Miller chuckled. His monitors blinked into alarm mode and then back out.
“You sound like you trained as a med tech,” he said.
“Nope. Engineer. But I’ve been reading the printouts every day, so I’ve got the lingo down. I wish Shed was still here,” she said, and sounded sad for the first time.
That was the second time someone had mentioned Shed. There was a story there, but Miller let it drop.
“Hair going to fall out?” he asked.
“Maybe,” Naomi said. “The system shot you full of the drugs that are supposed to stop that, but if the follicles die, they die.”
“Well. Good thing I’ve still got my hat. What about Eros?”
Naomi’s false light tone failed her.
“It’s dead,” Holden said from his bed, turning to look at Miller. “I think we were the last ship out. The station isn’t answering calls, and all the automatic systems have it in a quarantine lockdown.”
“Rescue ships?” Miller asked, and coughed again. His throat was still sore.
“Not going to happen,” Naomi said. “There were a million and a half people on station. No one has the resources to put into that kind of rescue op.”
“After all,” Holden said, “there’s a war on.”
The ship system dimmed the lights for night. Miller lay on his bed. The expert system had shifted his treatment regimen into a new phase, and for the past three hours, he’d alternated between spiking fevers and teeth-chattering chills. His teeth and the nail beds of his fingers and toes ached. Sleep wasn’t an option, so he lay in the gloom and tried to pull himself together.
He wondered what his old partners would have made of his behavior on Eros. Havelock. Muss. He tried to imagine them in his place. He’d killed people, and he’d done it cold. Eros had been a kill box, and when the people in charge of the law wanted you dead, the law didn’t apply anymore. And some of the dead assholes had been the ones who’d killed Julie.
So. Revenge killing. Was he really down to revenge killing? That was a sad thought. He tried to imagine Julie sitting beside him the way Naomi had with Holden. It was like she’d been waiting for the invitation. Julie Mao, who he’d never really known. She raised a hand in greeting.
And what about us? he asked her as he looked into her dark, unreal eyes. Do I love you, or do I just want to love you so bad I can’t tell the difference?
“Hey, Miller,” Holden said, and Julie vanished. “You awake?”
“Yeah. Can’t sleep.”
“Me either.”
They were silent for a moment. The expert system hummed. Miller’s left arm itched under its cast as the tissue went through another round of forced regrowth.
“You doing okay?” Miller asked.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Holden said sharply.
“You killed that guy,” Miller said. “Back on the station. You shot him. I mean, I know you shot at guys before that. Back at the hotel. But right at the end there, you actually hit somebody in the face.”
“Yeah. I did.”
“You good with that?”
“Sure,” Holden said, too quickly.
The air recyclers hummed, and the blood pressure cuff on Miller’s good arm squeezed him like a hand. Holden didn’t speak, but when Miller squinted, he could see the elevated blood pressure and the uptick in brain activity.
“They always made us take time off,” Miller said.
“What?”
“When we shot someone. Whether they died or not, they always made us take a leave of absence. Turn in our weapon. Go talk to the headshrinker.”
“Bureaucrats,” Holden said.
“They had a point,” Miller said. “Shooting someone does something to you. Killing someone… that’s even worse. Doesn’t matter that they had it coming or you didn’t have a choice. Or maybe a little difference. But it doesn’t take it away.”
“Seems like you got over it, though.”
“Maybe,” Miller said. “Look. All that I said back there about how you kill someone? About how leaving them alive wasn’t doing them any favors? I’m sorry that happened.”
“You think you were wrong?”
“I wasn’t. But I’m still sorry it happened.”
“Okay.”
“Jesus. Look, I’m saying it’s good that it bothers you. It’s good that you can’t stop seeing it or hearing it. That part where it haunts you some? That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
Holden was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was gray as stone.
“I’ve killed people before, you know. But they were blips in a radar track. I—”
“It’s not the same, is it?” Miller said.
“No, it isn’t,” Holden replied. “Does this go away?”
Sometimes, Miller thought.
“No,” he said. “Not if you’ve still got a soul.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“One other thing?”
“Yeah?”
“I know it’s none of my business, but I really wouldn’t let her put you off. So you don’t understand sex and love and women. Just means you were born with a cock. And this girl? Naomi? She seems like she’s worth putting a little effort into it. You know?”
“Yeah,” Holden said. Then: “Can we never talk about that again?”
“Sure.”
The ship creaked and gravity shifted a degree to Miller’s right. Course correction. Nothing interesting. Miller closed his eyes and tried to will himself to sleep. His mind was full of dead men and Julie and love and sex. There was something Holden had said about the war that was important, but he couldn’t make the pieces fit. They kept changing. Miller sighed, shifted his weight so that he blocked one of his drainage tubes and had to shift back to stop the alarm.
When the blood pressure cuff fired off again, it was Julie holding him, pulling herself so close her lips brushed his ear. His eyes opened, his mind seeing both the imaginary girl and the monitors that she would have blocked if she’d really been there.
I love you too, she said, and I will take care of you.
He smiled at seeing the numbers change as his heart raced.
Chapter Thirty-Three: Holden
For five more days, Holden and Miller lay on their backs in sick bay while the solar system burned down around them. The reports of Eros’ death ran from massive ecological collapse brought about by war-related supply shortages, to covert Martian attack, to secret Belt bioweapon laboratory accident. Analysis from the inner planets had it that the OPA and terrorists like them had finally shown how dangerous they could be to innocent civilian populations. The Belt blamed Mars, or the maintenance crews of Eros, or the OPA for not stopping it.
And then a group of Martian frigates blockaded Pallas, a revolt on Ganymede ended in sixteen dead, and the new government of Ceres announced that all ships with Martian registry docked on station were being commandeered. The threats and accusations, all set to the constant human background noise of war drums, moved on. Eros had been a tragedy and a crime, but it was finished, and there were new dangers popping up in every corner of human space.
Holden turned off his newsfeed, fidgeted in his bunk, and tried to wake Miller up by staring at him. It didn’t work. The massive radiation exposure had failed to give him superpowers. Miller began to snore.
Holden sat up, testing the gravity. Less than a quarter g. Alex wasn’t in a hurry, then. Naomi was giving him and Miller time to heal before they arrived at Julie’s magical mystery asteroid.