Expanse: Nemesis Games Part 18

"Inventories are running slow. I think more of them are being dry-labbed than anyone wants to admit. I've been trying to convince the admiral that it's a problem, but either she doesn't understand or..."

"Or?"

Duarte didn't finish his thought. "There has been a pattern of attacks too. They may be political or it may just be theft and piracy. You heard about the attack on Callisto?"

"Heard about it."

"Have you come across anything about it particularly?"

"No."

Duarte clenched his jaw in disappointment. "There was something about that one that bothers me, but I can't put my finger on it. The timing was precise. The attack was well coordinated. And for what? To loot a s.h.i.+pyard?"

"What did they take?"

Duarte's gaze clicked onto Alex. His smile was sorrowful. "I don't know. n.o.body knows. I think n.o.body will ever know, because I can't even figure out what was there. That's how bad it is."

Alex scowled. "You're telling me that the Martian Navy doesn't know where its own s.h.i.+ps are?"

"I'm telling you that the tracking of supplies, s.h.i.+ps, and material has all but collapsed. We don't know what's missing because we don't know. And I'm telling you that the leaders.h.i.+p is so focused on trying not to lose face in front of Earth and the OPA that they're downplaying it."

"Covering it up."

"Downplaying it," Duarte said. "Prime Minister Smith is making a big show right now of taking a convoy to Luna to meet with the UN secretary-general and swearing that everything's fine, and he's doing that because it isn't true. If I were a criminal and a black marketer, all this would look like a permanent Christmas."

Alex said something obscene. Duarte opened his desk and took out a pad of paper and a silver pen. He wrote for a moment, then tore off the sheet and handed it across the desk. In precise, legible handwriting he'd written KAARLO HENDERSON-CHARLES and an address in base housing. The act of physically writing something down, not trusting the information to electronic transfer, felt like either sensible precaution or paranoia. Alex wasn't sure which.

"While you're here, I'd recommend talking to Kaarlo. He's a senior programmer that's been working on a project that was supposed to coordinate the databases. He was the one who came to me first to say he was seeing problems. If you have specific questions, he may be able to give you answers. Or he may be able to point you to where they are."

"Will he help me?"

"He may," Duarte said. "I did."

"Could you... give him cover?"

"No," Duarte said, with his sad smile. "I'm not ordering anyone to do anything with you. No offense. You're not Navy anymore. Whatever we do, you and I, we do as part of my investigation. And I report all of it, down to the letter, to the admiral."

"Covering your a.s.s."

"h.e.l.l yes," Duarte said. "You should do the same."

"Yes, sir," Alex said.

Fermin wasn't in the waiting area when he left, so Alex went out and caught one of the moving walkways heading east, toward base housing. His head felt a little light, like he'd been running the oxygen too lean for too long.

The Navy had always been the thing in his life that didn't change. The permanent factor. His relations.h.i.+p to it might s.h.i.+ft. He did his tours, he mustered out, but those changes were all about him. His life, his fragility and mortality and impermanence. The idea that the Navy itself could be fragile, that the government of Mars might stumble or collapse, was like saying the sun might go out. If that wasn't solid, then nothing was.

So maybe nothing was.

Kaarlo Henderson-Charles' hole was in a stretch of a hundred just like it, spare and spartan. There was nothing on the gray-green door to identify it beyond numbers. No flowers in the planter, only dry soil. Alex rang the bell. When he knocked, the door opened under his knuckles. He heard someone grumbling angrily under their breath. No. Not a person. The recyclers on high, scrubbing the air. He caught a whiff of cordite and something like rotten meat.

The body was on the kitchen table in its uniform jumper. The blood had pooled under the chair and spattered along the wall and ceiling. A pistol still hung in the limp right hand. Alex coughed out a laugh of mixed disbelief and despair, then he pulled out his hand terminal and called the MPs.

"Then what happened?" Bobbie asked.

"What do you think? The MPs came."

The hotel lobby was decorated in crimson and gold. A wall fountain burbled and chuckled beside the couches, giving the two of them something like privacy. Alex sipped at his gin and tonic. The alcohol bit a little. Bobbie pressed her knuckles against her lips and scowled. She was looking solid for any other person who'd been tortured and shot, but still a little fragile for Bobbie. The bandages that covered bullet wounds on her left side made an awkward b.u.mp under her blouse, but nothing more.

"They questioned you?" she said, barely even making it a question.

"For about eight hours. Duarte was able to give me a solid alibi, though, so I'm not in prison."

"Small favors. And your friend? Fermin?"

