Cibola Burn (The Expanse) (52 page)

“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 It didn’t. The man floating in the washroom wore military body armor of a Martian design that was maybe half a decade out of date.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?”

“W
e’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.

“Go faster, get ahead of them.”

“Hey Kemp?” Havelock said. “Thought I sent you to medical with Salvatore? You didn’t leave him bleeding out in a corridor somewhere, did you?”

“No, sir,” Kemp replied. “Someone’s taking him there now —”

“Stop talking to him!” the angry older man said. “He is not on our team!”

Naomi was struggling to get the emergency suit over her shoulders, and Basia pushed over to help her. Havelock stayed at the locker room hatch, occasionally firing down the corridor.

“Find an air bottle,” Naomi said, then started opening locker doors and rummaging through the contents. Basia helped.

“Hey, Mfume?” Havelock said.

“What?” a new voice snapped.

“Turning on your boot mags to stick to the floor behind cover is a good instinct. But in the position you’re crouched in, your knee is sticking out past the corner.” Havelock fired a shot from his shotgun, and someone on the radio screeched in pain. “See?”

Basia found a locker full of emergency air bottles and helped Naomi connect one to her suit, twisting it to break the seal. A few seconds later she gave him the thumbs-up.

“We’re ready to go,” she told Havelock.

The Earther fired off a few more shots, then backed into the locker room with them. He handed his shotgun to Naomi, who pointed it at the doorway to cover them while the two men sealed their helmets.

“Changed your mind about giving me a gun?” Naomi asked.

“I’ll want it back.”

“We’re ready out here,” Kemp said on the radio.

“Hey, guys?” Havelock said. “Don’t do that. We’d barely started on the spacewalk combat tactics. You head out there with live ammo and it will get really dangerous.”

“Well, the chief said —”

“Stop talking to him!” the older man yelled, loud enough to distort Basia’s helmet speakers. “Goddammit you guys!”

“Koenen,” Havelock said. His voice sounded subtly different now that his helmet was on and sealed. “I’m serious. Don’t send your guys out there. Someone’s going to get hurt or dead.”

“Yeah,” the chief replied. “You Belter-loving traitorous sonofabitch.”

“How’re those ribs, chief?” Havelock said, a smile in his voice. “You see, right now, you’re acting out of anger. Not thinking it through. This is why I didn’t want to break out the live rounds.”

Basia strapped on the EVA pack he’d left by the airlock hatch. Naomi handed him the shotgun and pulled two more packs out of storage. A moment later, she and Havelock were wearing them and the inner airlock door was cycling closed. Havelock took the shotgun away from Basia and hung it from a strap on his harness. Naomi started the airlock cycle.

“You know,” she said, “they can just kill this airlock from the bridge.”

As if in response to her words, the airlock status light on the control panel shifted to red, and the cycle stopped. Havelock punched something into the panel and it started again.

“They won’t have had time to reset all the security overrides,” he said.

“RCE security can countermand ship operations?” Naomi asked.

“Welcome to corporate security. The ship’s crew are glorified taxi drivers. Security division works directly for the company, protecting its interests. We can override anything they do.”

“This is why everyone hates you,” Basia said.

The airlock cycle completed, and the outer door opened. Havelock gestured them out. “You sure you don’t like me right now? Just a little bit?”

Ilus’ star was just peeking around the limb of the planet, and Basia’s visor dimmed dramatically to keep it from blinding him. The planet itself was the same angry ball of storm-wracked gray clouds. In the distance, the
Rocinante
flashed green and red landing lights at them, marking its position.

“Okay,” Havelock said, his voice crackling with low-level static. “Should probably get moving. They’ve got guys outside on the other side of the ship. They can’t catch us, but watch each other for grapnel lines.”

Naomi was already firing her EVA pack, moving out of the airlock on four small white cones of compressed gas. “Alex? We’re out.”

“Oh, thank God,” the pilot said, his drawl mostly disappearing in the tension of his voice. “I’ve been worried sick over here. Basia with you?”

“Yeah,” Basia said. “I’m here.”

“You’ll be picking up three,” Naomi said. “Come get us.”

“Three?”

“Taking a stray home with me.”

“A stray?” Havelock said, amusement in his voice. “I’m the one doing the rescuing here.”

“It’s complicated,” Naomi continued. They were all out of the airlock now. The remote connection light went on in Basia’s HUD, and a complex program began spooling across it. Alex having the
Rocinante
take control of their EVA navigation to bring them to the ship. The pack did several sharp burns, and the
Rocinante
began slowly growing.

“Glad Basia made it okay,” Alex said. “Worried sendin’ him in there like that.”

“I didn’t wind up helping much,” Basia admitted, feeling that same rush of embarrassment.

“You got everyone looking in the wrong direction,” Havelock said. “That was actually pretty helpful.”

“Yay,” Alex said, “we’re all heroes. There’re four guys tailing you right now. Do we know about them?”

A small box appeared on Basia’s HUD. Inside it was video of four people in vacuum suits and wearing EVA packs, the bulk of the
Edward Israel
behind them. Without his doing anything, the view zoomed in until he could see the weapons they were carrying. Alex was sending them all images pulled from the
Rocinante
’s telescopes.

“Yeah, those are the militia I formed and trained,” Havelock said, then sighed. “In retrospect, that’s seeming like a bad idea.”

“Do you want me to take care of that?” Alex asked.

“Does your version of ‘taking care of it’ involve your ship’s point defense cannons?” Havelock replied.

“Uh. Yeah?”

“Then no. These guys are dumb and untrained enough to still be gung-ho. But they’re just engineers. They’re not bad guys,” Havelock said.

“They’re shootin’ at you,” Alex said, and suddenly Basia’s HUD had red lines across it. “Got the
Roci
trackin’ bullet paths.”

The knowledge that there were silent, invisible, and potentially deadly projectiles flying past him made Basia’s scalp tingle. The red lines on the display apparently meant more to Havelock, because the Earther said, “They’re nowhere near us. They haven’t got HUD-integrated targeting, so they’re just spraying and praying right now. There’s no reason to return fire.”

“XO?” Alex said. It took Basia a second to realize he was talking to Naomi.

“Havelock’s calling this one,” she replied. “They’re his people.”

“Okay,” Alex said doubtfully.

The
Rocinante
continued to grow minute by minute until Basia could see the tiny ring of lights around its airlock. He’d only been on the ship a short time, but it felt like coming home. His EVA pack fired off a quick series of blasts and spun him around to face the
Israel
, then began braking. Almost there.

“Guys,” Havelock said. “Recoilless is an exaggeration. It doesn’t mean there’s no recoil at all.”

It sounded like more nonsense talk to Basia until he looked at the
Rocinante
’s video of the pursuing team and saw one of the four men spinning and rotating in space, frantically firing his EVA pack to get under control. It only seemed to make it worse, as every blast of gas from the pack just added a new axis to the rotation.

“Then that’s an inaccurate name for the weapons,” the man called Kemp replied.

“And if we’d gotten to more advanced zero-g tactics, I would have explained that,” Havelock said. “I also would have taught you to use the integrated compensation software to have the EVA pack do stabilizing bursts every time you fire the gun.”