The Dragon's Path

by Daniel Abraham

  “Attention, please. Eros Station is in emergency lockdown. Proceed immediately to the casino level for radiological safety confinement. Cooperate with all emergency personnel. Attention, please. Eros station is in emergency lockdown… ”

  And on in a loop that would continue, if no one coded in the override, until every man, woman, child, animal, and insect on the station had been reduced to dust and humidity. It was the nightmare scenario, and Miller did what a lifetime on pressurized rocks had trained him to do. He was up from the table, in the corridor, and heading down toward the wider passages, already clogged with bodies. Holden and his crew were on his heels.

  “That was an explosion,” Alex said. “Ship drive at the least. Maybe a nuke.”

  “They are going to kill the station,” Holden said. There was a kind of awe in his voice. “I never thought I’d miss the part where they just blew up the ships I was on. But now it’s stations.”

  “They didn’t crack it,” Miller said.

  “You’re sure of that?” Naomi asked.

  “I can hear you talking,” Miller said. “That tells me there’s air.”

  “There are airlocks,” Holden said. “If the station got holed and the locks closed down… ”

  A woman pushed hard against Miller’s shoulder, forcing her way forward. If they weren’t damn careful, there was going to be a stampede. This was too much fear and not enough space. It hadn’t happened yet, but the impatient movement of the crowd, vibrating like molecules in water just shy of boiling, made Miller very uncomfortable.

  “This isn’t a ship,” Miller said. “It’s a station. This is rock we’re on. Anything big enough to get to the parts of the station with atmosphere would crack the place like an egg. A great big pressurized egg.”

  The crowd was stopped, the tunnel full. They were going to need crowd control, and they were going to need it fast. For the first time since he’d left Ceres, Miller wished he had a badge. Someone pushed into Amos’ side, then backed away through the press when the big guy growled.

  “Besides,” Miller said, “it’s a rad hazard. You don’t need air loss to kill everyone in the station. Just burn a few quadrillion spare neutrons through the place at C, and there won’t be any trouble with the oxygen supply.”

  “Cheerful fucker,” Amos said.

  “They build stations inside of rocks for a reason,” Naomi said. “Not so easy to force radiation through this many meters of rock.”

  “I spent a month in a rad shelter once,” Alex said as they pushed through the thickening crowd. “Ship I was on had magnetic containment drop. Automatic cutoffs failed, and the reactor kept runnin’ for almost a second. Melted the engine room. Killed five of the crew on the next deck up before they knew we had a problem, and it took them three days to carve the bodies free of the melted decking for burial. The rest of us wound up eighteen to a shelter for thirty-six days while a tug flew to get us.”

  “Sounds great,” Holden said.

  “End of it, six of ’em got married, and the rest of us never spoke to each other again,” Alex said.

  Ahead of them, someone shouted. It wasn’t in alarm or even anger, really. Frustration. Fear. Exactly the things Miller didn’t want to hear.

  “That may not be our big problem,” Miller said, but before he could explain, a new voice cut in, drowning out the emergency-response loop.

  “Okay, everybody! We’re Eros security, que no? We got an emergency, so you do what we tell you and nobody gets hurt.”

  About time, Miller thought.

  “So here’s the rule,” the new voice said. “Next asshole who pushes anyone, I’m going to shoot them. Move in an orderly fashion. First priority: orderly. Second priority is move! Go, go, go!”

  At first nothing happened. The knot of human bodies was tied too tightly for even the most heavy-handed crowd control to free quickly, but a minute later, Miller saw some heads far ahead of him in the tunnel start to shift, then move away. The air in the tunnel was thickening and the hot plastic smell of overloaded recyclers reached him just as the clot came free. Miller’s breath started coming easier.

  “Do they have hard shelters?” a woman behind them asked her companion, and then was swept away by the currents. Naomi plucked Miller’s sleeve.

  “Do they?” she asked.