"Apparently his terminal's not on the network. I don't know if he killed the guy or if whoever killed the guy killed him or... anything. I don't know anything." He drank again, more deeply this time. "I may not be good at this whole investigation thing."

"I'm not much better," Bobbie said. "Mostly I've just been shaking the trees and seeing what falls out. So far the only thing I'm really sure about is that something's going on."

"And that people are willing to kill each other over it," Alex said.

"And now that the MPs are involved, they're going to lock down the investigation like it was fissionable. I'm not going to be able to do a d.a.m.ned thing."

"Amateur detective hour does seem to be pretty much over," Alex agreed. "I mean, I can still ask around."

"You did more than enough," Bobbie said. "I shouldn't have gotten you into this in the first place. I just don't like disappointing the old lady."

"I can respect that. But I do kind of wish I knew what was going on."

"Me too."

Alex finished his drink, the ice clicking against his teeth. He had a pleasant warmth in his belly. He looked at Bobbie, saw her looking back at him.

"You know," he said slowly, "just because everything's shut down here, it doesn't mean everything's shut down everywhere."

Bobbie blinked. Her shrug was noncommittal, but there was a gleam in her eyes. "You're thinking about that backwater asteroid Holden was asking about?"

"You've got a s.h.i.+p. There's nothing we can do here," Alex said. "Seems like something we could do."

"Anyone shot at us, at least we'd see it coming," Bobbie said, her nonchalance radiating a kind of excitement. Or perhaps it was the alcohol and the prospect of being in a pilot's chair again making Alex see what he wanted to see.

"We could go," he said. "Take a look. Probably it's nothing."

Chapter Eighteen: Holden.

The construction sphere of Tycho Station glittered around Holden, brighter than stars. s.h.i.+ps hung in their berths in all states of undress, the Rocinante just one among many. Other s.h.i.+ps hung in the center, awaiting clearance to leave. The sparks of welding rigs and the white plumes of maneuvering thrusters blinked into and out of existence like fireflies. The only sound he heard was his own breath, the only smell the too-clean scent of bottled air. The dirty green-gray EVA suit had TYCHO SECURITY stenciled on the arm in orange, and the rifle in his hand had come from Fred's weapons locker.

Station security was on high alert, Drummer and her teams all set to watch each other on the a.s.sumption and Holden was too painfully aware that it wasn't anything more that if there was a dissident faction within them, they'd be outnumbered by the ones loyal to Fred. When they'd started out from the airlock, Holden had turned on the security system. It highlighted slightly over a thousand possible sniper's nests. He'd turned it off again.

Fred floated ahead of him strapped into a bright yellow salvage mech. The rescue-and-recovery kit looked like a ma.s.sive backpack slung across the mech's shoulders. A burst of white gas came from the mech's left side, and Fred drifted elegantly to the right. For a moment, Holden's brain interpreted the dozens of s.h.i.+pping containers cl.u.s.tered in the empty s.p.a.ce outside the ma.s.sive warehouse bays as being below them, as if he and Fed were divers in a vast airless sea; then they flipped and he was rising up toward them feetfirst. He turned the HUD back on, resetting its display priorities, and one container took on a green overlay. The target. Monica Stuart's prison, or else her tomb.

"How're you doing back there?" Fred asked in his ear.

"I'm solid," Holden said, then curled his lip in annoyance and turned his mic on. "I'm solid except that this isn't my usual suit of armor. The controls on this thing are all just a little bit wrong."

"Keep you from dying if they start shooting at us."

"Sure, unless they're good at it."

"We can hope they're bad," Fred said. "Get ready. I'm heading in."

As soon as they'd identified the container, Holden had thought they'd send out a mech, haul it into a bay, and open it. He hadn't thought about the possibility of b.o.o.by traps until Fred pointed it out. The container's data showed awaiting pickup, but the frame that should have said what s.h.i.+p it was slated for was garbled. The image from Monica's feed didn't show anything beyond the access door. For all they knew, she could be sitting on tanks of acetylene and oxygen wired to the same circuit as the docking clamps. What they knew for certain was that the main doors were bolted and sealed. But even those could be wired to a trigger. The lowest-risk option, according to Fred, was to cut a hole into the visible doorframe and send someone in to take a look. And the only someone he was sure he could trust was Holden.

Fred positioned himself in front of the container's doors, and the mech's ma.s.sive arm reached back and plucked the r-and-r pack loose. Fred unpacked it with a speed and efficiency of movement that made it seem like something he did all the time. The thin plastic emergency airlock, a single-use cutting torch, two emergency pressure suits, a distress beacon, and a small, sealed crate of medical supplies all took their places in the vacuum around him like they'd been hooked in place. Holden had spent enough years bucking ice to admire how little drift each piece of equipment had.

