view panning around enough to identify the hub back on Station 112. But instead of the noisy, cheerful chatter that had surrounded us during our dinner, the room was silent.
The tables and booths had been shoved out of the way, and the greenery was torn down.
The largest room on the station was cleared out, and as the camera continued to pan, it was easy to see why.
Rows of gray coverall covered workers clustered together at one end of the room, surrounded by pacing black uniformed guards toting blast rifles.
And on a makeshift stage facing the terrified crowd, stood the old man I’d last seen threatening to blow the observation dome.
Yasmin’s uncle.
Ran Denau.
Next to him knelt Commander Serrup. If he’d been racing around in terror during the attack, now he’d shut down completely, eyes wide, staring straight ahead, as if utterly unable to process what was happening.
“Do you care nothing for the people who have been entrusted to you?” Ran Denau asked silkily. He beckoned and one of the guards reached into the crowd and pulled out a man in his thirties.
Nothing remarkable about him other than the look of sheer terror on his face.
“I’m here for information,” Denau continued. “But since you seem to not believe the seriousness of my requests, let me be clear.”
With a short hop, he left the stage and strolled over to the unfortunate worker, who had fallen to his knees, mutely shaking his head.
Pivoting quickly, Denau turned back to Commander Serrup.
The camera hadn’t zoomed in on the poor fool’s face, but it didn’t need to for me to read the blankness in his eyes.
“All you have to do is give me the files I want,” Denau continued smoothly.
Then without warning, without ultimatums, without counting down, he pulled out a small handheld blaster.
And fired it through the kneeling worker’s skull.
Screams from the crowd behind him were quickly cut short at the guards’ insistence.
Denau ignored it all.
He moved back towards the stage then stopped, turning again to the crowd.
“Do any of you know where the files are?”
“You bastard!” a blonde woman shoved her way to the front.
She tickled a memory. Maybe she’d been at the table that I’d found Yasmin sitting at in the hub.
My hands clenched uselessly. Whoever she had been, I was certain it wouldn’t matter now.
I searched the guards around the crowd, every visible figure of the mercs on the platform for Jenke.
Finally, I spotted him, his face expressionless.
Waiting for something.
“He didn’t do anything!” the woman screamed, pulling my attention back. “He didn’t know anything. None of us do. We’re a fab lab, same as a dozen other places.”
“I think not,” Denau answered and shot her neatly through the forehead.
There was no screaming that time.
His steps echoing through the hub were the only sounds as he strolled back to the stage and yanked Commander Serrup to the side.
“I really would like those files.” Then he stared straight into the camera. “And I will get them.”
The screen blanked and we all sat in silence.
Yasmin shook in the chair before me, and I put one hand on her shoulder, rubbing lightly.
And this time, instead of turning away, she reached up and gripped my fingers as if they were the only thing keeping her tethered to reality.
“That’s not my uncle,” she said softly.
“Yas, honey,” I said, still rubbing at her rigid shoulder. “That’s the guy that we saw on the ship.”
“I know that,” she said sharply. “It’s certainly his face and his voice. But my uncle is a kind man. He raised us. He would never do something like that. It’s Dysek propaganda.”
She swallowed and her grip on my fingers grew tighter. “And if it’s not, well, I think I have the files he’s looking for.”
“Even if so, you surely can’t mean to give them to him?” Thalcorr protested.
She looked straight at him as the ice grew back over her expression.
But still, she kept her grip on my hand.
“Thank you for your concern. But I really must be leaving now.”
“Give the docking bay crew a bit more time to get a ship fueled up and ready, and I’ll take you over myself,” I said.
Yasmin turned to me, shocked. “Why would you do that?” she said.
“Never finished my tour, did I?”
Besides, we had an ace in the hole.
And he was waiting for us.
I hoped.
Yasmin
Luca waited for us as we exited the Imperial shuttle in the resupply bay of Station 112.
We might be twins, but my brother had always been taller than me, had always been pleased to be