  “They should, yes,” Miller said. “Enough for maybe a quarter million, and essential personnel and medical crews would get first crack at them.”

  “And everyone else?” Amos said.

  “If they survive the event,” Holden said, “station personnel will save as many people as they can.”

  “Ah,” Amos said. Then: “Well, fuck that. We’re going for the Roci, right?”

  “Oh, hell yes,” Holden said.

  Ahead of them, the fast-shuffling crowd in their tunnel was merging with another flow of people from a lower level. Five thick-necked men in riot gear were waving people on. Two of them were pointing guns at the crowd. Miller was more than half tempted to go up and slap the little idiots. Pointing guns at people was a lousy way to avoid panic. One of the security men was also far too wide for his gear, the Velcro fasteners at his belly reaching out for each other like lovers at the moment of separation.

  Miller looked down at the floor and slowed his steps, the back of his mind suddenly and powerfully busy. One of the cops swung his gun out over the crowd. Another one—the fat guy—laughed and said something in Korean.

  What had Sematimba said about the new security force? All bluster, no balls. A new corporation out of Luna. Belters on the ground. Corrupt.

  The name. They’d had a name. CPM. Carne Por la Machina. Meat for the machine. One of the gun-wielding cops lowered his weapon, swept off his helmet, and scratched violently behind one ear. He had wild black hair, a tattooed neck, and a scar that went from one eyelid down almost to the joint of his jaw.

  Miller knew him. A year and a half ago, he’d arrested him for assault and racketeering. And the equipment—armor, batons, riot guns—also looked hauntingly familiar. Dawes had been wrong. Miller had been able to find his own missing equipment after all.

  Whatever this was, it had been going on a long time before the Canterbury had picked up a distress call from the Scopuli. A long time before Julie had vanished. And putting a bunch of Ceres Station thugs in charge of Eros crowd control using stolen Ceres Station equipment had been part of the plan. The third phase.

  Ah, he thought. Well. That can’t be good.

  Miller slid to the side, letting as many bodies as he plausibly could fill the space between him and the gunmen dressed as police.

  “Get down to the casino level,” one of the gunmen shouted over the crowd. “We’ll get you into the radiation shelters from there, but you’ve got to get to the casino level!”

  Holden and his crew hadn’t noticed anything odd. They were talking among themselves, strategizing about how to get to their ship and what to do once they got there, speculating about who might have attacked the station and where Julie Mao’s twisted, infected corpse might be headed. Miller fought the impulse to interrupt them. He needed to stay calm, to think things through. They couldn’t attract attention. He needed the right moment.

  The corridor turned and widened. The press of bodies lightened a little bit. Miller waited for a dead zone in the crowd control, a space where none of the fake security men could see them. He took Holden by the elbow.

  “Don’t go,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Holden

  What do you mean, don’t go?” Holden asked, yanking his elbow out of Miller’s grasp. “Somebody just nuked the station. This has escalated beyond our capacity to respond. If we can’t get to the Roci, we’re doing whatever they tell us to until we can.”

  Miller took a step back and put up his hands; he was clearly doing his best to look nonthreatening, which just pissed Holden off even more. Behind him, the riot cops were motioning the people milling in the corridors toward the casinos. The air echoed with the electronic
ally amplified voices of the police directing the crowds and the buzz of anxious citizens. Over it all, the public-address system told everyone to remain calm and cooperate with emergency personnel.

  “See that bruiser over there in the police riot gear?” Miller said. “His name is Gabby Smalls. He supervises a chunk of the Golden Bough protection racket on Ceres. He also runs a little dust on the side, and I suspect he’s tossed more than a few people out airlocks.”

  Holden looked at the guy. Wide shoulders, thick gut. Now that Miller pointed him out, there was something about him that didn’t seem right for a cop.

  “I don’t get it,” Holden said.

  “A couple months ago, when you started a bunch of riots by saying Mars blew up your water hauler, we found out—”

  “I never said—”

  “—found out that most of the police riot gear on Ceres was missing. A few months before that, a bunch of our underworld muscle went missing. I just found out where both of them are.”

