"Norian, I think you and Lendill should stand back," I said, and turning my arm to mist I reached through the wall, found what had been placed inside and drew it out. If we'd torn the brick out, a device would have been tripped and the bombers would be notified. Instead, I'd moved around that, pulling out the detonation device itself.
Lendill cursed and Norian had some choice words to offer as well. "Boss, what are we going to do with that?" Lendill asked when he ran out of expletives. I wanted to point out that neither one of them was holding the stupid bomb, but decided against it. For now, I was faced with handling a bomb. That was a new experience for me, and one I had no real desire to repeat.
While I'd attended Conclave, a deserted planet had been chosen to drop Alliance trash and refuse on—I decided to take the bomb there right away before any of us were blown to bits. While Norian and Lendill casually discussed what we might do with the bomb, I folded away, placed the bomb carefully upon a tall mound of trash dumped on the deserted world of Tykl and folded back to Norian and Lendill.
"You may want to let the Alliance members know that the bomb is now on Tykl," I said, dusting myself off. Tykl wasn't a clean place—not with that much trash and debris dumped on it. Norian and Lendill shut up immediately and stared, blinking a time or two before shrugging their acceptance at my solution.
Lendill was the one who offered to make the communication. "Lissa Beth, I know you have a sensitive nose," Norian said instead. "Can you give us information on who was down here while the patch was placed?"
"Honey, it stinks so bad, I can't even sort out the scents of the three workers. If anybody knew that somebody might be looking for scents, they chose the perfect place to hide that bomb," I grumped. It worried me, too—if they were concerned about scents, then they knew I might be one of the investigators.
"That bomb would have taken out half the city," Lendill observed dryly.
"Do you think that half the city is all they were aiming for, or is there another one of those things out there somewhere?" I asked, holding back a shiver.
"Lendill, can we get into the city records and find out where maintenance crews have been working in the sewers recently on the other side of town?" Norian asked.
"Sure. Let's go back to headquarters and we can pull up the information," Lendill nodded.
I wasn't willing to spend any longer in the sewer than I had to, so I misted the three of us to the opening, replaced the cover and then misted us to ASD headquarters. "Why haven't we found somebody to do this for us before?" Lendill asked when I dropped him and Norian off inside the small office/sleeping quarters.
"Because nobody else can do this," Norian straightened his clothing absently. "Lissa Beth is the only one, aren't you, Lissa Beth?"
"How the hell should I know? And stop calling me Lissa Beth."
"But Lissa Beth, I like that name too much," Norian smiled. Yeah—looked like I was going to be stuck with thirty years of being called Lissa Beth. Lendill went to the wall opposite the sleeping cubicles, tapped a code into an alarm system keypad and a computer console slid out of the wall.
"I think I saw this in a James Bond film once," I said, watching while Lendill sat at the console and began searching for information on sewer repairs.
"James Bond?" Now Norian was interested.
"A fictional spy character," I mumbled. "Around three hundred years ago."
"Maybe a little more than that," Norian was grinning again.
"Norian, have you been snooping around?" My hands were on my hips now and I was glaring at him.
"I have—I check out all my Liaisons. Information from Earth isn't easy to come by, but it can be had."
One of my claws slid out and I pointed it at him. "You'd better be able to keep your mouth shut, Norian Keef."
* * *
Norian watched Lissa carefully. He'd gotten the information, all right. The memoirs of the man who'd held the office of President when Lissa disappeared had been copied and placed carefully back in the archives before he was done, and then he'd placed a few well-planned questions here and there among the vampires who'd come to Le-Ath Veronis from Earth.
The windfall had come from her personal guard, who threatened Norian afterward. Norian now knew about Lissa's childhood; he'd gone to pull those records himself. He didn't blame Rolfe for making the threat—Lissa needed to be protected in that way. Norian was the only person inside the ASD who held all that information, and it would stay with him. He understood the devastation of a cruel childhood all too well.
* * *
Norian was lost in thought for a few seconds and didn't seem concerned at all about the claw pointed in his direction. I let it slide back in. "Here we go, boss," Lendill had been working to get the required information, oblivious of what had passed between Norian and me. Norian turned to see what Lendill had. We found records of seven repairs made in the sewers citywide, so we set out to check every stinking (in the literal sense) one of them.
Why is it that the thing you're looking for is always at the last place on your list? As if you have to put in the effort before the reward comes. We found a second bomb, but this time we also found something else. This patch job was the biggest of all of them, so I misted inside and nearly gagged. Nine bodies, in addition to the bomb, lay inside a hastily excavated tomb. Bringing the bomb out first, I placed it beside its twin on Tykl before returning and misting the bloodied bodies out of their bricked-up hole. Norian and Lendill stared at one in particular.
"No way to know if he was in on this, or got too close and was killed as a result," Norian muttered angrily as they glared at one of their missing agents, now deceased. Lendill nodded at the assessment. The other bodies were dressed in various ways—some looked like maintenance workers; the others could have been anyone. The nametags and ID hadn't been removed from the maintenance workers, though—three men and one woman still wore their city-issued identification. One of the nine was Norian's agent, so that left four others whom we couldn't identify.
"Lissa, can you take these to the city morgue?" Norian asked me.
"Yeah, I can take them there. How are we going to explain this?"
"We have someone there," Norian replied enigmatically. Lendill called somebody on his communicator and passed along information, then supplied directions. I gathered all the bodies as mist, then lifted Norian and Lendill. Someone met us on the loading dock behind the city morgue with nine body bags. Norian, Lendill and I helped get the bodies inside the bags then hauled them inside.