Cibola Burn (The Expanse) (23 page)

“Help
her
,” he croaked at the woman who reached down to help him up. He pushed himself up to his hands and knees, but stopped there, too dizzy to stand.

Another member of the security team was already bending over her. “This one’s dead.”

Holden collapsed back to the ground, suddenly robbed of strength. Too late. The big meat grinder he was trying to save these people from just kept chewing away relentlessly, and they kept lining up to throw themselves inside. The RCE people were helping up their fallen comrade, and she was insisting that she was fine, that the armor had stopped the round, that she’d just have a big bruise. Someone joked about idiots bringing slingshots to a gunfight, followed by laughter. All the while, the house burned, filling the air with acrid black smoke and the smell of hot epoxy and cooking pork.

The RCE people seemed to remember he was there, and several came over to look down at him. “Secure him,” one said. Wei. The one who’d come out to look at the alien robot with them. The one who’d shot it. She stared down, nothing like compassion in her eyes.

“Fuck you,” Holden said, trying to push himself back up to his feet. “You aren’t securing shit.”

Wei smashed him in the chest with her rifle butt, knocking him back to the ground. One of the other security people pointed his rifle at Holden. He found himself thinking it was very likely he was about to be shot.

“Hold on, now,” a calm voice said. Murtry strode into view out of the darkness. “No one’s shooting Captain Holden.”

“He tried to help the terrorists,” Wei said.

“Did he?” Murtry feigned shock. “You didn’t, did you? That would be a violation of the neutrality of your position here, wouldn’t it?”

“I tried to help a woman who’d been shot,” Holden replied, slowly climbing to his feet. His sternum felt bruised. That was all right. It would only hurt when he breathed.

“That sounds reasonable,” Murtry said. “Is that the extent of his aid to the terrorists?”

Wei nodded, then looked away, annoyed.

“Then there’s no reason to detain you,” Murtry continued, his voice full of good cheer.
He’s insane
, Holden thought.
He’s gone completely over the edge. I could kill him right now and end this.
In his mind, he could picture Miller nodding in approval at the thought.

“Sir,” Wei said, bringing her rifle up to her shoulder and aiming into the darkness beyond the firelight. “Incoming.”

“Hold your panties,” Amos said from the dark and stepped into the light. He had Basia Merton and Carol Chiwewe and a number of other colonists with him.

“My God,” Carol said, looking at the fire. “Did anyone get out?”

One of the security people pointed his rifle at the body lying on the ground. “She did.”

“Zadie,” Basia said. “They killed her.”

Murtry stepped forward and cleared his throat. When everyone was looking at him, he said, “My team surrounded the house where a cell of known terrorists were actively preparing to murder myself, the entire RCE security detachment, and Captain Holden. They had firearms and possibly explosives. When the RCE security team demanded that they exit the building unarmed and with their hands up, they opened fire. All of the terrorists were killed by the
return
fire. It’s possible that explosives the terrorists were planning to use acted as an accelerant when the house started burning. Everything done here was by the book and appropriate for protecting RCE personnel and the UN/OPA mediator from harm.”

Carol looked at blazing house with a stunned expression. “Appropriate…”

“Mister Merton,” Murtry continued. “So glad you could join us. Sergeant Wei, take Basia Merton into custody.”

“What?” Basia said, raising his hands and backing up. “Why me?”

“No,” Holden said, stepping in front of Wei and planting his hand on the breastplate of her armor. “Not happening.”

“Mister Merton was a party to this conspiracy,” Murtry said, speaking loud enough for the gathering crowd of colonists to hear. “He attended the secret meeting at which the attack was planned, and there is significant evidence that he was a participant in the attack which killed five of my people. Might have something to say about what happened to Governor Trying too.” Lowering his voice, he said, “Out of the way, Holden, or we’ll just go through you.” Wei smiled at him without humor. One of the other RCE people walked around them toward Basia, a plastic wrist restraint in his hands.

Amos stepped in front of Basia and punched the RCE man in the face. It sounded like a hammer hitting a side of beef. The security man fell to the ground, a puppet whose strings had been cut.

