Sloane tried to lift her. Throw her. Nothing happened. Then the impossibly heavy thief just raised a fist and drove it down between Sloane’s shoulder blades. Her shields took the hit but not the force. Sloane stumbled back before she kissed the hangar floor.
“Damn, you’re big,” she gasped. She swiped a hand over her sweaty chin. “The hell do you do?”
“Cargo.” The woman rolled her wide shoulders, thick lips peeled back in a wide, toothy smile. “Seven years.” The name on her uniform read Graves.
Sloane sighed. Guess it isn’t all hydraulic lifters and easy pay.
“You need some help, boss?” Talini asked wryly.
She didn’t need help or sass. Keeping a wary eye on her beef-bound opponent, she tipped her head slightly. “Get those hostages out and lock down the ship.”
“Joining Kandros,” Talini replied, but that thread of humor lingered.
“Got four holed up on the ramp,” Kandros added.
“Roger.”
“Now,” Sloane said, her attention centered squarely back on Graves. “Your team’s getting dismantled as we speak.” If her words came out with a little bit more effort than menace, well, she’d ignore it and hope the woman didn’t notice.
Her opponent didn’t even glance around her. Instead she clenched her fists. “We’re not staying on this death trap,” Graves replied. “And you can’t stop us from leaving.”
“Got news for you, lady.” Sloane jerked a thumb back toward the sound of more firepower, and more yelling. “We need these shuttles. We need people who know what they’re doing, too, and you should have been one of them.”
The woman set her not insubstantial jaw.
“But since you aren’t going to help make this future…” Sloane tilted her head side to side, heard her neck pop. Easing up on her stance, she shifted just enough to gain the edge she needed.
“Up you go!” Talini cried from across the room. Graves flinched and stepped back as two screaming uniformed thieves sailed over her wide head in a tangle of flailing limbs.
Sloane lunged, throwing her shoulder into the brute’s exposed midsection. The two spilled onto a crate just as Sloane dropped and rolled into Graves’s ankles. The woman had braced, but in the wrong place. She tried to twist out of the way, too late and off-balance.
The accidental knee Sloane received to her gut drove the breath out of her. The less accidental collision of Graves with the two tangled thieves did its job. She landed on both of Talini’s victims, smashing them to the floor and pinning them there.
Sloane rolled to one side and lay on her back for a moment, her shoulder numb. The sound of the fight continued around her.
“Last one’s down,” Kandros announced in her comm. “Two bogeys dead,” he added grimly. Over her head, something sparked.
More work for maintenance.
It could have been worse. Sloane lifted a hand to her face, squinting at her omni-tool display. “Sloane to Addison.”
The woman responded instantly. “Did you get them?”
Taking a breath made Sloane want to expel it on a stream of curses. She deferred to a gritted, “Yup,” instead.
“Any casualties?” Addison asked, her voice strained.
Sloane thought about it for a second.
“Nope,” she said, and cut the connection.
She really could use a drink. At this point, caffeinated or alcoholic would do.
“This is a disaster,” Tann said, pacing the section of the common room reserved for officers. “A total disaster. How could you let this happen?”
“It wasn’t Sloane’s fault,” Foster Addison cut in sharply. She stood by the bulkhead window, watching the salarian pace while Sloane leaned back in one of the padded chairs likely appropriated from a conference room.
The tough security director didn’t look too much worse for wear, if you ignored the nasty bruise around her neck and a cold gelpack draped over one shoulder. Addison knew from watching the footage how those bruises had been earned. Not something she ever wanted to experience herself.
Security had resolved the crisis like the well-trained force they were. Addison couldn’t find anything wrong with how they had handled it, which meant Tann was overreacting. Again.
For her part, Sloane said nothing, as if she needed the time to take in air rather than let fly with whatever she wanted to say to the salarian.
He turned his glower on Addison instead. “Two more bodies in cold storage. Eight more locked up in…” He hesitated. “Where did we put them?”
Sloane grunted behind her gelpack. “Up your—”
“A temporary cell,” Addison cut in hastily. She shot Sloane a look that was meant to be hard, but probably came across more exasperated. The woman wrinkled her nose in silent acknowledgement. “It will suffice. They’re well away from any communication terminals, sans omni-tools, and with plenty of room to rest until we decide what to do with them.”
“Space ’em,” Sloane muttered. “They’re traitors.”
Addison ignored that. The security director might be joking, but there was a very real possibility the hotheaded woman wasn’t. She didn’t want to press anybody’s luck.
“A trial, then,” Tann said, returning to his pacing. “A proper one, in full view of everyone so they know—”
“This isn’t a circus,” Addison said, her eyes widening. She took a step away from the window, hands automatically going to her hips. “Handle it quietly. You’re going to start stirring bad blood if you try to make a show of this. The people down there in that cell aren’t the only ones to come to Andromeda fleeing checkered pasts.”
“Bad blood,” Tann repeated, rolling his large eyes. His thin nostrils flared as he gestured vaguely toward the door—and ultimately, the quarters where the would-be thieves waited. “They tried to steal our shuttles. Hold hostages! We cannot be seen to go lightly on them, it will only encourage the behavior.”
Sloane said nothing. She held the gelpack to her injury.
Addison squared on Tann. “So will crashing down on them. The morale around here is piss poor already. I’m not saying that we pardon them or anything. Just that maybe a kangaroo court isn’t how we need to deal with our first security breach.”
Tann stared at her for a moment. Then his face cleared. “Ah, a nearly extinct Earth species. I wasn’t aware they held courts.”
Addison bit back a sigh. “It’s an expression, Tann.”
“A very odd one.”
“Speak for yourself,” Sloane muttered.
Tann glared at her. “Director Sloane, if you please—”
The woman threw down the gelpack, revealing the livid bruise beneath the torn shoulder of her uniform. She sat forward, elbows on her knees, fingers laced ever so pointedly, and drilled them both with a painfully hard stare.
“Look. All I know is that we can’t afford to pretend like everyone on this station is happy and shiny anymore. Innocent people could have died. Two of my team are in medical right now. Addison’s right about one thing. There’s a decent chunk of the Nexus crew that have, shall we say, colorful pasts. Garson believed in second chances.”
“She also believed in a large and well-funded security team,” Tann noted.
“Yes, a team which resolved the situation. We did our job. Now do yours. Space these criminals before—”
“Isn’t it your job to prevent this sort of thing?” Tann asked coolly.
“If you’d get out of the way and let me lead—”
“That is not going to happen in my… in any lifetime,” Tann shot back. Addison’s heart rate spiked into something she didn’t want to call anger, but she was running out of options.