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“Okay,” Holden said. “Somewhere around here there has to be a maintenance shaft.”

“Could also try the tube station,” Miller said. “The cars run in vacuum, but there might be some service tunnels running parallel.”

“Don’t you think they’d have shut those down as part of the big roundup?”

“Probably,” Miller said.

“Hey! You two! What the fuck you think you’re doing up here?”

Miller looked back over his shoulder. Two men in riot gear were waving at them menacingly. Holden said something sharp under his breath. Miller narrowed his eyes.

The thing was these men were amateurs. The beginning of an idea moved in the back of Miller’s mind as he watched the two approach. Killing them and taking their gear wouldn’t work. There was nothing like scorch marks and blood to make it clear something had happened. But…

“Miller,” Holden said, a warning in his voice.

“Yeah,” Miller said. “I know.”

“I said what the fuck are you two doing here?” one of the security men said. “The station’s on lockdown. Everyone goes down to the casino level or up to the radiation shelters.”

“We were just looking for a way to… ah… get down to the casino level,” Holden said, smiling and being nonthreatening. “We’re not from around here, and—”

The closer of the two guards jabbed the butt of his rifle neatly into Holden’s leg. The Earther staggered, and Miller shot the guard just below the faceplate, then turned to the one still standing, mouth agape.

“You’re Mikey Ko, right?” Miller said.

The man’s face went even paler, but he nodded. Holden groaned and stood.

“Detective Miller,” Miller said. “Busted you on Ceres about four years ago. You got a little happy in a bar. Tappan’s, I think? Hit a girl with a pool cue?”

“Oh, hey,” the man said with a frightened smile. “Yeah, I remember you. How you been doing?”

“Good and bad,” Miller said. “You know how it is. Give the Earther your gun.”

Ko looked from Miller to Holden and back, licking his lips and judging his chances. Miller shook his head.

“Seriously,” Miller said. “Give him the gun.”

“Sure, yeah. No problem.”

This was the kind of man who’d killed Julie, Miller thought. Stupid. Shortsighted. A man born with a sense for raw opportunity where his soul should have been. Miller’s mental Julie shook her head in disgust and sorrow, and Miller found himself wondering if she meant the thug now handing his rifle to Holden or himself. Maybe both.

“What’s the deal here, Mikey?” Miller asked.

“What do you mean?” the guard said, playing stupid, like they were in an interrogation cell. Stalling for time. Walking through the old script of cop and criminal as if it still made sense. As if everything hadn’t changed. Miller was surprised by a tightness in his throat. He didn’t know what it was there for.

“The job,” he said. “What’s the job?”

“I don’t know—”

“Hey,” Miller said gently. “I just killed your buddy.”

“And that’s his third today,” Holden said. “I saw him.”

Miller could see it in the man’s eyes: the cunning, the shift, the move from one strategy to another. It was old and familiar and as predictable as water moving down.

“Hey,” Ko said, “it’s just a job. They told us about a year ago how we were making a big move, right? But no one knows what it is. So a few months back, they start moving guys over. Training us up like we were cops, you know?”

“Who was training you?” Miller said.

“The last guys. The ones who were working the contract before us,” Ko said.

“Protogen?”

“Something like that, yeah,” he said. “Then they took off, and we took over. Just muscle, you know. Some smuggling.”

“Smuggling what?”

“All kinds of shit,” Ko said. He was starting to feel safe, and it showed in the way he held himself and the way he spoke. “Surveillance equipment, communication arrays, serious-as-fuck servers with their own little gel software wonks already built in. Scientific equipment too. Stuff for checking the water and the air and shit. And these ancient remote-access robots like you’d use in a vacuum dig. All sorts of shit.”

“Where was it going to?” Holden