"Should be a med kit and some emergency patching tape. Tape his hands together and put the med kit on that leg. He may bleed out."
Despite being "senior" to her, Leo did not consider objecting. He could see the well-marked emergency locker on the wall and gave himself what he would have thought of as an expert push-off to float over to it. He had just revised his estimate of what "expert" zero-g maneuvering was, however.
Getting it open, he found both a med kit and a hull patch kit. The tape in the hull kit was strong enough to cover holes in the outer hull and retain hull integrity, so he was pretty sure it would hold a guy with a leg wound.
Getting the attacker's hands taped behind his back wasn't easy in zero-g. Leo wound up using his boot magnets to hold himself down while he taped the man's hands together.
The attacker was utterly compliant, which made it possible even if it wasn't easy. Even so, Leo was very careful of Ramona's line of fire—he had no doubt she would shoot to kill if needed. The assassin apparently agreed with Leo's assessment and made no hostile moves.
The binding done, Leo activated the medical kit, clamped it to the intruder's leg, and set it to automatic. He knew almost nothing about gunshot wounds, but the whole point of a self-contained med kit was that he didn't have to know. Based on what he'd read, he thought the man would live unless his blood loss was much higher than Leo was guessing.
"He'll live."
Ramona apparently agreed. Leo had the feeling this wasn't the first time she'd seen a gunshot wound.
"Give me a hand with this vacuum. Gotta get this blood out of here before it spreads into the environmental system."
She sounded calm, but Leo could see that the hand holding the vacuum was shaking. His hands were shaking too, but he didn't need pinpoint control to vacuum up the loose liquid.
Thinking about a normal spacer function—cleaning up loose liquid in zero-g—made it easier to keep from screaming his head off.
Ramona had her helmet off and was talking to a console on the far side of the room.
"This is Eddington. We have an emergency on buoy six. Say again, emergency on buoy six."
She turned to Leo.
"Reggie just passed the e-limit. She's still a ways out, but she should get the message in about ten minutes."
Leo looked at the panel on his sleeve.
Had it really been only ten minutes since they had docked? It seemed like hours.
Once all the blood was cleaned up, they were able to make a shroud out of hull patch fabric and tape the dead body into it. It probably wasn't strictly necessary, but Leo, for one, felt better not having to look at the gaping hole in the man's head.
"…And now we wait."
Leo was confused.
"Wait? Wait for what? Shouldn't we finish cleaning up? Or do the maintenance?"
Ramona gave him a sad look.
"Leo, I just killed one guy and gravely wounded another. There will be an inquiry. We cannot tamper with any evidence."
Before Leo could interrupt, she continued,
"We did what was necessary—kept the blood out of the enviro system and covered the body. Anything else would be considered tampering.
"And before you ask, yes, I have done this before. But I was on the other side. The Raeburn Militia is both a military and police force for any part of the system outside the jurisdiction of a local polity. I have worked several murder scenes, so I know the drill."
Leo's quiet "oh" was probably lost in the background noise of the vacuum.
Once again, his mouth engaged before his brain could stop it.
"Is everyone from the Raeburn Militia a lethal circus performer?"
Ramona looked stricken by the question.
Perhaps Leo should not be talking. He was rattled, and random stuff was going to come out.
Too late.
"Uh, no. I mean, I wasn't in the circus. I was on my district gee-ball all-star team, which is how I won my scholarship to the academy. Because of that, I was section leader for my zero-gee combat class at the academy.
"When I got to my ship, we did some boarding actions. If you do something enough, you get good at it. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes."
Leo wasn't sure what a squirrel was or why it would be blind (did they have eyes?), but he got the picture. He understood the value of repetition and practice.
He had spent hundreds of hours in the gym practicing his outside shot in gee-ball himself, but he had never thought about zero-g combat before—or why being good at gee-ball would make you a good candidate for the military.
Before Leo could ask another stupid and/or embarrassing question, Gunny Tomlin's voice came from every speaker in the room, including Leo's helmet and the operations consoles.
"Eddington, Timur: confirm your status. Is the buoy secure?"
Leo was over his shock now and was able to activate his communicator to answer in the affirmative.
"Roger that, Timur. Lock down and do not touch anything. We will be coming in the aux lock in two minutes."
Giving Leo an I told you so look, Ramona locked the aux control console she had been using and went to check on the prisoner.
Putting her helmet back on but face shield up, she waited by Leo for the aux lock to open.
Predictably, it was Gunny who was first through. Carrying what looked like an old-fashioned zero-gee carbine slung across his chest, he quickly checked the interior of the buoy—including a couple of cubby holes that Leo and Ramona had not checked, to her obvious embarrassment.
Two other armed spacers came through the lock. Leo didn't recognize either of them, but he could tell from their insignia that they worked for the ship's master-at-arms. That is to say, they were ship's crew and not traders.
Gunny was in full military mode—issuing crisp orders that he clearly expected to be followed, no nonsense.
One of the men took possession of the prisoner and quickly moved him back through the aux airlock. Gunny was checking the enviro system for fouling; he gave a pleased grunt when he found none and removed his helmet.
"You two are on restricted duty until further notice. We are on a Guild buoy, so we are subject to Guild law only. The Guild Master will need to convene an inquiry.
"The Reggie is thirty minutes out. We'll transfer you across on a shuttle. Your cutter will remain here until it has been processed for evidence."
In a much lower voice, with his mouth inches from Ramona's ear, he said:
"Well done, spacer. Nice grouping on the stiff."
Leo would learn later that there had been quite a commotion back on the Reggie when Gunny had usurped the master-at-arms' authority by taking command of the armed cutter assigned to recover Leo and Ramona.
In the end, Gunny was a master trader, and the master-at-arms was simply a hired hand—so the outcome wasn't really in doubt once Gunny decided to take issue.
When it came time for Leo and Ramona to transfer back to the ship, they sealed up their hard suits and went out the aux lock like the rest of the Reggie's spacers had done.
Looking up, Leo could see the massive face of the Reggie looming over the buoy. Even at a safe kilometer stand-off distance, Reggie was huge.
Living inside a moving mountain was one thing—seeing her from outside was another.
Festooned with antennas and other external fittings, the Reggie was more functional than what most people would consider beautiful. Her bluff bows sprouted with emitters for her FTL system, and her mid-ships were wrinkled with heat sinks for her massive data cores. She lacked the clean lines of a ship designed to enter atmosphere or the deadly grace of a warship.
Leo enjoyed the view until they entered the airlock of the shuttle sent to pick them up.
She was the most beautiful thing Leo had ever seen.