“Yeah. I know,” Jim said. “But it is literally the best bad idea I’ve got.”
“You look back, some of the life choices that got you here were ill-advised.”
Jim shifted to look at the space where the dead detective seemed to be. Miller had the decency to look sheepish and raise one hand, palm out in a gesture of surrender.
“I’m not saying there’s no pot-and-kettle aspect to this,” Miller said. “I’m just trying to set your expectations on how this ends.”
The sphere of the station wasn’t a sphere at this distance. He was close enough—they were close enough—that it felt more like a glowing blue plain. The ring gates around and behind him shone like tiny, perversely regular stars.
The Laconian heavy vac suit that Elvi had given him fit strangely in the armpits and knees, giving him an ease of motion that kept sending little the-suit-is-coming-apart jabs of panic to his amygdala. The HUD showed that he had fifteen hours of air, which was pretty damned good. He didn’t even need a second bottle. The Laconian suits stored backup air and water in pores in the suit’s plating, and while this wasn’t battle armor—the only weapon he had was a sidearm from the Roci’s supply—it was reinforced enough to give him some protection.
The on-suit sensors didn’t show anything dangerous in the station’s bluish glow, and only a few hundred millirems coming from all the gates together. He would have suffered more radiation on a short walk outside to check the Roci’s hull in normal space. It was the only thing about his situation that seemed even vaguely safe.
The Roci and the Falcon floated a few kilometers off to his right, the Derecho about the same distance to his left. All the ships were small enough to cover with the thumb of an outstretched hand. And the alien transport that had hauled Winston Duarte from Laconia was a pale dot below him on the station surface. His helmet assured him that Teresa and Tanaka were both en route to his position, but he couldn’t see them without magnification. Not yet. Which just left him, or else him and Miller, depending how he looked at it.
The detective wore the same gray suit and dark hat that he had in life. His sad, basset-hound expression seemed younger than Jim remembered it, but that was probably just that Jim had grown past him while Miller stayed the same. Having the protomolecule working directly on his body had given Miller the ability to remain in Jim’s consciousness even when other people were present, and Miller had also developed the unpleasant habit of being somewhere in Jim’s view at all times. If he seemed to be at Jim’s right side, and Jim turned left, Miller would be there too. And his sense of the direction Miller’s voice came from clicked to match wherever he seemed to be. It was disorienting and creepy, like Miller was the villain in a low-budget horror video.
Miller stuck his hands in his pockets and pointed toward the Derecho with his chin. “Looks like Colonel Friendly’s here.”
“You don’t want to call her that.”
“Why not? It’s not like she’ll hear me.”
Tanaka was a dark dot against the background light of the gates. Her maneuvering thrusters were compressed gas and hardly made any sign that they were firing except that she began to slow as she approached. Her suit was the same blue as Laconia’s flag, with the stylized wings on it. Apart from that, it reminded Jim of Bobbie Draper’s old Goliath: less a vac suit than a weapon shaped like one. Her face was surprisingly visible. One cheek looked smoother and younger because he’d blown the original into ribbons not that long before. Her gaze clicked around him like she was taking inventory. She paused, frowning, and seemed to focus on the emptiness around his helmet.
“Well, I guess it’s true then,” she said through the helmet radio. “You really do have someone else on board.”
“Yes, I do,” Jim said. “But how did you—”
“I’m here,” Teresa said. Jim turned back toward the Roci and found Teresa in a battered Rocinante-badged vac suit, Miller floating apologetically at her side. “I’m almost ready. I just need to take care of one more thing.”
“What?” Tanaka asked sharply.
“Muskrat. If there’s fighting, she should be in her crash couch.”
Tanaka’s silence seemed like a pointed reply.
“Oh, this is going to be fun,” Miller said.
“I’ll take care of that,” Jim said. “Other than Muskrat, are you both ready? Do we need anything else before we head in?”