The Dragon’s Path (126 page)

“Good question,” Miller agreed.

Dresden chuckled.

“This is what I mean, Mr. Johnson,” Dresden said. He turned to Holden. “Jim? Well then, Jim. The fact that you don’t understand this station’s security needs tells me that you have no idea what you’ve become involved with. And I think you know that as well as I do. As I was saying to Fred here—”

“Antony, you need to shut the fuck up,” Holden said, surprised by the sudden flush of anger. Dresden looked disappointed.

The bastard had no right to be comfortable. Condescending. Holden wanted the man terrified, begging for his life, not sneering behind his cultured accent.

“Amos, if he talks to me again without being told to, break his jaw.”

“My pleasure, Captain,” Amos said, and took half a step forward.

Dresden smirked at the ham-fisted threat but kept his mouth shut.

“What do we know?” Holden asked, aiming the question at Fred.

“We know the Eros data is coming here, and we know this piece of shit is in charge. We’ll know more once we’ve taken the place apart.”

Holden turned to look at Dresden again, taking in the blue blood European good looks, the gym-sculpted physique, the expensive haircut. Even now, surrounded by men with guns, Dresden managed to look like he was in charge. Holden could imagine him glancing down at his watch and wondering how much more of his expensive time this boarding party was going to take.

Holden said, “I need to ask him something.”

Fred nodded. “You earned it.”

“Why?” Holden asked. “I want to know why.”

Dresden’s smile was almost pitying, and he stuck his hands into his pockets as casually as a man talking sports at a dockside bar.

“ ‘Why’ is a very big question,” Dresden said. “Because God wanted it that way? Or perhaps you want to narrow it for me.”

“Why Eros?”

“Well, Jim—”

“You can call me Captain Holden. I’m the guy that found your lost ship, so I’ve seen the video from Phoebe. I know what the protomolecule is.”

“Really!” Dresden said, his smile becoming half a degree more genuine. “I have you to thank for turning the viral agent over to us on Eros. Losing the
Anubis
was going to put our timeline back
months. Finding the infected body already there on the station was a godsend.”

I knew it. I fucking knew it,
Holden thought. Out loud, he said, “Why?”

“You know what the agent is,” Dresden said, at a loss for the first time since Holden had come into the room. “I don’t know what more I can tell you. This is the most important thing to ever happen to the human race. It’s simultaneously proof that we are not alone in the universe, and our ticket out of the limitations that bind us to our little bubbles of rock and air.”

“You aren’t answering me,” Holden said, hating the way his broken nose made his voice slightly comical when he wanted to be threatening. “I want to know
why
you killed a million and a half people.”

Fred cleared his throat, but he didn’t interrupt. Dresden looked from Holden to the colonel and back again.

“I
am
answering, Captain. A million and a half people is small potatoes. What we’re working with here is bigger than that,” Dresden said, then moved over to a chair and sat down, pulling up his pants leg as he crossed his knees, so as not to stretch the fabric. “Are you familiar with Genghis Khan?”

“What?” Holden and Fred said at almost the same instant. Miller only stared at Dresden with a blank expression, tapping the barrel of his pistol against his own armored thigh.

“Genghis Khan. There are some historians who claim that Genghis Kahn killed or displaced one quarter of the total human population of Earth during his conquest,” Dresden said. “He did that in pursuit of an empire that would begin falling apart as soon as he died. In today’s scale, that would mean killing nearly ten billion people in order to affect a generation. A generation and a half. Eros isn’t even a rounding error by comparison.”

“You really don’t care,” Fred said, his voice quiet.

“And unlike Khan, we aren’t doing it to build a brief empire. I know what you think. That we’re trying to aggrandize ourselves. Grab power.”

“You don’t want to?” Holden said.

“Of course we do.” Dresden’s voice was cutting. “But you’re thinking too small. Building humanity’s greatest empire is like building the world’s largest anthill. Insignificant. There is a civilization out there that built the protomolecule and hurled it at us over two billion years ago. They were
already
gods at that point. What have they become since then? With another two billion years to advance?”

With a growing dread, Holden listened to Dresden speak. This speech had the air of something spoken before. Perhaps many times. And it had worked. It had convinced powerful people. It was why Protogen had stealth ships from the Earth shipyards and seemingly limitless behind-the-scenes support.

“We have a terrifying amount of catching up to do, gentlemen,” Dresden was saying. “But fortunately we have the tool of our enemy to use in doing it.”

“Catching up?” a soldier to Holden’s left said. Dresden nodded at the man and smiled.

“The protomolecule can alter the host organism at the molecular level; it can create genetic change on the fly. Not just DNA, but any stable replicator. But it is only a machine. It doesn’t think. It follows instructions. If we learn how to alter that programming, then
we
become the architects of that change.”

Holden interrupted. “If it was supposed to wipe out life on Earth and replace it with whatever the protomolecule’s creators wanted, why turn it loose?”

“Excellent question,” Dresden said, holding up one finger like a college professor about to deliver a lecture. “The protomolecule doesn’t come with a user’s manual. In fact, we’ve never before been able to actually watch it carry out its program. The molecule requires significant mass before it develops enough processing power to fulfill its directives. Whatever they are.”

Dresden pointed at the screens covered with data around them.