"Wish me luck," Fred said.

"Don't blow up," Holden replied. Fred's mic cut out on his chuckle, and the mech's arms swung into motion with a surgical speed and precision. The welding torch bloomed, slicing through the metal while a sealant foam injector followed to keep the air in the box from venting. Holden opened a connection to the lab and the captured image from Monica's feed. A brightness like a star shone there.

"We've got confirmation," Holden said. "This is the right one."

"I saw," Fred replied, finis.h.i.+ng the cut. He smoothed the airlock over the scar, pressing the adhesive against the surface, and then opened the outer zipper. "You're up."

Holden moved forward. Fred held out a bulky three-fingered mech claw, and Holden gave it the rifle, scooping up the medical bag and emergency suit.

"If anything looks suspicious, just get back out," Fred said. "We'll take our chances with a real demolitions tech."

"I'll just pop my head in," Holden said.

"Sure you will," Fred said. The angle of the faceplate made Fred's smile impossible to see, but he could hear it. Holden pulled the outer sheet of the lock over him, sealed it, inflated the blister, and opened the interior sheet. The cut was a square, a meter to each side, black scorch marks with a pale beige foam between them. Holden put a foot on the uncut container door, locking the mag boot in place, and kicked in. The foam splintered and broke inward; the cut panel floated into the container. Dull b.u.t.tery light spilled out.

Monica Stuart lay strapped in a crash couch. Her eyes were open but glazed, her mouth slack. A cut across her cheek had a ridge of black scab. A cheap autodoc was clamped to the wall, a tube reaching out to her neck like a leash. There didn't seem to be anything else there. Nothing with a big CAUTION EXPLOSIVES sign anyway.

When Holden grabbed the edge of the crash couch, it s.h.i.+fted on its gimbals. Her eyes looked into his, and he thought he saw a flicker of emotion there confusion and maybe relief. He took the needle out of her neck gently. A tiny spurt of clear liquid bubbling and dancing in the air. He cracked the emergency medical kit open and strapped it over her arm. Forty long seconds later, it reported that she appeared sedated but stable and asked if Holden wanted to intervene.

"How's it going in there?" Fred asked, and this time Holden remembered to turn on the mic.

"I've got her."

Three hours later, they were in the medical bay on Tycho Station proper. The room was sealed off, four guards posted outside and all network connections to the suite physically disabled. Three other beds sat empty, the patients, if there were any, rerouted to other places. It was half recovery room, half protective custody, and Holden could only wonder if Monica understood how much of that security was just theater.

"That wasn't fun," Monica said.

"I know," Holden said. "You've been through a lot."

"I have." The words were slushy, like she was drunk, but her eyes had the sharpness and focus Holden was used to seeing in them.

Fred, standing at the foot of the bed, crossed his arms. "I'm sorry, Monica, but I'm going to have to ask you some questions."

Her smile reached her eyes. "Usually goes the other way."

"Yes, but I usually don't answer. I'm hoping you will."

She took a deep breath. "Okay. What do you have?"

"Why don't we start with how you wound up in that container," Fred said.

Her shrug looked sore and painful. "Not much to tell there. I was in my quarters and the door opened. Two guys came in. I sent an emergency alert to security, screamed a lot, and tried to get away from them. But then they sprayed something in my face and I blacked out."

"The door opened," Fred said. "You didn't answer it?"

"No."

Fred's expression didn't change, but Holden had the sense of growing weight in the angle of his shoulders. "Go on."

"I came to when they were loading me into the crash couch. I couldn't move much," Monica went on, "but I managed to turn my camera rig on."

"Did you hear anyone speaking?"

"Did," she said. "They were Belters. That's what you're getting at, isn't it?"

"It's one thing. Can you tell me what they said?"

"They called me some unpleasant names," Monica said. "There was something about a trigger. I couldn't follow all of it."

"Belter creole can be hard to follow."

"And I'd been drugged and a.s.saulted," Monica said, her voice growing hard. Fred lifted his hands, placating.

"No offense meant," he said. "Do you remember anything specific that -"

"This is about the missing colony s.h.i.+ps, isn't it?"

"It's early to say what this is 'about,' " Fred said, and then, grudgingly, "but that's certainly one possibility."

"The OPA's doing it, then. Only you didn't know about it."

"I'm not confirming or denying anything, just at the moment."

"Then neither am I," Monica said, crossing her arms.