Leviathan Wakes - James S. A. Corey [155]
“What?” Naomi said, an uncertain smile on her lips.
Miller blinked.
“You were laughing a little,” Naomi said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you laugh before. I mean, not when something was funny.”
“I was just thinking about something a partner of mine told me about letting cases go when you got pulled from them.”
“What did he say?”
“That it’s like taking half a shit,” Miller said.
“Had a way with words, that one.”
“He was all right for an Earther,” Miller said, and something tickled at the back of his mind. Then, a moment later: “Ah, Jesus. I may have something.”
Havelock met him in an encrypted drop site that lived on a server cluster on Ganymede. The latency kept them from anything like real-time conversation. It was more like dropping notes, but it did the trick. The waiting made Miller anxious. He sat with his terminal set to refresh every three seconds.
“Would you like anything else?” the woman asked. “Another bourbon?”
“That’d be great,” Miller said, and checked to see if Havelock had replied yet. He hadn’t.
Like the observation deck, the bar looked out on the Nauvoo, though from a slightly different angle. The great ship looked foreshortened, and arcs of energy lit it where a layer of ceramic was annealing. A bunch of religious zealots were going to load themselves into that massive ship, that small self-sustaining world, and launch themselves into the darkness between the stars. Generations would live and die in it, and if they were mind-bendingly lucky enough to find a planet worth living on the end of the journey, the people who came out of it would never have known Earth or Mars or the Belt. They’d be aliens already. And if whatever had made the protomolecule was out there to greet them, then what?
Would they all die like Julie had?
There was life out there. They had proof of it now. And the proof came in the shape of a weapon, so what did that tell him? Except that maybe the Mormons deserved a little warning about what they were signing their great-grandkids up for.
He laughed to himself when he realized that was exactly what Holden would say.
The bourbon arrived at the same moment his hand terminal chimed. The video file had a layered encryption that took almost a minute to unpack. That alone was a good sign.
The file opened, and Havelock grinned out from the screen. He was in better shape than he’d been on Ceres, and it showed in the shape of his jaw. His skin was darker, but Miller didn’t know if it was purely cosmetic or if his old partner had been basking in false sunlight for the joy of it. It didn’t matter. It made the Earther look rich and fit.
“Hey, buddy,” Havelock said. “Good to hear from you. After what happened with Shaddid and the OPA, I was afraid we were going to be on different sides now. I’m glad you got out of there before the shit hit the fan.
“Yeah, I’m still with Protogen, and I’ve got to tell you, these guys are kind of scary. I mean, I’ve worked contract security before, and I’m pretty clear when someone’s hard-core. These guys aren’t cops. They’re troops. You know what I mean?
“Officially, I don’t know dick about a Belt station, but you know how it is. I’m from Earth. There are a lot of these guys who gave me shit about Ceres. Working with the vacuum-heads. That kind of thing. But the way things are here, it’s better to be on the good side of the bad guys. It’s just that kind of job.”
There was an apology in his expression. Miller understood. Working in some corporations was like going to prison. You adopted the views of the people around you. A Belter might get hired on, but he’d never belong. Like Ceres, just pointed the other way. If Havelock had made friends with a set of inner planets mercs who spent their off nights curb-stomping Belters outside bars, then he had.
But making friends didn’t mean he was one of them.
“So. Off the record, yeah, there’s a black ops station in the