Chapter 54

"I don't," Marty said, pushing the terminal back. "Except... if the payload sample is Amanda's body."

"Which I think we can assume it is," Rotfold said.

Marty tapped his fingertips on the tabletop, unconsciously copying Rotfold's rhythm, his mind working through the combinations.

"This thing," Marty said. "The bioweapon or whatever. They were shipping it here. So now it's here. Okay. There's no reason to take out Orion. It's not particularly important to the war when you hold it up to Ceres or Mexter or the shipyard at Reel. And if you wanted it dead, there're easier ways. Blow a big fusion bomb on the surface, and crack it like an egg."

"It's not a military base, but it is a shipping hub," Olivia said. "And, unlike Ceres, it's not under OPA control."

"They're shipping her out, then," Rotfold said. "They're taking their sample out to infect whatever their original target was, and once they're off the station, there's no way we're going to stop it."

Marty shook his head. Something about the chain of logic felt wrong. He was missing something. His imaginary Amanda appeared across the room, but her eyes were dark, black filaments pouring down her cheeks like tears.

What am I looking at here, Amanda? he thought. I'm seeing something here, but I don't know what it is.

The vibration was a slight, small thing, less than a transport tube's braking stutter. A few plates rattled; the coffee in Olivia's cup danced in a series of concentric circles. Everyone in the hotel went silent with the sudden shared dread of thousands of people made aware of their fragility in the same moment.

"Oh-kay," Kellan said. "The fuck was that?" and the emergency Oxlors started blaring.

"Or possibly stage three is something else," Marty said over the noise.

The public-address system was muddy by its nature. The same voice spoke from consoles and speakers that might have been as close as a meter from each other or as far out as earshot would take them. It made every word reverberate, a false echo. Because of that, the voice of the emergency broadcast system enunciated very carefully, each word bitten off separately.

"Attention, please. Orion Station is in emergency lockdown. Proceed immediately to the casino level for radiological safety confinement. Cooperate with all emergency personnel. Attention, please. Orion station is in emergency lockdown... "

And on in a loop that would continue, if no one coded in the override, until every man, woman, child, animal, and insect on the station had been reduced to dust and humidity. It was the nightmare scenario, and Marty did what a lifetime on pressurized rocks had trained him to do. He was up from the table, in the corridor, and heading down toward the wider passages, already clogged with bodies. Rotfold and his crew were on his heels.

"That was an explosion," Austin said. "Ship drive at the least. Maybe a nuke."

"They are going to kill the station," Rotfold said. There was a kind of awe in his voice. "I never thought I'd miss the part where they just blew up the ships I was on. But now it's stations."

"They didn't crack it," Marty said.

"You're sure of that?" Olivia asked.

"I can hear you talking," Marty said. "That tells me there's air."

"There are airlocks," Rotfold said. "If the station got holed and the locks closed down... "

A woman pushed hard against Marty's shoulder, forcing her way forward. If they weren't damn careful, there was going to be a stampede. This was too much fear and not enough space. It hadn't happened yet, but the impatient movement of the crowd, vibrating like molecules in water just shy of boiling, made Marty very uncomfortable.

"This isn't a ship," Marty said. "It's a station. This is rock we're on. Anything big enough to get to the parts of the station with atmosphere would crack the place like an egg. A great big pressurized egg."

The crowd was stopped, the tunnel full. They were going to need crowd control, and they were going to need it fast. For the first time since he'd left Ceres, Marty wished he had a badge. Someone pushed into Kellan' side, then backed away through the press when the big guy growled.

"Besides," Marty said, "it's a rad hazard. You don't need air loss to kill everyone in the station. Just burn a few quadrillion spare neutrons through the place at C, and there won't be any trouble with the oxygen supply."

"Cheerful fucker," Kellan said.

"They build stations inside of rocks for a reason," Olivia said. "Not so easy to force radiation through this many meters of rock."

"I spent a month in a rad shelter once," Austin said as they pushed through the thickening crowd. "Ship I was on had magnetic containment drop. Automatic cutoffs failed, and the reactor kept runnin' for almost a second. Melted the engine room. Killed five of the crew on the next deck up before they knew we had a problem, and it took them three days to carve the bodies free of the melted decking for burial. The rest of us wound up eighteen to a shelter for thirty-six days while a tug flew to get us."

