‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I can be a gentleman.’
In your dreams,she thought.
‘I’ll leave if you pledge to give my crew the best care possible,’ he added.
‘Professionalism doesn’t need a promise,’ she murmured, giving him a cold flash of warning with her eyes.
‘Rhixon Corp is not wanted here,’ one of the locals, a crotchety, silver-haired, elderly woman, sneered from her bed.
At this, Ty spun around to face the older woman, scorn written on his face.
‘I can do whatever thefokkI want, old girl. I have a mining concession from Tansinian officials who have my back. The problem is your alderman, and this freakin’ village stands in the way of improving the lives of all Tansinians. You’ve minerals beneath this ground that can generate billions of schills. My brother Tiberius, may he rest in peace, died to bring that dream to life, but I won’t. So watch out, lady, you might have to fleefrom that bed when I take it from under you to see my vision come to light.’
‘Are you threatening my patients?’ Sheba snarled. ‘You need to leave now.’
‘Get the hell out,’ Toma growled, supporting her as he strode toward Ty.
The mining executive lifted both hands in mock surrender and stalked back in the direction of his sleek flyer.
As it rose into the evening sky, he leaned out from the lead vessel and gave her a single finger salute and a curled, twisted grin.
‘Bastard,’ she murmured as the craft climbed and banked away.
The sense of unease in Sheba’s gut did not fade with his departure. It deepened.
With an exhale, she turned to the task at hand: sutures, pressure dressings, bone stabilization, and quiet reassurance.
In less than two hours, the staff had most of the miners cleaned, bandaged, stitched, and stabilized, their pain dulled and their anger spent.
The critical cases remained in the wards for observation, and the rest got bundled back onto their waiting crafts.
The flyers lifted off with unnecessary force, rotors tearing at the air, hurling dust into the tents until tarpaulins snapped and strained against their ties.
Sheba stood outside the emergency wing as the fleet rose into the skies, hand up, shielding herself from the dust and grit.
‘Good riddance to them all, including their boss, may I never see his smug face ever again.’
‘We all wish it,’ Toma growled beside her. ‘He runs dirty mining operations here and out on the fringes, with a massive op in the Gamma Algenib sector.’
Sheba kept her eyes on the shrinking silhouettes and blinking tail lights in the darkened night sky. ‘Let me guess. Aqqari?’
‘Yup,’ Toma said. ‘Rhixon Corp has little to no respect for the environment. They tend to bully locals and bribe planetary officials to get their way. Ty has spent millions greasing palms across four planets and counting.’
Sheba turned to him. ‘How do you know so much?’
‘I had an encounter with his brother, Tiberius, some years back,’ Toma said. ‘He’s dead now, but then he was after a rich lode of xentium he started mining in the mountains behind us, and we found out that Rhixon Corp was poisoning the area’s waterways with chemical runoffs. He stopped only when I reported him to the Pegasi Board of Environmental Protection, which ended his operation. Ever since then, they’ve harassed us in retaliation. I fear Ty might fight harder and dirtier to get at the xentium beneath our feet.’
He stared at her hard. ‘Keep your guard around him.’
‘I intend to,’ Sheba murmured, as the flyers disappeared into the velvet black sky.
6
Savage Unbridled Power
The world split in a burst of screaming roars.
A beast smashed through a hedgerow of driftwood and furrowed reeds, hulking, standing up to seven meters at the shoulder.
