Amos poured the last of the tequila into everyone’s cups and held his up in a toast.
“I guess we’ll f**king find out.”
Chapter Ten: Miller
Captain Shaddid tapped the tip of her middle finger against her thumb when she started getting annoyed. It was a small sound, soft as a cat’s paws, but ever since Miller first noticed her habit, it had seemed louder. Quiet as it was, it could fill her office.
“Miller,” she said, smiling as if she meant it. “We’re all on edge these days. These have been hard, hard times.”
“Yes, sir,” Miller said, lowering his head like a fullback determined to muscle his way through all defenders, “but I think this is important enough to deserve closer—”
“It’s a favor for a shareholder,” Shaddid said. “Her father got jumpy. There’s no reason to think he meant Mars blasting the Canterbury. Tariffs are going up again. There was a mine blowout on one of the Red Moon operations. Eros is having trouble with their yeast farm. We don’t go through a day without something happening in the Belt that would make a daddy scared for his precious little flower.”
“Yes, sir, but the timing—”
Her fingers upped tempo. Miller bit his lips. The cause was lost.
“Don’t go chasing conspiracies,” Shaddid said. “We’ve got a full board of crimes we know are real. Politics, war, system-wide cabals of inner planet bad guys searching for ways to screw us over? Not our mandate. Just get me a report that says you’re looking, I’ll send it back up the line, and we can get back to our jobs.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Anything else?”
“No, sir.”
Shaddid nodded and turned back to her terminal. Miller plucked his hat from the corner of her desk and headed out. One of the station house air filters had gone bad over the weekend, and the replacement gave the rooms a reassuring smell of new plastic and ozone. Miller sat at his desk, fingers laced behind his head, and stared at the light fixture above him. The knot that had tied itself in his gut hadn’t loosened up. That was too bad.
“Not so good, then?” Havelock asked.
“Could have gone better.”
“She pull the job?”
Miller shook his head. “No, it’s still mine. She just wants me to do it half-assed.”
“Could be worse. At least you get to find out what happened. And if you maybe spend a little time after hours digging into it just for practice, you know?”
“Yeah,” Miller said. “Practice.”
Their desks were unnaturally clean, his and Havelock’s both. The barrier of paperwork Havelock had created between himself and the station had eroded away, and Miller could tell from his partner’s eyes and the way his hands moved that the cop in Havelock wanted to get back into the tunnels. He couldn’t tell if it was to prove himself before his transfer went through, or just to break a few heads. Maybe those were two ways of saying the same thing.
Just don’t get yourself killed before you get out of here, Miller thought. Aloud, he said, “What have we got?”
“Hardware shop. Sector eight, third level in,” Havelock said. “Extortion complaint.”
Miller sat for a moment, considering his own reluctance as if it belonged to someone else. It was like Shaddid had given a dog just one bite of fresh meat, then pointed it back toward kibble. The temptation to blow off the hardware shop bloomed, and for a moment he almost gave in. Then he sighed, swung his feet down to the decking, and stood.
“All right, then,” he said. “Let’s go make the station safe for commerce.”
“Words to live by,” Havelock said, checking his gun. He’d been doing that a lot more recently.
The shop was an entertainment franchise. Clean white fixtures offering up custom rigs for interactive environments: battle simulations, exploration games, sex. A woman’s voice ululated on the sound system, somewhere between an Islamic call to prayer and orgasm with a drumbeat. Half the titles were in Hindi with Chinese and Spanish translations. The other half were English with Hindi as the second language. The clerk was hardly more than a boy. Sixteen, seventeen years old with a weedy black beard he wore like a badge.
“He was selling us a private insurance plan. Hundred a month, same as the last guy.”
“Last guy?” Havelock said. “So this happened before?”
“Sure,” the manager said. “Everyone has to pay some, you know. Price of doing business.”
Miller closed his terminal, frowning. “Philosophical. But if it’s the price of doing business, what’re we here for?”
“Because I thought you… you people had this shit under control. Ever since we stopped paying the Loca, I’ve been able to turn a decent profit. Now it’s all starting up again.”