“Don’t let it come back on us,” Kira ordered with a polite nod at the strangers.
Their expressions were guarded as they gave her a brief chin tilt.One of those that practically screamed, “hey, how are you?I don’t actually want to talk.I’m just being polite.”
Fine with her.She didn’t want to talk either.
“What do you take me for?An idiot?Relax, it’s not like I haven’t done this before.”
Two of Jin’s spawn dropped from his bag.They hit the metal floor with a soft ping before scuttling into the station’s air vents.
Before Kira could see what they were up to, the station’s gangway curved, taking them out of sight.A few seconds later, there was a loud clang followed by shouting.
Then screaming.
After that, there was silence.
Jin chuckled sinisterly to himself.
“No structural damage,” Kira murmured.“Sure.”
“The station’s still intact.We’d know if it wasn’t.”
They reached the end of the gangway and the mouth of one of the tunnels that would take them into the inner station.A welcome sign hung over the tunnel’s entrance.The words that should have read “Welcome to Titan” had been scratched out.In uneven and shaky handwriting someone had carved, “All ye who enter, abandon all hope,” in their place.
Raider glanced up.“Charming.”
“Titan has always been known for its abundance of character,” Jin announced.
The station representative stopped at the tunnel’s threshold and waved them through.“Customs is through there.Please enjoy your stay.”
“Oh, we will,” Maksym said in accented standard as he passed her.“Do not worry about that.”
His smile made the woman flinch.She clutched her scroll to her chest and leaned back slightly.
Maksym noticed.To Kira, “What’d I do?”
“Nothing.”
Some humans were just a little more perceptive than others, able to sense danger even when it wasn’t aimed at them.
They followed the tunnel, arriving at customs a few minutes later.
“How we doing, Jin?”Kira asked, a little nervous.
Customs was a lot less busy than she had hoped.The low hum of conversation filled the mid-sized bay.Scanners that were from at least two generations ago beeped as people passed through them.
Kira wasn’t sure those things could pick up the presence of a fork let alone a dangerous weapon.She just hoped Finn and Maksym’s en-blades passed through along with the rest of their weapons.
It should be okay.Most places had a ban on hot weapons such as rifles and grenades but tended to look the other way when it came to cold weapons such as swords and daggers.
Customs agents clad in the same uniform as the representative who’d met them on the gangway stood behind antiballistic transparent barriers.Shouting pulled Kira’s attention to her right where a trio of burly miners were arguing with the customs agent in charge of their processing.
She lost interest as soon as she caught words such as contraband being bandied about.
It wasn’t until one of the miners slammed his hand against the transparent barrier that she tuned back in.
An alarm screeched.
Station security poured out of a room off to the side, surrounding the miners and ushering them none too gently into a back area.
