Page 209 (1/2)

“I’h his sedation haze “You just go ahead, finish that without me I’ll be over …”

“Another bleeder,” one of their abductors said She was a thick-featured woloves “Right there”

“Check Got it,” said thethe metal tip back down into the patient’s open belly wound The sharp tapping sound of electrical discharge, and another s from the wound

Amos rolled over suddenly, his nose a bloody ruin, his face covered in gore “I bight be wrong about dis, Cab’n,” he said, the words fighting out past the bulbous mess of his nose, “’ut I don’d dink dese fellas are station security”

The room Prax had found hi to do with the usual atmosphere of law enforcement It looked like an old office The kind a safety inspector or a shipping clerk ht have used in the ancient days before the cascade had started: a long desk with a built-in surface ter, a dead plant— Sanseviera trifasciata—with long green-brown leaves turning to dark sliuards or soldiers or whatever they were had been veryone wall, bound at the ankles and wrists; their hand ter the opposite ith two guards set to do nothing but make sure no one touched them The armor they’d stripped off Holden and Auns Then the pair that Prax thought of as thefor the o on to anybody else

“Any idea e’re dealing with here?” Wendell asked under his breath

“Not OPA,” Holden said

“That leaves a pretty large number of suspects,” the Pinkwater captain said “Is there somebody you’ve pissed off I should know about?”

Holden’s eyes took on a pained expression and he iven the circumstances

“There’s kind of a list,” he said

“Another bleeder here,” the woman said

“Check,” the drillflesh

“No offenseto wish I’d just shot you when I had the chance”

“None taken,” Holden replied with a nod

Four of the soldiers came back into the room They were all squat Earther types One—a dark-skinned ray hair and an air of coaze passed over the prisoners, seeing the them Like they were boxes When his eyes were on Prax, the man nodded but not to him

“Are they stable?” the dark-skinned man asked the medical team

“If I had the choice,” the woman said, “I wouldn’t move this one”

“If you didn’t?”

“He’ll probably et him to a real medical bay”