pulled a piece of chalk from his suit's pocket and drew a line around the safe on the bulkhead. "Naomi, cut a small hole in the bulkhead and see if there's anything that would stop us from just cutting the whole damned thing out and taking it with us."
"We'd have to take out half the wall."
"Okay."
Naomi frowned, then shrugged, then smiled and nodded with one hand.
"All right, then," she said. "Thinking of taking it to Fred's people?"
Miller laughed again, a dry humorless rasp that made Holden uneasy. The detective had been watching the video of Julie Mao's fight with her captors over and over again while they'd waited on Naomi and Amos to finish their work. It gave Holden the disquieting feeling that Miller was storing the footage in his head. Fuel for something he planned to do later.
"Mars would give you your lives back in exchange for this," Miller said. "I hear Mars is nice if you're rich."
"Fuck rich," Amos said with a grunt as he worked on something below. "They'd build statues of us."
"We have an agreement with Fred to let him outbid any other contracts we take," Holden said. "Of course, this isn't really a contract per se... "
Naomi smiled and winked at Holden.
"So what is it, sir?" she said, her voice faintly mocking. "OPA heroes? Martian billionaires? Start your own biotech firm? What are we doing here?"
Holden pushed away from the safe and kicked out toward the airlock and the cutting torch that waited there with their other tools.
"I don't know yet," he said. "But it sure feels nice to have choices again."
Amos pushed the button again. No new stars flared in the dark. The radiation and infrared sensors remained quiet.
"There's supposed to be an explosion, right?" Holden asked.
"Fuck, yes," Amos said, then pushed the button on the black box in his hand a third time. "This isn't an exact science or anything. Those missile drives are as simple as it gets. Just a reactor with one wall missing. Can't exactly predict... "
"It isn't rocket science," Holden said with a laugh.
"What?" Amos asked, ready to be angry if he was being mocked.
"You know, 'it isn't rocket science,' " Holden said. "Like 'it isn't hard.' You're a rocket scientist, Amos. For real. You work on fusion reactors and starship drives for a living. Couple hundred years ago, people would have been lining up to give you their children for what you know."
"What the fu - " Amos started, but stopped when a new sun flared outside the cockpit window, then faded quickly. "See? Fucking told you it would work."
"Never doubted it," Holden said, then slapped Amos on one meaty shoulder and headed aft down the crew ladder.
"What the fuck was that about?" Amos asked no one in particular as Holden drifted away.
He headed through the ops deck. Naomi's chair was empty. He'd ordered her to get some sleep. Strapped down to loops inset in the deck was the stealth ship's safe. It looked bigger cut out of the wall. Black and imposingly solid. The kind of container in which one kept the end of the solar system.
Holden floated over to it and quietly said, "Open sesame."
The safe ignored him, but the deck hatch opened and Miller pulled himself up into the compartment. His environment suit had been traded in for a stale-smelling blue jumpsuit and his ever-present hat. There was something about the look on his face that made Holden uncomfortable. Even more so than the detective usually made him.
"Hey," Holden said.
Miller just nodded and pulled himself over to one of the workstations, then buckled in to one of the chairs.
"We decided on a destination yet?" he asked.
"No. I'm having Alex run the numbers on a couple of possibilities, but I haven't made up my mind."
"Been watching the news at all?" the detective asked.
Holden shook his head, then moved over to a chair on the other side of the compartment. Something in Miller's face was chilling his blood.
"No," he said. "What happened?"
"You don't hedge, Holden. I admire that about you, I guess."
"Just tell me," Holden said.
"No, I mean it. A lot of people claim to believe in things. 'Family is most important,' but they'll screw a fifty-dollar hooker on payday. 'Country first,' but they cheat on their taxes. Not you, though. You say everyone should know everything, and by God, you put your money where your mouth is."
Miller waited for him to say something, but Holden didn't know what. This speech had the feel of something the