The Dragon's Path

“Eros just disappeared off the radar,” Alex was saying, but Holden was already punching up the sensor suite to check for himself. His telescopes showed the rock still moving on its new course toward the sun. Thermal imaging showed it as slightly warmer than space. The weird feed of voices and madness that had been leaking out of the station was still detectable, if faint. But radar said there was nothing there.

  Magic, a small voice at the back of his mind said again.

  No, not magic. Humans had stealth ships too. It was just a matter of absorbing the radar’s energy rather than reflecting it. But suddenly, keeping the asteroid in visual range became all the more important. Eros had shown that it could move fast and maneuver wildly, and it was now invisible to radar. It was entirely possible that a mountain-sized rock could disappear completely.

  Gravity began to pile up as the Roci chased Eros toward the sun.

  “Naomi?”

  She looked up at him. The fear was still in her eyes, but she was holding it together. For now.

  “Jim?”

  “The comm? Could you…?”

  The chagrin on her face was the most reassuring thing he’d seen in hours. She shifted control to his station, and he opened a connection request.

  “UNN corvette, this is the Rocinante, please respond.”

  “Go ahead, Rocinante,” the other ship said after half a minute of static.

  “Calling to confirm our sensor data,” Holden said, then transmitted the data regarding Eros’ movement. “You guys seeing the same thing?”

  Another delay, this one longer.

  “Roger that, Rocinante.”

  “I know we were just about to shoot each other and all, but I think we’re a little past that now,” Holden said. “Anyway, we’re chasing the rock. If we lose sight of it, we might never find it again. Want to come with? Might be nice to have some backup if it decides to shoot at us or something.”

  Another delay, this one almost two minutes long; then a different voice came on the line. Older, female, and totally lacking the arrogance and anger of the young male voice he’d been dealing with so far.

  “Rocinante, this is Captain McBride of the UNN Escort Vessel Ravi.” Ah, thought Holden. I’ve been talking to the first officer all along. The captain finally took the horn. That might be a good sign. “I’ve sent word to fleet command, but it’s a twenty-three minute lag right now, and that rock’s putting on speed. You have a plan?”

  “Not really, Ravi. Just follow and gather intel until we find an opportunity to do something that makes a difference. But if you came along, maybe none of your people will shoot at us accidentally while we figure it out.”

  There was a long pause. Holden knew that the captain of the Ravi was weighing the chance that he was telling the truth against the threat he’d made against their science vessel. What if he was in on whatever was happening? He’d be wondering the same thing in their position.

  “Look,” he said. “I’ve told you my name. James Holden. I served as a lieutenant in the UNN. My records should be on file. It’ll show a dishonorable discharge, but they’ll also show that my family lives in Montana. I don’t want that rock to hit Earth any more than you do.”

  The silence on the other end continued for another few minutes.

  “Captain,” she said, “I believe my superiors would want me to keep an eye on you. We’ll be coming along for the ride while the brains figure this out.”

  Holden let out a long, noisy exhale.

  “Thanks for that, McBride. Keep trying to get your people on the line. I’m going to make a few calls myself. Two corvettes are not going to fix this problem.”

  “Roger that,” the Ravi replied, then killed the connection.

  “I’ve opened a connection with Tycho,” Naomi said.

  Holden leaned back in his chair, the mounting gravity of their acceleration pressing against him. A watery lump was gathering low in his gut, the loose knot telling him that he had no idea what he was doing, that all the best plans had failed, and that the end was near. The brief hope he’d felt was already starting to slip away.

  How can you be so calm?

  I think I’m watching the end of the human race, Holden thought. I’m calling Fred so that it isn’t my fault when no one has an idea how to stop it. Of course I’m not calm.

  I’m just spreading the guilt.

  “How fast?” Fred Johnson asked incredulously.

  “Four g’s now and climbing,” Holden replied, his voice thick as his throat compressed. “Oh, and it’s invisible to radar now.”

  “Four g. Do you know how heavy Eros is?”

