Holden entered the station’s ops center and saw Fred, Miller, a bunch of OPA troops, and one stranger in an expensive-looking suit. A line of technicians and operations staff in Protogen uniform had their wrists cuffed and were being led away. The room was covered deck to ceiling in screens and monitors, most of which were spooling text data too fast to read.
“Let me get this straight,” Fred was saying. “You’ll give me all the kingdoms of the Earth if I just bow down and do one act of worship for you?”
“I don’t know the reference,” the stranger said.
Whatever else they were about to say stopped when Miller noticed Holden and tapped Fred on the shoulder. Holden could swear that the detective gave him a warm smile, though on his dour face it was hard to tell.
“Jim,” Fred said, then gestured for him to come closer. He was reading a matte black business card. “Meet Antony Dresden, executive VP of bio research for Protogen, and the architect of the Eros project.”
The asshole in the suit actually reached out like he was going to shake hands. Holden ignored him.
“Fred,” he said. “Casualties?”
“Shockingly low.”
“Half their security had non-lethals,” Miller said. “Riot control. Sticky rounds. Like that.”
Holden nodded and then shook his head and frowned.
“I saw a lot of Protogen security bodies out there in the corridor. Why have so many guys and then give them weapons that can’t repel boarders?”
“Good question,” Miller agreed.
Dresden chuckled.
“This is what I mean, Mr. Johnson,” Dresden said. He turned to Holden. “Jim? Well then, Jim. The fact that you don’t understand this station’s security needs tells me that you have no idea what you’ve become involved with. And I think you know that as well as I do. As I was saying to Fred here—”
“Antony, you need to shut the fuck up,” Holden said, surprised by the sudden flush of anger. Dresden looked disappointed.
The bastard had no right to be comfortable. Condescending. Holden wanted the man terrified, begging for his life, not sneering behind his cultured accent.
“Amos, if he talks to me again without being told to, break his jaw.”
“My pleasure, Captain,” Amos said, and took half a step forward.
Dresden smirked at the ham-fisted threat but kept his mouth shut.
“What do we know?” Holden asked, aiming the question at Fred.
“We know the Eros data is coming here, and we know this piece of shit is in charge. We’ll know more once we’ve taken the place apart.”
Holden turned to look at Dresden again, taking in the blue blood European good looks, the gym-sculpted physique, the expensive haircut. Even now, surrounded by men with guns, Dresden managed to look like he was in charge. Holden could imagine him glancing down at his watch and wondering how much more of his expensive time this boarding party was going to take.
Holden said, “I need to ask him something.”
Fred nodded. “You earned it.”
“Why?” Holden asked. “I want to know why.”
Dresden’s smile was almost pitying, and he stuck his hands into his pockets as casually as a man talking sports at a dockside bar.
“‘Why’ is a very big question,” Dresden said. “Because God wanted it that way? Or perhaps you want to narrow it for me.”
“Why Eros?”
“Well, Jim—”
“You can call me Captain Holden. I’m the guy that found your lost ship, so I’ve seen the video from Phoebe. I know what the protomolecule is.”
“Really!” Dresden said, his smile becoming half a degree more genuine. “I have you to thank for turning the viral agent over to us on Eros. Losing the Anubis was going to put our timeline back months. Finding the infected body already there on the station was a godsend.”
I knew it. I fucking knew it, Holden thought. Out loud, he said, “Why?”
“You know what the agent is,” Dresden said, at a loss for the first time since Holden had come into the room. “I don’t know what more I can tell you. This is the most important thing to ever happen to the human race. It’s simultaneously proof that we are not alone in the universe, and our ticket out of the limitations that bind us to our little bubbles of rock and air.”
“You aren’t answering me,” Holden said, hating the way his broken nose made his voice slightly comical when he wanted to be threatening. “I want to know why you killed a million and a half people.”
Fred cleared his throat, but he didn’t interrupt. Dresden looked from Holden to the colonel and back again.
“I am answering, Captain. A million and a half people is small potatoes. What we’re working with here is bigger than that,” Dresden said, then moved over to a chair and sat down, pulling up his pants leg as he crossed his knees, so as not to stretch the fabric. “Are you familiar with Genghis Khan?”
“What?” Holden and Fred said at almost the same instant. Miller only stared at Dresden with a blank expression, tapping the barrel of his pistol against his own armored thigh.
“Genghis Khan. There are some historians who claim that Genghis Khan killed or displaced one quarter of the total human population of Earth during his conquest,” Dresden said. “He did that in pursuit of an empire that would begin falling apart as soon as he died. In today’s scale, that would mean killing nearly ten billion people in order to affect a generation. A generation and a half. Eros isn’t even a rounding error by comparison.”
“You really don’t care,” Fred said, his voice quiet.
“And unlike Khan, we aren’t doing it to build a brief empire. I know what you think. That we’re trying to aggrandize ourselves. Grab power.”
“You don’t want to?” Holden said.
“Of course we do.” Dresden’s voice was cutting. “But you’re thinking too small. Building humanity’s greatest empire is like building the world’s largest anthill. Insignificant. There is a civilization out there that built the protomolecule and hurled it at us over two billion years ago. They were already gods at that point. What have they become since then? With another two billion years to advance?”
With a growing dread, Holden listened to Dresden speak. This speech had the air of something spoken before. Perhaps many times. And it had worked. It had convinced powerful people. It was why Protogen had stealth ships from the Earth shipyards and seemingly limitless behind-the-scenes support.
“We have a terrifying amount of catching up to do, gentlemen,” Dresden was saying. “But fortunately we have the tool of our enemy to use in doing it.”
“Catching up?” a soldier to Holden’s left said. Dresden nodded at the man and smiled.
“The protomolecule can alter the host organism at the molecular level; it can create genetic change on the fly. Not just DNA, but any stable replicator. But it is only a machine. It doesn’t think. It follows instructions. If we learn how to alter that programming, then we become the architects of that change.”
Holden interrupted. “If it was supposed to wipe out life on Earth and replace it with whatever the protomolecule’s creators wanted, why turn it loose?”
“Excellent question,” Dresden said, holding up one finger like a college professor about to deliver a lecture. “The protomolecule doesn’t come with a user’s manual. In fact, we’ve never before been able to actually watch it carry out its program. The molecule requires significant mass before it develops enough processing power to fulfill its directives. Whatever they are.”
Dresden pointed at the screens covered with data around them.
“We are going to watch it at work. See what it intends to do. How it goes about doing it. And, hopefully, learn how to change that program in the process.”