The Dragon's Path

by Daniel Abraham

  “How did you know that?” Holden said.

  “It’s my job,” Miller said. “Well, it used to be.”

  The answer didn’t appear to satisfy the Earther. The big guy had fallen in behind Holden, his face a friendly cipher: No trouble, unless there was trouble, and then maybe a whole lot of trouble. Miller nodded, half to the big guy, half to himself.

  “I had a contact in the OPA who told me you didn’t die on the Donnager,” Miller said.

  “They just told you that?” the woman asked, banked outrage in her voice.

  “He was making a point at the time,” Miller said. “Anyway, he said it, and I took it from there. And in about ten minutes, I’m going to make sure Eros security doesn’t throw all of you in a hole, and me with you. So if there’s anything at all you want to tell me—like what you’re doing here, for instance—this would be the right time.”

  The silence was broken only by the sound of recyclers laboring to clear the smoke and particulate dust of gunfire. The shaky one stood. Something about the way he held himself looked military. Ex-something, Miller assumed, but not a ground pounder. Navy, maybe; Martian at a guess. He had the vocal twang some of them affected.

  “Ah, fuck it, Cap’n,” the big one said. “He shot the flank guy for us. He may be an asshole, but he’s okay by me.”

  “Thank you, Amos,” Holden said. Miller filed that. The big one was Amos. Holden put his hands behind his back, returning his gun to his waistband.

  “We’re here to look for someone too,” he said. “Probably someone from the Scopuli. We were just double-checking the room when everyone decided to start shooting at us.”

  “Here?” Miller said. Something like emotion trickled into his veins. Not hope, but dread. “Someone off the Scopuli is in this flop right now?”

  “We think so,” Holden said.

  Miller looked out the flophouse lobby’s front doors. A small, curious crowd had started to gather in the tunnel. Crossed arms, nervous glances. He knew how they felt. Sematimba and his police were on the way. The gunmen who’d attacked Holden and his crew weren’t mounting another attack, but that didn’t mean they were gone. There might be another wave. They could have fallen back to a better position to wait for Holden to advance.

  But what if Julie was here right now? How could he come this far and stop in the lobby? To his surprise, he still had his gun drawn. That was unprofessional. He should have holstered it. The only other one still drawn was the Martian’s. Miller shook his head. Sloppy. He needed to stop that.

  Still, he had more than half a magazine left in the pistol.

  “What room?” he asked.

  The flophouse corridors were thin and cramped. The walls had the impervious gloss of warehouse paint, and the carpet was carbon-silicate weave that would wear out more slowly than bare stone. Miller and Holden went first, then the woman and the Martian—Naomi and Alex, their names were—then Amos, trailing and looking back over his shoulder. Miller wondered if anyone but he and Amos understood how they were keeping the others safe. Holden seemed to know and be irritated by it; he kept edging ahead.

  The doors of the rooms were identical fiberglass laminates, thin enough to be churned out by the thousand. Miller had kicked in a hundred like them in his career. A few here and there were decorated by longtime residents—with a painting of improbably red flowers, a whiteboard with a string where a pen had once been attached, a cheap reproduction of an obscene cartoon acting out its punch line in a dimly glowing infinite loop.

  Tactically, it was a nightmare. If the ambushing forces stepped out of doors in front of and behind them, all five could be slaughtered in seconds. But no slugs flew, and the only door that opened disgorged an emaciated, long-bearded man with imperfect eyes and a slack mouth. Miller nodded at the man as they passed, and he nodded back, possibly more surprised by someone’s acknowledging his presence than by the drawn pistols. Holden stopped.

  “This is it,” he murmured. “This is the room.”

  Miller nodded. The others came up in a clump, Amos casually hanging back, his eyes on the corridor retreating behind them. Miller considered the door. It would be easy to kick in. One strong blow just above the latch mechanism. Then he could go in low and to the left, Amos high and to the right. He wished Havelock were there. Tactics were simpler for people who’d trained together. He motioned Amos to come up close.

  Holden knocked on the door.

