The Butcher of Anderson Station Read Online Free Page B

and conversational as if they were sitting in a bar somewhere sharing a beer, “and I don’t mean this as a criticism of you in particular. It’s true of anybody who didn’t grow up in the Belt. The problem with you is that you are wasteful.”
    “I’m not a fucking coward,” Fred said through his rapidly swelling lip.
    “Of course you are. You’re smart, you’re healthy. Maybe a few hundred people out of forty billion have your combination of talent and training. And you’re trying to waste that very valuable resource. You’re like the guy who delays replacing his airlock seals when they start to leak. You think it’s just a little bit. It doesn’t matter. You’re one guy. You get killed, no big loss.”
    He heard Dawes walking behind him, but his gaze was still on the rifle. Dawes grabbed Fred’s collar and hauled him back to kneeling.
    “When I was growing up, my dad used to beat the crap out of me if I spat someplace other than the reclamation duct because we needed the water. We don’t waste things out here, Colonel. We can’t afford to. You understand that, though. Don’t you?”
    Slowly, Fred nodded. Blood was seeping down his chin even though Dawes and the woman hadn’t laid an angry hand on him. He’d done this to himself.
    “When I was about fifteen, I killed my sister,” Dawes said. “I didn’t mean to. We were on this rock about a week from Eros Station. We were going out of the ship to get some survey probes that got stuck in the slurry. I was supposed to check her suit seals, but I was in a mood. I was fifteen, you know? So I did a half-assed job of it. We went outside, and everything seemed fine until she twisted sideways to pull up a rock spur. I heard it on the comm link, and it just sounded like a pop. We had the old Ukrainian-style suits. Solid as stone unless something broke, and then it all failed at once.”
    Dawes shrugged.
    “You’re a fucking piece of shit, then, aren’t you?” Fred said, and Dawes grinned.
    “Felt like that, yeah. Still do sometimes. I understand why someone could want to die after a thing like that.”
    “So why not kill yourself?” Fred asked, then spat a dark red clot on the deck at his feet.
    “I’ve got three more sisters,” Dawes said. “Someone’s got to check their seals.”
    Fred shook his head. His shoulder vibrated with sudden pain.
    “Why are you telling me this?”
    “Builds rapport,” Dawes said. “How’s it working?”
    Fred laughed before he knew he was going to. Dawes gestured, and the woman put up the rifle, walking back to her doorway.
    “So. Colonel,” Dawes said. “What information did you get on Anderson Station that you ended up here talking to a sad sack of shit like me?”
    Fred took a long breath.
    “There was a message sent to us as we went in,” he said. “A message I didn’t see until it was too late.”
     
    * * *
     
    “Let me see it,” Fred said.
    “There are a couple things here,” the lieutenant said. “Got a partial that was never sent. And one that looks like it’s being sent to the command ship on infinite repeat. Also, a running feed that looks like a straight dump of the security cameras.”
    “Do the unsent partial first.”
    The video started, and the man in the mining jumpsuit stared out of the screen. For Fred, there was a surreal quality to watching a man alive and speaking while his corpse lay cooling on the floor behind him.
    I could have told him this would happen.
    The dead man said, “Citizens of the solar system, my name is Marama Brown. I’m a freelance mining technician for Anderson-Hyosung Cooperative Industries Group. I, and some like-minded individuals, have taken control of the company resupply station.”
    Fred hit pause and turned to his lieutenant. He had a sinking feeling in his gut. The dead man had expected this to get out. Even though he had to know they were jamming, he’d expected the message to be heard.
    “Where was that security camera feed going?” Fred