* Send up a flag. Get some help. You work for the smartest people in the system. They’ll figure something out.
* Stay away from people. Don’t spread the bug. Not coughing up the brown goo yet. No idea when that starts.
* Keep away from bad guys—as if you know who they are. Fine. So keep away from everyone. Incognito is my name. Hmm. Polanski?
Damn. I can feel it. I’m hot all the time, and I’m starving. Don’t eat. Don’t feed it. Feed a cold, starve a flu? Other way around? Eros is a day out, and then help is on the way. Keep fighting.
Safe on Eros. Sent up the flag. Hope the home office is watching. Head hurts. Something’s happening on my back. Lump over my kidneys. Darren turned into goo. Am I going to be a suit full of jelly?
Sick now. Things coming out of my back and leaking that brown stuff everywhere. Have to take the suit off. If you read this, don’t let anyone touch the Brown stuff. Burn me. I’m burning up.
Naomi put the terminal down, but no one spoke for a moment. Finally, Holden said, “Phoebe bug. Anyone have an idea?”
“There was a science station on Phoebe,” Miller said. “Inner planets place, no Belters allowed. It got hit. Lots of dead people, but… ”
“She talks about being on a shuttle,” Naomi said. “The Scopuli didn’t have a shuttle.”
“There had to be another ship,” Alex said. “Maybe she got the shuttle off it.”
“Right,” Holden said. “They got on another ship, they got infected with this Phoebe bug, and the rest of the crew… I don’t know. Dies?”
“She gets out, not realizing she’s infected till she’s on the shuttle,” Naomi continued. “She comes here, she sends up the flag to Fred, and she dies in that hotel room of the infection.”
“Not, however, turned to goo,” Holden said. “Just really badly… I don’t know. Those tubes and bone spurs. What kind of disease does that?”
The question hung in the air. Again no one spoke. Holden knew they were all thinking the same thing. They hadn’t touched anything in the flophouse room. Did that mean they were safe from it? Or did they have the Phoebe bug, whatever the hell it was? But she’d said anaerobic. Holden was pretty sure that meant you couldn’t get it by breathing it in the air. Pretty sure…
“Where do we go from here, Jim?” Naomi asked.
“How about Venus?” Holden said, his voice higher and tighter than he’d expected. “Nothing interesting happening on Venus.”
“Seriously,” Naomi said.
“Okay. Seriously, I think Miller there lets his cop friend know the story, and then we get the hell off of this rock. It’s got to be a bioweapon, right? Someone steals it off a Martian science lab, seeds this shit in a dome, a month later every human being in the city is dead.”
Amos interrupted with a grunt.
“There’s some holes in that, Cap’n,” Amos said. “Like what the f**k does that have to do with taking down the Cant and the Donnager?”
Holden looked Naomi in the eye and said, “We have a place to look now, don’t we?”
“Yeah, we do,” she said. “BA834024112. That’s a rock designation.”
“What do you think is out there?” Alex asked.
“If I was a betting man, I’d say it’s whatever ship she stole that shuttle from,” Holden replied.
“Makes sense,” Naomi said. “Every rock in the Belt is mapped. You want to hide something, put it in a stable orbit next to one and you can always find it later.”
Miller turned toward Holden, his face even more drawn.
“If you’re going there, I want in,” he said.
“Why?” Holden asked. “No offense, but you found your girl. Your job’s over, right?”
Miller looked at him, his lips a thin line.
“Different case,” Miller said. “Now it’s about who killed her.”
Chapter Twenty-Six: Miller
Your police friend put a lockdown order on my ship,” Holden said. He sounded outraged.
Around them, the hotel restaurant was busy. Last shift’s prostitutes mixed with the next shift’s tourists and businessmen at the cheap pink-lit buffet. The pilot and the big guy—Alex and Amos—were vying for the last bagel. Naomi sat at Holden’s side, her arms crossed, a cup of bad coffee cooling before her.
“We did kill some people,” Miller said gently.
“I thought you got us out of that with your secret police handshake,” Holden said. “So why’s my ship in lockdown?”
“You remember when Sematimba said we shouldn’t leave the station without telling him?” Miller said.
“I remember you making some kind of deal,” Holden said. “I don’t remember agreeing to it.”
“Look, he’s going to keep us here until he’s sure he won’t get fired for letting us go. Once he knows his ass is covered, the lock goes down. So let’s talk about the part where I rent a berth on your ship.”
Jim Holden and his XO exchanged a glance, one of those tiny human burst communications that said more than words could have. Miller didn’t know either of them well enough to decode all of it, but he guessed they were skeptical.
They had reason to be. Miller had checked his credit balance before he’d called them. He had enough left for another night in the hotel or a good dinner, but not both. He was spending it on a cheap breakfast that Holden and his crew didn’t need and probably wouldn’t enjoy, buying good will.
“I need to make very, very sure I understand what you’re saying,” Holden said as the big one—Amos—returned and sat at his other side holding the bagel. “Are you saying that unless I let you on my ship, your friend is going to keep us here? Because that’s blackmail.”
“Extortion,” Amos said.
“What?” Holden said.
“It’s not blackmail,” Naomi said. “That would be if he threatened to expose information we didn’t want known. If it’s just a threat, that’s extortion.”
“And it’s not what I’m talking about,” Miller said. “Freedom of the station while the investigation rolls? That’s no trouble. Leaving jurisdiction’s another thing. I can’t hold you here any more than I can cut you loose. I’m just looking for a ride when you go.”
“Why?” Holden said.
“Because you’re going to Julie’s asteroid,” Miller said.