“I’m such an idiot,” Holden said.
“Granted. Elaborate?”
Holden touched the screen and began scrolling up and down through the data. He tapped one long list of numbers and letters and leaned back with a grin.
“There, that’s it,” he said.
“That’s what?”
“Hull structure isn’t the only recognition metric. It’s the most accurate, but it’s also got the shortest range and”—he gestured around him at the Rocinante—“is the easiest to fool. The next best method is drive signature. Can’t mask your radiation and heat patterns. And they’re easy to spot even from really far away.”
Holden turned on the screen next to his chair and pulled up the ship’s friend/foe database, then linked it to the data on Naomi’s screen.
“That’s what this message is, Naomi. It’s telling Mars who killed the Donnager by showing them what the drive signature was.”
“Then why not just say, ‘So-and-so killed us,’ in a nice easy-to-read text file?” Naomi asked, a skeptical frown on her face.
Holden leaned forward and paused, opened his mouth, then closed it and sat back again with a sigh.
“I don’t know.”
A hatch banged open with a hydraulic whine; then Naomi looked past Holden to the ladder and said, “Miller’s coming up.”
Holden turned to watch the detective finish the slow climb up from the sick bay deck. He looked like a plucked chicken, pink-gray skin stippled with gooseflesh. His paper gown went poorly with the hat.
“Uh, there’s a lift,” Holden said.
“Wish I’d known that,” Miller replied, then dragged himself up onto the ops deck with a gasp. “We there yet?”
“Trying to figure out a mystery,” Holden said.
“I hate mysteries,” Miller said, then hauled himself to his feet and made his way to a chair.
“Then solve this one for us. You find out who murdered someone. You can’t arrest them yourself, so you send the information to your partner. But instead of just sending the perp’s name, you send your partner all the clues. Why?”
Miller coughed and scratched his chin. His eyes were fixed on something, like he was reading a screen Holden couldn’t see.
“Because I don’t trust myself. I want my partner to arrive at the same conclusion I did, without my biasing him. I give him the dots, see what it looks like when he connects ’em.”
“Especially if guessing wrong has consequences,” Naomi said.
“You don’t like to screw up a murder charge,” Miller said with a nod. “Looks unprofessional.”
Holden’s panel beeped at him.
“Shit, I know why they were careful,” he said after reading his screen. “The Roci thinks those were standard light-cruiser engines built by the Bush Shipyards.”
“They were Earth ships?” Naomi said. “But they weren’t flying any colors, and… Son of a bitch!”
It was the first time Holden had ever heard her yell, and he understood. If UNN black ops ships had killed the Donnager, then that meant Earth was behind the whole thing. Maybe even killing the Canterbury in the first place. It would mean that Martian warships were killing Belters for no reason. Belters like Naomi.
Holden leaned forward and called up the comm display, then tapped out a general broadcast. Miller caught his breath.
“That button you just pressed doesn’t do what I think it does, does it?” he said.
“I finished Kelly’s mission for him,” Holden said.
“I have no idea who the fuck Kelly is,” Miller said, “but please tell me that his mission wasn’t broadcasting that data to the solar system at large.”
“People need to know what’s going on,” Holden said.
“Yes, they do, but maybe we should actually know what the hell is going on before we tell them,” Miller replied, all the weariness gone from his voice. “How gullible are you?”
“Hey,” Holden said, but Miller got louder.
“You found a Martian battery, right? So you told everyone in the solar system about it and started the single largest war in human history. Only turns out the Martians maybe weren’t the ones that left it there. Then, a bunch of mystery ships kill the Donnager, which Mars blames on the Belt, only, dammit, the Belt didn’t even know it was capable of killing a Martian battle cruiser.”
Holden opened his mouth, but Miller grabbed a bulb of coffee Amos had left behind on the console and threw it at his head.
“Let me finish! And now you find some data that implicates Earth. First thing you do is blab it to the universe, so that Mars and the Belt drag Earth into this thing, making the largest war of all time even bigger. Are you seeing a pattern here?”
“Yes,” Naomi said.
“So what do you think’s going to happen?” Miller said. “This is how these people work! They made the Canterbury look like Mars. It wasn’t. They made the Donnager look like the Belt. It wasn’t. Now it looks like the whole damn thing’s Earth? Follow the pattern. It probably isn’t! You never, never put that kind of accusation out there until you know the score. You look. You listen. You’re quiet, fercrissakes, and when you know, then you can make your case.”
The detective sat back, clearly exhausted. He was sweating. The deck was silent.
“You done?” Holden said.
Miller nodded, breathing heavily. “Think I might have strained something.”
“I haven’t accused anyone of doing anything,” Holden said. “I’m not building a case. I just put the data out there. Now it’s not a secret. They’re doing something on Eros. They don’t want it interrupted. With Mars and the Belt shooting at each other, everyone with the resources to help is busy elsewhere.”
“And you just dragged Earth into it,” Miller said.
“Maybe,” Holden said. “But the killers did use ships that were built, at least in part, at Earth’s orbital shipyards. Maybe someone will look into that. And that’s the point. If everyone knows everything, nothing stays secret.”
“Yeah, well,” Miller said. Holden ignored him
“Eventually, someone’ll figure out the big picture. This kind of thing requires secrecy to function, so exposing all the secrets hurts them in the end. It’s the only way this really, permanently stops.”
Miller sighed, nodded to himself, took off his hat, and scratched his scalp.
“I was just going to put ’em out an airlock,” Miller said.
BA834024112 wasn’t much of an asteroid. Barely thirty meters across, it had long ago been surveyed and found completely devoid of useful or valuable minerals. It existed in the registry only to warn ships not to run into it. Julie had left it tethered to wealth measured in the billions when she flew her small shuttle to Eros.
Up close, the ship that had killed the Scopuli and stolen its crew looked like a shark. It was long and lean and utterly black, almost impossible to see against the backdrop of space with the naked eye. Its radar-deflecting curves gave it an aerodynamic look almost always lacking in space-going vessels. It made Holden’s skin crawl, but it was beautiful.
“Motherfucker,” Amos said under his breath as the crew clustered in the cockpit of the Rocinante to look at it.
“The Roci doesn’t even see it, Cap,” Alex said. “I’m pourin’ ladar into it, and all we see is a slightly warmer spot on the asteroid.”
“Like Becca saw just before the Cant died,” Naomi said.
“Her shuttle’s been launched, so I’m guessin’ this is the right stealth ship someone left tied to a rock,” Alex added. “Case there’s more than one.”