Leviathan Wakes

“Got to move,” a woman’s voice said. “Too much splashback here. We have to get to the other side of the docks.”

“These go on for almost two kilometers,” Miller said.

“Is,” she agreed. “We can unmoor and move the ship under power or we can tow it. We’ve got enough lead line.”

“Which one’s fastest? We don’t have a lot of spare time here.”

“Towing.”

“Tow it, then,” Miller said.

Slowly, the ship rose, twenty small, crawling transport drones clinging to leads like they were hauling a great metallic zeppelin. The ship was going to stay with him, here on the station, strapped to the rock like a sacrifice to the gods. Miller walked with the crew as they crossed the wide, closed bay doors. The only sounds were the tapping of his soles as the electromagnets jolted onto the surface and then a tick when they let go again. The only smells were of his own body and the fresh plastic of the air recycler. The metal under his feet shone like someone had cleaned it. Any dust or pebbles had been hurled away long ago.

They worked fast to place the ship, arm the bombs, and fit the security codes, everyone tacitly aware of the great missile that had been the Nauvoo speeding toward them.

If another ship came down and tried to disarm the trap, the ship would send synchronizing signals to all the other OPA bomb ships studding the moon’s surface. Three seconds later, the surface of Eros would be scrubbed clean. The spare air and supplies were loaded off the ship, bundled together and ready for reclamation. No reason to waste the resources.

Nothing horrific crawled out of an airlock and tried to attack the crew, which made Miller’s presence during the mission entirely superfluous. Or maybe not. Maybe it was just a ride.

When everything was done that could be, Miller sent the all clear, relayed through the now-dead ship’s system. The return transport appeared slowly, a dot of light that grew gradually brighter and then spread, the null-g boarding web strung out like scaffolding. At the new ship’s word, Miller’s team turned off their boots and fired simple maneuvering thrusters either from their suits or, if the suits were too old, from shared ablative evacuation shells. Miller watched them drop away.

“Call va and roll, Pampaw,” Diogo said from someplace. Miller wasn’t sure which of them he was at this distance. “This tube don’t sit.”

“I’m not coming,” Miller said.

“Sa que?”

“I decided. I’m staying here.”

There was a moment of silence. Miller had been waiting for this. He had the security codes. If he needed to crawl back into the shell of their old ship and lock the door behind him, he could. But he didn’t want to. He’d prepared his arguments: He would only be going back to Tycho as a political pawn for Fred Johnson’s negotiations; he was tired and old in a way that years didn’t describe; he’d already died on Eros once, and he wanted to be here to finish it. He’d earned that much. Diogo and the others owed it to him.

He waited for the boy to react, to try to talk him out of it.

“All correct, then,” Diogo said. “Buona morte.”

“Buona morte,” Miller said, and shut off his radio. The universe was silent. The stars below him shifted slowly but perceptibly as the station he hung from spun. One of those lights was the Rocinante. Two others were the ships Holden had been sent out to stall. Miller couldn’t pick them out. Julie floated beside him, her dark hair floating in the vacuum, the stars shining through her. She looked peaceful.

If you had it to do again, she said. If you could do it all over from the beginning?

“I wouldn’t,” he said.

He watched the OPA transport ship start up its engines, glowing gold and white, and pull away until it was a star again. A small one. And then lost. Miller turned and considered the dark, empty moonscape and the permanent night.

He just needed to be with her for another few hours, and they would both be safe. They would all be safe. It was enough. Miller found himself smiling and weeping, the tears tracking up from his eyes and into his hair.

It’s going to be fine, Julie said.

“I know,” Miller said.

He stood silently for almost an hour, then turned and made his slow, precarious way back to the sacrificed ship, down the airlock, and into the dim belly. There was enough residual atmosphere that he didn’t need to sleep in his suit. He stripped naked, chose an acceleration couch, and curled up on the hard blue gel. Not twenty meters away, five fusion devices powerful enough to outshine the sun waited for a signal. Above him, everything that had once been human in Eros Station changed and re-formed, pouring from one shape to another like Hieronymus Bosch made real. And still almost a day away, the Nauvoo, the hammer of God, hurtled toward him.