Eon Gate (The Eon Pentalogy Book 1)

by Mitchell T. Jacobs

Lauren sat quietly, not sure what she'd be doing during that time. She still needed to learn and train her combat skills, but if the rest of them were going on leave then who would be teaching her? And-

  Nina leaned toward her. “I'm going to need you to stay around for the duration. There's a lot that we need to discuss, and you should continue working on your training as well. Of course you'll have plenty of free time, but you're going to be very important to our voyage.”

  She nodded. “Provided I hold up my end of the bargain.”

  Nina gave her an amused smile. “What, trying to make sure that you're ready to fight? Is that what you think you're doing?”

  The conversation with Kei flashed into her mind. “What should I think?”

  “You should think about dealing with all the possible Ulic technology and information we run into out there.”

  “But the training...”

  “The training is to make sure that you can adequately defend yourself if things get desperate, and to make sure that you don't shoot anyone in the back in the process,” Nina said. “You're not trying to join a commando unit. You're a civilian advisor.”

  “That's a lot different than what you told me that time we talked in your cabin.”

  Nina laughed. “Oh yes. Yes it was, but it worked, didn't it? That made you work hard, and you finally realized what you were getting into. I must say though, you've turned a few heads. Getting thrown into combat scenarios right at the beginning and not flinching.”

  Lauren wanted to wince. “So did you all do this for your amusement?”

  “Of course not. We wanted to make sure you knew what you might be getting yourself into at the other end. Just because it was-”

  The limousine suddenly swerved, and Lauren went flying. An arm wrapped around her and pushed her back into the seat before she slammed into the window on the other side.

  She heard the sound of squealing tires and then an awful, sickening crunch. It was faint, muted, but she could still hear it from inside the cabin. She looked out the right window to see a car resting against the barricade, almost completely flipped over.

  The limousine ground to a halt, along with their escort vehicle and the rest of the traffic behind them. She saw another car, black with severe damage to its rear fender, but in the blink of an eye it sped up and fled the scene of the accident.

  “Instructions, ma'am?” the driver called back to them.

  “Out. Everyone out. Tell the security team to fan out for the moment,” Nina instructed. “Everyone else-”

  “No,” Griz said firmly.

  “I didn't-”

  “No. This might be a trap, and you're not getting out of this car. We'll handle the accident victims. Rappa, Maeda, Bradley, get over there and do what you can. IVIN, call for emergency services. Elsner, help me direct traffic. And Salim, stay here and make sure she doesn't leave.”

  Lauren decided to sit tight as well, even as the rest of the squad moved into action. She saw Nina open her mouth to protest before shutting it and shaking her head, to all appearances completely annoyed by the look on her face.

  She just hoped the occupants of the car were OK.

  IT DIDN'T LOOK GOOD. Twisted metal and shattered plastic, an entire side deformed by the force of impact. Kei hoped that everyone inside had been wearing their seat belts, otherwise they'd have been pulped by the force of impact.

  But as he approached he heard the faint sound of crying, a pair of small voices that brought on a hollow feeling in his gut.

  “Oh no,” he muttered to himself, sprinting the rest of the way.

  Out of every type of patient he had to treat, children affected him the most. And with more than one trapped inside the overturned vehicle…

  He went to his knees and leaned down for a better look inside. A child, probably about six or seven, another maybe four years old. The younger one had a cut across her forehead, but despite the terrified looks on their faces neither appeared to be seriously injured.

  Their mother in the front seat, on the other hand…

  Kei pushed himself up into a crouch and activated his radio. “IVIN, have you contacted EMS?”

  “I have.”

  “Are you still on the line with them?”

  “Yes. Is there anything further I need to tell them?”

  “Let them know we need an aerial medical evacuation for an ultra-red patient. Adult female, puncture wound to the torso, trapped in an overturned vehicle.”

  “Understood.”

  “What do we do?” Rappa asked quietly, his normally jovial expression now serious.

  “I'm not sure we can move her, but we need to get them out,” Kei said, motioning toward the back seat and the two young children.

  The woman had been knocked out by the crash and had a piece of debris stuck in her torso like a shiv. From this angle he couldn't tell if it had penetrated any major organs. She was still breathing, but beyond that…

  They started to move forward when Bradley put her arm out and blocked them, looking toward the engine block of the overturned car.

  “We-” he started to say.

  “Don't start crawling around in there right away, because it's leaning pretty precariously on the barrier. And I don't think a drop is going to be good for anyone inside.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  She got on the radio. “Griz, can you sent Elsner over to us? And have him grab my tool kit out of the limo.”

  “He's headed over.”

  “We don't have a ton of time,” Kei said. The emergency teams would arrive shortly, but the clock was ticking for the patient in the front seat. The sooner he could start administering treatment, the higher her chances of survival.”

  “Once he gets over here we're going to lift and move it so it's stabilized. Pull it away from the barricade and then rest it on the ground.”

  A tall task even with four people, though at least the car was relatively small and lightweight. Elsner came running up with Bradley's kit in hand, and after a round of instructions they positioned themselves for the task.

  “We're getting you out of there,” Rappa said reassuringly to the children inside. “We're just moving the car to a better position. Don't worry about it shaking.”

