can get to the bottom of this if you’ve finished provoking my employees."
"Go get them," Xanto spoke before Taarig could. "I'll make sure the Sub Commander behaves, and while they're transferring, you can get cleaned up." He gave a meaningful look to the Meddyg who was just finishing up with Tay.
"Good idea." Cali gave Taarig one last hard look then crossed to the hidden panel that led to her quarters.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
It only took Cali moments to copy the visual recordings to a portable strip, but Xanto would have known that. Just like he would have known, Cali could have done it from her terminal in the Owner's Booth, but Taarig wouldn't. So, he'd given her the chance to avoid the Meddygs, clean up, and finish healing. Maybe it was a good thing he was around.
Cali stripped off her destroyed clothing, letting them fall where they may as she crossed the room to her cleansing unit, unlike the others on the Star Base. Those used either chemicals or sonic waves for cleansing, depending on a being's preference. Cali's choice was water. Her parents had described how it was that way on Earth and how it hadn't been possible to do on their ship, The Discovery, when they'd left Earth. Once they'd settled on Diter, a moon that orbited Zagreus Prime, the homeworld of the Zagreus, they’d resumed the tradition. It was done in space rarely, due to the expense of purifying the water, but it was a part of Cali's heritage that she refused to give up.
Stepping into the unit, she tipped her face up into the stream of heated fluid flowing from the ceiling and let it wash over her body. Gods, it felt good. Slowly she began to massage the cleansing liquid her mom sent her into her hair. She carefully removed any debris she found, checking her scalp as she did.
She still had some cuts that, while no longer bleeding, hadn't completely healed. It told her just how deep they'd been. But it was the egg-sized bump on the back of her head that had her most concerned. She hadn't thought she'd lost consciousness, but this suggested she had. Ruk! That meant she’d need to use the rejuvenation tank.
Quickly she finished cleansing the rest of her body, then shutting off the water, grabbed a towel. She didn't bother drying off as she moved to the oversized bench that contained her tank. After opening it, she stepped in and let the shimmering tendrils slowly pull her beneath the surface.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
"So, neither of you saw anything unusual outside before the explosion?" Taarig forced himself not to watch Cali walk away and concentrated on the task at hand, finding out who had almost killed her.
"I saw nothing," Hamm told him.
"No." Tay then expanded. "The normal sanitation crew hadn’t been through yet, so there was the normal amount of trash lying around but nothing that seemed unusual."
"Sanitation didn’t arrive as scheduled?" Taarig frowned; he'd have to look into that, even though sanitation was Wik Corp’s responsibility. "Can you think of anyone that left or entered right before the explosion?"
Tay silently thought back for a minute. "A Bix male left just as I came on duty, but he walked into the doors of the lift before they opened; he was so bashed. The only other one I saw was Nalo." Tay looked to the bar to where the male, who was one of their regulars, stood and pointed. "He’s there, at the bar."
"Nalo is a sweetie," Mae chimed in. "He's always asking how I'm doing and inquiring about my offspring." Mae didn't see Tay's frown as she rubbed her distended belly. "He wouldn't set an actinic bomb."
"How do you know that’s what it was?" Taarig instantly demanded, his gaze targeting Mae. But before Tay could tell the Sub Commander to back off or pummel him into the ground, Mae pulled up the sleeve covering the arm she always kept hidden, revealing the splotches and crisscrossing lines that marred her olive skin.
"Because I lived through one such bombing on Gala," she told him with hard eyes. "I'll never forget that odor."
Taarig was slightly taken aback at seeing the extent of the scarring on the small, Galaian female. Only the very wealthy on Gala had access to Meddygs. The rest had to survive with only the most basic health care, which wouldn’t have been able to do much for her.
"I’m sure you won’t," Taarig told her, the slight softening