Terra Dawning Read Free Page B

translator and leaned over to one of his guards. “Make sure she's not armed and let her though. It might be good if she sat in on this.” The Marine nodded and keyed his tactical mic to relay the order.
    Ben turned the translator back on. “Let’s head over to the pilot's briefing room. It's not ideal, but it'll save a trip back to the Pod.”
    “What's a Pod?” Elrond asked.
    “That's part of our long story,” Ben said, cryptically.
    ––––––––
    They had made it to the briefing room before Addson caught up to them. However, when she did, she immediately launched herself at Elrond.
    “You fucking Animal! You murdered friends of mine! People I loved!” She screamed.
    Elrond held up his hands in defense against the slapping attack, until Ben and one of the guards could restrain her.
    “Addson! Get control of yourself! I had them let you in because I thought it might be good for you to understand what's behind all of this! Now, please! Calm Down!” Ben said in as commanding a voice as he could.
    “They need to be executed for their crimes, Ben! Not talked to!” Addson pleaded.
    “Would you just kill them out of hand, without finding out if there is more to this picture? What if this man isn't the one who planned it? Wouldn't you feel better knowing we killed the right person instead of just blasting away at everyone you think might be involved?” Ben reasoned. Amazingly, his words were having an affect. Addson was calming down. She was clearly still pissed, but she was no longer ready to kill. “We are in the middle of a military base filled with Marines, they're not going anywhere.”
    She stared at Elrond and the others with murderous intent, but nodded to Ben and slowly took a chair.
    “Excuse me, Sir, but you called her Addson. She isn't the poor girl we had to shoot down, is she?” Elrond asked.
    Addson opened her mouth to reply, saw Ben's face and closed it.
    “As a matter of fact she is. When she crashed we detected it and dispatched a ship to recover her. She was pretty banged up, but she's doing better now,” Ben replied and turned to see the man's reaction to the news.
    He was surprised, but seemed very happy about it. The woman that had been holding on to his arm smiled excitedly and hugged him.
    “Thank the Gods! We'd hoped you might have survived, but then we heard the report. Let's just say that we are very happy to hear that report proven false,” Elrond said.
    “Why would it matter to you?” Addson asked. “You've got a pretty large body count, what does one more or less matter?”
    Elrond lost his smile. “Every one of them matters. We've the deaths of those at Great Falls on our hands, yes, but the fewer deaths laid at our feet the better.”
    “What about those from the tram you robbed?” Addson asked.
    “There were ten more people on that train than we were told. We told them not to leave the tram station emergency shelter and there was supposed to be a rescue mission dispatched as soon as the tram stopped. They were not supposed to die. In fact, they shouldn't have been more than inconvenienced. We had no idea they hadn't been rescued until we heard the report of the incident and by then it was too late for us.
    “You see, most of my people are indentured servants in the house of the Duke. Since humans in that household tend to end up on the dinner table, we jumped at the chance to have our debts canceled.
    “At first, it was simple stuff. Smuggle this or that to another planet in the duchy. Stage a mock pirate raid on a freighter that was supposed to be carrying high value goods. No one ever got hurt though. We made that clear to him; we wouldn't kill except in defense.
    “Fucking Lizard is pretty smart. He's also been using us all along. By the time we realized it, we already had several murders and kidnappings laid at our feet. You see, those freighters we 'raided'? Well, after our raid, his personal house troops would go in and remove the crew before the