Tycho Station, the Belt headquarters of the company, was a massive ring station built around a sphere half a kilometer across, with more than sixty-five million cubic meters of manufacturing and storage space inside. The two counter-rotating habitation rings that circled the sphere had enough space for fifteen thousand workers and their families. The top of the manufacturing sphere was festooned with half a dozen massive construction waldoes that looked like they could rip a heavy freighter in half. The bottom of the sphere had a bulbous projection fifty meters across, which housed a capital-ship-class fusion reactor and drive system, making Tycho Station the largest mobile construction platform in the solar system. Each compartment within the massive rings was built on a swivel system that allowed the chambers to reorient to thrust gravity when the rings stopped spinning and the station flew to its next work location.
Holden knew all this, and his first sight of the station still took his breath away. It wasn’t just the size of it. It was the idea that four generations of the smartest people in the solar system had been living and working here as they helped drag humanity into the outer planets almost through sheer force of will.
Amos said, “It looks like a big bug.”
Holden started to protest, but it did resemble some kind of giant spider: fat bulbous body and all its legs sprouting from the top of its head.
Alex said, “Forget the station, look at thatmonster.”
The vessel it was constructing dwarfed the station. Ladar returns told Holden the ship was just over two kilometers long and half a kilometer wide. Round and stubby, it looked like a cigarette butt made of steel. Framework girders exposed internal compartments and machinery at various stages of construction, but the engines looked complete, and the hull had been assembled over the bow. The name Nauvoowas painted in massive white letters across it.
“So the Mormons are going to ride that thing all the way to Tau Ceti, huh?” Amos asked, following it up with a long whistle. “Ballsy bastards. No guarantee there’s even a planet worth a damn on the other end of that hundred-year trip.”
“They seem pretty sure,” Holden replied. “And you don’t make the money to build a ship like that by being stupid. I, for one, wish them nothing but luck.”
“They’ll get the stars,” Naomi said. “How can you not envy them that?”
“Their great-grandkids’ll get maybe astar if they don’t all starve to death orbiting a rock they can’t use,” Amos said. “Let’s not get grandiose here.”
He pointed at the impressively large comm array jutting from the Nauvoo’s flank.
“Want to bet that’s what threw our anus-sized tightbeam message?” Amos said.
Alex nodded. “If you want to send private messages home from a couple light-years away, you need serious beam coherence. They probably had the volume turned down to avoid cuttin’ a hole in us.”
Holden got up from the copilot’s couch and pushed past Amos.
“Alex, see if they’ll let us land.”
Landing was surprisingly easy. The station control directed them to a docking port on the side of the sphere and stayed on the line, guiding them in, until Alex had married the docking tube to the airlock door. The tower control never pointed out that they had a lot of armaments for a transport and no tanks for carrying compressed gas. She got them docked, then wished them a pleasant day.
Holden put on his atmosphere suit and made a quick trip to the cargo bay, then met the others just inside the Rocinante’s inner airlock door with a large duffel.
“Put your suits on, that’s now standard ops for this crew anytime we go someplace new. And take one of these,” he said, pulling handguns and cartridge magazines from the bag. “Hide it in a pocket or your bag if you like, but I will be wearing mine openly.”
Naomi frowned at him.
“Seems a bit… confrontational, doesn’t it?”
“I’m tired of being kicked around,” Holden said. “The Roci’s a good start toward independence, and I’m taking a little piece of her with me. Call it a good luck charm.”
“Fuckin’ A,” said Amos, and strapped one of the guns to his thigh.
Alex stuffed his into the pocket of his flight suit. Naomi wrinkled her nose and waved off the last gun. Holden put it back into his duffel, led the crew into the Rocinante’s airlock, and cycled it. An older, dark-skinned man with a heavy build waited for them on the other side. As they came in, he smiled.
“Welcome to Tycho Station,” said the Butcher of Anderson Station. “Call me Fred.”
Chapter Eighteen: Miller
The death of the Donnagerhit Ceres like a hammer striking a gong. Newsfeeds clogged themselves with high-power telescopic footage of the battle, most if not all of it faked. The Belt chatter swam with speculation about a secret OPA fleet. The six ships that had taken down the Martian flagship were hailed as heroes and martyrs. Slogans like We did it once and we can do it againand Drop some rockscropped up even in apparently innocuous settings.
The Canterburyhad stripped away the complacency of the Belt, but the Donnagerhad done something worse. It had taken away the fear. The Belters had gotten a sudden, decisive, and unexpected win. Anything seemed possible, and the hope seduced them.
It would have scared Miller more if he’d been sober.
Miller’s alarm had been going off for the past ten minutes. The grating buzz took on subtones and overtones when he listened to it long enough. A constant rising tone, fluttering percussion throbbing under it, even soft music hiding underneath the blare. Illusions. Aural hallucinations. The voice of the whirlwind.
The previous night’s bottle of fungal faux bourbon sat on the bedside table where a carafe of water usually waited. It still had a couple fingers at the bottom. Miller considered the soft brown of the liquid, thought about how it would feel on his tongue.
The beautiful thing about losing your illusions, he thought, was that you got to stop pretending. All the years he’d told himself that he was respected, that he was good at his job, that all his sacrifices had been made for a reason fell away and left him with the clear, unmuddied knowledge that he was a functional alcoholic who had pared away everything good in his own life to make room for anesthetic. Shaddid thought he was a joke. Muss thought he was the price she paid not to sleep with someone she didn’t like. The only one who might have any respect for him at all was Havelock, an Earther. It was peaceful, in its way. He could stop making the effort to keep up appearances. If he stayed in bed listening to the alarm drone, he was just living up to expectations. No shame in that.
And still there was work to be done. He reached over and turned off the alarm. Just before it cut off, he heard a voice in it, soft but insistent. A woman’s voice. He didn’t know what she’d been saying. But since she was just in his head, she’d get another chance later.
He levered himself out of bed, sucked down some painkillers and rehydration goo, stalked to the shower, and burned a day and a half’s ration of hot water just standing there, watching his legs get pink. He dressed in his last set of clean clothes. Breakfast was a bar of pressed yeast and grape sweetener. He dropped the bourbon from the bedside table into the recycler without finishing it, just to prove to himself that he still could.
Muss was waiting at the desk. She looked up when he sat.
“Still waiting for the labs on the rape up on eighteen,” she said. “They promised them by lunch.”
“We’ll see,” Miller said.
“I’ve got a possible witness. Girl who was with the vic earlier in the evening. Her deposition said she left before anything happened, but the security cameras aren’t backing her up.”