain spun, but he kept his face impassive. She was taking Julie away. He wasn’t going to let her. That was a given. But it wasn’t the first issue.

  “I have some inquiries in process… ” he began.

  “No, you don’t,” Shaddid said. “Your little letter to the parents was a breach of policy. Any contact with the shareholders should have come through me.”

  “You’re telling me it didn’t go out,” Miller said. Meaning You’ve been monitoring me.

  “It did not,” Shaddid said. Yes, I have. What are you going to do about it?