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ecotech. "He'd have to come out eventually."
Helda ground her teeth. "I'm not waiting that long for some infected
dirt-sucker to decide to get cooperative with me." She moved to a sealed
locked panel a little farther down the wall marked fire control: authorized
personnel only and stuck her ID card in its read-slot. Its transparent doors
hissed obediently apart. They wouldn't have dared do otherwise, Ethan thought.
She pressed a complex series of bright keypads.
A muffled hissing roar, and faint cries, penetrated from the sealed door to
Millisor's room. Helda smiled satisfaction.
"What's she doing?" Ethan whispered in Quinn's shell-like ear.
Quinn was grinning ferociously. "Fire control. Downside, you have automatic
sprinkler systems that fling water on fires. Very inefficient. Here we seal
the room and pump out the air. Real fast. No oxygen, no oxidation. Millisor
either wasn't smart enough or wasn't stupid enough to sabotage the fire
control vents . . ."
"Er . . . isn't that rather hard on anyone trapped inside?"
"Normally there's an alarm to evacuate the room first. Helda overrode it."
The unlocking device pressed over the door mechanism by the other ecotech
twinkled and beeped. Frantic pounding came from the interior.
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"Now Millisor wants to open it, and can't, because of the pressure
differential," Quinn whispered.
After a good long pause Helda reversed the airflow. The doorseals parted with
an audible pop and whoosh. Millisor and Rau, noses bleeding, stumbled gasping
into the corridor, swallowing and working their jaws in an effort to equalize
inner-ear pressure.
"Helda didn't even give the poor fellows a chance to tell her about their
hostage." Quinn smirked. "Efficient lady . . ."
Millisor finally got his breath. "Are you insane?" he snarled at the three
Stationer officials. He focused on the Security man. "My diplomatic immunity "
The Security man jerked his thumb at Helda. "She's in charge here."
"Where is your warrant?" cried Millisor angrily. "This space is legally paid
for and possessed, and furthermore I hold a Class IV diplomatic waiver. You
have no right to restrict or impede my movements for anything except a major
felony charge "
Ethan could not tell if the bluster was feigned or real, Harman Dal or
ghem-Colonel Millisor talking.
"The rights you cite are for transients versus Security," said Helda sharply.
"A biocontrol emergency abrogates them all. Now step into the float pallet."
Ethan and Quinn had been playing the part of goggling bystanders. About this
time Rau's eye fell on them; a hand on his superior's arm stemmed the next
argument. Millisor's head swivelled, and his mouth shut with a snap. There was
something chilling about so much rage being so abruptly controlled. Not
quenched, but banished from the surface, conserved for some future moment.
Thought boiled in Millisor's eyes.
"Hey," the Security man said, sticking his head into the recently evacuated
room, "there's a third guy in here. Tied to a chair, naked."
"That's disgusting," said Helda. She treated Millisor to a withering glare.
The glare failed its intended effect, bouncing off Millisor's furious
introspection. Rau stirred nervously. His hand twitched toward his jacket, but
both Millisor and Quinn shook their heads at him, each from their different
perspective.
"He's bleeding," said the Security man, advancing into the room and, with a
glance back at Millisor and Rau, meditatively loosing his stunner in its
holster.
"It's the nose," called Helda. "Always makes it look like a slaughter, but I
guarantee you nobody ever died of a bloody nose."
"My friend here is a doctor," Quinn chirped, inserting herself into the group
with a quick wriggle. "Can we help?"
"Oh, yes," called the Security man, sounding relieved.
Quinn grabbed Ethan by the hand and thrust him past her into the room, never
taking her smiling gaze off Millisor and Rau. Her stunner had found its way
into her other hand, somehow. The Security man glanced back at her and nodded
gratefully. Helda grudgingly snapped on plastic gloves and followed to view
the scene of debauch for herself.
Ethan approached Millisor's trussed prey anxiously. The Security man knelt
beside the chair and poked tentatively at the wires binding Teki's ankles.
They had cut through and his skin oozed blood. Teki's clothes were laid out on
the bed in the familiar search array. Wires also bound his wrists, and the
skin puffed up redly along their tight lines. Blood from his nose masked his
lower face. Teki's head bled, but his eyes were open and smiling, unnaturally
bright. He giggled as the Security man touched his ankle. The Security man
jumped back in startlement, eyed him with growing grimness, and pulled out his
report panel with the air of a swordsman unsheathing his steel. "I don't like
the looks of this," he stated.
Helda, coming up behind Ethan, stopped short. "By all the gods! Teki! I always
thought you were an idiot, but this goes beyond all "
"I'm off-shift," said Teki in a small, dignified voice. "I don't hafta put up
with you off-shift, Helda." He twitched against his bonds, starting a new
trickle of blood across his feet.
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Helda's voice stumbled to silence as she got a better view. But not for long.
"What is this?"
"Is he drugged, Doctor?" asked the Security man as Ethan knelt beside Teki.
"What with? Was this a, a private act that got out of hand, or something
chargeable?" His thick fingers poised hopefully over his report panel.
"Drugged and tortured," said Ethan shortly, opening Quinn's medkit.
"Kidnapped, too." There was a vibra-scalpel; a touch, and the ankle wires
parted with a ping.
"Raped?"
"I doubt it."
Helda, closing in, turned her head at the sound of Ethan's voice and stared at
him. "You're no doctor," she gasped. "You're that moron from Docks and Locks
again. My department wants a word with you!"
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