  “There’s, uh, been some discussion,” Holden said, only the acceleration keeping his impatience from showing in his voice. “The question is, now what? The Nauvoo missed. Our plans are shot to shit.”

  There was another perceptible increase in pressure as Alex sped the ship up to keep up with Eros. A little while longer and speech wouldn’t be possible.

  “It’s definitely headed for Earth?” Fred asked.

  “Alex and Naomi are ninety percent or so. Hard to be totally accurate when we can only use visual data. But I trust them. I’d go to where there are thirty billion new hosts too.”

  Thirty billion new hosts. Eight of whom were his parents. He imagined Father Tom as a bundle of tubes oozing brown goo. Mother Elise as a rib cage dragging itself across the floor with one skeletal arm. And with that much biomass, what could it do then? Move Earth? Turn out the sun?

  “Have to warn them,” Holden said, trying not to strangle on his own tongue as he spoke.

  “You don’t think they know?”

  “They see a threat. They may not see the end of all native life in the solar system,” Holden said. “You wanted a reason to sit at the table? How about this one: Come together or die.”

  Fred was quiet for a moment. Background radiation spoke to Holden in mystic whispers full of dire portents while he waited. Newcomer, it said. Hang around for fourteen billion years or so. See what I’ve seen. Then all this nonsense won’t seem so important.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Fred said, interrupting the universe’s lecture on transience. “In the meantime, what are you going to do?”

  Get outrun by a rock and then watch the cradle of humanity die.

  “I’m open to suggestions,” Holden said.

  “Maybe you could detonate some of the surface nukes the demo team put down. Deflect Eros’ course. Buy us time.”

  “They’re on proximity fuses. Can’t set them off,” Holden said, the last word turning into a yelp as his chair stabbed him in a dozen different places and injected him full of fire. Alex had hit them with the juice, which meant Eros was still speeding up, and he was worried they’d all black out. How fast was it going to go? Even on the juice they couldn’t sustain prolonged acceleration past seven or eight g without serious risk. If Eros kept this rate of increase up, it would outrun them.

  “You can remote detonate,” Fred said. “Miller will have the codes. Have the demo team calculate which ones to set off for maximum effect.”

  “Roger that,” Holden said. “I’ll give Miller a call.”

  “I’ll work on the inners,” Fred said, using the Belter slang without a hint of self-consciousness. “See what I can do.”

  Holden broke the connection, then linked up to Miller’s ship.

  “Yo,” said whoever was manning the radio there.

  “This is Holden, on the Rocinante. Give me Miller.”

  “Uh… ” said the voice. “Okay.”

  There was a click, then static, then Miller saying hello with a faint echo. Still wearing his helmet, then.

  “Miller, this is Holden. We need to talk about what just happened.”

  “Eros moved.”

  Miller sounded strange, his voice distant, as though he was only barely paying attention to the conversation. Holden felt a flush of irritation but tamped it back down. He needed Miller right now, whether he wanted to or not.

  ??
?Look,” he said. “I’ve talked to Fred and he wants us to coordinate with your demo guys. You’ve got remote codes. If we set off all of them on one side, we can deflect its course. Get your techs on the line, and we’ll work it out.”

  “Huh, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I’ll send the codes along,” said Miller, his voice no longer distant, but holding back a laugh. Like a man about to tell the punch line of a really good joke. “But I can’t really help you with the techs.”

  “Shit, Miller, you pissed those people off, too?”

  Miller did laugh now, a free, soft sound that someone who wasn’t piling on g could afford. If there was a punch line, Holden had missed it.

  “Yeah,” Miller said. “Probably. But that’s not why I can’t get them for you. I’m not on the ship with them.”

  “What?”

  “I’m still on Eros.”

  Chapter Fifty: Miller

  What do you mean you’re on Eros?” Holden said.

  “Pretty much that,” Miller said, covering his growing sense of shame with a casual tone of voice. “Hanging upside down outside the tertiary docks, where we moored one of the ships. Feel like a freaking bat.”