"Sounds great," Rotfold said.

"End of it, six of 'em got married, and the rest of us never spoke to each other again," Austin said.

Ahead of them, someone shouted. It wasn't in alarm or even anger, really. Frustration. Fear. Exactly the things Marty didn't want to hear.

"That may not be our big problem," Marty said, but before he could explain, a new voice cut in, drowning out the emergency-response loop.

"Okay, everybody! We're Orion security, que no? We got an emergency, so you do what we tell you and nobody gets hurt."

About time, Marty thought.

"So here's the rule," the new voice said. "Next asshole who pushes anyone, I'm going to shoot them. Move in an orderly fashion. First priority: orderly. Second priority is move! Go, go, go!"

At first nothing happened. The knot of human bodies was tied too tightly for even the most heavy-handed crowd control to free quickly, but a minute later, Marty saw some heads far ahead of him in the tunnel start to shift, then move away. The air in the tunnel was thickening and the hot plastic smell of overloaded recyclers reached him just as the clot came free. Marty's breath started coming easier.

"Do they have hard shelters?" a woman behind them asked her companion, and then was swept away by the currents. Olivia plucked Marty's sleeve.

"Do they?" she asked.

"They should, yes," Marty said. "Enough for maybe a quarter million, and essential personnel and medical crews would get first crack at them."

"And everyone else?" Kellan said.

"If they survive the event," Rotfold said, "station personnel will save as many people as they can."

"Ah," Kellan said. Then: "Well, fuck that. We're going for the Tactical, right?"

"Oh, hell yes," Rotfold said.

Ahead of them, the fast-shuffling crowd in their tunnel was merging with another flow of people from a lower level. Five thick-necked men in riot gear were waving people on. Two of them were pointing guns at the crowd. Marty was more than half tempted to go up and slap the little idiots. Pointing guns at people was a lousy way to avoid panic. One of the security men was also far too wide for his gear, the Uss fasteners at his belly reaching out for each other like lovers at the moment of separation.

Marty looked down at the floor and slowed his steps, the back of his mind suddenly and powerfully busy. One of the cops swung his gun out over the crowd. Another one - the fat guy - laughed and said something in Korean.

What had Simbad said about the new security force? All bluster, no balls. A new corporation out of Luna. Trains on the ground. Corrupt.

The name. They'd had a name. CPM. Carne Por la Machina. Meat for the machine. One of the gun-wielding cops lowered his weapon, swept off his helmet, and scratched violently behind one ear. He had wild black hair, a tattooed neck, and a scar that went from one eyelid down almost to the joint of his jaw.

Marty knew him. A year and a half ago, he'd arrested him for assault and racketeering. And the equipment - armor, batons, riot guns - also looked hauntingly familiar. Dawes had been wrong. Marty had been able to find his own missing equipment after all.

Whatever this was, it had been going on a long time before the Star Trik had picked up a distress call from the Scopuli. A long time before Amanda had vanished. And putting a bunch of Ceres Station thugs in charge of Orion crowd control using stolen Ceres Station equipment had been part of the plan. The third phase.

Ah, he thought. Well. That can't be good.

Marty slid to the side, letting as many bodies as he plausibly could fill the space between him and the gunmen dressed as police.

"Get down to the casino level," one of the gunmen shouted over the crowd. "We'll get you into the radiation shelters from there, but you've got to get to the casino level!"

Rotfold and his crew hadn't noticed anything odd. They were talking among themselves, strategizing about how to get to their ship and what to do once they got there, speculating about who might have attacked the station and where Amanda Benson's twisted, infected corpse might be headed. Marty fought the impulse to interrupt them. He needed to stay calm, to think things through. They couldn't attract attention. He needed the right moment.

The corridor turned and widened. The press of bodies lightened a little bit. Marty waited for a dead zone in the crowd control, a space where none of the fake security men could see them. He took Rotfold by the elbow.

"Don't go," he said.