Hal found it amusing that she always looked in Eazi’s direction when speaking to him, even if the thinking system couldn’t possibly see her and it couldn’t possibly matter.
“As far as I can see.” Eazi sounded a little jumpy. “But so many unpredictable things have happened so far, I’m nervous to commit one hundred percent.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Fiona told him. She walked to the window, testing the wall strength before she hoisted herself up, balanced on the ledge, and dropped down on the other side.
Hal followed and found her standing beside what could only be described as a baked-on mess on the warehouse floor. She was staring down at it in disgust, and he slid his hand across her shoulder to cup her upper arm. “You all right?”
“Yes. No.” She looked up at him. “Ew.”
He felt the corners of his mouth tug upward. “This is where the man who shot at you with a Class 5 laser cannon met the consequences of his actions?” he asked.
She nodded, eyes going back to the hard-baked blackened charcoal on the floor.
“What is the Earthling concept you keep telling me about?” he asked.
“Karma, baby.” She sighed, reached up and twined her fingers with his own. “But still. Ew.”
He squeezed her fingers in comfort, then stepped back, pushing down the fury that bubbled up. The man who’d shot at her had wanted this to be her fate. Her ending.
That it was his own was satisfying, but knowing he wasn’t acting alone meant it wasn’t enough.
Hal took a deep breath and then stood still, looking and listening to make sure they were alone.
“I’m sure there was more on these shelves when I was here last,” Fee said.
“Security didn’t log very much into evidence,” Eazi said. “I’ll need to check your lens feed to see what’s missing.”
The warehouse was bigger than Hal expected. He could see places on the floor where a standing bracket, likely to hold the cannon, had been bolted. Security had probably taken it away, or it had been vaporized.
“There was someone talking to you before you were shot at, I saw in the lens feed,” he said as he walked forward, glancing down the rows of shelves on either side of him. The long stacks ran parallel almost all the way down the length of the warehouse and were blackened at the ends where the laser had scorched them. A few closest to the laser had fallen over.
Fee was right that the number of boxes they held were few, although there were a few lonely items here and there that he could see.
“Yes, he kept looking behind him, and this area was poorly lit,” Fee said. She wasn’t following behind him, she was going to each item she could see sitting on the shelves and lifting it up to show Eazi through the lens worked into her left shoulder. “He threw himself down on the ground a moment before the shot was taken, so he was obviously waiting for it and trying to get the timing right.”
“Security has him in custody, don’t they,” he asked. “Do they have his name?”
“He’s refusing to give it,” Eazi said. “And Balcoan law means they can’t hold him for much longer given Security doesn’t know he abducted Natta, and they can’t prove he was responsible for the injuries to the other three in the warehouse.”
“So it’s just the laser cannon that’s keeping him there?” Fiona asked.
“Yes, there are so many levels of wrong in that, they don’t want him out of their sight. Right now they’re operating on the hypothesis that he and his friends stole a cannon and were working on it when it went off.” Eazi’s tone sounded satisfied, as if he’d personally had a hand in that conclusion. “The amount of damage the laser shot caused is also being used to explain the other injuries. Fortunately there were things lying all around the bodies, and damage you did with your silver rod is being put down to flying debris.”
“The shockgun strikes won’t be, though,” Hal said.
“No, but as everyone is refusing to talk, Security is going on the assumption that a fight broke out among friends about whether to live test the cannon in the warehouse itself, and the falling out resulted in some low stun shots being fired.”
That wasn’t exactly a far fetched reading of the scene, Hal thought. And it was very handy for Fee and Trayla.
“By the way, everything you’ve found on the shelves so far is Paxe’s,” Eazi said. “I have a small carrier drone close by. It’ll come through the window and take everything off the shelves, then deliver them to the space port.”
“Where do you get all these couriers and drones?” Fiona was crouched down beside a low shelf, holding up another part. “You seem to have them on tap.”
“We own a courier company down here,” Eazi said. “I’m sure I’ve mentioned it. Don’t you remember?”
Fiona straightened up. “Vaguely. At the start, when Balco was being all passive aggressive about our taking Larga Waysandallour supplies were delayed or missing. Before Paxe was even with us and rebuilding his Class 5.” She was nodding.
“I don’t think I heard about that.” Hal wasn’t surprised, though. Balco had run Larga Ways and taken half the profits. Being usurped by a thinking system and an Earthling had probably stung their pride more than a bit.
