Caliban’s War

Holden could see the arrogance and bravado in the woman’s face for the mask it was. Behind that, there was worry as she weighed the casualties her team would suffer against the risks of talking it out and seeing where that went. Holden gave her a smile and a nod to help her decide. Talk to me. We’re all rational people here.

Except that not all of them were.

“Where’s Mei?” Prax yelled, poking the gun at her as if his gesture would be somehow translated through the air. “Tell me where Mei is!”

“I—” she started to reply, but Prax screamed out, “Where’s my little girl!” and cocked his gun.

As if in slow motion, Holden saw eleven hands dart down to the holsters at their belts.

Shit.

Chapter Seventeen: Prax

In the cinema and games that formed the basis of Prax’s understanding of how people of violence interacted, the cocking of a gun was less a threat than a kind of punctuation mark. A security agent questioning someone might begin with threats and slaps, but when he cocked his gun, that meant it was time to take him seriously. It wasn’t something Prax had considered any more carefully than which urinal to use when he wasn’t the only one in the men’s room or how to step on and off a transport tube. It was the untaught etiquette of received wisdom. You yelled, you threatened, you cocked your gun, and then people talked.

“Where’s my little girl!” he yelled.

He cocked his pistol.

The reaction was almost immediate: a sharp, stuttering report like a high-pressure valve failing, but much louder. He danced back, almost dropping the pistol. Had he fired it by mistake? But no, his finger hadn’t touched the trigger. The air smelled sharp, acidic. The woman with the pizza was gone. No, not gone. She was on the ground. Something terrible had happened to her jaw. As he watched, her ruined mouth moved, as though she was trying to speak. Prax could hear only a high-pitched squeal. He wondered if his eardrums had ruptured. The woman with the destroyed jaw took a long, shuddering breath and then didn’t take another. With a sense of detachment, he noticed that she’d drawn her pistol. It was still clutched in her hand. He wasn’t sure when she’d done that. The handset playing dance music transitioned to a different song that only faintly made it past the ringing in his ears.

“I didn’t shoot her,” he said. His voice sounded like he was in partial vacuum, the air too thin to support the energy of sound waves. But he could breathe. He wondered again if the gunfire had ruptured his eardrums. He looked around. Everyone was gone. He was alone in the room. Or no, they were behind cover. It occurred to him that he should probably be behind cover too. Only nobody was firing and he wasn’t sure where to go.

Holden’s voice seemed to come from far away.

“Amos?”

“Yeah, Cap?”

“Would you please take his gun away now?”

“I’m on it.”

Amos rose from behind one of the boxes nearest the wall. His Martian armor had a long pale streak across the chest and two white circles just below the ribs. Amos limped toward him.

“Sorry, Doc,” he said. “Givin’ it to you was my bad call. Maybe next time, right?”

Prax looked at the big man’s open hand, then carefully put the gun in it.

“Wendell?” Holden said. Prax still wasn’t sure where he was, but he sounded closer. That was probably just Prax’s hearing coming back. The acrid smell in the air changed to something more coppery. It made him think of compost heaps gone sour: warm and organic and unsettling.

“One down,” Wendell said.

“We’ll get a medic,” Holden said.

“Nice thought, but no point,” Wendell said. “Finish the mission. We got most of them, but two or three made it through the door. They’ll raise an alarm.”

One of the Pinkwater soldiers stood up. Blood was ru

“What happened?” Prax asked.

“You started a gunfight,” Holden said. “Okay, let’s move ahead before they can set up defenses.”

Prax started noticing other bodies. Men and women who had been eating pizza and listening to music. They’d had pistols, but Holden’s people carried automatic shotguns and assault rifles and some had military-looking armor. The difference in outcome hadn’t been subtle.

“Amos, take point,” Holden said, and the big man moved through the doorway and into the unknown. Prax moved to follow, and the head of the Pinkwater people took his elbow.

“Why don’t you stay with me, professor,” he said.

“Yes. I’ll c all right.”

On the other side of the door, the nature of the rooms changed. They were still clearly in the old tu

The two remaining Pinkwater soldiers who weren’t Wendell scuttled forward, pressing their backs to the wall on either side of the freight gateway. Prax started toward them, but Wendell put a restraining hand on his shoulder. The man on the left side of the door ducked his head into the doorway and then out again. A bullet gouged a streak in the wall where it missed him.

“What can you give me?” Holden asked, and for a moment Prax thought he was talking to them. Holden’s eyes were hard, and the scowl seemed etched into his skin. Then Naomi said something to make him smile, and he only looked tired and sad. “All right. We’ve got a partial floor plan. Through there, we’ve got an open room. It drops down about two meters, with exits to our ten o’clock and one o’clock. It’s built like a pit, so if they’re setting up defense here, we’ve got the high ground.”

“Makes it a damned stupid place to set up a defense, then,” Wendell said.

Gunfire chattered, three small holes appearing in the metal of the freight gateway. The people on the other side were nervous.

“And yet the evidence suggests c” Holden said.

“You want to talk to ’em, Cap?” Amos said. “Or do we head straight for the obvious thing?”

The question meant something more than Prax understood; he could tell that much. Holden started to say something, hesitated, and then nodded toward the doorway.

“Let’s get this done,” he said.

Holden and Amos jogged toward the gateway, Prax and Wendell close behind. Someone was shouting orders in the room beyond. Prax made out the words payloadand evac, his heart going tight. Evac. They couldn’t let anyone leave until they found Mei.

“I counted seven,” one of the Pinkwater soldiers said. “Could be more.”

“Any kids?” Amos asked.

“Didn’t see any.”

“We should probably look again,” Amos said, and leaned out the door. Prax caught his breath, expecting to see the man’s head dissolve in a rain of bullets, but Amos was already pulling back when the first shots started.

“What are we working with?” Holden asked.

“More’n seven,” Amos said. “They’re using this as a choke point, but the fella’s right. Either they don’t know what they’re doing, or there’s something in there they can’t pull back from.”