Cibola Burn (Expanse 4)

The security teams constantly patrolling the town would never have gotten close enough to listen in. “You’ve been bugging the town.”

“Every building in it,” Murtry agreed. “So while I appreciate you coming here, I think I’ve got the situation handled.”

“You bugged my town?” Carol asked, anger seeming to win out over her fear.

“What are you doing?” Holden said. “Don’t do something stupid.”

Murtry just smiled again, picked up his hand terminal, and said, “Strike team is go.”

The gunshots outside were softened by the foam covering the walls, and sounded like a rapid string of faint pops. Like distant fireworks, or a bad hydraulic seal finally letting go.

“Oh no,” Carol said, and rushed to the door. Holden followed her, fumbling with his hand terminal to call Amos.

Outside, the sound was much louder. The staccato reports of gunfire splitting the peaceful night air, the flashes a distant strobe lighting up the far edge of the town. Holden ran toward the shots, shouting into his terminal for Amos to come. He stumbled in the dark, dropping it, but didn’t stop to pick it up.

At the northern edge of town, he found the rest of Murtry’s security team firing on one of the houses. Shots were coming back at them from inside. The security people were shouting at the people in the house to surrender, the people inside cursing and firing in answer. Smoke poured out one of the house’s broken windows, something inside burning.

“Stop it!” Holden yelled as he ran toward the RCE people. They ignored him and continued to pour fire into the house. Answering bullets hit one of the RCE people in the chest, the body armor making a dull thud as it stopped the round. The security woman fell on her back, yelling in pain and surprise. The rest of the team opened up on the window the shot had come from, blasting the frame and inside wall behind it into splinters.

The blaze inside the house spread suddenly with a wave of heat and a whooshing sound. Someone inside screamed in panic or pain. The front door, already just a mass of carbon fiber splinters from gunfire, swung open. A woman rushed out, a rifle in her hands. The security team shot her into a splatter of blood, and she collapsed at the bottom of the steps, twitching.

“They’re burning!” Holden yelled, grabbing the nearest RCE person by the arms and shaking him. “We have to get them out!”

The man responded by shoving him away. “Stay back until the area is cleared, sir!”

Holden shoved back, hard enough to put the RCE man on his ass in the dirt, and ran toward the fallen woman at the front of the house. Someone inside must have thought he was attacking, because a shotgun blast rang out and the ground a meter behind him flew up in a miniature explosion of dust. The RCE people opened up, and Holden found himself between two different firing lines.

Again, some distant and still calm part of his brain thought, marveling at how often this sort of thing seemed to happen.

He dove to the ground and rolled his body on top of the fallen woman, screaming for everyone to stop. No one listened. The fire in the house billowed out with another loud whump, and the heat scorched the exposed skin on Holden’s face and hands. The gunshots from inside the house cut off all at once, and the RCE return fire soon after. Holden grabbed the fallen woman by the arms and dragged her away from the flames. He stumbled when he reached the RCE people, falling down at their feet.

“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.”