  Miller pointed at the riot-gear-equipped Gabby Smalls.

  “I wouldn’t go wherever he’s sending people,” he said. “I really wouldn’t.”

  A thin stream of people bumped past.

  “Then where?” Naomi asked.

  “Yeah, I mean, if the choice is radiation or mobsters, I gotta go with the mobsters,” Alex said, nodding emphatically at Naomi.

  Miller pulled out his hand terminal and held it up so everyone could see the screen.

  “I’ve got no radiation warnings,” he said. “Whatever happened outside isn’t a danger on this level. Not right now. So let’s just calm down and make the smart move.”

  Holden turned his back on Miller and motioned to Naomi. He pulled her aside and said in a quiet voice, “I still think we go back to the ship and get out of here. Take our chances getting past these mobsters.”

  “If there’s no radiation danger, then I agree,” she said with a nod.

  “I disagree,” Miller said, not even pretending he hadn’t been eavesdropping. “To do that we have to walk through three levels of casino filled with riot gear and thugs. They’re going to tell us to get in one of those casinos for our own protection. When we don’t, they’ll beat us unconscious and throw us in anyway. For our own protection.”

  Another crowd of people poured out of a branch corridor, heading for the reassuring presence of the police and the bright casino lights. Holden found it difficult not to be swept along with the crowd. A man with two enormous suitcases bumped into Naomi, almost knocking her down. Holden grabbed her hand.

  “What’s the alternative?” he asked Miller.

  Miller glanced up and down the corridor, seeming to measure the flow of people. He nodded at a yellow-and-black-striped hatch down a small maintenance corridor.

  “That one,” he said. “It’s marked HIGH VOLTAGE, so the guys sweeping for stragglers won’t bother with it. It’s not the kind of place citizens hide.”

  “Can you get that door open quickly?” Holden said, looking at Amos.

  “Can I break it?”

  “If you need to.”

  “Then sure,” Amos said, and began pushing his way through the crowd toward the maintenance hatch. At the door, he pulled out his multi-tool and popped off the cheap plastic housing for the card reader. After he twisted a couple of wires together, the hatch slid open with a hydraulic hiss.

  “Ta-da,” Amos said. “The reader won’t work anymore, so anyone who wants in comes in.”

  “Let’s worry about that if it happens,” Miller replied, then led them into the dimly lit passageway beyond.

  The service corridor was filled with electrical cable held together with plastic ties. It stretched through the dim red light for thirty or forty feet before falling into gloom. The light came from LEDs mounted on the metal bracing that sprouted from the wall every five feet or so to hold the cable up. Naomi had to duck to enter, her frame about four centimeters too tall for the ceiling. She put her back to the wall and slid down onto her haunches.

  “You’d think they’d make the maintenance corridors tall enough for Belters to work in,” she said irritably.

  Holden touched the wall almost reverently, tracing a corridor identification number carved right into the stone.

  “The Belters who built this place weren’t tall,” he said. “These are some of the main power lines. This tunnel goes back to the first Belt colony. The people who carved it grew up in gravity.”

  Miller, who also had to duck his head, sat on the floor with a grunt and popping knees.

  “History lesson later,” he said. “Let’s figure a way off this rock.”

  Amos, studying the bundles of cable intently, said over his shoulder, “If you see a frayed spot, don’t touch it. This thick fucker right here is a couple million volts. That’d melt your shit down real good.”

  Alex sat down next to Naomi, grimacing when his butt hit the cold stone floor.

  “You know,” he said, “if they decide to seal up the station, they might pump all the air outta these maintenance corridors.”

  “I get it,” Holden said loudly. “It’s a shitty and uncomfortable hiding spot. You have my permission to now shut up about that.”

  He squatted down across the corridor from Miller and said, “Okay, Detective. Now what?”

