Cibola Burn

There were scratching sounds on the floor as Carol shuffled back toward the door and out of the potential firing line. Holden kept his eyes on Murtry. The man frowned up at him for several seconds, then shifted back to the vague smile. Here we go, Holden thought, and tried not to let the rush of adrenaline make his hand shake.

When the hand terminal on the desk squawked a connection request, Holden was so startled that he half drew his gun before he could stop himself. Murtry didn’t move. The terminal screeched again.

“May I answer that?” Murtry asked.

Holden just nodded at him, dropping his gun back into its holster. Murtry picked up the terminal and opened the connection.

“Wei here,” a voice said.

“Go ahead.”

“Team in position. Birds are all in the nest and tooling up. Are we a go?”

“Hold,” Murtry said, then put the terminal down and looked back up and Holden. “You’re still twitching over what happened on Eros. I get that. You’re not rational about all this alien shit, and honestly, who would be? I forgive you for the threats. And I appreciate that your initial purpose in coming here was to warn me about the danger to my team. It says something to me that in spite of our differences, you’re still trying to save my people.”

“No one needs to die here,” Holden said, hoping against hope that Murtry was backing down.

“Well, that’s not strictly speaking true,” Murtry replied. “I’m good at this job. Did you think I didn’t know about this little uprising? I knew before you did.”

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.