“Someone have a birthday?”

Diogo gave an elaborate shrug.

“Why’s everyone in such a good fucking mood?” Miller said, more sharply than he’d intended. Diogo took no offense. He smiled his great red-and-white teeth.

“Audi-nichts?”

“No, I haven’t heard, or I wouldn’t be asking,” Miller said.

“Mars did the right thing,” Diogo said. “Got the feed off Eros, put two and two, and—”

The boy slammed a fist into his open palm. Miller tried to parse what he was saying. They’d attacked Eros? They’d taken on Protogen?

Ah. Protogen. Protogen and Mars.Miller nodded. “The Phoebe science station,” he said. “Mars quarantined it.”

“Fuck that, Pampaw. Autoclavedit, them. Moon is gone. Dropped enough nukes on it to split it subatomic.”

They better have,Miller thought. It wasn’t a big moon. If Mars had really destroyed it and there was any protomolecule left on a hunk of ejectac

“Tu sabez?” Diogo said. “They’re on our side now. They get it. Mars-OPA alliance.”

“You don’t really think that,” Miller said.

“Nah,” Diogo said, just as pleased with himself in admitting that the hope was fragile at best and probably false. “But don’t hurt to dream, que no?”

“You don’t think?” Miller said, and lay back.

The acceleration gel was too stiff to conform to his body at the dock’s one-third g, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. He checked the news on his hand terminal, and indeed someone in the Martian navy had made a judgment call. It was a lot of ordinance to use, especially in the middle of a shooting war, but they’d expended it. Saturn had one fewer moon, one more tiny, unformed, filamentous ring—if there was even enough matter left from the detonations to form that. It looked to Miller’s unpracticed eye as if the explosions had been designed to drop debris into the protective and crushing gravity of the gas giant.

It was foolish to think it meant the Martian government wouldn’t want samples of the protomolecule. It was naive to pretend that any organization of that size and complexity was univocal about anything, much less something as dangerous and transforming as this.

But still.

Perhaps it was enough just knowing that someone on the other side of the political and military divide had seen the same evidence they had seen and drawn the same conclusions. Maybe it left room for hope. He switched his hand terminal back to the Eros feed. A strong throbbing sound danced below a cascade of noise. Voices rose and fell and rose again. Data streams spewed into one another, and the pattern-recognition servers burned every spare cycle making something from the resultant mess. Julie took his hand, the dream so convincing he could almost pretend he felt it.

You belong with me,she said.

As soon as it’s over,he thought. It was true he kept pushing back the end point of the case. First find Julie, then avenge her, and now destroy the project that had claimed her life. But after that was accomplished, he could let go.

He just had this one last thing he needed to do.

Twenty minutes later, the Klaxon sounded. Thirty minutes later, the engines kicked on, pressing him into the acceleration gel at a joint-crushing high-g burn for thirteen days, with one-g breaks for biological function every four hours. And when they were done, the half-trained jack-of-all-trades crew would be handling nuclear mines capable of annihilating them if they screwed it up.

But at least Julie would be there. Not really, but still.

It didn’t hurt to dream.

Chapter Forty-Seven: Holden

  Even the wet cellulose taste of reconstituted artificial scrambled eggs was not enough to ruin Holden’s warm, self-satisfied glow. He shoveled the faux eggs into his mouth, trying not to grin. Sitting at his left around the galley table, Amos ate with lip-smacking enthusiasm. To Holden’s right, Alex pushed the limp eggs around on his plate with a piece of equally fake toast. Across the table, Naomi sipped a cup of tea and looked at him from under her hair. He stifled the urge to wink at her.

They’d talked about how to break the news to the crew but hadn’t come to any consensus. Holden hated to hide anything. Keeping it secret made it seem dirty or shameful. His parents had raised him to believe that sex was something you did in private not because it was embarrassing, but because it was intimate. With five fathers and three mothers, the sleeping arrangements were always complex at his house, but the discussions about who was bedding with whom were never hidden from him. It left him with a strong aversion to hiding his own activities.

Naomi, on the other hand, thought they shouldn’t do anything to upset the fragile equilibrium they’d found, and Holden trusted her instincts. She had an insight into group dynamics that he often lacked. So, for now, he was following her lead.

Besides, it would have felt like boasting, and that would have been rude.

Keeping his voice neutral and professional, he said, “Naomi, can you pass the pepper?”

Amos’ head snapped up, and he dropped his fork on the table with a loud clatter.

“Holy shit, you guys are doing it!”

“Um,” Holden said. “What?”

“Something’s been screwy ever since we got back on the Roci,but I couldn’t figure. But that’s it! You guys are finally playing hide the weasel.”

Holden blinked twice at the big mechanic, unsure of what to say. He glanced at Naomi for support, but her head was down, and her hair completely covered her face. Her shoulders were shaking in silent laughter.

“Jesus, Cap,” Amos said, a grin on his wide face. “It fucking took you long enough. If she’d been throwing herself at me like that, I’d have been neck deep in that shit.”

“Uh,” Alex said, looking shocked enough that it was clear he hadn’t shared Amos’ insights. “Wow.”

Naomi stopped laughing and wiped tears away from the corners of her eyes.

“Busted,” she said.

“Look. Guys, it’s important that you know this doesn’t affect our—” Holden said, but Amos cut him off with a snort.

“Hey, Alex,” Amos said.

“Yo,” Alex replied.

“XO boning the captain going to make you a really shitty pilot?”

“Don’t believe it will,” Alex said with a grin, exaggerating his drawl.

“And, oddly enough, I don’t feel the need to be a lousy mechanic.”

Holden tried again. “I think it’s important that—”

“Cap’n?” Amos continued, ignoring him. “Consider that no one gives a fuck, it won’t stop us from doing our jobs, and just enjoy it, since we’ll probably all be dead in a few days anyway.”

Naomi started laughing again.

“Fine,” she said. “I mean, everyone knows I’m only doing it to get a promotion. Oh, wait, right. Already the second-in-command. Hey, can I be captain now?”

“No,” Holden said, laughing. “It’s a shit job. I’d never ask you to do it.”

Naomi grinned and shrugged. See? I’m not always right.Holden glanced at Alex, who was looking at him with genuine affection, clearly happy about the idea of him and Naomi together. Everything seemed right.

  Eros spun like a potato-shaped top, its thick skin of rock hiding the horrors inside. Alex brought them in close to do a thorough scan of the station. The asteroid swelled on Holden’s screen until it looked close enough to touch. At the other ops station, Naomi swept the surface with ladar, looking for anything that might pose a danger to the Tycho freighter crews, still a few days behind. On Holden’s tactical display, the UNN science ship continued to flare in a braking maneuver toward Eros, its escort right beside it.

“Still not talking, huh?” Holden asked.

Naomi shook her head, then tapped on her screen and sent the comm’s monitoring information to his workstation.