“Nope,” Amos said, then shook his right hand with a grimace and added, “Ouch.”

The rest of the security team brought their rifles to bear on him. Holden saw Amos drop his right hand toward his gun, then stepped in front of him and yelled, “Stop!”

“We’re taking him in,” Murtry said, pointing at Basia. “One way or the other. We’ll let the assault on one of my people slide for now. Emotions running hot, and all.”

“We’re all leaving anyway,” Holden said, keeping his voice low, appealing to Murtry rather than the crowd.

“You have no authority to order anyone to leave,” Murtry replied. “I hoped we were done with that.”

“In the meantime,” Holden continued as though Murtry hadn’t spoken, “the UN is taking custody of this man. Basia. As part of our investigation. He’ll be secure on my ship, he won’t be a threat to your people down here, and when we all get back you can present your evidence and have him arrested.”

“ ‘Get back,’ ” Murtry said with a lazy smile. “Just going to keep him in a holding cell for the next few years? Because I accused him of something?”

“If I have to,” Holden said. “Because I don’t believe for a second that you wouldn’t kill him.”

Murtry shrugged. “Okay. He’s your baggage, then. Just keep him off my planet.”

Basia looked stunned, his eyes focused on nothing in particular. The colonists began organizing a firefighting detail to put the blaze out. Murtry and his team stood and watched, not offering to help, a visible reminder of the threat they presented next to the violence of their handiwork.

Holden headed back into town, Basia and Amos in tow. He patted his pockets looking for his hand terminal before remembering he’d dropped it on the run out to the fight. He’d never find it in the dark, so he borrowed Amos’ and called the ship.

“Naomi,” he said once she’d picked up. “Bring the
Roci
down to the landing area. We’re going to need you to offload our heavier armor and some bigger firepower.”

“This doesn’t sound good,” she said.

“It’s not. Have you heard back from the UN or Fred yet?”

“Nothing yet. I take it this means RCE and the Ganymede folks aren’t in a big hurry to leave?”

“No,” Holden said with a heavy sigh. “No, they’d rather stay here and kill each other right up until the alien shit starts turning them into spare parts.”

“And you?” she said. She meant was he coming up the well too. It was the sane thing to do.

“Not yet,” he said. “If it escalates any more, maybe.”

“ ‘It’ the aliens or ‘it’ the people?”

“Right?”

“Alex has seen a few more power spikes, and there’s more movement, but it’s pretty far south of you. If it starts looking more interesting, I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you. Oh, and you’ll be picking up a passenger.”

“Que?”

“It’s complicated, but we’re putting him on the
Roci
because he isn’t safe down here anymore. I owe this guy, Naomi. He tried to save my life. Take good care of him.”

“Okay.”

“And honey?” Holden said, unable to keep the worry out of his voice. “When you get back up, keep a close eye on the
Israel
. I think things might be about to go all the way bad down here, and when they do, they may go bad up there too.”

“Ha!” Naomi said, and he could hear the smile in her voice. “Let ’em try.”

T
he corridor stretched forty meters between the recycling tanks and the secondary machine shop with hatches inset every ten meters. Open lifts at either end led to environmental control fore and hydroponics aft. The age of the
Israel
showed not only in the design of the walls and the grating of the floor, but also in the green-gray finish of the ceramic. Harsh edges at the doorways marked where safety design had improved in the decades since the ship first flew out past the orbit of Mars. A white scar splashed across one wall where something drastic had happened in some previous era of the ship’s history and been patched like painting over graffiti. Havelock fought the urge to press himself into the corner nearest the doorway.

It was hard. His species had evolved in the gravity well of Earth, had grown and developed in it. His hindbrain told him that pressure meant safety. The angry whispers of the men in the hall set his heart tripping over faster, and the wall, centimeters from his back, seemed to pull at him like a magnet. It was an error waiting to happen. Lean in, push against the wall, and it would push back, sending him out into the open air of the corridor. And the firing lines. The second law of thermodynamics as applied to gunfights.

“Clear,” one of the engineers said, and Havelock was torn between pleasure and annoyance.
Not clear
, he thought. They hadn’t seen him, so they thought he wasn’t there. He held the gun at his leg, stayed still. Waited. Didn’t hug the wall.