  “What are you…?” Miller whispered fiercely, but Holden ignored him.

  “Hello?” Holden called. “Anyone there?”

  Miller tensed. Nothing happened. No voice, no gunfire. Nothing. Holden seemed perfectly at ease with the risk he’d just taken. From the expression on Naomi’s face, Miller took it this wasn’t the first time he’d done things this way.

  “You want that open?” Amos said.

  “Kinda do,” Miller said at the same moment Holden said, “Yeah, kick it down.”

  Amos looked from one to the other, not moving until Holden nodded at him. Then Amos shifted past them, kicked the door open in one blow, and staggered back, cussing.

  “You okay?” Miller asked.

  The big man nodded once through a pale grimace.

  “Yeah, busted my leg a while back. Cast just came off. Keep forgetting about that,” he said.

  Miller turned back to the room. Inside, it was as black as a cave. No lights came on, not even the dim glow of monitors and sensory devices. Miller stepped in, pistol drawn. Holden was close behind him. The floor made the crunching sound of gravel under their feet, and there was an odd astringent smell that Miller associated with broken screens. Behind it was another smell, much less pleasant. He chose not to think about that one.

  “Hello?” Miller said. “Anyone here?”

  “Turn on the lights,” Naomi said from behind them. Miller heard Holden patting the wall panel, but no light came up.

  “They’re not working,” Holden said.

  The dim spill from the corridor gave almost nothing. Miller kept his gun steady in his right hand, ready to empty it toward muzzle flash if anyone opened fire from the darkness. With his left, he took out his hand terminal, thumbed on the backlight, and opened a blank white writing tablet. The room came into monochrome. Beside him, Holden did the same.

  A thin bed pressed against one wall, a narrow tray beside it. The bedding was knotted like the remnant of a bad night’s sleep. A closet stood open, empty. The hulking form of an empty vacuum suit lay on the floor like a mannequin with a misplaced head. An old entertainment console hung on the wall across from the cot, its screen shattered by half a dozen blows. The wall was dimpled where blows intended to bread the LED sconces had missed. Another hand terminal added its glow, and another. Hints of color started to come into the room—the cheap gold of the walls, the green of the blankets and sheet. Under the cot, something glimmered. An older-model hand terminal. Miller crouched as the others stepped in.

  “Shit,” Amos said.

  “Okay,” Holden said. “Nobody touches anything. Period. Nothing.” It was the most sensible thing Miller had heard the man say.

  “Someone put up a bitch of a fight,” Amos muttered.

  “No,” Miller said. It had been vandalism, maybe. It hadn’t been a struggle. He pulled a thin-film evidence bag out of his pocket and turned it inside out over his hand like a glove before picking up the terminal, flipping the plastic over it, and setting off the sealing charge.

  “Is that… blood?” Naomi asked, pointing to the cheap foam mattress. Wet streaks pooled on the sheet and pillow, not more than a fingers’ width, but dark. Too dark even for blood.

  “No,” Miller said, shoving the terminal into his pocket.

  The fluid marked a thin path toward the bathroom. Miller raised a hand, pushing the others back as he crept toward the half-open door. Inside the bathroom, the nasty background smell was much stronger. Something deep, organic, and intimate. Manure in a hothouse, or the aftermath of sex, or a slaughterhouse. All of t
hem. The toilet was brushed steel, the same model they used in prisons. The sink matched. The LED above it and the one in the ceiling had both been destroyed. In the light of his terminal, like the glow of a single candle, black tendrils reached from the shower stall toward the ruined lights, bent and branching like skeletal leaves.

  In the shower stall, Juliette Andromeda Mao lay dead.

  Her eyes were closed, and that was a mercy. She’d cut her hair differently since she’d taken the pictures Miller had seen, and it changed the shape of her face, but she was unmistakable. She was nude, and barely human. Coils of complex growth spilled from her mouth, ears, and vulva. Her ribs and spine had grown spurs like knives that stretched pale skin, ready to cut themselves free of her. Tubes stretched from her back and throat, crawling up the walls behind her. A deep brown slush had leaked from her, filling the shower pan almost three centimeters high. He sat silently, willing the thing before him not to be true, trying to force himself awake.

