The Dragon's Path

by Daniel Abraham

  Twenty minutes later, an older man in a good suit came through the front door, stopped in front of Miller, and looked him up and down.

  “Detective Miller?” the man said.

  “You’d be Dowd’s lawyer,” Miller said cheerfully.

  “I am, and I would like to—”

  “Really,” Miller said. “We should do this now.”

  The office was clean and spare with light blue walls that lit themselves from within. Dowd sat at the table. He was young enough that he still looked arrogant, but old enough to be scared. Miller nodded to him.

  “You’re Immanuel Corvus Dowd?” he said.

  “Before you continue, Detective,” the lawyer said, “my client is involved with very high-level negotiations. His client base includes some of the most important people in the war effort. Before you make any accusations, you should be aware that I can and will have everything you’ve done reviewed, and if there is one mistake, you will be held responsible.”

  “Mr. Dowd,” Miller said. “What I am about to do to you is literally the only bright spot in my day. If you could see your way clear to resisting arrest, I’d really appreciate it.”

  “Harry?” Dowd said, looking to his lawyer. His voice cracked a little.

  The lawyer shook his head.

  Back at the police cart, Miller took a long moment. Dowd, handcuffed in the back, where everyone walking by could see him, was silent. Miller pulled up his hand terminal, noted the time of arrest, the objections of the lawyer, and a few other minor comments. A young woman in professional dress of cream-colored linen hesitated at the door of the accountancy. Miller didn’t recognize her; she was no one involved with the rape case, or at least not the one he was working. Her face had the expressionless calm of a fighter. He turned, craning his neck to look at Dowd, humiliated and not looking back. The woman shifted her gaze to Miller. She nodded once. Thank you.

  He nodded back. Just doing my job.

  She went through the door.

  Two hours later, Miller finished the last of the paperwork and sent Dowd off to the cells.

  Three and a half hours later, the first of his docking log requests came in.

  Five hours later, the government of Ceres collapsed.

  Despite being full, the station house was silent. Detectives and junior investigators, patrolmen and desk workers, the high and the low, they all gathered before Shaddid. She stood at her podium, her hair pulled back tight. She wore her Star Helix uniform, but the insignia had been removed. Her voice was shaky.

  “You’ve all heard this by now, but starting now, it’s official. The United Nations, responding to requests from Mars, is withdrawing from its oversight and… protection of Ceres Station. This is a peaceful transition. This is not a coup. I’m going to say that again. This isn’t a coup. Earth is pulling out of here, we aren’t pushing.”

  “That’s bullshit, sir,” someone shouted. Shaddid raised her hand.

  “There’s a lot of loose talk,” Shaddid said. “I don’t want to hear any of it from you. The governor’s going to make the formal announcement at the start of the next shift, and we’ll get more details then. Until we hear otherwise, the Star Helix contract is still in place. A provisional government is being formed with members drawn from local business and union representation. We are still the law on Ceres, and I expect you to behave appropriately. You will all be here for your shifts. You will be here on time. You will act professionally and within the scope of standard practice.”

  Miller looked over at Muss. His partner’s hair was still unkempt from the pillow. It was pushing midnight for them both.

  “Any questions?” Shaddid said in a voice that implied there ought not be.

  Who’s going to pay Star Helix? Miller thought. What laws are we enforcing? What does Earth know that makes walking away from the biggest port in the Belt the smart move?

  Who’s going to negotiate your peace treaty now?

  Muss, seeing Miller’s gaze, smiled.

  “Guess we’re hosed,” Miller said.

  “Had to happen,” Muss agreed. “I better go. Got a stop to make.”

  “Up at the core?”

  Muss didn’t answer, because she didn’t have to. Ceres didn’t have laws. It had police. Miller headed back to his hole. The station hummed, the stone beneath him vibrating from the countless docking clamps and reactor cores, tubes and recyclers and pneumatics. The stone was alive, and he’d forgotten the small signs that proved it. Six million people lived here, breathed this air. Fewer than in a middle-sized city on Earth. He wondered if they were expendable.

