that had made the protomolecule, loaded it into Phoebe, and shot it at the Earth were already godlike back when humanity's ancestors thought photosynthesis and the flagellum were cutting-edge. But he'd taken their ancient engine of destruction and turned the key anyway, because when you got right down to it, humans were still just curious monkeys. They still had to poke everything they found with a stick to see what it did.
The red haze in Holden's vision had taken on a strange strobing pattern. It took him a moment to realize that a red telltale on his panel was flashing, letting him know that the Ravi was calling. He kicked off a nearby crash couch, floated back to his station, and opened the link.
"Rocinante here, Ravi, go ahead."
"Holden, why are we stopped?" McBride asked.
"Because we weren't going to keep up anyway, and the danger of crew casualties was getting too high," he replied. It sounded weak even to him. Cowardly. McBride didn't seem to notice.
"Roger. I'm going to get new orders. Will let you know if anything changes."
Holden killed the connection and stared blankly at the console. The visual tracking system was doing its very best to keep Eros in sight. The Roci was a good ship. State of the art. And since Alex had tagged the asteroid as a threat, the computer would do everything in its power to keep track of it. But Eros was a fast-moving, low-albedo object that didn't reflect radar. It could move unpredictably and at high speed. It was just a matter of time before they lost track of it, especially if it wanted to be lost track of.
Next to the tracking information on his console, a small data window opened to inform him that the Ravi had turned on its transponder. It was standard practice even for military ships to keep them on when there was no apparent threat or need for stealth. The radio man on the little UNN corvette must have flipped it back on out of habit.
And now the Roci registered it as a known vessel and threw it onto the threat display with a gently pulsing green dot and a name tag. Holden looked at it blankly for a long moment. He felt his eyes go wide.
"Shit," Holden said, then opened the shipwide comm. "Naomi, I need you in ops."
"I think I'd rather stay down here for a bit," she replied.
Holden hit the battle station's alert button on his console. The deck lights shifted to red and a Klaxon sounded three times.
"XO Nagata to ops," he said. Let her chew him out later. He'd have it coming. But right now he didn't have any time to waste.
Naomi was on the ops deck in less than a minute. Holden had already buckled back into his crash couch and was pulling up the comm logs. Naomi pushed over to her chair and belted in as well. She gave him an inquiring look - Are we going to die after all? - but said nothing. If he said so, she would. He felt a spike of equal parts admiration for and impatience with her. He found what he was looking for in the logs before speaking.
"Okay," he said. "We've had radio contact with Miller after Eros dropped off of radar. Is that right?"
"Yes, that's right," she said. "But his suit isn't powerful enough to transmit through the shell of Eros out to much distance, so one of the moored ships is boosting the signal for him."
"Which means that whatever Eros is doing to kill the radar isn't killing all radio transmissions from outside."
"That seems right," Naomi said, a growing curiosity in her voice.
"And you still have the control codes for the five OPA freighters on the surface, right?"
"Yes, sir." And then a moment later: "Oh, shit."
"Okay," Holden said, turning in his chair to face Naomi with a grin. "Why do the Roci and every other naval ship in the system have a switch to turn off their transponders?"
"So the enemy can't get a missile lock on the transponder signal and blow them up," she said, sharing his grin now.
Holden spun his chair back around and began opening a comm channel to Tycho Station.
"XO, would you be so kind as to use the control codes Miller gave you to turn those five OPA freighters back on and fire up their transponders? Unless our visitor on Eros can outrun radio waves, I think we've gotten around the acceleration problem."
"Aye, aye, Captain," Naomi replied. Even