Cibola Burn

Down the corridor, the chief engineer boiled around the corner and slammed into the wall, firing his pistol wildly.

“Cease fire!” Havelock called. “You’ve got one of your own floating outside cover. Cease fire!”

“Fuck you!” Koenen shouted, and Havelock pulled the shotgun’s trigger. The bag round took the chief in the side and sent him spinning. Havelock landed the second shot in the man’s back just as three more engineers caromed around the corner in a clump. Havelock shot each of them once, then shifted himself to the other side of the hatch and pushed off, stowing the shotgun and pulling the Tasers. The low-charge one was already dead, and he dropped it. One of the men was bleeding; a droplet of blood the size of a fingernail floated in the air. All four men were gasping in pain. Two of them had dropped their weapons, and the other two – the bleeding man and Koenen – seemed unaware Havelock was there at all. Havelock Tased the first of the floating men, then grabbed the one who was bleeding, Salvatore.

“You. Kemp.”

“You shot me.”

“With a bag round. The other guy shot Salvatore with a bullet. You need to get him to the medical bay.”

“You’re a traitor,” the chief engineer shouted, and Havelock Tased him before turning back to Kemp.

“I’m taking your gun away, and I’m giving you Salvatore. You’re helping him get to the medical bay now. You understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Kemp said, then looked over Havelock’s shoulder and nodded. “Ma’am.”

“Everything under control?” Naomi asked.

“Wouldn’t go that far,” Havelock said, putting Kemp’s hand on Salvatore’s arm and giving them both a little shove back up the corridor. “I’m fairly sure the two from the brig are on their way down here.”

“We should leave, then.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

The short stretch of corridor between the corner and the airlock had a sealed door to secondary storage, a low access panel to the power conduits in the walls, and the entrance to the maintenance airlock’s locker room. The space was narrow and cramped. Bullet holes pocked the cloth. One of them had penetrated the wall and hit a hydraulic tube. The safety hydraulic fluid was polymerizing in the air, a hundred tiny greenish dots slowly turning white. The original leak was probably already sealed with a hunk of the stuff. The washroom was the standard utility size, so small that squatting on the vacuum seat meant pressing back to one wall and knees to the other. It wouldn’t have been much for cover in the first place, and the narrow door stood open. A dozen bullet holes scarred the walls and the doorway.

“Okay,” Havelock said, and a gun popped out, firing blind down the hallway. He pushed Naomi behind him, shouting, “Stop! Stop! I’ve got Nagata right here!”

“Stay the hell back!” a man’s voice shouted from the washroom. It sounded almost familiar, but Havelock couldn’t place it. “I swear to God I’ll shoot.”

“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.