Afterward, he’d been through mandatory counseling. He’d cried. He’d suffered the nightmares and the shakes and all the things that cops suffered quietly and didn’t talk about. But even then, it seemed to be happening at a distance, like he’d gotten too drunk and was watching himself throw up. It was just a physical reaction. It would pass.
The important thing was he knew the answer to the question. Yes, if he needed to, he could take a life.
It wasn’t until now, walking through the corridors of Eros, that he’d taken joy in it. Even taking down the poor bastard in that first firefight had felt like the sad necessity of work. Pleasure in killing hadn’t come until after Julie, and it wasn’t really pleasure as much as a brief cessation of pain.
He held the gun low. Holden started down the ramp, and Miller followed, letting the Earther take point. Holden walked faster than he did and with the uncommented athleticism of someone who lived in a wide variety of gravities. Miller had the feeling he’d made Holden nervous, and he regretted that a little. He hadn’t intended to, and he really needed to get aboard Holden’s ship if he was going to find Julie’s secrets.
Or, for that matter, not die of radiation sickness in the next few hours. That seemed a finer point than it probably was.
“Okay,” Holden said at the bottom of the ramp. “We need to get back down, and there are a lot of guards between us and Naomi that are going to be really confused by two guys walking the wrong direction.”
“That’s a problem,” Miller agreed.
“Any thoughts?”
Miller frowned and considered the flooring. The Eros floors were different than Ceres’. Laminate with flecks of gold.
“Tubes aren’t going to be running,” he said. “If they are, it’ll be in lockdown mode, where it only stops at the holding pen down in the casino. So that’s out.”
“Maintenance corridor again?”
“If we can find one that goes between levels,” Miller said. “Might be a little tricky, but it seems like a better bet than shooting our way past a couple dozen ass**les in armor. How long have we got before your friend takes off?”
Holden looked at his hand terminal. The radiation alarm was still deep red. Miller wondered how long those took to reset.
“A little more than two hours,” Holden said. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Let’s see what we can find,” Miller said.
The corridors nearest the radiation shelters—the death traps, the incubators—had been emptied. Wide passages built to accommodate the ancient construction equipment that had carved Eros into a human habitation were eerie with only Holden’s and Miller’s footsteps and the hum of the air recyclers. Miller hadn’t noticed when the emergency announcements had stopped, but the absence of them now seemed ominous.
If it had been Ceres, he would have known where to go, where everything led, how to move gracefully from one stage to another. On Eros, all he had was an educated guess. That wasn’t so bad.
But he could tell it was taking too long, and worse than that—they weren’t talking about it; neither one spoke—they were walking more slowly than normal. It wasn’t up to the threshold of consciousness, but Miller knew that both of their bodies were starting to feel the radiation damage. It wasn’t going to get better.
“Okay,” Holden said. “Somewhere around here there has to be a maintenance shaft.”
“Could also try the tube station,” Miller said. “The cars run in vacuum, but there might be some service tunnels running parallel.”
“Don’t you think they’d have shut those down as part of the big roundup?”
“Probably,” Miller said.
“Hey! You two! What the f**k you think you’re doing up here?”
Miller looked back over his shoulder. Two men in riot gear were waving at them menacingly. Holden said something sharp under his breath. Miller narrowed his eyes.
The thing was these men were amateurs. The beginning of an idea moved in the back of Miller’s mind as he watched the two approach. Killing them and taking their gear wouldn’t work. There was nothing like scorch marks and blood to make it clear something had happened. But…
“Miller,” Holden said, a warning in his voice.
“Yeah,” Miller said. “I know.”
“I said what the f**k are you two doing here?” one of the security men said. “The station’s on lockdown. Everyone goes down to the casino level or up to the radiation shelters.”
“We were just looking for a way to… ah… get down to the casino level,” Holden said, smiling and being nonthreatening. “We’re not from around here, and—”
The closer of the two guards jabbed the butt of his rifle neatly into Holden’s leg. The Earther staggered, and Miller shot the guard just below the faceplate, then turned to the one still standing, mouth agape.
“You’re Mikey Ko, right?” Miller said.
The man’s face went even paler, but he nodded. Holden groaned and stood.
“Detective Miller,” Miller said. “Busted you on Ceres about four years ago. You got a little happy in a bar. Tappan’s, I think? Hit a girl with a pool cue?”
“Oh, hey,” the man said with a frightened smile. “Yeah, I remember you. How you been doing?”
“Good and bad,” Miller said. “You know how it is. Give the Earther your gun.”
Ko looked from Miller to Holden and back, licking his lips and judging his chances. Miller shook his head.
“Seriously,” Miller said. “Give him the gun.”
“Sure, yeah. No problem.”
This was the kind of man who’d killed Julie, Miller thought. Stupid. Shortsighted. A man born with a sense for raw opportunity where his soul should have been. Miller’s mental Julie shook her head in disgust and sorrow, and Miller found himself wondering if she meant the thug now handing his rifle to Holden or himself. Maybe both.
“What’s the deal here, Mikey?” Miller asked.
“What do you mean?” the guard said, playing stupid, like they were in an interrogation cell. Stalling for time. Walking through the old script of cop and criminal as if it still made sense. As if everything hadn’t changed. Miller was surprised by a tightness in his throat. He didn’t know what it was there for.
“The job,” he said. “What’s the job?”
“I don’t know—”