Chapter 17: The Scarlet Claw
“Transmission complete Ssir,” the Teladi hissed. It may have been something in her tone, or maybe something in her alien body language, something registering subliminally and interpreted by his subconscious, programmed by years of working with members of the reptilian species, but he had the intuition that she realised what was coming next.
Something in his body language perhaps, despite a lifetime of cultivated imperturbability? The palm-sized blaster sprang from his sleeve and terminated the puzzle with a single shot. He was a kilometre away, another tourist heading for the spaceport when the charge exploded, collapsing the low-rise housing block into the smoking crater that had been the clandestine Stoertebeker communications tap into the Teladi Military Net, courtesy of Director Morn. Another atrocity in the war raging between Law and Skull the authorities would be led by the trail of evidence he planted to assume. One that severed the single channel to the distant station, deep out in the Teladi Gain system.
Continued on the Space Ritual site, below.
