“You forgot to threaten us,” Cohen said. He sounded almost ill.
“No. I didn’t.”
Naomi had unbuckled her harness as well, and was floating next to him now. She tapped a wall panel and said, “Alex, get down here.”
“Look,” Monica said, patting the air with her hands. “You’re making a mistake blaming us for this.” Clip and Okju moved behind her, pulling Cohen to them. The documentary crew formed a small circle facing outward, unconsciously creating a defensive perimeter. More Pleistocene-age behavior that humans still carried with them. Alex drifted down from the cockpit; his usually jolly face had a hard expression on it. He was carrying a heavy wrench.
“Tell me who did it,” Holden repeated. “I swear by everything holy that I will space the whole damn lot of you to protect this ship if I have to.”
“It wasn’t us,” Monica said, the fear on her face draining the bland video star prettiness away, making her look older, gaunt.
“Fuck this,” Amos said, pointing the gun at them. “Let me drag one of ’em down to the airlock and space them right now. Even if only one of them did it, I got me a twenty-five percent chance to get the right one. Got a thirty-three percent chance with the second one I toss. Fifty-fifty by the third, and those are odds I’ll take any day.”
Holden didn’t acknowledge the threat, but he didn’t argue with it either. Let them sweat.
“Shit,” Cohen said. “I don’t suppose it will matter that I got set up just as bad as you guys, will it?”
Monica’s eyes went wide. Okju and Clip turned to stare at the blind man.
“You?” Holden said. It didn’t make any sense not to, not really, but he honestly hadn’t suspected the blind guy. It made him feel betrayed and guilty of his prejudices at the same time.
“I got paid to stick that rig on the ship,” Cohen said, moving out of the defensive circle and floating a half meter closer to Holden. Pulling himself out of the group, so that if anything happened, they wouldn’t get hurt. Holden respected him for that. “I had no idea what it would do. I figured someone was spying on your comms, is all. When that broadcast went out and the missiles started flying, I was just as surprised as you guys. And my ass was just as much on the line.”
“Motherfucker,” Amos said again, this time without the heat. Holden knew him well enough to know that angry Amos was not nearly as dangerous as cold Amos. “I was thinking I’d have a tough time spacing a blind guy, but turns out I’m gonna be just fine with it.”
“Not yet,” Holden said, waving Amos off. “Who paid you to do this. Lie to me and I let Amos have his way.”
Cohen held up both hands in surrender. “Hey, you got me, boss. I know my ass is hanging by a thread right now. I got no reason not to come clean.”
“Then do.”
“I only met her once,” Cohen continued. “Young woman. Nice voice. Had lots of money. Asked me to plant this thing. I said, ‘Sure, get me on that ship and I plant whatever you want.’ Next thing I know Monica’s got a gig doing this doc about you and the Ring. Damned if I know how she swung that.”
“Son of a bitch,” Monica said, clearly as surprised by this revelation as anyone else. That actually made Holden feel a little better.
“Who was this young woman with all the money?” Holden asked. Amos hadn’t moved, but he wasn’t pointing the gun at anyone anymore. Cohen’s tone didn’t have a hint of deception in it. He sounded like a man who knew that his life hung on every word.
“Never got a name, but I can sculpt her pretty easy.”
“Do that,” Holden said, then watched as Cohen plugged his modeling software into the big monitor. Over the next several minutes, the image of a woman slowly formed. It was all one color, of course, and the hair was a sculpted lump, not individual strands. But when Cohen had finished, Holden had no doubt about who it was. She was changed, but not so much that he couldn’t recognize the dead girl.
Julie Mao.
The ship was quiet. Monica and her two camera operators had been confined to the crew decks again, and last time Holden had checked they were together in the galley, not talking. Cohen’s betrayal had taken them by surprise as well, and they were still working through it. Cohen himself was in the airlock. It was the closest thing they had to a brig. Holden had to assume the man was quietly panicking.
Alex was back in the cockpit. After Amos had thrown Cohen into the airlock he’d disappeared back down to his machine shop to brood. Holden had let him go. Of them all, Amos took betrayal the hardest. Holden knew that Cohen’s life was hanging on whether Amos could get past it or not. If he decided to take action, Holden wouldn’t be able to stop him, and didn’t even know if he’d want to try.
So he and Naomi sat alone together on the ops deck as she made the last few adjustments to get the comm array back up and running. With Cohen’s device disabled, they’d been able to reboot it without being hijacked.
Naomi was waiting for him to speak. He could feel the tension in her shoulders from across the room. But he had no idea what to say. For a year, Miller had been a confused phantasm that appeared randomly and spouted nonsense. Now everything Miller had said over the last year took on the weight of dark portents. Prophetic riddles whose meaning must be teased out or risk catastrophe. And Miller wasn’t the only ghost haunting Holden.
Julie Mao had joined the game.
Somehow, while Miller had followed Holden around the solar system, the protomolecule had been using Julie, working on its own secret plans. Julie had arranged for the Martian lawsuit that stripped him of safe ports and employment. She’d arranged to have a documentary crew placed on his ship to send him to the Ring. And now it appeared she’d engineered an elaborate betrayal that forced him to actually go through the Ring to stay alive. The ghost Julie didn’t resemble his Miller at all. It was working with very specific purpose. It had access to money and powerful connections. The only thing it had in common with Miller was that it seemed to be focused on him. And if this was all true, then everything it had done had been with a single purpose in mind.
To bring him here. To force him to go through the Ring.
A shiver crawled its way up his spine, sending all the hairs on his arms and neck standing straight up. He turned on the closest workstation and brought up the external telescopes. Nothing at all in this starless void except a lot of inactive rings and the massive blue ball at its center. As he watched, the missile that had chased them through the gate drifted into view and joined the slowly circling ring of flotsam that orbited the station.