Blood spilled from the man’s mouth. The area around his lips were already entirely red, and the man looked to Brooks with desperate eyes.
Pirra appeared, scanner in hand. She put her hands on the wound in the man’s stomach, attempting to staunch the bleeding.
But Brooks didn’t even need her to give him a shake of her head to know that there was no helping Nec Tede.
Brooks propped him up. He did not think Tede was a good or honest man, but nonetheless he did not deserve to die bloody like this.
The man’s hand flailed upwards, searching for Brooks’s. The Captain gave it to him, and the man hung to him desperately.
“Don’t try to talk,” Brooks said. “We have medical teams on their way.”
The man shook his head, spitting more blood.
This amount – it had to be a splitter round. Smart bullets used only in the wild territories by megafauna hunters, that shattered in ways designed to cause the most damage to the most important organs.
“Rem,” the man got out. It was barely audible over his choking.
He was fading rapidly. Even if they got the medical team here, there was no surviving this kind of wound without the most intensive of care literally on hand – and even then, it was unlikely.
The man’s grip went slack, and his eyes rolled back in his head.
“We’ve caught the culprit sir,” a security officer said, panting as he came up. “It was a drone – already blanked itself. We’ve got it for scanning all the same.”
Brooks did not look up from Nec Tede until the life was fully gone from his eyes.
Lowering the man’s body to the floor, he stood up. His uniform was covered in the man’s blood.
“Keep searching in case there was a controller,” Brooks said. “And set up anti-drone defenses, just in case someone else is targeted.”
“Yes, sir. For that reason, Commander Yaepanaya is asking that you come back aboard the Craton.”
Brooks nodded, and moved to follow the security officer.
Pirra saw that he was looking down at his hand. It was clenched around something.
“What is it, sir?” she asked, standing up. Blood had gotten on her wing drapes, but she could clean them later.
The Captain opened his hand, briefly. In it, he was holding a data capsule.
“The Governor’s parting gift,” he said.
FINIS
Other Terrestrial 