it. For a moment, he was back on Eros, in the apartment where Julie had died. There had been an environment suit there. And then Julie was there with him, pushing her way out of the locker.
What were you doing there? he thought.
"No brig," he said.
"What?" Holden said.
"I just noticed," Miller said. "Ship's got no brig. They aren't built to carry prisoners."
Holden made a low agreeing grunt.
"Makes you wonder what they were planning to do with the crew of the Scopuli," Naomi said. The tone of her voice meant she didn't wonder at all.
"I don't think they were," Miller said slowly. "This whole thing... they were improvising."
"Improvising?" Naomi said.
"Ship was carrying an infectious something or other without enough containment to contain it. Taking on prisoners without a brig to hold 'em in. They were making this up as they went along."
"Or they had to hurry," Holden said. "Something happened that made them hurry. But what they did on Eros must have taken months to arrange. Maybe years. So maybe something happened at the last minute?"
"Be interesting to know what," Miller said.
Compared to the rest of the ship, the ops deck looked peaceful. Normal. The computers had finished their diagnostics, screens glowing placidly. Naomi went to one, holding the back of the chair with one hand so the gentle touch of her fingers against the screen wouldn't push her backward.
"I'll do what I can here," she said. "You can check the bridge."
There was a pause that carried weight.
"I'll be fine," Naomi said.
"All right. I know you'll... I... C'mon, Miller."
Miller let the captain float ahead into the bridge. The screens there were spooling through diagnostics so standard Miller recognized them. It was a wider space than he'd imagined, with five stations with crash couches customized for other people's bodies. Holden strapped in at one. Miller took a slow turn around the deck. Nothing seemed out of place here - no blood, no broken chairs or torn padding. When it happened, the fight had been down near the reactor. He wasn't sure yet what that meant. He sat at what, under a standard layout, would have been the security station, and opened a private channel to Holden.
"Anything you're looking for in particular?"
"Briefings. Overviews," Holden said shortly. "Whatever's useful. You?"
"See if I can get into the internal monitors."
"Hoping to find...?"
"What Julie found," Miller said.
The security assumed that anyone sitting at the console had access to the low-level feeds. It still took half an hour to parse the command structure and query interface. Once Miller had that down, it wasn't hard. The time stamp on the log listed the feed as the day the Scopuli had gone missing. The security camera in the airlock bay showed the crew - Belters, most of them - being escorted in. Their captors were in armor, with faceplates lowered. Miller wondered if they'd meant to keep their identities secret. That would almost have suggested they were planning to keep the crew alive. Or maybe they were just wary of some last-minute resistance. The crew of the Scopuli weren't wearing environment suits or armor. A couple of them weren't even wearing uniforms.
But Julie was.
It was strange, watching her move. With a sense of dislocation, Miller realized that he'd never actually seen her in motion. All the pictures he'd had in his file back on Ceres had been stills. Now here she was, floating with her chosen compatriots, her hair back out of her eyes, her jaw clamped. She looked very small surrounded by her crew and the men in armor. The little rich girl who'd turned her back on wealth and status to be with the downtrodden Belt. The girl who'd told her mother to sell the Razorback - the ship she'd loved - rather than give in to emotional blackmail. In motion, she looked a little different from the imaginary version he'd built of her - the way she pulled her shoulders back, the habit of reaching her toes toward the floor even in null g - but the basic image was the same. He felt like he was filling in blanks with the new details rather than reimagining the woman.
The guards said something - the security feed's audio was playing to vacuum - and the Scopuli crew looked aghast. Then, hesitantly, the captain started taking his uniform off. They were stripping the prisoners. Miller shook his head.
"Bad plan."
"What?" Holden said.
"Nothing. Sorry."
Julie wasn't moving. One of the guards moved toward her, his legs braced on the wall. Julie, who'd