  Had it really gone so far that the inner planets would be willing to lose a major station? It seemed like it had if Earth was abandoning Ceres. The OPA would step in, whether it wanted to or not. The power vacuum was too great. Then Mars would call it an OPA coup. Then… Then what? Board it and put it under martial law? That was the good answer. Nuke it into dust? He couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that either. There was just too much money involved. Docking fees alone would fuel a small national economy. And Shaddid and Dawes—much as he hated it—were right. Ceres under Earth contract had been the best hope for a negotiated peace.

  Was there someone on Earth who didn’t want that peace? Someone or something powerful enough to move the glacial bureaucracy of the United Nations to take action?

  “What am I looking at, Julie?” he said to the empty air. “What did you see out there that’s worth Mars and the Belt killing each other?”

  The station hummed to itself, a quiet, constant sound too soft for him to hear the voices within it.

  Muss didn’t come to work in the morning, but there was a message on his system telling him she’d be in late. “Cleanup” was her only explanation.

  To look at it, nothing about the station house had changed. The same people coming to the same place to do the same thing. No, that wasn’t true. The energy was high. People were smiling, laughing, clowning around. It was a manic high, panic pressed through a cheesecloth mask of normalcy. It wasn’t going to last.

  They were all that separated Ceres from anarchy. They were the law, and the difference between the survival of six million people and some mad bastard forcing open all the airlocks or poisoning the recyclers rested on maybe thirty thousand people. People like him. Maybe he should have rallied, risen to the occasion like the rest of them. The truth was the thought made him tired.

  Shaddid marched by and tapped him on the shoulder. He sighed, rose from his chair, and followed her. Dawes was in her office again, looking shaken and sleep deprived. Miller nodded to him. Shaddid crossed her arms, her eyes softer and less accusing than he’d become used to.

  “This is going to be tough,” she said. “We’re facing something harder than anything we’ve had to do before. I need a team I can trust with my life. Extraordinary circumstances. You understand that?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I got it. I’ll stop drinking, get myself together.”

  “Miller. You’re not a bad person at heart. There was a time you were a pretty good cop. But I don’t trust you, and we don’t have time to start over,” Shaddid said, her voice as near to gentle as he had ever heard it. “You’re fired.”

  Chapter Nineteen: Holden

  Fred stood alone, hand outstretched, a warm and open smile on his broad face. There were no guards with assault rifles behind him. Holden shook Fred’s hand and then started laughing. Fred smiled and looked confused but let Holden keep a grip on his hand, waiting for Holden to explain what was so funny.

  “I’m sorry, but you have no idea how pleasant this is,” Holden said. “This is literally the first time in over a month that I’ve gotten off a ship without it blowing up behind me.”

  Fred laughed with him now, an honest laugh that seemed to originate somewhere in his belly.

  After a moment the man said, “You’re quite safe here. We are the most protected station in the outer planets.”

  “Because you’re OPA?” Holden ask
ed.

  Fred shook his head.

  “No. We make campaign contributions to Earth and Mars politicians in amounts that would make a Hilton blush,” he said. “If anyone blows us up, half the UN assembly and all of the Martian Congress will be howling for blood. It’s the problem with politics. Your enemies are often your allies. And vice versa.”

  Fred gestured to a doorway behind him and motioned for everyone to follow. The ride was short, but halfway through, gravity reappeared, shifting in a disorienting swoop. Holden stumbled. Fred looked chagrined.

  “I’m sorry. I should have warned you about that. The central hub’s null g. Moving into the ring’s rotational gravity can be awkward the first time.”

  “I’m fine,” Holden said. Naomi’s brief smile might only have been his imagination.

  A moment later the elevator door opened onto a wide carpeted corridor with walls of pale green. It had the reassuring smell of air scrubbers and fresh carpet glue. Holden wouldn’t have been surprised to find they were piping ‘new space station’ scent into the air. The doors that led off the corridor were made of faux wood distinguishable from the real thing only because nobody had that much money. Of all his crew, Holden was almost certainly the only one who had grown up in a house with real wooden furniture and fixtures. Amos had grown up in Baltimore. They hadn’t seen a tree there in more than a century.