  “But—”

  “Funny thing, too. I didn’t feel it when the thing moved. You’d think accelerating like that, it would have thrown me off or squashed me flat, one or the other. But there was nothing.”

  “Okay, hold on. We’re coming to get you.”

  “Holden,” Miller said. “Just stop it, all right?”

  The silence didn’t last more than a dozen seconds, but it carried a wealth of meaning. It’s not safe to bring the Rocinante to Eros, and I came here to die, and Don’t make this harder than it is.

  “Yeah, I just… ” Holden said. And then: “Okay. Let me… let me coordinate with the technicians. I’ll… Jesus. I’ll let you know what they say.”

  “One thing, though,” Miller said. “You’re talking about deflecting this sonofabitch? Just keep in mind it’s not a rock anymore. It’s a ship.”

  “Right,” Holden said. And a moment later: “Okay.”

  The connection dropped with a tick. Miller checked his oxygen supply. Three hours in-suit, but he could head back to his little ship and refill it well before that. So Eros was moving, was it? He still didn’t feel it, but watching the curved surface of the asteroid, he could see micro-asteroids, all coming from the same direction, bouncing off. If the station kept accelerating, they’d start coming more often, more powerfully. He’d need to stay in the ship.

  He turned his hand terminal back to the Eros feed. The station beneath him was chirping and muttering, long slow vowel sounds radiating out from it like recorded whale song. After the angry words and static, the voice of Eros sounded peaceful. He wondered what kind of music Diogo’s friends would be making out of this. Slow dancing didn’t seem like their style. An annoying itch settled in the small of his back, and he shifted in his suit, trying to rub it away. Almost without his noticing it, he grinned. And then laughed. A wave of euphoria passed into him.

  There was alien life in the universe, and he was riding on it like a tick on a dog. Eros Station had moved of its own free will and by mechanisms he couldn’t begin to imagine. He didn’t know how many years it had been since he’d been overwhelmed by awe. He’d forgotten the feeling. He raised his arms to his sides, reaching out as if he could embrace the endless dark vacuum below him.

  Then, with a sigh, he turned back toward the ship.

  Back in the protective shell, he took off the vac suit and hooked the air supply to the recyclers to charge up. With only one person to care for, even low-level life support would have it ready to go within the hour. The ship batteries were still almost fully charged. His hand terminal chimed twice, reminding him that it was once again time for the anti-cancer meds. The ones he’d earned the last time he’d been on Eros. The ones he’d be on for the rest of his life. Good joke.

  The fusion bombs were in the ship’s cargo hold: gray square boxes about half again as long as they were tall, like bricks in a mortar of pink adhesive foam. It took Miller twenty minutes of searching through storage lockers to find a can of solvent that still had charge in it. The thin spray from it smelled like ozone and oil, and the stiff pink foam melted under it. Miller squatted beside the bombs and ate a ration bar that tasted convincingly like apples. Julie sat beside him, her head resting weightlessly on his shoulder.

  There had been a few times that Miller had flirted with faith. Most had been when he was young and trying out everything. Then when he was older, wiser, more worn, and in the crushing pain of the divorce. He understood the longing for a greater being, a huge and compassionate intelligence that could see everything from a perspective that dissolved the pettiness and evil and made everything all right. He still felt that longing. He just couldn’t convince himself it was true.

  And still, maybe there was something like a plan. Maybe the universe had put him in the right place at the right time to do the thing that no one else would do. Maybe all the pain and suffering he’d been through, all the disappointments and soul-crushing years wallowing through the worst that humanity had to offer up, had been meant to bring him here, to this moment, when he was ready to die if it bought humanity a little time.

  It would be pretty to think so, Julie said in his mind.

  “It would,” he agreed with a sigh. At the sound of his voice, the vision of her vanished, just another daydream.

  The bombs were heavier than he’d remembered. Under a full g, he wouldn’t have been able to move them. At only one-third, it was a struggle, but possible. An agonizing centimeter at a time, he dragged one of them onto a handcart and hauled it to the airlock. Eros, above him, sang to itself.