“We are going to watch it at work. See what it intends to do.
How it goes about doing it. And, hopefully, learn how to change that program in the process.”

“You could do that with a vat of bacteria,” Holden said.

“I’m not interested in remaking bacteria,” Dresden said.

“You’re fucking insane,” Amos said, and took another step toward Dresden. Holden put a hand on the big mechanic’s shoulder.

“So,” Holden said. “You figure out how the bug works, and then what?”

“Then
everything.
Belters who can work outside a ship without wearing a suit. Humans capable of sleeping for hundreds of years at a time flying colony ships to the stars. No longer being bound to the millions of years of evolution inside one atmosphere of pressure at one g, slaves to oxygen and water. We decide what we want to be, and we reprogram ourselves to be that. That’s what the protomolecule gives us.”

Dresden had stood back up as he’d delivered this speech, his face shining with the zeal of a prophet.

“What we are doing is the best and only hope of humanity’s survival. When we go out there, we will be facing
gods.
”

“And if we don’t go out?” Fred asked. He sounded thoughtful.

“They’ve already fired a doomsday weapon at us once,” Dresden said.

The room was silent for a moment. Holden felt his certainty slip. He hated everything about Dresden’s argument, but he couldn’t quite see his way past it. He knew in his bones that something about it was dead wrong, but he couldn’t find the words.

Naomi’s voice startled him.

“Did it convince them?” she asked.

“Excuse me?” Dresden said.

“The scientists. The technicians. Everyone you needed to make it happen. They actually had to do this. They had to watch the video of people dying all over Eros. They had to design those radioactive murder chambers. So unless you managed to round up
every serial killer in the solar system and send them through a postgraduate program, how did you do this?”

“We modified our science team to remove ethical restraints.”

Half a dozen clues clicked into place in Holden’s head.

“Sociopaths,” he said. “You turned them into sociopaths.”

“High-functioning sociopaths,” Dresden said with a nod. He seemed pleased to explain it. “And extremely curious ones. As long as we kept them supplied with interesting problems to solve and unlimited resources, they remained quite content.”

“And a big security team armed with riot control rounds for when they aren’t,” Fred said.

“Yes, there are occasional issues,” Dresden said. He looked around, the slightest frown creasing his forehead. “I know. You think it’s monstrous, but I am saving the human
race.
I am giving humanity the
stars.
You disapprove? Fine. Let me ask you this. Can you save Eros? Right now.”

“No,” Fred said, “but we can—”

“Waste the data,” Dresden said. “You can make certain that every man, woman, and child who died on Eros died for nothing.”

The room was silent. Fred was frowning, his arms crossed. Holden understood the struggle going on in the man’s mind. Everything Dresden said was repulsive and eerie and rang too much of the truth.

“Or,” Dresden said, “we can negotiate a price, you can go on your way, and I can—”

“Okay. That’s enough,” Miller said, speaking for the first time since Dresden had begun his pitch. Holden glanced over at the detective. His flat expression had gone stony. He wasn’t tapping the barrel of his pistol against his leg.

Oh, shit.

D
resden didn’t see it coming. Even as Miller raised the pistol, the man’s eyes didn’t register a threat. All he saw was Miller with an object in his hand that happened to be a gun. A dog would have known to be scared, but not Dresden.

“Miller!” Holden shouted from a great distance. “Don’t!”

Pulling the trigger was simple. A soft click, the bounce of metal against his glove-cushioned palm, and then again two more times. Dresden’s head snapped back, blooming red. Blood spattered a wide screen, obscuring the data stream. Miller stepped close, fired two more rounds into Dresden’s chest, considered for a moment, then holstered the pistol.

The room was silent. The OPA soldiers were all looking at each other or at Miller, surprised, even after the press of the assault, by the sudden violence. Naomi and Amos were looking at Holden,
and the captain was staring at the corpse. Holden’s injured face was set as a mask; fury, outrage, maybe even despair. Miller understood that. Doing the obvious thing still wasn’t natural for Holden. There had been a time when it hadn’t come so easily for Miller either.

Only Fred didn’t flinch or look nervous. The colonel didn’t smile or frown, and he didn’t look away.

“What the fuck was that?” Holden said through his blood-plugged nose. “You shot him in cold blood!”

“Yeah,” Miller said.

Holden shook his head. “What about a trial? What about justice? You just decide, and that’s the way it goes?”

“I’m a cop,” Miller said, surprised by the apology in his voice.

“Are you even human anymore?”

“All right, gentlemen!” Fred said, his voice booming out in the quiet. “Show’s over. Let’s get back to work. I want the decryption team in here. We’ve got prisoners to evacuate and a station to strip down.”

Holden looked from Fred to Miller to the still-dying Dresden. His jaw was set with rage.

“Hey, Miller,” Holden said.

“Yeah?” Miller said softly. He knew what was coming.

“Find your own ride home,” the captain of the
Rocinante
said, then spun and stalked out of the room, his crew following. Miller watched them walk away. Regret tapped gently at his heart, but there was nothing to be done about it. The broken bulkhead seemed to swallow them. Miller turned to Fred.

“Hitch a lift?”

“You’re wearing our colors,” Fred said. “We’ll get you as far as Tycho.”

“I appreciate that,” Miller said. Then, a moment later: “You know it had to be done.”

Fred didn’t reply. There wasn’t anything to say.