  “Now,” Miller said, “we wait for the sweep to pass us by, and get behind it, try to get to the docks. The folks in the shelters are easy to avoid. Shelters are up deep. Trick’s going to be getting through the casino levels.”

  “Can’t we just use these maintenance passages to move around?” Alex asked.

  Amos shook his head. “Not without a map, we won’t. You get lost in here, you’re in trouble,” he said.

  Ignoring them, Holden said, “Okay, so we wait for everyone to move to the radiation shelters and then we leave.”

  Miller nodded at him, and then the two men sat staring at each other for a moment. The air between them seemed to thicken, the silence taking on a meaning of its own. Miller shrugged like his jacket itched.

  “Why do you think a bunch of Ceres mobsters are moving everyone to radiation shelters when there’s no actual radiation danger?” Holden finally said. “And why are the Eros cops letting them?”

  “Good questions,” Miller said.

  “If they were using these yahoos, it helps explain why their attempted kidnapping at the hotel went so poorly. They don’t seem like pros.”

  “Nope,” Miller said. “That’s not their usual area of expertise.”

  “Would you two be quiet?” Naomi said.

  For almost a minute they were.

  “It’d be really stupid,” Holden said, “to go take a look at what’s going on, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes. Whatever’s going on at those shelters, you know that’s where all the guards and patrols will be,” Miller said.

  “Yeah,” Holden said.

  “Captain,” Naomi said, a warning in her voice.

  “Still,” Holden said, talking to Miller, “you hate a mystery.”

  “I do at that,” Miller replied with a nod and a faint smile. “And you, my friend, are a damn busybody.”

  “It’s been said.”

  “Goddamn it,” Naomi said quietly.

  “What is it, Boss?” Amos asked.

  “These two just broke our getaway plan,” Naomi replied. Then she said to Holden, “You guys are going to be very bad for each other and, by extension, us.”

  “No,” Holden replied. “You aren’t coming along. You stay here with Amos and Alex. Give us”—he looked at his terminal—“three hours to go look and come back. If we aren’t here—”

  “We leave you to the gangsters and the three of us get jobs on Tycho and live happily ever after,” Naomi said.

  “Yeah,” Holden said with a grin. “Don’t be a hero.”

  “Wouldn’t even consider it, sir.”

  Holden crouched in the shadows outside the maintenance hatch and watched as Ceres mobsters dressed
in police riot gear led the citizens of Eros away in small groups. The PA system continued to declare the possibility of radiological danger and exhorted the citizens and guests of Eros to cooperate fully with emergency personnel. Holden had selected a group to follow and was getting ready to move when Miller placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “Wait,” Miller said. “I want to make a call.”

  He quickly dialed up a number on his hand terminal, and after a few moments, a flat gray Network Not Available message appeared.

  “Phone is down?” Holden asked.

  “That’s the first thing I’d do, too,” Miller replied.

  “I see,” Holden said even though he really didn’t.

  “Well, I guess it’s just you and me,” Miller said, then took the magazine out of his gun and began reloading it with cartridges he pulled out of his coat pocket.

  Even though he’d had enough of gunfights to last him the rest of his life, Holden took out his gun and checked the magazine as well. He’d replaced it after the shoot-out in the hotel, and it was full. He racked it and put it back in the waistband of his pants. Miller, he noticed, kept his out, holding it close to his thigh, where his coat mostly covered it.

  It wasn’t difficult following the groups up through the station toward the inner sections where the radiation shelters were. As long as they kept moving in the same direction as the crowds, no one gave them a second look. Holden made a mental note of the many corridor intersections where men in riot gear stood guard. It would be much tougher coming back down.

  When the group they were following eventually stopped outside a large metal door marked with the ancient radiation symbol, Holden and Miller slipped off to the side and hid behind a large planter filled with ferns and a couple of stunted trees. Holden watched the fake riot cops order everyone into the shelter and then seal the door behind them with the swipe of a card. All but one of them left, the remaining one standing guard outside the door.