Expanse #01 - Leviathan Wakes by Daniel Abraham & James S. A. Corey

Author:Daniel Abraham & James S. A. Corey [Abraham, Daniel & Corey, James S. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adventure, Science Fiction, Fiction, General, Space Opera, Interplanetary Voyages, Space Warfare
ISBN: 9780316129084
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2011-06-14T23:00:00+00:00

The casinos were a powder keg waiting for a match. If the evacuation sweeps had been even moderately successful, there were probably a million or more people crammed into three levels of the station. Hard-looking men in riot gear moved through the crowds, telling everyone to stay put until they were taken to the radiation shelters, keeping the crowd frightened. Every now and then, a small group of citizens would be led away. Knowing where they were going made Holden’s stomach burn. He wanted to yell out that cops were fake, that they were killing people. But a riot with this many people in such a confined space would be a meat grinder. Maybe that was inevitable but he wasn’t going to be the one to start it.

Someone else did.

Holden could hear raised voices, the angry rumble of the mob, followed by the electronically amplified voice of someone in a riot helmet yelling for people to get back. And then a gunshot, a brief pause, then a fusillade. People screamed. The entire crowd around Holden and Miller surged in two opposing directions, some of the people rushing toward the sound of the conflict, but many more of them running away from it. Holden spun in the current of bodies; Miller reached out and grabbed the back of his shirt, gripping it in his fist and yelling for Holden to stay close.

About a dozen meters down the corridor, in a coffee shop seating area separated by a waist-high black iron fence, one of the mafia thugs had been cut off from his group by a dozen citizens. Gun drawn, he was backing up and yelling at them to move aside. They kept advancing, their faces wild with the drunken frenzy of mob violence.

The mafia thug fired once, and one small body staggered forward, then fell to the ground at the thug’s feet. Holden couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl, but they couldn’t be more than thirteen or fourteen years old. The thug moved forward, looking down at the small thin figure at his feet, and pointed his gun at them again.

It was too much.

Holden found himself running down the corridor toward the thug, gun drawn and screaming for people to get out of the way. When he was about seven meters away, the crowd split apart enough for him to begin firing. Half his shots went wild, hitting the coffee shop counter and walls, one round blowing a stack of ceramic plates into the air. But a few of them hit the thug, staggering him back.

Holden vaulted the waist-high metal fence and came to a sliding halt about three meters from the fake cop and his victim. Holden’s gun fired one last time and then the slide locked in the open position to let him know it was empty.

The thug didn’t fall down. He straightened up, looked down at his torso, and then looked up and pointed his gun at Holden’s face. Holden had time to count the three bullets that were smashed against the heavy chest armor of the thug’s riot gear.

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