  Holden pulled off his helmet and turned around to tell his crew to do the same, but theirs were already off. Amos looked up and down the corridor and whistled.

  “Nice digs, Fred,” he said.

  “Follow me, I’ll get you settled in,” Fred replied, leading them down the corridor. As he walked, he spoke. “Tycho Station has undergone a number of refurbishments over the last hundred years, as you might guess, but the basics haven’t changed much. It was a brilliant design to begin with; Malthus Tycho was an engineering genius. His grandson, Bredon, runs the company now. He isn’t on station at the moment. Down the well at Luna negotiating the next big deal.”

  Holden said, “Seems like you have a lot on your plate already, with that monster parked outside. And, you know, a war going on.”

  A group of people in jumpsuits of various colors walked past, talking animatedly. The corridor was so wide that no one had to give way. Fred gestured at them as they went by.

  “First shift’s just ending, so this is rush hour,” he said. “It’s actually time to start drumming up new work. The Nauvoo is almost done. They’ll be loading colonists on her in six months. Always have to have the next project lined up. The Tycho spends eleven million UN dollars every day she’s in operation, whether we make money that day or not. It’s a big nut to cover. And the war… well, we’re hoping that’s temporary.”

  “And now you’re taking in refugees. That won’t help,” Holden said.

  Fred just laughed and said, “Four more people won’t put us in the poorhouse anytime soon.”

  Holden stopped, forcing the others to pull up short behind him. It was several steps before Fred noticed, then turned around with a confused look.

  “You’re dodging,” Holden said. “Other than a couple billion dollars’ worth of stolen Martian warship, we haven’t got anything of value. Everyone thinks we’re dead. Any access of our accounts ruins that, and I just don’t live in a universe where Daddy Warbucks swoops in and makes everything okay out of the goodness of his heart. So either tell us why you’re taking the risk of putting us up, or we go get back on our ship and try our hand at piracy.”

  “Scourge of the Martian merchant fleet, they’ll call us,” Amos growled from somewhere behind him. He sounded pleased.

  Fred held up his hands. There was a hardness in his eyes, but also an amused respect.

  “Nothing underhanded, you have my word,” he said. “You’re armed, and station security will allow you to carry guns whenever you like. That alone should reassure you that I’m not planning foul play. But let me get you settled in before we do much more talking, okay?”

  Holden didn’t move. Another group of returning workers was going by in the corridor, and they watched the scene curiously as they passed. Someone from the knot of people called out, “Everything okay, Fred?”

  Fred nodded and waved them by impatiently. “Let’s get out of the corridor at least.”

  “We aren’t unpacking until we get some answers,” Holden replied.

  “Fine. We’re almost there,” Fred said, and then led them off again at a somewhat faster pace. He stopped at a small inset in the corridor wall with two doors in it. Opening one with the swipe of a card, he led the four of them into a large residential suite with a roomy living space and lots of seating.

  “Bathroom is that door back there on the left. The bedroom is the one on the right. There’s even a small kitchen space over here,” Fred said, pointing to each thing as he spoke.

  Holden sat down in a large brown faux-leather recliner and leaned it back. A remote control was in a pocket of the armrest. He assumed it controlled the impressively large screen that took up most of one wall. Naomi and Amos sat on a couch that matched his chair, and Alex draped himself over a loveseat in a nice contrasting cream color.

  “Comfortable?” Fred asked, pulling a chair away from the six-seat dining area and sitting down across from Holden.

  “It’s all right,” Holden said defensively. “My ship has a really nice coffeemaker.”

  “I suppose bribes won’t work. You are all comfortable, though? We have two suites set aside for you, both this basic layout, though the other suite has two rooms. I wasn’t sure of the, ah, sleeping arrangements… ” Fred trailed off uncomfortably.