  He had to rest before he tackled the hard work. The airlock was thin enough that only the bomb or he could fit through at a time. He climbed on top of it to get out the outer airlock door, then had to lift the bomb out with straps he rigged from cargo netting. And once out, it had to be tethered to the ship with magnetic clamps to keep Eros’ spin from slinging it out into the void. After he’d pulled it out and strapped it to the cart, he stopped to rest for half an hour.

  There were more impacts now, a rough sign that Eros was indeed accelerating. Each one a rifle shot, capable of bouncing clean through him or the ship behind him if bad luck sent it in the right direction. But the odds were low of one of the occasional rocks lining up a killing shot with his tiny antlike figure crawling across the surface. Once Eros cleared the Belt, they’d stop, anyway. Was Eros leaving the Belt? He realized he had no idea where Eros was going. He’d assumed it was Earth. Holden would know by now, probably.

  His shoulders ached a little from his efforts, but not badly. He worried that he’d overloaded the cart. Its wheels were stronger than his mag boots, but they could still be overcome. The asteroid above him lurched once, a new and unsettling motion that didn’t repeat. His hand terminal cut off the Eros feed, alerting him that he had an incoming connection. He looked at it, shrugged, and let the call come through.

  “Naomi,” he said before she could speak. “How’ve you been doing?”

  “Hey,” she said.

  The silence between them stretched.

  “You talked to Holden, then?”

  “I did,” she said. “He’s still talking about ways to get you off that thing.”

  “He’s a good guy,” Miller said. “Talk him out of it for me, okay?”

  The silence hung long enough that Miller started to get uncomfortable.

  “What are you doing there?” she asked. As if there were an answer for that. As if all his life could be summarized in answer to one simple question. He danced around what she meant and replied only to what she’d said.

  “Well, I’ve got a nuclear bomb strapped to a cargo wagon. I’m hauling it over to the access hatch and taking it into station.”

  “Miller—”

  “The thing is, we were treating this like a rock. Now everyone knows t
hat’s a little simplistic, but it’s going to take people time to adjust. Navies are still going to be thinking of this thing like a billiard ball when it’s really a rat.”

  He was talking too fast. The words spilling out of him in a rush. If he didn’t give her room, she wouldn’t talk. He wouldn’t have to hear what she had to say. He wouldn’t have to keep her from talking him down.

  “It’s going to have structure. Engines or control centers. Something. If I truck this thing inside, get it close to whatever coordinates the thing, I can break it. Turn it back into a billiard ball. Even if it’s just for a little while, that gives the rest of you a chance.”

  “I figured,” she said. “It makes sense. It’s the right thing to do.”

  Miller chuckled. A particularly solid impact tocked against the ship beneath him, the vibration of it jarring his bones. Gas started venting out of the new hole. The station was moving faster.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Well.”

  “I was talking to Amos,” she said. “You need a dead man’s switch. So that if something happens, the bomb still goes off. If you have the access codes…?”

  “I do.”

  “Good. I’ve got a routine you can put on your hand terminal. You’ll need to keep your finger on the select button. If you go away for five seconds, it sends the go signal. If you want, I can upload it to you.”

  “So I have to wander around the station with my finger mashed on a button?”

  Naomi’s tone made it an apology. “They might take you out with a head shot. Or wrestle you down. The longer the gap, the more chance for the protomolecule to disable the bomb before it goes off. If you need more, I can reprogram it.”

  Miller looked at the bomb resting on its cart just outside the ship’s airlock. Its readouts all glowed green and gold. His sigh briefly fogged the inside of his helmet.

  “Yeah, no. Five is good. Upload the routine. Am I going to need to tweak it, or is there a simple place I can put the arm-and-fire string?”

  “There’s a setup section,” Naomi said. “It prompts you.”

  The hand terminal chirped, announcing the new file. Miller accepted it, ran it. It was easy as keying in a door code. Somehow he felt that arming fusion bombs to detonate around him should have been more difficult.