Flash Fiction 458 -- Raiders/8

 

Lisel moved faster.  He didn't even extend his claws -- just reached over to Brick and pulled the small laser pistol from the man's hand.  It might not have worked if Brick hadn't been so confused and upset.

"We are not the enemy," Lisel said.  "We're stuck here with you."

"I don't know that.  Your ship might be out there, waiting."

"I wish -- I hope -- it is," I said.  Brick frowned.  "Look, if we were behind this, would we have come here to find this with you?  You know we just arrived, so we couldn't have done the killing.  However, we had some reason to think there would be trouble.  I could lie and say we suspected a problem from the way we were handled when we came in."

"But you are saying that's not true.  That's not why you knew."

"Other stations have been destroyed," I said.  "Wiped out.  The three of us were sent in to find out what we could and hope to stop ... this.  We didn't realize the problem had already started."

"You took out the Catchins," he said with a flash of anger.

"My people are few," Lisel said with a whisper of regret in his voice.  "If I had realized how close we were to danger, I might have tried to rescue the young of others."

"I have a wife and two daughters under ten," Brick said with such fear in his face that it stilled anything I was about to say.

Lisel put his hand on Brick's shoulder.  "I apologize.  And I will fight for your daughters as though they were my own."

Brick blinked several times and then gave a bow of his head.  "Let's see if we can find anyone to help.  Quietly, I think.  We don't want a panic."

I looked at Lisel, but he only nodded and moved off with Brick.  I didn't like to see them go because I wanted Lisel safe.  I almost went with them, but no ... I needed to be here with Krisin.

"We need to move the bodies out of here," Krisin said as he stepped carefully over someone.  "The air filtration has worked so far, and the bots have kept things cleaned up -- but we need them out, especially if we have others we want to come in and work here.  We don't know these people, but they do.  We don't want them to fall apart."

"Damn.  What do we do?"

"Move them into the Station Manager's office and seal the door," he said with a wave of his hand toward a door on the right of the room.  "I think I can get the bots to do most of the work."

"That would be good."

He went straight to work, first to get the door open.  The station manager was not there, and I wondered if he was one of the dead.  I didn't know the people on this station.

That helped as we moved them, the bots doing their part.

But I felt as though every moment meant we were closer to death without ever learning what was happening here.  Did I trust Brick?  Not entirely, and that worried me about Lisel being off in the station with him.  She did trust Lisel to be careful of the man, though.

Krisin went to work at one of the stations.  I didn't linger over him, demanding what he was doing.  Instead, I found a computer station, ignored the burn hole through the back of the chair and the scorch mark on the side of the screen, and began to carefully call up info.

I knew a few secrets about comps that got me past the sign-in.  I stayed out of any of the controls, but I did want to see what was going on before everyone was killed.

Nothing outstanding leapt up, though I did get the name of the ship.  The Sailfor, with a tangled ownership record and a sketchy list of past destinations.  Sadly, this was not enough to make them look like a problem.  Out here along the edge, many ships changed hands and didn't always list everywhere they went, partly to hide good trading partners they didn't want to share.

If they hadn't done something odd that got the alarms running, she wouldn't have done more than scanned their record.  Now I marked their bay and checked to see if they'd had any visitors, but that was hard to track, too.

Brick and Lisel came back, bringing two pale-faced women with them.

"They were training for work here," Brick explained.  "We told them what happened."

"I don't know enough," one of the women said.  Her voice trembled.  "We barely started --"

Krisin took them both in hand.  I gave up my spot and went to talk to Brick and Lisel.

"The Sailfor is our problem ship," I said.  "I got that from the records."

"We took a quick look out at the bays.  The Sailfor is off-loading crates."

"Light crates," Brick added with a frown.  "Maybe empty ones?"

"Krisin --"

"Trying to look," he said from a seat nearby.  "Someone messed with the program.  These people are thorough.  They were doing their best not to let anyone look too closely."

I nodded.  We were running out of time, and I didn't know what we could do.  Why did the Captain drop us in here on Dayer's Station?  She didn't really expect the three of us to be able to stop this, did she?

We could run for our fighter and get out.

But we wouldn't.  Not yet, at least.

"Brick, how many of your team can you round up?  And how good are they at making trouble?

"Fourteen," he said.  "And they're far better at starting trouble than ending it.  Fools."

"You didn't hire them?" I said.

"Not me.  Someone on the station brought them in a few months ago ... oh."

"Not the people we want to trust," Lisel decided.mm