  “Don’t worry, Boss, you can bunk with me,” Amos said with a wink at Naomi.

  Naomi just smiled faintly.

  “Okay, Fred, we’re off the street,” she said. “Now answer the captain’s questions.”

  Fred nodded, then stood up and cleared his throat. He seemed to review something. When he spoke, the conversational facade was gone. His voice carried a grim authority.

  “War between the Belt and Mars is suicide. Even if every rock hopper in the Belt were armed, we still couldn’t compete with the Martian navy. We might kill a few with tricks and suicide runs. Mars might feel forced to nuke one of our stations to prove a point. But we can strap chemical rockets onto a couple hundred rocks the size of bunk beds and rain Armageddon down on Martian dome cities.”

  Fred paused, as if looking for words, then sat back down on his chair.

  “All of the war drums ignore that. It’s the elephant in the room. Anyone who doesn’t live on a spaceship is structurally vulnerable. Tycho, Eros, Pallas, Ceres. Stations can’t evade incoming missiles. And with all of the enemy’s citizens living at the bottom of huge gravity wells, we don’t even have to aim particularly well. Einstein was right. We will be fighting the next war with rocks. But the Belt has rocks that will turn the surface of Mars into a molten sea.

  “Right now everyone is still playing nice, and only shooting at ships. Very gentlemanly. But sooner or later, one side or the other will be pressed to do something desperate.”

  Holden leaned forward, the slick surface of his environment suit making an embarrassing squeak on the leather textured chair. No one laughed.

  “I agree. What does that have to do with us?” he asked.

  “Too much blood has already been shed,” Fred said.

  Shed.

  Holden winced at the bleak, unintentional pun but said nothing.

  “The Canterbury,” Fred continued. “The Donnager. People aren’t just going to forget about those ships, and those thousands of innocent people.”

  “Seems like you just crossed off the only two options, Chief,” Alex said. “No war, no peace.”

  “There’s a third alternative. Civilized society has another way of dealing with things like this,” Fred said. “A criminal trial.”

  Amos’ snort shook the air. Holden had to fight not to smile himself.

  “Are you fucki
ng serious?” Amos asked. “And how do you put a goddamn Martian stealth ship on trial? Do we go question all the stealth ships about their whereabouts, double-check their alibis?”

  Fred held up a hand.

  “Stop thinking of the Canterbury’s destruction as an act of war,” he said. “It was a crime. Right now, people are overreacting, but once the situation sinks in, heads will cool. People on both sides will see where this road goes and look for another way out. There is a window where the saner elements can investigate events, negotiate jurisdiction, and assign blame to some party or parties that both sides can agree to. A trial. It’s the only outcome that doesn’t involve millions of deaths and the collapse of human infrastucture.”

  Holden shrugged, a gesture barely visible in his heavy environment suit.

  “So it goes to a trial. You still aren’t answering my question.”

  Fred pointed at Holden, then at each of the crew in turn.

  “You’re the ace in the hole. You four people are the only eyewitnesses to the destruction of both ships. When the trial comes, I need you and your depositions. I have influence already through our political contacts, but you can buy me a seat at the table. It will be a whole new set of treaties between the Belt and the inner planets. We can do in months what I’d dreamed of doing in decades.”

  “And you want to use our value as witnesses to force your way into the process so you can make those treaties look the way you want them to,” Holden said.

  “Yes. And I’m willing to give you protection, shelter, and run of my station for as long as it takes to get there.”

  Holden took a long, deep breath, got up, and started unzipping his suit.

  “Yeah, okay. That’s just self-serving enough I believe it,” he said. “Let’s get settled in.”

  Naomi was singing karaoke. Just thinking about it made Holden’s head spin. Naomi. Karaoke. Even considering everything that had happened to them over the past month, Naomi up onstage with a mic in one hand and some sort of fuchsia martini in the other, screaming out an angry Belt-punk anthem by the Moldy Filters, was the strangest thing he’d ever seen. She finished to scattered applause and a few catcalls, then staggered off the stage and collapsed across from him in the booth.