Cibola Burn (Expanse 4)

Then he turned back toward town to find Holden.

~

Holden and Amos were sitting in the commissary’s tiny bar. Amos drank and watched everyone who came in through the door. He held his glass with his left hand, his right never far from the gun at his belt. Holden was typing rapidly on a hand terminal lying on the table. Both men looked tense.

Basia walked toward them, smiling and nodding his head and keeping his hands visible and away from his body. Amos smiled back. The big man’s scalp looked pale and shiny under the commissary’s white LEDs. When he leaned forward in his chair it looked perfectly natural and non-threatening, and Basia noted that it also put the gun closer to hand seemingly by accident.

They were not the sort of details he would have noticed before. Coop and Cate and the violence of the last few months had left him on edge, seeing the potential for violence everywhere. When he looked at Amos, he suspected his instincts were not wrong.

Raising his hands, he said, “Captain Holden, can I join you for a moment?”

Holden’s head darted up, startled and frightened. Basia was pretty sure he was not the source of the man’s fear, and wondered what was. Murtry and his corporate killers? Had Holden heard from someone else about the planned attack?

“Please,” Holden said, the fear disappearing from his face as quickly as it had come. He gestured at one of their table’s empty chairs. “What can I do for you?”

Amos said nothing, just kept smiling his vague smile. Basia sat, making sure to keep his hands on the table and in plain view. “Captain, I’ve come to warn you.”

“About?” Amos said at once. Holden said nothing.

“There is a group here. The same group that attacked and killed the RCE security team prior to your arrival. They plan to kill the remaining security people sometime in the next few days. Maybe as early as tomorrow night.”

Holden and Amos shared a quick look. “We’ve been expecting something like that,” Holden said. “But that’s not the important —”

Basia didn’t let him finish. “They also plan to kill you.”

Holden sat up a little straighter. He didn’t seem angry so much as offended.

“Me? Why would they want to kill me?”

“They think it will send a message,” Basia said, his tone apologetic. “Also, they’re mad about the explosives inspectors.”

“Told you,” Holden said to Amos. “A good compromise pisses everyone off.”

Without realizing he was going to do it, Basia grabbed the bottle off the table and took a long drink. It must have been something they had brought with them, because it was much better whiskey than anything the colony had access to. It warmed his throat and belly pleasantly, but didn’t calm him as much as he’d hoped. He pushed the bottle back toward Amos, but the big man stopped him. “You keep that, brother. You look like you need it.”

“What are you going to do?” Basia asked Holden.

“About the assassination? Nothing. It won’t matter because we’re all leaving.”

“We’re all —?”

“We’re evacuating the planet. All of us. Everyone.”

“No,” Basia said. “No one’s leaving. We can’t go now.” I helped kill people to stay here.

“Oh, we really are,” Holden said. “Something very bad is happening on this planet, and it has nothing to do with obstinate Belters or sociopathic corporate security.”

Basia took another long drink from the bottle. The alcohol was starting to leave him a little fuzzy, but not any less anxious. “I don’t understand.”

“Somebody used to live here,” Holden said, waving one arm around. It took Basia’s drink-addled mind a moment to realize Holden didn’t mean the commissary. “Maybe they’re gone, and maybe they aren’t, but they left a lot of stuff behind and some of it’s waking up. So before we wind up being Eros with a great big sky, everyone is getting the hell out of Dodge.”

Basia nodded without understanding. Amos grinned at him and said, “The towers and robots, man. He means the alien shit. Looks like some of it’s waking up.”

“I’m sending a message up to the Roci right now to bounce it on to the UN and the OPA council,” Holden continued. “My recommendation is that everyone get into orbit as soon as possible. I’m asking for emergency command of the Israel and the Barbapiccola to facilitate that.”

“That isn’t going to happen,” Basia said, his voice soft.

“It’s not an easy sell,” Holden said, “but I can be persuasive. And once I have command —”

“They won’t go,” Basia said. “People already bled for this land. Died for it. We’re willing to kill each other to stay here, we’ll sure as hell stay and fight whatever else wants us gone.”

“Providing there’s anyone left,” Amos said.

“Well, sure,” Basia agreed. “Providing that.”

Chapter Eighteen: Holden

Murtry and his security team had converted the small prefab security outpost into a fortress. The inner walls had been sprayed with energy-absorbing foam that looked like whipped cream but formed a ballistic barrier that could stop small-arms fire and light explosives. A large gun cage sat against one wall, secured with a biometric lock. It had only a few guns in it. Since Holden didn’t know exactly how many the security team had brought with them, that was either a good thing or a bad thing.

Murtry sat behind a small desk with a hand terminal lying on it. He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, a vague smile on his face. He looked like a man with all the time in the world.

“Did you hear me when I said that people are planning to murder your team?” Holden asked.

“I wish you’d stop using that word,” Carol Chiwewe said. She insisted on being present at any meeting between Holden and the RCE people, and it had seemed like a reasonable request. Now, with her own people plotting an attack, it felt like a security risk.

“ ‘Murder’?” Murtry said. “ ‘Terrorism’ has a nice ring to it. ‘Homicide’ always sounded a bit legalistic to me. Pretentious.”

“Wait,” Holden cut in before Carol could respond to Murtry’s baiting. “Cut that out right now. My capacity for giving a shit about your little tiff down here has hit its limit. This is no longer a negotiation of rights or a discussion of who attacked who first.”