Cibola Burn (Expanse 4)

“Chief Engineer Koenen isn’t head of security on this ship. I am. You guys are helping me. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it, but keep in mind that this is what I do, all right? What the hell are you two doing here?”

They exchanged a glance. “Chief told us to come guard the prisoner.”

Naomi smiled and looked demure and non-threatening. She faked it pretty well.

“Good plan,” Havelock said. “This is where they’ll be coming. You two set up here in case they get through. Once I’ve got this one safely stowed where they won’t find her, I’ll come reinforce you.”

“Yes, sir,” the second man said, making a sharp salute with the same hand that had the gun in it. Havelock flinched. These guys were so not ready for live rounds. Havelock pulled the shotgun to ready and racked it.

“Miss Nagata,” he said. “If you’d be so kind.”

“Yes, sir,” she said meekly and pushed off for the door.

He followed, catching himself on the doorframe and turning back.

“If anyone comes through, identify them before you start shooting, all right? I don’t want anyone to get hurt by mistake.”

“We will, sir,” the first one said. The second one nodded. Havelock would have wagered half his salary that they’d been planning to open up on anyone that came through the door. Naomi waited for him just down the corridor. He put the shotgun’s safety on and let it trail from his shoulder. All the corridors in the Israel were narrow, but more so here. The nearer you got to the outside, the tighter the space became. The cloth and padding along the walls ate the sounds of the ship. Numeric codes printed on the material listed what conduits and technical systems were buried in the bulkhead underneath them, the model of panel, and their replacement dates. The idea behind the foam and cloth was to make everyone safer in case of a collision or unexpected burn. Right now, it made him think of a padded cell.

Havelock nodded back over his shoulder. “If something happens, don’t go back there without me.”

“Hadn’t planned on it.”

They moved down the corridor, Havelock taking lead and gesturing her forward. She didn’t move with the tactical instinct of someone trained to do it, but she was smart and quiet and caught on quickly. She also had a Belter’s grace in zero g. If he’d had a few weeks with a squad of people like her, he’d have given them live rounds. At the wall before the intersection with the maintenance corridor, he gestured to the thin ceramic lip of the bulkhead.

“Stay here,” he whispered. “And stay small.”

Naomi lifted her fist. Havelock moved forward. At the intersection, two more of the team were braced in what they probably thought was a cover position. One of them was solid. The other had his hand too far forward. If he tried to push off, he’d get a backspin that would turn him away from the fight. They’d been over this.

“Gentlemen,” Havelock said as he slid forward through the air. “Walters and… Honneker, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Honneker said.

“What’s our situation?”

“Chief called for radio silence. Don’t want to warn the enemy what we’re up to. We’ve got Boyd and Mfume at the decompression hatch. Chief’s got Salvatore and Kemp. They’re going forward to flush the bad guys out.”

“Who do we have outside?”

“Outside?” He shook his head, uncomprehending.

“Did we put anybody in suits and send them out the other airlocks?”

“Hey,” Honneker said, “that’s a good idea. We should do that.”

“So didn’t do it already,” Havelock said.

“No, sir. Didn’t think of it.”

“All right,” Havelock said, and the dry rattle of gunfire echoed from down the corridor. The two engineers turned, pulling themselves to look. Honneker pulled a little too hard, launching himself into the corridor where anyone coming the other direction could have shot him while he flailed. The radio clicked to life in Havelock’s ear. The chief engineer sounded like a kid at a birthday party.

“We have contact! We have contact! The enemy’s taken cover in the lavatory by secondary supply. We have him pinned down!”

A flurry of shots rang out, coming through the radio a fraction of a second before the sound could move through the ship’s air. Koenen started shouting at someone to pull back, then realized his radio was still live and cut it. Havelock braced his ankle in a handhold, stretched out to Honneker, and pulled him back in gently.

“What do we do?” Walters said as Honneker steadied himself on a handhold. “Should we go forward? We could grab some suits and go around like you said?”

Havelock took out the fully charged Taser, shaking his head. It was ready to fire. The second one, with the low charge, took half a second to go to ready status. The two men were looking at him for guidance.

“You should both look down the corridor,” Havelock said, pointing at the intersection with his chin. When they turned, he shot them both in the back. Their bodies arched, shuddered, and went still. Havelock took their pistols, disabled their suit radios, and handcuffed them first to each other, and then to one of the handholds.

“Clear,” he said over his shoulder, his voice calm but strong enough to carry. Naomi moved forward, shifting from one side of the corridor to the other so that she was never more than a fraction of a second from something solid she could use to change direction. Good instincts.

“That’s four down,” she said. “Are you really good at this, or are they really bad?”

“Teaching may not be my strong suit,” Havelock said. “And we do have the element of surprise on our side.”

“I guess,” Naomi said, her voice making her skepticism clear. “How are you doing?”

Havelock started to say I’m fine by reflex, and then paused. He had just attacked and disabled two of his crewmen who’d been working at the direct and explicit order of his superior officer. He’d betrayed the trust of men he’d been traveling with for years on behalf of a Belter saboteur. And they were all of them days from dying. And, maybe oddly, it was that last fact that made all the rest all right. He was a dead man. They were all dead men. So there was a sense in which what he did now didn’t matter. He was free to follow his conscience wherever it led.

It was the security man’s nightmare scenario. In the face of death, why wouldn’t there be riots? Why wouldn’t there be killing and theft and rape? If there were no consequences – or if all the consequences were the same – then anything became possible. It was his job to expect the worst of humanity, including himself. And now here he was, helping a lawfully bound prisoner escape because he liked the death she offered him better than Murtry’s plastic-and-ceramic sepulcher standing on an empty planet. He didn’t give a good goddamn about New Terra or Ilus or whatever the unpleasant ball of mud under them got called. He cared about the people. The ones on the Israel and the ones on the Barbapiccola and the ones on the surface. All of them. Staking a claim that the corporation could use to protect its assets after they all died just wasn’t good enough.