Shaw took a step forward, but Badeau caught his arm.
‘Take another look, ‘ she warned. ‘What do you see?’
Shaw felt a growing sense of unease, which Badeau’s words had done nothing to quell, and he studied the corridor once more. The grated floor allowed easy access to the distributed power and information networks that threaded the outpost, the ceiling bland and featureless aside from the emergency lighting fixtures interspersed between their more powerful but darkened neighbours. Nothing seemed out of place. Then his eyes focussed on a small patch of soot at the end of the corridor.
‘PPG blast!’ he exclaimed. ‘And another, there,’ pointing to a few metres away on the floor.
‘Stay alert,’ Badeau ordered. ‘We’ll sweep this place room by room. I don’t want to be here any longer than necessary.’
As Badeau took her datapad and connected a small sensor array to its top bracket, Shaw unclipped his Denn’Bok fighting pike but did not extend it. The heavy metal shaft felt comforting in his hand and did much to alleviate his nervousness. With a single shake of his hand, the four-inch cylinder would instantly expand into a five-foot staff--and he ranked highly in Denn’Bok lessons.
Sweeping the access corridor with the sensor array, Badeau noted they had missed another PPG blast on the inner airlock hatch when they entered. There were four exits from the corridor, two on each side, which they searched one at a time. Shaw entered first, senses alert while Sabine followed with a thorough scan. The first exit led to sleeping and living quarters, the second to kitchen and waste facilities. On the other side of the corridor, they found the power station and a small laboratory. They quickly noted that nothing valuable remained in the outpost. Throughout each tiny room, the Rangers found signs of combat, PPG blasts matched with the occasional spray of blood across a wall or fixture.
‘Must have been a hell of a fight,’ Shaw remarked as they left the kitchens to cross the access corridor once more.
Badeau shook her head. ‘This was no fight. It was a massacre.’ She paused to adjust the sensitivity of her datapad’s array. ‘The PPG blasts are mostly focussed away from the main entrance. Someone entered this place and opened fire. I am guessing the blast on the airlock either came from a defender who managed to get a single shot off or, more likely, someone trying to escape who got shot in the back as they ran.’
In his mind’s eye, Shaw tried to picture the scene as an unknown invader entered the outpost with murderous intent, slaughtering unarmed civilians. The Centauri had a bad reputation in the galaxy at the present time, but he was wise enough to know not all of them matched the stereotype. As they entered the laboratory, Badeau increased the intensity of her scans, guessing this was the chamber that governed the overall purpose of the outpost. For his part, Shaw began to consider the perpetrators of the massacre.
‘The Narn?’ he ventured. The Regime had always been enemies of the Centauri. The Narn had, after all, been among the last attack force to devastate huge regions of Centauri Prime.
‘I don’t think so,’ Badeau said, her mind obviously elsewhere as she studied her readings. ‘This is odd. . .’
‘Found something?’
‘Not sure. The datapad is reading ‘unidentified’. Some kind of residual emission in this room. It is marked as harmless--though that is relative, of course. Not sure I trust a computer telling me something is harmless when it cannot identify it. Still, I’m not a scientist.’
‘No clues then?’ he asked.
‘Well, there may be plenty, but damned if I can tell what they are. With the equipment stripped out, no doubt by the attackers, all I am left with is this energy signature. I am getting readings from the walls, ceiling and floor, and only in this room. We can only presume it’s some sort of leakage or by-product from whatever they were
‘Take another look, ‘ she warned. ‘What do you see?’
Shaw felt a growing sense of unease, which Badeau’s words had done nothing to quell, and he studied the corridor once more. The grated floor allowed easy access to the distributed power and information networks that threaded the outpost, the ceiling bland and featureless aside from the emergency lighting fixtures interspersed between their more powerful but darkened neighbours. Nothing seemed out of place. Then his eyes focussed on a small patch of soot at the end of the corridor.
‘PPG blast!’ he exclaimed. ‘And another, there,’ pointing to a few metres away on the floor.
‘Stay alert,’ Badeau ordered. ‘We’ll sweep this place room by room. I don’t want to be here any longer than necessary.’
As Badeau took her datapad and connected a small sensor array to its top bracket, Shaw unclipped his Denn’Bok fighting pike but did not extend it. The heavy metal shaft felt comforting in his hand and did much to alleviate his nervousness. With a single shake of his hand, the four-inch cylinder would instantly expand into a five-foot staff--and he ranked highly in Denn’Bok lessons.
Sweeping the access corridor with the sensor array, Badeau noted they had missed another PPG blast on the inner airlock hatch when they entered. There were four exits from the corridor, two on each side, which they searched one at a time. Shaw entered first, senses alert while Sabine followed with a thorough scan. The first exit led to sleeping and living quarters, the second to kitchen and waste facilities. On the other side of the corridor, they found the power station and a small laboratory. They quickly noted that nothing valuable remained in the outpost. Throughout each tiny room, the Rangers found signs of combat, PPG blasts matched with the occasional spray of blood across a wall or fixture.
‘Must have been a hell of a fight,’ Shaw remarked as they left the kitchens to cross the access corridor once more.
Badeau shook her head. ‘This was no fight. It was a massacre.’ She paused to adjust the sensitivity of her datapad’s array. ‘The PPG blasts are mostly focussed away from the main entrance. Someone entered this place and opened fire. I am guessing the blast on the airlock either came from a defender who managed to get a single shot off or, more likely, someone trying to escape who got shot in the back as they ran.’
In his mind’s eye, Shaw tried to picture the scene as an unknown invader entered the outpost with murderous intent, slaughtering unarmed civilians. The Centauri had a bad reputation in the galaxy at the present time, but he was wise enough to know not all of them matched the stereotype. As they entered the laboratory, Badeau increased the intensity of her scans, guessing this was the chamber that governed the overall purpose of the outpost. For his part, Shaw began to consider the perpetrators of the massacre.
‘The Narn?’ he ventured. The Regime had always been enemies of the Centauri. The Narn had, after all, been among the last attack force to devastate huge regions of Centauri Prime.
‘I don’t think so,’ Badeau said, her mind obviously elsewhere as she studied her readings. ‘This is odd. . .’
‘Found something?’
‘Not sure. The datapad is reading ‘unidentified’. Some kind of residual emission in this room. It is marked as harmless--though that is relative, of course. Not sure I trust a computer telling me something is harmless when it cannot identify it. Still, I’m not a scientist.’
‘No clues then?’ he asked.
‘Well, there may be plenty, but damned if I can tell what they are. With the equipment stripped out, no doubt by the attackers, all I am left with is this energy signature. I am getting readings from the walls, ceiling and floor, and only in this room. We can only presume it’s some sort of leakage or by-product from whatever they were
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