Cibola Burn (Expanse 4)

“I noticed,” Havelock shouted back.

“It’s okay, Basia,” Naomi called. “It’s me.”

The voice went silent. Havelock moved forward slowly, ready for the gun to reappear. It didn’t. The man floating in the washroom wore military body armor of a Martian design that was maybe half a decade out of date. His hair was dark with flecks of gray at the temples, and he had a welding torch in one hand. The gun was in the other. His eyes were wide and his skin was ashy. A streak across the side of the armor showed where one of the militia’s bullets had skipped off his ribs. Havelock put up his left hand, palm out, but kept the Taser tight in his right.

“Okay,” he said. “It’s all right. We’re all on the same side here.”

“Who the hell are you?” the man demanded. “You’re the security guy. The one that locked her up.”

“Used to be,” Havelock said.

Naomi put her hands on Havelock’s shoulders, pulling herself over him to see the other man.

“We’re leaving,” she said. “Want to come with?”

Chapter Forty-Three: Basia

“We’re leaving,” Naomi said. “Want to come with?”

Basia felt a powerful flush of embarrassment. Things had started out so well.

He’d cut into the Israel’s airlock control panel with the efficiency of long practice. The composite plating had been an old layering system he’d seen often working on Ganymede, and the familiarity had given him a sense of confidence. He’d floated through the short corridor to a storage and locker room without seeing a soul, clutching his pistol in one hand. He’d hoped the weapon would turn out to be unnecessary. On the other side of the locker room was the starboard passageway that would lead to the brig. He was about sixty meters from his goal, and not even an alarm had gone off.

His first sign that things were going wrong was a massive barrage of gunfire that seemed to come from everywhere at once. He’d been hiding in the tiny lavatory closet ever since.

“I came to rescue you,” Basia said, recognizing how silly the words sounded even as he said them.

“Thanks for that,” Naomi replied with a smile.

“Yeah, so, we should probably keep —” the Earther in the body armor started to say, then was cut off by a new fusillade of shots. Bullets bounced off the corridor walls, tearing strips of foam off to join the floating blobs of solidified hydraulic fluid. The Earther shoved Naomi into the lavatory with Basia, mashing them both against the back wall. More shots hit, including one that skipped off the Earthman’s shoulder plating, leaving a long dented streak.

“I’m Basia,” he said.

The Earther leaned around the doorway with a bulky rifle of some kind and fired several booming shots. “Havelock. Let’s cover the rest once we’re out of here.”

Before Basia knew she was going to do it, Naomi plucked the pistol out of his hand and held it out to Havelock. “You might need this.”

“No,” he replied, and fired off his big rifle a few more times. “No lethal rounds. We’re not killing these idiots if we can avoid it.”

“Then what?” she asked.

Havelock was pulling fat shotgun shells out of a pouch on his armor and loading them into his gun. “As soon as I move into the corridor, you two head to the airlock as fast as you can.” He loaded one last shell into the gun, then racked it with a loud clack. “Basia, you’re armored, so keep her in front of you. Naomi, you’ll be moving through a storage compartment. Grab a suit. Anything you can put on fast.”

“Ready when you are,” Naomi replied and put a hand on Havelock’s shoulder. Basia nodded his fist at the Earthman.

“Then go,” Havelock said and darted into the corridor firing his shotgun. Naomi followed him out and turned the other direction, toward the locker room and the airlock; Basia stayed right behind. They’d only gone a few meters when he felt two bruising hammer blows on his back.

“I’m shot!” he yelled in a panic. “I got shot!”

Naomi didn’t slow down. “Is your HUD telling you you’re bleeding out?”

“No.”

“Then you’ll live. That’s what the armor is for.”

“Less talk,” Havelock said from right behind him, and gave him a shove in the back. “More escaping.”

Basia hadn’t even known he was there. He stifled an undignifieed squeak. Several meters ahead, Naomi darted into the storage room, and Basia followed when he reached the doorway. She was already wriggling her way into a bright orange emergency atmosphere suit. Havelock paused at the door to fire several more shots down the corridor.

“Tune to twenty-seven oh one five,” the Earther said.

“What?” The words made no sense to Basia. And the whole sequence of events was more and more coming to feel like a bad dream. People shooting and spouting nonsense at him. The sense of peace and heroism he’d felt when he agreed to the rescue mission was entirely gone.

“It’s the frequency the security team’s using,” Havelock said. “You can listen in. They aren’t encrypting. Because” – he sighed – “they’re fucking amateurs.”

Basia found the menu to switch his suit’s radio frequency and set it to 27.015. “— in on it,” a voice said. Young, male, angry.

“The fact that he’s shooting back at us makes it pretty goddamn clear,” an older voice said. “He shot me with a couple fucking beanbag rounds. I think he broke a rib.”

“So,” Havelock said, then paused to fire off another shot. “I guess this is a decision I don’t get to take back.” Basia couldn’t tell who he was talking to.

“I’m gonna shoot you in the face, asshole,” the older man said. This was followed by another barrage of gunfire that tore up the hallway.

“Mostly you’re shooting the ship, chief,” Havelock replied. His voice was matter-of-fact. He seemed halfway between being embarrassed on the attacker’s behalf and steeled for more violence of his own. Basia remembered someone telling him about the idea of Bushido back when he’d first signed on for work on Ganymede. They’d said it was the peace and effectiveness that came from already thinking of yourself as dead. Havelock reminded him of that.

“Kemp,” the older voice said. “Are you in position?”

“We’re suited up and moving to emergency access one eleven,” a voice replied.