Miller’s medical station chimed. Another new cancer. He ignored it. Holden’s cycle was just finishing, the redness of his cheeks speaking as much to the fresh, healthy blood in his body as to his emotional state.
“That’s the same ethos they have,” Holden said.
“Who?”
“Protogen. You may be on different sides, but you’re playing the same game. If everyone said what they knew, none of this would have happened. If the first lab tech on Phoebe who saw something weird had gotten on his system and said, ‘Hey, everyone! Look, this is weird,’ none of this would have happened.”
“Yeah,” Miller said, “because telling everyone there’s an alien virus that wants to kill them all is a great way to maintain calm and order.”
“Miller,” Holden said. “I don’t mean to panic you, but there’s an alien virus. And it wants to kill everyone.”
Miller shook his head and smiled like Holden had said something funny. “So look, maybe I can’t point a gun at you and make you do the right thing. But lemme ask you something. Okay?”
“Fine,” Holden said. Miller leaned back. The drugs were making his eyelids heavy.
“What happens?” Miller said.
There was a long pause. Another chime from the medical system. Another rush of cold through Miller’s abused veins.
“What happens?” Holden repeated. It occurred to Miller he could have been more specific. He forced his eyes open again.
“You broadcast everything we’ve got. What happens?”
“The war stops. People go after Protogen.”
“There’s some holes in that, but let it go. What happens after that?”
Holden was quiet for a few heartbeats.
“People start going after the Phoebe bug,” he said.
“They start experimenting. They start fighting for it. If that little bastard’s as valuable as Protogen thinks, you can’t stop the war. All you can do now is change it.”
Holden frowned, angry lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes. Miller watched a little piece of the man’s idealism die and was sorry that it gave him joy.
“So what happens if we get to Mars?” Miller went on, his voice low. “We trade out the protomolecule for more money than any of us have ever seen. Or maybe they just shoot you. Mars just wins against Earth. And the Belt. Or you go to the OPA, who are the best hope the Belt has of independence, and they’re a bunch of crazy zealots, half of ’em thinking we can actually sustain out there without Earth. And trust me, they’ll probably shoot you too. Or you just tell everyone everything and pretend that however it comes down, you kept your hands clean.”
“There’s a right thing to do,” Holden said.
“You don’t have a right thing, friend,” Miller said. “You’ve got a whole plateful of maybe a little less wrong.”
Holden’s blood flush finished. The captain pulled the needles out of his arm and let the thin metallic tentacles retract. As he rolled down his sleeve, the frown softened.
“People have a right to know what’s going on,” Holden said. “Your argument boils down to you not thinking people are smart enough to figure out the right way to use it.”
“Has anyone used anything you’ve broadcast as something besides an excuse to shoot someone they already didn’t like? Giving them a new reason won’t stop them killing each other,” Miller said. “You started these wars, Captain. Doesn’t mean you can stop them. But you have to try.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?” Holden said. The distress in his voice could have been anger. It could have been prayer.
Something in Miller’s belly shifted, some inflamed organ calming enough to slip back into place. He hadn’t been aware he’d felt wrong until he suddenly felt right again.
“You ask yourself what happens,” Miller said. “Ask yourself what Naomi’d do.”
Holden barked out a laugh. “Is that how you make your decisions?”
Miller let his eyes close. Juliette Mao was there, sitting on the couch at her old apartment on Ceres. Fighting the crew of the stealth ship to a standstill. Burst open by the alien virus on the floor of her shower stall.
“Something like it,” Miller said.
The report from Ceres, a break from the usual competing press releases, came that night. The governing council of the OPA announced that a ring of Martian spies had been rooted out. The video feed showed the bodies floating out an industrial airlock in what looked like the old docks in sector six. At a distance, the victims seemed almost peaceful. The feed cut to the head of security. Captain Shaddid looked older. Harder.
“We regret the necessity of this action,” she said to everyone everywhere. “But in the cause of freedom, there can be no compromise.”
That’s what it’s come to, Miller thought, rubbing a hand across his chin. Pogroms after all. Cut off just a hundred more heads, just a thousand more heads, just ten thousand more heads, and then we’ll be free.
A soft alert sounded, and a moment later, gravity shifted a few degrees to Miller’s left. Course change. Holden had made a decision.
He found the captain sitting alone and staring at a monitor in ops. The glow lit his face from below, casting shadows up into his eyes. The captain looked older too.
“You make the broadcast?” Miller asked.
“Nope. We’re just one ship. We tell everyone what this thing is and that we’ve got it, we’ll be dead before Protogen.”
“Probably true,” Miller said, sitting at an empty station with a grunt. The gimbaled seat shifted silently. “We’re going someplace.”
“I don’t trust them with it,” Holden said. “I don’t trust any of them with that safe.”
“Probably smart.”
“I’m going to Tycho Station. There’s someone there I… trust.”
“Trust?”
“Don’t actively distrust.”
“Naomi think it’s the right thing?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask her. But I think so.”
“Close enough,” Miller said.
Holden looked up from the monitor for the first time.
“You know the right thing?” Holden said.
“Yeah.”
“What is it?”
“Throw that safe into a long collision course with the sun and find a way to make sure no one ever, ever goes to Eros or Phoebe again,” Miller said. “Pretend none of this ever happened.”