The first man who floated by didn’t notice him until he’d already been shot. Havelock’s paint round bloomed orange against the man’s chest. The one behind him had already launched, his body sailing between one handhold and the next, unable to change his trajectory. Havelock hit him twice, once in the leg, then in the belly. In a real fight, there would be blood in the air now. Fine red droplets spinning into orbs and already coalescing and beginning to clot. The third man was still far enough down the corridor that Havelock didn’t have a clear line of sight. Half a dozen blue paint rounds hissed past him, splattering the ceramic bulkhead. Suppressing fire. Not a bad plan, but there was no one left to exploit it.

Havelock pulled gently at the handhold behind him to keep from drifting out, reloaded his pistol, and counted incoming rounds. The “dead” engineer floated in the corridor, a sour expression on his face. Havelock counted fifteen rounds, then there was a pause and the slick metallic sound of the pistol ejecting the paint round magazine. Havelock pulled a few centimeters forward, looking down the hall. The last man – Williams – hadn’t even taken cover while he fumbled to reload his gun. Havelock fired three times, hitting him only once. The accuracy on the pistols stank, but it was enough to make his point. The last engineer barked out an obscenity.

“All right,” Havelock said into his hand terminal. “That’s a wrap, guys. Let’s get the cleanup crew out, and meet back in the conference room in thirty.”

It was hard to judge the training sessions. On the one hand, they had been going for eight days now, and they were not ready for real action. The engineers weren’t soldiers. The three who’d had some training earlier in life were so out of practice that they were worse than the absolute beginners. At least the novices knew they didn’t know anything.

And on the other hand, they were getting better faster than Havelock had expected. With another week or ten days, they’d be at least as competent as a squad of rookies. Maybe more.

Security trainees were driven by any number of things – the need for a job, an idealistic view of helping people, sometimes just a narcissistic love of violence. The engineers weren’t like that. They were more focused, more driven, and there was a palpable sense of the team against the enemy. Murtry’s defeat of the terrorist cell downstairs left them at once excited and edgy, and Havelock didn’t see anything wrong with the bloodthirst, so long as it was channeled and controlled.

For the next half hour, the engineers and the security team – Havelock and two others from this skeleton crew – went through the corridors, holds, and locks cleaning up the mess from the exercise. The paint polymerized quickly, peeling off the walls and grates without flaking much or leaving fragments on the float that someone could breathe in. The engineers had also manufactured sets of personal vacuuming systems that filtered everything from tiny particles of the paint casing to volatile molecules out of the air. They laughed and joked and traded friendly insults as they worked, like junior belts cleaning a dojang. Havelock hadn’t intended the cleanup as a team-building exercise, but it worked well enough that he was starting to tell himself that he had.

The conference room where they had the orientation before the exercise and the postmortem afterward had been designed for the false gravity of thrust. An oblong table was bolted to the floor with crash couches around it that the engineers didn’t use. Havelock didn’t know how the decision had been made to ignore the table and rotate the consensus for up and down ninety degrees, but every meeting was like that now. The engineers and security floated against the walls or in the open air, the “floor” to their right, and Havelock took his place by the main doors.

“All right,” he said, and the murmur of conversations stopped. “What did we learn?”

“Not to trust motherfucking Gibbs when he tells us the corridor’s clear.” Laughter bubbled after, but it wasn’t angry or mean. Even the man being mocked was smiling.

“Wrong answer,” Havelock said with a grin. “The right answer is don’t hurry when you’re clearing a space. We have a natural tendency to see an empty space and think it’s safe. Doors and corners are always dangerous, because you’re moving into something without being sure what’s there. By the time you see the enemy, you’re exposed to them.”

“Sir?”

Havelock pointed to the woman with the raised hand. “Yes.”

“Sir, is there an algorithm for this? Because if we could get some kind of best-practice flowchart that we could study when we’re not here, I think it would help us a lot.”

“We could classify them by the types of doors or corners,” someone else said. “And what plane we could use to approach them. Seem to me like we’d be better off shifting the axis so that whatever we’re coming to reads as down.”