“Naomi,” he said before she could speak. “How’ve you been doing?”
“Hey,” she said.
The silence between them stretched.
“You talked to Holden, then?”
“I did,” she said. “He’s still talking about ways to get you off that thing.”
“He’s a good guy,” Miller said. “Talk him out of it for me, okay?”
The silence hung long enough that Miller started to get uncomfortable.
“What are you doing there?” she asked. As if there were an answer for that. As if all his life could be summarized in answer to one simple question. He danced around what she meant and replied only to what she’d said.
“Well, I’ve got a nuclear bomb strapped to a cargo wagon. I’m hauling it over to the access hatch and taking it into the station.”
“Miller—”
“The thing is, we were treating this like a rock. Now everyone knows that’s a little simplistic, but it’s going to take people time to adjust. Navies are still going to be thinking of this thing like a billiard ball when it’s really a rat.”
He was talking too fast. The words spilling out of him in a rush. If he didn’t give her room, she wouldn’t talk. He wouldn’t have to hear what she had to say. He wouldn’t have to keep her from talking him down.
“It’s going to have structure. Engines or control centers. Something. If I truck this thing inside, get it close to whatever coordinates the thing, I can break it. Turn it back into a billiard ball. Even if it’s just for a little while, that gives the rest of you a chance.”
“I figured,” she said. “It makes sense. It’s the right thing to do.”
Miller chuckled. A particularly solid impact tocked against the ship beneath him, the vibration of it jarring his bones. Gas started venting out of the new hole. The station was moving faster.
“Yeah,” he said. “Well.”
“I was talking to Amos,” she said. “You need a dead man’s switch. So that if something happens, the bomb still goes off. If you have the access codes…?”
“I do.”
“Good. I’ve got a routine you can put on your hand terminal. You’ll need to keep your finger on the select button. If you go away for five seconds, it sends the go signal. If you want, I can upload it to you.”
“So I have to wander around the station with my finger mashed on a button?”
Naomi’s tone made it an apology. “They might take you out with a head shot. Or wrestle you down. The longer the gap, the more chance for the protomolecule to disable the bomb before it goes off. If you need more, I can reprogram it.”
Miller looked at the bomb resting on its cart just outside the ship’s airlock. Its readouts all glowed green and gold. His sigh briefly fogged the inside of his helmet.
“Yeah, no. Five is good. Upload the routine. Am I going to need to tweak it, or is there a simple place I can put the arm-and-fire string?”
“There’s a setup section,” Naomi said. “It prompts you.”
The hand terminal chirped, announcing the new file. Miller accepted it, ran it. It was easy as keying in a door code. Somehow he felt that arming fusion bombs to detonate around him should have been more difficult.
“Got it,” he said. “We’re good to go. I mean, I still have to move this bastard, but other than that. How fast am I accelerating on this thing, anyway?”
“Eventually it will be faster than the Roci can go. Four g and ramping up with no sign of easing off the throttle.”
“Can’t feel it at all,” he said.
“I’m sorry about before,” Naomi said.
“It was a bad situation. We did what we had to do. Same as always.”
“Same as always,” she echoed.
They didn’t speak for a few seconds.
“Thanks for the trigger,” Miller said. “Tell Amos I appreciate it.”
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.