Cibola Burn

“Well,” Murtry said with an almost imperceptible shrug, “I need to get over there and stop whatever you people are cooking up. Doctor Okoye seems to think you are going to break the defense network down.”

“Yeah,” Holden replied. “Pretty much am. Call it saving people.”

Murtry nodded but didn’t speak for a moment. Holden waited for him to reach for his gun. The distance between them, the width of the chasm, was just over five meters. An easy shot at the range. Harder when you were rushing because the other guy was shooting back. The lighting was good and Murtry wasn’t wearing a helmet. Risk the head shot? The RCE man’s armor looked pretty chewed up. The blast patterns on it made Holden suspect that was the work of Amos’ autoshotgun. The chest shot was easier, but it was possible the damage to the armor was mostly cosmetic, in which case his sidearm wasn’t going to do much.

Murtry winked at him, and Holden suddenly felt like the man was reading his mind as he calculated the best way to kill him. “I can’t let that happen,” Murtry said. His shrug was almost apologetic. “By charter, this all belongs to RCE. You don’t get to break it.”

Holden shook his head in disbelief. “You really are crazy. If I don’t break it, our ships fall out of the sky and we all die.”

“Maybe. Maybe we die. Maybe we find some other way to stay alive. Either way, the RCE claim remains in force.” Murtry waved one hand, not his gun hand, around the room. “All this is worth trillions intact. We’ve made incredible advances in materials science just by looking at the rings. How much will working technology do for us? This is what we came here for, Captain. You don’t get to decide what we do with it.”

“Trillions,” Holden said, unable to keep the disbelief out of his voice. “I’ve never seen a dead person spend money.”

“Sure you have. They call it a foundation or a bequest. Happens all the time.”

“This is all so you can make a bequest?”

Murtry’s smile widened a millimeter.

“No,” he said. “I came to conquer a new world. This is how you do that. I understand what I’m doing seems cruel and inflexible to you, but it’s what this situation requires. The tools you’re using here are the ones that let you get along once civilization takes over. They’re the wrong shape for this work. I have no illusions about what it will take to carve out a place in this new frontier. It will take sacrifices, and it will take blood, and things we wouldn’t do back where everything’s regulated and controlled will have to happen here. You think we can do it with committee meetings and press releases.”

“I wonder if this will sound like a compelling argument to the people dying in orbit right now.”

“I’m sorry for them. I truly am. But they knew the risks when they got on board. And their deaths will have meaning,” Murtry said.

“Meaning?”

“They are the sign that we didn’t give up a centimeter. What we came for, we held to the last gasp. This isn’t something humanity can do halfway, Captain. It never has been. Even Cortez burned his ships.”

Holden’s laugh was half disbelief and half contempt. “What is it with you guys and worshiping mass murderers?”

Murtry frowned. A swirl of bright blue lights rose and fell between them like dust blowing down a desert street.

“How do you mean?” Murtry asked.

“A guy I once knew tried to justify his life choices to me by comparing himself to Genghis Khan.”

“I take it you didn’t find his argument compelling?” Murtry asked with a smirk.

“No,” Holden said. “And then a friend of mine shot him in the face.”

“An ironic rebuttal to an argument about necessary violence.”

“I thought so too, at the time.”

Murtry reached up and scratched his head with his left hand, his short greasy hair shifting into a configuration vaguely resembling Miller’s carapace. A sculpture of curves and spikes. He looked at his fingertips in disgust and wiped them on his armor. Holden waited. Somewhere far behind them, a strange chittering sound rose like cicadas on a summer afternoon.

“So,” Murtry finally said. “I’m going to need to come over there.” He gestured at Holden’s side of the chasm with his chin. His right hand still hovered over his gun.

“Nope,” Holden replied.

Murtry nodded, as if expecting this. “You going to arrest me, Sheriff?”

“Actually, I was kind of thinking I’d shoot you.”

“In the face, no doubt.”

“If that’s what I can hit.”

“Seems like a radical shift,” Murtry said, “for a man who wants to tame the frontier with mediation and committee meetings.”

“Oh, no, this isn’t about that. Elvi says you killed Amos. I wouldn’t kill a single person for your fucking frontier, but for my crew? Yeah, I’ll kill you for that.”

“They say revenge is empty.”

“This is my first try at it,” Holden said. “Forgive me if my opinions on it are fairly unformed.”

“Will it change things if your boy isn’t dead? He was still shooting when I left him.”