The Riddled Post - Aaron Rosenberg [8]
“I’ll help if I can,” April replied, “but I don’t really know how. Acid Camp—that’s what we called it—was a pretty quiet place. We only had about a dozen people at any given time, sometimes less.” She stopped for a moment, tears welling up, but managed to continue. “It was mostly miners—Alex and I, along with Carol and Tina, were there to keep the systems running, Price and Geoff broke up the occasional fight, and we always had a couple scientists around running experiments on new mining methods.”
Sonya felt terrible for her—she wasn’t sure she’d have been able to speak so calmly if the da Vinci and its crew were killed like that—but she forced herself to continue with the questions.
“Did you keep a large supply of dilithium on hand, or anything else that might be worth stealing?”
Alex shook his head. “Why bother? We had more dilithium coming through every few days. Most of our equipment’s too specific for nonminers to care, or too heavily modified to be worthwhile—like our transporter pad. Sure, it’s souped up, but just to cut through interference, and it’s a lot more unwieldy and a much bigger power drain than even a cargo transporter.”
“Had anyone new come in recently?” That was Kieran. It was a good question, but Alex shook his head again.
“No, the last new arrival was almost eight months ago—two new miners to replace ones who’d shipped out. And they never caused any trouble, really—okay, maybe Cortez kept bugging the scientists, but just out of curiosity. He never hurt anyone. No one did.”
“What about new supplies, new equipment, anything?”
“We get supply shuttles every few months—last one was almost two months ago. It didn’t have anything unusual on it, just some replacement gear.”
Sonya tugged her shirt cuffs, then forced herself to stop. “What about the day this all happened? What can you tell us about it?”
Neither of them spoke for a moment, but finally April answered. “We were on shift, Alex and I—it’s pretty boring, really, just keeping an eye on the matter-antimatter readings, doing general maintenance. We were chatting, and then suddenly we heard people screaming, and this weird sound, like a giant bee or something.” Her voice was soft, so low Sonya had to strain to hear her, but she didn’t ask the woman to speak up—this was hard enough on her.
Kieran glanced at Sonya, and she could tell he was thinking the same thing about what April had just said. A bee? Could this have been a native of the planet, attacking at random?
“Yeah, it was a hum, but low and sort of gravelly.” Alex shook his head. “We opened the door to see what was going on, and saw people running and holes in the walls—and the shields down. So we slammed the door again and hid. I know we should have helped the others …” he faltered, and Lense patted his shoulder.
“There was nothing you could have done,” she reassured him—Sonya was used to Lense’s bitterness, and a bit surprised at how well the doctor projected sympathy and understanding. “You were right to save yourselves.”
The engineer shrugged. “Honestly, we weren’t even thinking that clearly—I think we both just panicked and hid. Whatever was attacking never bothered us, but without the filters we had only the air in the power station, and after a while we both passed out. Next thing we knew, we’d woken up here.”
Lense glanced at her charts. “You were both lucky. Even another twenty minutes and you’d have had brain damage. As it is, your lungs will feel a little weak for a month or so, but you’ll be fine.”
“I wish we could do more to help,” April said. “I—I want to help. They were our friends, and now they’re all gone.” She didn’t cry, though it looked as if she might, and Lense patted her arm as well.
“You’ve been a big help already,” Sonya told her, “even if it’s just by eliminating possibilities. We’ll let you know if we think of any more questions. In the meantime, you should rest and get your strength back. Thanks.” She stepped back out into the hall, Kieran right behind her.
“Well, I’m running out of ideas,” she admitted, heading toward