Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [129]
“Yes, yes, which is why you’ve got to get him out of here.”
Will noticed that Zaffos, probably made curious by Luwadis’s gesture toward the balcony, had edged closer to the doors there. Will started to move, as subtly as he could, to intercept Zaffos if he should decide to go outside. But the continued conversation between Luwadis and Aronson had distracted him, and Zaffos took two quick steps before Will could stop him.
“Wow,” he heard Zaffos say. “He’s not kidding.”
Will lunged onto the balcony. He spared only a glance toward the prison walls. Beyond them, what looked like thousands-tens of thousands, maybe-teemed, pressing up against the walls as if trying to knock them down by sheer weight of numbers. Will grabbed Zaffos’s gold-sleeved arm and tugged him toward the door. “Get back inside,” he urged. “We’re supposed to stay out of sight, remember?”
“Here, here!” Luwadis shouted from inside the office. “Don’t go out there! If they see you-“
Will and Zaffos stepped back inside and Will pushed the doors closed. But it was too late. A deafening cry rose up from the crowd on the other side of the walls. Will couldn’t make out many words, but he thought sure he heard “Starfleet” among the furious din.
“I… I’m sorry,” Zaffos said quickly. “It’s my fault. I wanted to see.”
Luwadis scowled at him. “You wanted to see? You wanted to touch off a riot, that’s what you wanted to do!”
Will risked another glance outside. Luwadis was right. The mob’s angry cries had grown louder, and now he could see that some of them had gained the top of the wall. Prison guards were rushing to quell them, but they were vastly outnumbered and maybe even outgunned.
“Get out,” Luwadis insisted. “Get out of here, and take Plure with you, or we’re all dead!”
Four guards approached through an open doorway, surrounding a prisoner. Endyk Plure was as dangerous-looking as his reputation implied. He was a big, beefy individual, with coppery coloring similar to Luwadis’s. His muscles strained at the sleeves of the plain prison-issue tunic he wore. His face, unshaven for at least a week, was solid, jaw square, mouth cruel. His eyes were small and did not reflect much intelligence, Will thought, but maybe a vicious cunning. He stared defiantly at the Starfleet team that had come to collect him, but didn’t speak. Will knew that appearances could be deceiving, but in this case he was pretty sure that he could have picked Endyk out as a mass murderer in any lineup.
“You’re coming with us, Plure,” Aronson said. “To stand trial in a Federation court for war crimes and mass murder.”
“Sounds like fun,” Plure growled, his voice every bit as unpleasant as the rest of him. “Maybe you’ll introduce me to your family. The meals they serve here stink, and you look like some good eating.”
Aronson ignored the taunt and touched his combadge. “Pegasus,” he said, “five to beam aboard.”
As Will dematerialized, to arrive a moment later in the transporter room of the Pegasus, he thought he heard the terrible mob break through the prison walls. He hoped Luwadis could calm the mob before he and his guards had all been killed.
Chapter 33
There was little security in the psychiatric facility. Carson Cook wasn’t considered a danger to himself or anyone else. One had to have some kind of mental process to be dangerous. Carson was just a blank slate, and no one had written menace onto it. And psychiatric science was such that very few people needed to be confined. So Tanguy Messina was alone in the building with Carson Cook, and once Tanguy was dead, there was no one standing in his way.
Carson walked away from the building rapidly, partly in order to put distance between himself and Messina’s body, but mainly to find and kill his next victim. There was menace in him now, certainly. He personified danger. He didn’t have a conscience-had he been asked, he wouldn’t have been able to define the word. He didn’t have a moral code or a set of ethical standards. All those things had been