  What did they do to you? he thought. Oh, kid. What did they do?

  “Ohmygod,” Naomi said behind him.

  “Don’t touch anything,” he said. “Get out of the room. Into the hall. Do it now.”

  The light in the next room faded as the hand terminals retreated. The twisting shadows momentarily gave her body the illusion of movement. Miller waited, but no breath lifted the bent rib cage. No flicker touched her eyelids. There was nothing. He rose, carefully checking his cuffs and shoes, and walked out to the corridor.

  They’d all seen it. He could tell from the expressions, they’d all seen. And they didn’t know any better than he did what it was. Gently, he pulled the splintered door closed and waited for Sematimba. It wasn’t long.

  Five men in police riot armor with shotguns made their way down the hall. Miller walked forward to meet them, his posture better than a badge. He could see them relax. Sematimba came up behind them.

  “Miller?” he said. “The hell is this? I thought you said you were staying put.”

  “I didn’t leave,” he said. “Those are the civilians back there. The dead guys downstairs jumped them in the lobby.”

  “Why?” Sematimba demanded.

  “Who knows?” Miller said. “Roll them for spare change. That’s not the problem.”

  Sematimba’s eyebrows rose. “I’ve got four corpses down there, and they’re not the problem.”

  Miller nodded down the corridor.

  “Fifth one’s up here,” he said. “It’s the girl I was looking for.”

  Sematimba’s expression softened. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Nah,” Miller said. He couldn’t accept sympathy. He couldn’t accept comfort. A gentle touch would shatter him, so he stayed hard instead. “But you’re going to want the coroner on this one.”

  “It’s bad, then?”

  “You’ve got no idea,” Miller said. “Listen, Semi. I’m in over my head here. Seriously. Those boys down there with the guns? If they weren’t hooked in with your security force, there would have been alarms as soon as the first shot was fired. You know this was a setup. They were waiting for these four. And the squat fella with the dark hair? That’s James Holden. He’s not even supposed to be alive.”

  “Holden that started the war?” Sematimba said.

  “That’s the one,” Miller said. “This is deep. Drowning deep. And you know what they say about going in after a drowning man, right?”

  Sematimba looked down the corridor. He nodded.

  “Let me help you,” Sematimba said, but Miller shook his head.

  “I’m too far gone. Forget me. What happened was you got a call. You found the place. You don’t know me, you don’t know them, you’ve got no clue what happened. Or you come along and drown with me. Your pick.”

  “You don’t leave the station without telling me?”

  “Okay,” Miller said.

  “I can live with that,” Sematimba said. Then, a moment later: “That’s really Holden?”

  “Call the coroner,” Miller said. “Trust me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Holden

  Miller gestured at Holden and headed for the elevator without waiting to see if he was following. The presumption irritated him, but he went anyway.

  “So,” Holden said, “we were just in a gunfight where we killed at least three people, and now we’re just leaving? No getting questioned or giving a statement? How exactly does that happen?” Holden asked.

  “Professional courtesy,” Miller said, and Holden couldn’t tell if he was joking.

  The elevator door opened with a muffled ding, and Holden and the others followed Miller inside. Naomi was closest to the panel, so she reached out to press the lobby button, but her hand was shaking so badly that she had to stop and clench it into a fist. After a deep breath, she reached out a now steady finger and pressed the button.

  “This is bullshit. Being an ex-cop doesn’t give you a license to get in gunfights,” Holden said to Miller’s back.

  Miller didn’t move, but he seemed to shrink a little bit. His sigh was heavy and unforced. His skin seemed grayer than before.

  “Sematimba knows the score. Half the job is knowing when to look the other way. Besides, I promised we wouldn’t leave the station without letting him know.”

  “Fuck that,” Amos said. “You don’t make promises for us, pal.”

  The elevator came to a stop and opened onto the bloody scene of the gunfight. A dozen cops were in the room. Miller nodded at them and they nodded back. He led the crew out of the lobby to the corridor, then turned around.

