Lieutenant Sanna was an older Black woman with strange patterns of paler skin visible across her face and hands. Dressed in pale blue armor to stand out in crowds, she was giving direction to the rest of the Guadaloop Actual security people when Kira stepped up to her.
“You have a wounded woman, I understand?” Sanna asked sharply.
“I do,” Kira said. “We need medical attention.”
“A rescue pod is on the way; they’ll be here in two minutes,” the Lieutenant replied. “Will she be okay that long?”
“Someone got a medkit to her; I think so.”
“All right. Your name?”
“Kira Riker,” Kira replied.
“All right,” Sanna repeated. “Walk with me, Em Riker.”
The blue-armored vitiligoed woman led the way over to where the Shadows had fallen. Their holograms were down now, revealing an ordinary-looking pair of spacers in gray shipsuits.
“Any idea who these people were?” Sanna asked.
“I saw the holograms they were wearing,” Kira said grimly. “I’m from Apollo, Lieutenant. I know Shadows when I see them.”
There was a long pause.
“Assume I don’t, Em Riker,” the security officer finally told her. “Because I don’t have a damn clue what you’re talking about.”
“Brisingr Shadows,” Konrad interrupted, the big engineer stepping up to Kira’s right hand. “The elite assassins of the Kaiser’s covert operations departments.” He shrugged. “Supposedly, anyway. In practice, my understanding is that they’re any Brisingr espionage agent given a kill order.
“They use the holograms for anonymity.”
“I see,” Sanna said slowly. “We’ll get real IDs on these two, then,” she concluded with a gesture. “The blasters are unregistered and unlicensed, which would be enough to put them behind bars for a bit if they were still breathing.
“As it is, well.” She sighed. “Captain Zamorano is claiming that both kill shots were him and in self-defense. I’ll be reviewing the footage, but I understand his logic. What happened, Em Riker?”
“They shot me in the back,” Kira said quietly. “My jacket has dispersal matrix and armor layers, so I lived. Then they…kept shooting.”
“Probably saw the thermal bloom from the dispersal net on optics and realized you were still alive,” Sanna noted. “GAS does not approve of assassination attempts, Em Riker, though I’d love to know why they’d have taken a shot at you.”
Kira could guess. If she’d been IDed, there was still a significant bounty for turning her body—or even a recording of her death—in to a Brisingr embassy. That was almost certainly accompanied by an active kill order in Brisingr covert ops.
And it made sense there’d be Brisingr spy cells operating near the Crest. She hadn’t anticipated that.
“I don’t know, Lieutenant,” she lied to Sanna as the white-painted emergency pod hurtled to a stop near them. Two white-uniformed medics were checking on O’Mooney within seconds, and Kira sighed in relief.
“I’m going to hope that whatever you’re not telling me means that I won’t be seeing further incidents on my station,” Sanna said coldly. “I do not like other people’s trouble coming to my station, Em Riker.”
“I don’t like being in trouble anywhere, Lieutenant,” Kira replied. “Not sure if they’re after me or Konrad over there.” She gestured to her lover, currently also going by Riker. “He’s from Brisingr.”
If they did have any grudge against Konrad, she was glad the Shadows had shot her. She knew he was wearing an armor vest, but it was more in line with what O’Mooney was wearing—and O’Mooney was being loaded into an ambulance.
“I’ll take a formal statement while we walk to the clinic,” Sanna told her, producing an official-looking recorder. “From all three of you,” she noted, gesturing at Konrad and Bertoli.
“What about Zamorano?” Kira asked, looking around for the Captain.
“I know where to find Zamorano,” Sanna said calmly. “Baile Fantasma is under lockdown until I’m satisfied that we don’t need to lay charges. He’s not going anywhere without his ship.”
* * *
Treatment in a clinic on the primary orbital station of a planet well over a hundred light-years from your current residence and health insurance was neither free nor cheap. Kira had yet to meet any clinic that wouldn’t treat most injuries first and sort out payment afterward—but she also recognized the blatant relief from the human administrator when she asked how to pay.
That worthy was leaving, looking reassured—not least by the material amount of crests Kira had transferred to the clinic at his request—when Sanna stepped back into the waiting room.
“Well, we’ve IDed the pair of bodies cooling in my morgue,” she told Kira. “I believe your spiel about Brisingr Shadows, sadly, but they’re not Brisingr. They’re local—born on Actual, in fact. No criminal record, nothing.
“My guess is that they were local assets recruited by Brisingr to watch our shipping,” the security officer continued. “But that will take a lot more investigation. Not least since the one your people stunned never arrived at our lockup.”
“What happened?” Kira asked.
“Paperwork mix-up; they were transferred to the surface,” Sanna said crisply. “Where they appear to have disappeared.”
“Ah.” Somehow, Kira wasn’t surprised that whatever cell of Brisingr’s far-flung intelligence operations she’d run into had a way to get their people free. “That’s unfortunate.”
“Yes. It does support your theory, though,” the Lieutenant noted. “I have nothing on your people, Em Riker, if you’re worried. You were attacked, responded with an entirely rational level of force and, thankfully, escaped mostly unharmed.
“I have words for Captain Zamorano and his hero complex,” she said, “but even there, I expect the footage to be open-and-shut. I need to go through the process because there are two bodies in my morgue, but everything I’ve seen suggests they deserve to be there.”
“I’m sorry for the headache we’re giving you,” Kira murmured. She’d taken off her jacket and was surveying the damage to the back. “Does your station have any leatherworkers?”
“Not subtle, Em Riker,” Sanna replied. “I’m not certain about the leatherworkers—probably not any who can work with plasma-dispersal nets and particulate armor. I get the impression that’s a specialized combination.”
“Fair,” Kira said with a chuckle. She’d managed to get the jacket fixed after the first time she’d been shot wearing it, but this time, she wasn’t sure she had the resources. “I’ll see what I can find.”
A white-uniformed nurse stepped into the room.
“Are you the folks waiting on Em O’Mooney?” he asked.
“They are,” Sanna told the nurse, gesturing to Kira and her companions. “I’m done here, I think. Good luck, Em Riker—but I hope you forgive me when I say I hope you find your way off my station sooner rather than later!”
Kira turned her attention to the nurse.
“Yeah, we’re waiting on Aleifr O’Mooney,” she confirmed. “How is she?”
“She’s out of reconstruction and in recovery,” the nurse told them. “Doctor says she’ll be fine. Between the armor she was wearing and the near-immediate plasti-skin application, there was no serious damage to her intestines.
“We had to rebuild the abdominal muscle wall and she won’t be able to engage in heavy activity for at least six weeks, but she’ll be fine,” the nurse concluded. “She’s asleep now; doctor wants to keep her unconscious for at least eight hours and then in the clinic overnight for observation.”
“I’m not arguing with medical professionals,” Kira said. “Thank you.”