Page 141 of Alien Burn

He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles, then turned it and pressed his mouth to her palm.

“I do now.”

His security lead met him outside the operations room with a staffing record.

“Burk came over with the Galactic Alliance staff. He took another staff member's place. The transfer list carried that identity all the way onto our transport.”

Dhomhes looked at the boarding record. They had brought Adryel's attacker with them. He hadn't needed to know where they would go, only to stay among the people they were trying to protect.

“Who confirmed him?”

“The boarding team used the Alliance staff list. We're checking it against the original crew records now.”

“Suspend the provisional passes. Recheck every name against those records. Put refinery supervisors beside the guards. Someone who knows our own crew by sight. Hold pending maintenance orders until we've checked them too.”

“I'll have the service bays searched,” the lead said. “Anyone already on site stays accounted for.”

The lead opened the service-deck plan and began assigning the bays to search pairs. Dhomhes waited until every bay had a team beside it.

“And Roemary's escort stays with her. Two guards for any contact with another volunteer, in the receiving area, only if that person agrees. Nobody takes her near Sereya's door. Any threat ends the conversation and goes straight to the duty officer.”

“Block her outgoing comm traffic at the relay, including the Alliance fallback,” he added. “Route requests for counsel through the guards. She doesn't get to warn whoever is waiting for her.”

“The cell corridor?”

“Closed again. Two guards inside the block. Two at the access point.”

“No transfers without your voice confirming them,” Dhomhes said. “No maintenance visits. If a pipe bursts, Burk gets wet until we have an escort.”

He could remember giving Stron his knife on the landing pad. That quick, terrible calculation in his friend's face before he ran.

The refinery had been his promise of safety. He intended to find every person who had helped break it.

His comm showed several messages, including the notice of Wyleigh and Oleave's arrests that Stron had relayed during the chaos of the arrival. Khalzin had now sent the fuller account and access to the chamber recording.

He sent Hawn the promised landing update, then opened Khalzin's report. The old male deserved a call; Dhomhes needed first to understand what had happened in the chamber.

On the chamber recording, Khalzin traced the hologram to his mother. The accounts implicated Oleave. As the guards approached, Oleave seized Janae and put a blade to her throat.

Dhomhes gripped the desk. He knew she survived.

“You need to stand down, Oleave. This is over. How did you think this was going to end?”

Khalzin's recorded voice was steady. Dhomhes knew what that steadiness cost him.

“You have no right, just because you wanted to try something to destroy our way of life!” Oleave snarled back. “Now we have to eradicate the off-worlders. Erase them from our planet and start again. Like the Light.”

“That is not what the Light dictates,” Khalzin said. “You cannot justify killing a living humanoid because she's not from here.”

Aukrae spoke from his seat.

“The problem with your argument is that she's Kantenan, at least partly. So, if you killed her, you would murder a Kantenan. And that would condemn you to the Dark.”

Even the guards paused.

“Baron of Information Aukrae, what do you speak of?” Speaker Fowles said.

“While everyone was conversing, as my habit, I scanned the Gol-Vett and his mate when they came in. My scans revealed that the Gol-Vett's mate carries the Kantenan genome. She is very much one of us. If Oleave kills her, it is intentional murder of a Kantenan and that would destroy his opportunity to live in the Light.”