  “We can work that out later,” Miller said. “Right now, let’s get someplace we can talk.”

  Holden agreed with a shrug. “Okay, but you’re paying.”

  Miller headed off down the corridor toward the tube station.

  As they followed, Naomi put a hand on Holden’s arm and slowed him down a bit so that Miller could get ahead. When he was far enough away, she said, “He knew her.”

  “Who knew who?”

  “He,” Naomi said, nodding at Miller, “knew her.” She jerked her head back toward the crime scene behind them.

  “How do you know?” Holden said.

  “He wasn’t expecting to find her there, but he knew who she was. Seeing her like that was a shock.”

  “Huh, I didn’t get that at all. He’s seemed like Mr. Cool all through this.”

  “No, they were friends or something. He’s having trouble dealing with it, so maybe don’t push him too hard,” she said. “We might need him.”

  The hotel room Miller got was only slightly better than the one they’d found the body in. Alex immediately headed for the bathroom and locked the door. The sound of water running in the sink wasn’t quite loud enough to cover the pilot’s retching.

  Holden plopped down on the small bed’s dingy comforter, forcing Miller to take the room’s one uncomfortable-looking chair. Naomi sat next to Holden on the bed, but Amos stayed on his feet, prowling around the room like a nervous animal.

  “So, talk,” Holden said to Miller.

  “Let’s wait for the rest of the gang to finish up,” Miller replied with a nod toward the bathroom.

  Alex came out a few moments later, his face still white, but now freshly washed.

  “Are you all right, Alex?” Naomi asked in a soft voice.

  “Five by five, XO,” Alex said, then sat down on the floor and put his head in his hands.

  Holden stared at Miller and waited. The older man sat and played with his hat for a minute, then tossed it onto the cheap plastic desk that cantilevered out from the wall.

  “You knew Julie was in that room. How?” Miller said.

  “We didn’t even know her name was Julie,” Holden replied. “We just knew that it was someone from the Scopuli.”

  “You should tell me how you knew that,” Miller said, a frightening intensity in his eyes.

  Holden paused a moment. Miller had killed someone who had been trying to kill them, and that certainly
helped make the case that he was a friend, but Holden wasn’t about to sell out Fred and his group on a hunch. He hesitated, then went halfway.

  “The fictional owner of the Scopuli had checked into that flophouse,” he said. “It made sense that it was a member of the crew raising a flag.”

  Miller nodded. “Who told you?” he said.

  “I’m not comfortable telling you that. We believed the information was accurate,” Holden replied. “The Scopuli was the bait that someone used to kill the Canterbury. We thought someone from the Scopuli might know why everyone keeps trying to kill us.”

  Miller said, “Shit,” and then leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.

  “You’ve been looking for Julie. You’d hoped we were looking for her too. That we knew something,” Naomi said, not making it a question.

  “Yeah,” Miller said.

  It was Holden’s turn to ask why.

  “Parents sent a contract to Ceres looking for her to be sent home. It was my case,” Miller said.

  “So you work for Ceres security?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “So what are you doing here?” Holden asked.

  “Her family was connected to something,” Miller replied. “I just naturally hate a mystery.”

  “And how did you know it was bigger than just a missing girl?”

  Talking to Miller felt like digging through granite with a rubber chisel. Miller grinned humorlessly.

  “They fired me for looking too hard.”

  Holden consciously decided not to be annoyed by Miller’s non-answer. “So let’s talk about the death squad in the hotel.”

  “Yeah, seriously, what the fuck?” Amos said, finally pausing in his pacing. Alex took his head out of his hands and looked up with interest for the first time. Even Naomi leaned forward on the edge of the bed.

  “No idea,” Miller replied. “But someone knew you were coming.”

  “Yeah, thanks for the brilliant police work,” Amos said with a snort. “No way we woulda figured that out on our own.”

  Holden ignored him. “But they didn’t know why, or they would have already gone up to Julie’s room and gotten whatever they wanted.”