Leviathan Wakes

He cut the connection before she could answer. Long goodbyes weren’t anyone’s strong suit. The bomb rested in the handcart, magnetic clamps in place and a wide woven-steel belt around the whole mess. He moved slowly across the metallic surface of the port docks. If the cart lost its grip on Eros, he wouldn’t be strong enough to hold it back. Of course, if one of the increasingly frequent strikes hit him, it would be a lot like getting shot, so waiting around wasn’t a good solve either. He put both dangers out of his mind and did the work. For ten nervous minutes, his suit smelled of overheating plastic. All the diagnostics showed within the error bars, and by the time the recyclers cleared it, his air supply still looked good. Another little mystery he wasn’t going to solve.

The abyss above him shone with unflickering stars. One of the dots of light was Earth. He didn’t know which one.

The service hatch had been tucked in a natural outcropping of stone, the raw-ferrous cart track like a ribbon of silver in the darkness. Grunting, Miller hauled the cart and the bomb and his own exhausted body up around the curve, and spin gravity once again pressed down on his feet instead of stretching his knees and spine. Light-headed, he keyed in the codes until the hatch opened.

Eros lay before him, darker than the empty sky.

He ran the hand terminal connection through the suit, calling Holden for what he expected was the last time.

“Miller,” Holden said almost immediately.

“I’m heading in now,” he said.

“Wait. Look, there’s a way we might be able to get an automated cart. If the Roci—”

“Yeah, but you know how it is. I’m already here. And we don’t know how fast this sonofabitch can go. We’ve got a problem we need to fix. This is how we do it.”

Holden’s hope had been weak, anyway. Pro forma. A gesture and, Miller thought, maybe even heartfelt. Trying to save everyone, right to the last.

“I understand,” Holden finally said.

“Okay. So once I’ve broken whatever the hell I find in there…?”

“We’re working on ways to annihilate the station.”

“Good. I’d hate to go through the trouble for nothing.”

“Is there… Is there anything you want me to do? After?”

“Nah,” Miller said, and then Julie was at his side, her hair floating around her like they were underwater. She glowed in more starlight than was actually there. “Wait. Yes. A couple things. Julie’s parents. They run Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile. They knew the war was going to start before it did. They’ve got to have links to Protogen. Make sure they don’t get away with it. And if you see them, tell them I’m sorry I didn’t find her in time.”

“Right,” Holden said.

Miller squatted in the darkness. Was there anything else? Shouldn’t there be more? A message to Havelock, maybe? Or Muss. Or Diogo and his OPA friends? But then there would have to be something to say.

“Okay,” Miller said. “That’s it, then. It was good working with you.”

“I’m sorry it came down this way,” Holden said. It wasn’t an apology for what he’d done or said, for what he’d chosen and refused.

“Yeah,” Miller said. “But what can you do, right?”

It was as close to goodbye as either of them could get. Miller shut the connection, brought up the script Naomi had sent him, and enabled it. While he was at it, he turned the Eros feed back on.

A soft hushing sound, like fingernails scratching down an endless sheet of paper. He turned on the cart’s lights, the dark entrance of Eros brightening to industrial gray, shadows scattering to the corners. His imagined Julie stood in the glare like it was a spotlight, the glow illuminating her and all the structures behind her at the same time, the remnant of a long dream, almost over.

He took off the brakes, pushed, and went inside Eros for the last time.

Chapter Fifty-One: Holden

Holden knew that humans could tolerate extremely high g-forces over short durations. With proper safety systems, professional daredevils had sustained impacts in excess of twenty-five g’s and survived. The human body deformed naturally, absorbed energy in soft tissues, and diffused impacts across larger areas.

He also knew that the problem with extended exposure to high g was that the constant pressure on the circulatory system would begin exposing weaknesses. Have a weak spot in an artery that could turn into an aneurysm in forty years? A few hours at seven g might just pop it open now. Capillaries in the eyes started to leak. The eye itself deformed, sometimes causing permanent damage. And then there were the hollow spaces, like the lungs and digestive tract. You piled on enough gravity, and they collapsed.

And while combat ships might maneuver at very high g for short durations, every moment spent under thrust multiplied the danger.