“I wonder if this will sound like a compelling argument to the people dying in orbit right now.”
“I’m sorry for them. I truly am. But they knew the risks when they got on board. And their deaths will have meaning,” Murtry said.
“Meaning?”
“They are the sign that we didn’t give up a centimeter. What we came for, we held to the last gasp. This isn’t something humanity can do halfway, Captain. It never has been. Even Cortez burned his ships.”
Holden’s laugh was half disbelief and half contempt. “What is it with you guys and worshiping mass murderers?”
Murtry frowned. A swirl of bright blue lights rose and fell between them like dust blowing down a desert street.
“How do you mean?” Murtry asked.
“A guy I once knew tried to justify his life choices to me by comparing himself to Genghis Khan.”
“I take it you didn’t find his argument compelling?” Murtry asked with a smirk.
“No,” Holden said. “And then a friend of mine shot him in the face.”
“An ironic rebuttal to an argument about necessary violence.”
“I thought so too, at the time.”
Murtry reached up and scratched his head with his left hand, his short greasy hair shifting into a configuration vaguely resembling Miller’s carapace. A sculpture of curves and spikes. He looked at his fingertips in disgust and wiped them on his armor. Holden waited. Somewhere far behind them, a strange chittering sound rose like cicadas on a summer afternoon.
“So,” Murtry finally said. “I’m going to need to come over there.” He gestured at Holden’s side of the chasm with his chin. His right hand still hovered over his gun.
“Nope,” Holden replied.
Murtry nodded, as if expecting this. “You going to arrest me, Sheriff?”
“Actually, I was kind of thinking I’d shoot you.”
“In the face, no doubt.”
“If that’s what I can hit.”
“Seems like a radical shift,” Murtry said, “for a man who wants to tame the frontier with mediation and committee meetings.”
“Oh, no, this isn’t about that. Elvi says you killed Amos. I wouldn’t kill a single person for your fucking frontier, but for my crew? Yeah, I’ll kill you for that.”
“They say revenge is empty.”
“This is my first try at it,” Holden said. “Forgive me if my opinions on it are fairly unformed.”
“Will it change things if your boy isn’t dead? He was still shooting when I left him.”
The wave of relief that hit Holden at this almost doubled him over. If Murtry had pulled his pistol and shot at that moment the fight would have been over. But he managed to keep his face blank and his knees from buckling.
“Is he hurt?”
“Oh my, yes. Pretty badly. He killed one of mine before he went down. For a guy who wants to solve problems without violence, you travel in dangerous company.”
“Yeah,” Holden said, unable to keep the smile off his face. “But he’s a great mechanic. What about the other one? Fayez?”
“Down, not dead. I didn’t get to finish him before your boy started blazing away. Neither one was walking, so I just left.”
The matter-of-fact discussion of why Murtry hadn’t just killed Fayez chilled Holden’s blood.
“So here’s a deal,” Murtry said. “I let you cross to this side and you can go check on your man Amos. Save the egghead from bleeding out, too. You have my word I won’t interfere.”
“But,” Holden replied, “you head over to my side and stop Elvi from doing what I need her to do.”
“Seems a fair trade.”
Holden stopped just resting his hand on the butt of his pistol and wrapped it around the grip. He turned his body, getting his feet in position. Murtry gave him just the hint of a frown.
“No,” Holden said, and waited for the shooting to start.
“So,” Murtry said, not moving at all. “You know what people always forget about the new world?”
Holden didn’t answer.
“Civilization has a built-in lag time. Just like light delay. We fly out here to this new place, and because we’re civilized, we think civilization comes with us. It doesn’t. We build it. And while we’re building it, a whole lot of people die. You think the American west came with railroads and post offices and jails? Those things were built, and at the cost of thousands of lives. They were built on the corpses of everyone who was there before the Spanish came. You don’t get one without the other. And it’s people like me that do it. People like you come later. All of this?” Murtry waved his left hand at himself and Holden. “This is because you showed up too early. Come back after I’ve built a post office and we’ll talk.”
“You done?” Holden asked.
“So this is our day, I take it,” Murtry said. “No way but this way? Even if I didn’t kill your man?”
“Maybe you killed Amos and Fayez and maybe you didn’t. Maybe you’re right about the frontier and I’m just a naïve idiot. Maybe every single person you killed on this world had it coming and you were always in the right.”
“But you have people in orbit and saving them is all that counts?”
“I was going to say, ‘But you’re a flaming asshole,’ ” Holden said. “But the other works too. You don’t cross this bridge.”
“Well then,” Murtry said. He shifted his stance and his eyes narrowed. The chittering grew louder. Below them, the protomolecule fireflies swirled and shuddered. “Well then.”
Holden smiled at him. Mimicking Alex’s drawl he said, “Come on, Black Bart, you always knew it would end this way.”
Murtry laughed. “You’re a funny —”
Holden shot him.
Murtry staggered, clutching at his chest and fumbling for his gun. Holden put his second shot into the man’s right arm. He tried for the elbow and only managed to get the bicep. Just as good. Murtry dropped the gun onto the bridge in front of him. When the RCE man went to one knee to try and pick it up with his left hand, Holden shot him in the leg. Murtry pitched forward onto the bridge, sending the gun tumbling away into the abyss. Murtry slid to the side, going over the edge, but managed to throw his left arm onto the metal mesh and stop his fall.
The whole thing had taken about three seconds.
As the last echoing report of the gunshot faded, Holden walked out onto the bridge. The uncanny musculature pressed at the soles of his feet. Murtry clung to the mesh with his one good hand, his face tight with pain, but still managing a mocking grin.