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“Alex, someone’s moving to the entrance!” Holden screamed at the top of his lungs, hoping the pilot might be able to get off a shot before they were all chopped to pieces by crossfire.
A pistol barked three times by the entrance. Holden risked a look. Their tail with the goofy hat crouched by the door, a gun in his hand, the machine gun–toting flanker lying still at his feet. Instead of looking at them, the tail was pointing his gun toward the stairwell.
“No one shoot the guy with the hat!” Holden yelled, then moved back to the edge of the desk.
Amos put his back to the desk and popped the magazine from his gun. As he fumbled around in his pocket for another, he said, “Guy is probably a cop.”
“Extra especially do not shoot any cops,” Holden said, then fired a few shots at the stairwell door.
Naomi, who’d spent the entire gunfight so far on the floor with her arms over her head, said, “They might all be cops.”
Holden squeezed off a few more shots and shook his head.
“Cops don’t carry small, easily concealable machine guns and ambush people from stairwells. We call those death squads,” he said, though most of his words were drowned out by a barrage of gunfire from the stairwell. Afterward came a few seconds of silence.
Holden leaned back out in time to see the door swing shut.
“I think they’re bugging out,” he said, keeping his gun trained on the door anyway. “Must have another exit somewhere. Amos, keep your eye on that door. If it opens, start shooting.” He patted Naomi on the shoulder. “Stay down.”
Holden rose from behind the now ruined check-in kiosk. The desk facade had splintered and the underlying stone showed through. Holden held his gun barrel-up, his hands open. The man in the hat stood, considering the corpse at his feet, then looked up as Holden came near.
“Thanks. My name is Jim Holden. You are?”
The man didn’t speak for a second. When he did, his voice was calm. Almost weary. “Cops will be here soon. I need to make a call or we’re all going to jail.”
“Aren’t you the cops?” Holden asked.
The other man laughed; it was a bitter, short sound, but with some real humor behind it. Apparently Holden had said something funny.
“Nope. Name’s Miller.”
Chapter Twenty-Four: Miller
Miller looked at the dead man—the man he’d just killed—and tried to feel something. There was the trailing adrenaline rush still ramping up his heartbeat. There was a sense of surprise that came from walking into an unexpected firefight. Past that, though, his mind had already fallen into the long habit of analysis. One plant in the main room so Holden and his crew wouldn’t see anything too threatening. A bunch of trigger-happy yahoos in the stairwell to back her up. That had gone well.
It was a slapdash effort. The ambush had been set by people who either didn’t know what they were doing or didn’t have the time or resources to do it right. If it hadn’t been improvised, Holden and his three buddies would have been taken or killed. And him along with them.
The four survivors of the Canterbury stood in the remains of the firefight like rookies at their first bust. Miller felt his mind shift back half a step as he watched everything without watching anything in particular. Holden was smaller than he’d expected from the video feeds. It shouldn’t have been surprising; he was an Earther. The man had the kind of face that was bad at hiding things.
“Thanks. My name is Jim Holden. You are?”
Miller thought of six different answers and turned them all aside. One of the others—a big man, solid, with a bare scalp—was pacing out the room, his eyes unfocused the same way Miller’s were. Of Holden’s four, that was the only guy who’d seen serious gunplay before.
“The cops will be here soon,” Miller said. “I need to make a call or we’re all going to jail.”
The other man—thinner, taller, East Indian by the look of him—had been hiding behind a couch. He was sitting on his haunches now, his eyes wide and panicky. Holden had some of the same look, but he was doing a better job of keeping control. The burdens, Miller thought, of leadership.
“Aren’t you the cops?”
Miller laughed.
“Nope,” he said. “Name’s Miller.”
“Okay,” the woman said. “Those people just tried to kill us. Why did they do that?”
Holden took a half step toward her voice even before he turned to look at her. Her face was flushed, full lips pressed thin and pale. Her features showed a far-flung racial mix that was unusual even in the melting pot of the Belt. Her hands weren’t shaking. The big one had the most experience, but Miller put the woman down as having the best instincts.
“Yeah,” Miller said. “I noticed.”
He pulled out his hand terminal and opened a link to Sematimba. The cop accepted a few seconds later.
“Semi,” Miller said. “I’m really sorry about this, but you know how I was going stay low-profile?”
“Yes?” the local cop said, drawing the word out to three syllables.
“Didn’t work out. I was heading to a meeting with a friend… ”
“A meeting with a friend,” Sematimba echoed. Miller could imagine the man’s crossed arms even thought they didn’t show in the frame.
“And I happened to see a bunch of tourists in the wrong place at the wrong time. It got out of hand.”
“Where are you?” Sematimba asked. Miller gave him the station level and address. There was a long pause while Sematimba consulted with some internal communication software that would have been part of Miller’s tool set once. The man’s sigh was percussive. “I don’t see anything. Were there shots fired?”
Miller looked at the chaos and ruin around them. About a thousand different alerts should have gone out with the first weapon fired. Security should have been swarming toward them.
“A few,” he said.
“Strange,” Sematimba said. “Stay put. I’ll be there.”
“Will do,” Miller said, and dropped the connection.
“Okay,” Holden said. “Who was that?”
“The real cops,” Miller said. “They’ll be here soon. It’ll be fine.”
I think it’ll be fine. It occurred to him that he was treating the situation like he was still on the inside, a part of the machine. That wasn’t true anymore, and pretending it was might have consequences.