  “Ready?” Bradley asked. “On three. One. Two. Three!”

  Kei strained his muscles and pulled, trying to keep the load steady and avoid any jerky motions. One wrong move might do a whole mess of damage to the badly-injured woman inside.

  The four of them moved the vehicle a foot away from the concrete barricade and settled it down without incident. Kei still felt some soreness from the effort, but he had other things to worry about. They needed to get the victims out. He tried one of the doors, but the force of the collision had deformed the entire car and twisted it shut.

  “We need-”

  “We don't need anything,” Bradley interrupted him. She dug into her tool bag. “Give me a second and I can get them out. Who do you want first?”

  “Two in the back.”

  “Got it.” She offhandedly tossed a tool to Elsner. “Cut the battery cables so we don't have anything going haywire.”

  Kei watched with fascination as she went to work. He knew a little about mechanics and engineering thanks to his military training, but nothing compared to the knowledge she possessed.

  Sasha Bradley had come from the Orakan Army after serving in the sapper corps. Kei didn't know much more of her history than that, but he couldn't doubt her engineering knowledge or her ability to fix and take apart things.

  She swiftly cut through the door with a hydraulic tool. A moment later Elsner yanked it out of the frame and tossed it aside, giving them access to the rear of the vehicle. Bradley reached in and quickly cut the children out of their car seats.

  “We'll take them,” Rappa said as he reached in and grabbed the younger child. He passed her to Elsner, then took the older child in his arms. “Move them over to the limousine for now. Keep cutting.”

&
nbsp; The younger child said something Kei couldn't quite hear, but he was fairly sure what she meant. They needed to get the woman out quickly.

  Bradley needed a few seconds to cut the front door from its frame. Kei strained against it and yanked it out. He moved inside the cabin for a moment to get a good look at the object stabbed in the victim's chest.

  “Can you cut that? Carefully,” he said, pointing toward the shiv-like piece of plastic.

  “Easy enough,” she said, and gingerly cut it in half.

  Bradley moved out of the car and climbed into the back seat. “OK, I'm going to cut away at her seatbelt. Be ready to ease her down so she doesn't smash into the cabin roof.”

  “Got it,” Kei said, and positioned himself. At least she was smaller than a lot of patients he had to carry, though he needed to be careful. Dropping her at this point could very well kill her, but they had little choice at this point. She needed immediate medical attention, and he couldn't treat her upside down inside the cramped, twisted wreck.

  “Cutting the first one,” she said, and Kei felt the woman's weight start to drop toward him.

  “Cut the next one quick,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Bradley did so, and he strained to keep his patient stable. Kei slowly, carefully pulled her out of the vehicle, being careful to keep from jarring the plastic shiv still embedded in her body. Elsner returned and helped to ease her the rest of the way out.

  Kei slid free of the wreckage and went to work. Pulse, weak but still beating. He checked her lungs for fluid, her body for any broken limbs, her neck for any signs of damage or possible paralysis.

  He opened up his medical bag, slipped on his gloves and then grabbed a bag of universal plasma and an IV.

  “Hold this,” he instructed Elsner, handing over the bag.

  He wanted to get the wound bandaged and sealed up, but moving the foreign object meant risking serious blood loss, and he needed to be able to make up the difference. He had three bags of universal plasma in his medical kit. It would be enough.

  It took him a moment to find one of her veins, but he fed the needle in and taped it down to hold it steady. So far so good. Kei spread out his ground sheet and laid down some more equipment: bandages, medical tape, disinfectant. He laid down his heat gun as well, though Kei didn't want to cauterize the wound unless he had no other choice.

  “IVIN, how long until EMS gets here?” he asked.

  “Five minutes.”

  Kei grimaced. They didn't have five minutes to spare, not with blood beginning to seep around the plastic in the wound. It was do or die at this point.

  And that meant having to cauterize the wound. They could replace the damaged tissue with an artificial implant if they couldn't repair it, but his patient would likely die if he just tried to seal up the wound with bandages and clamps.

  “Tell me if that runs out,” he said to Elsner, and pulled the shiv out.

  Blood shot out of the wound and splashed over his clothing, but Kei ignored it. He reached into the wound with his forceps, found the damaged artery and gathered it together as well as he could. He grabbed his heat gun and reached into the wound, then pulled the trigger.

  The scent of burning blood and flesh filled the air, but it stopped the bleeding for now. Kei cleaned the wound as best as he could and bandaged it.

  “We're running low on plasma,” Elsner said. “Looks like EMS is here.”

  Kei could hear the sirens, but he didn't bother to look up. He check his patient's pulse again. Faint, but still present, and she was still breathing.

  He looked up as a medic sprinted into view, then another.

  “Looks like you have the situation in hand,” one said. “What can you tell me?”

  “The victim suffered head trauma during the crash and a puncture wound to the torso. It didn't hit any major organs, but the bleeding was severe enough that I had to cauterize the artery,” he said.

  “Good enough. We'll take it from here.”

  Kei gathered up his kit and backed off as more medics moved onto the scene with a stretcher. At this point he'd only get in the way, and they had more equipment with them. He still had his own duties to worry about.

  “Are there any other patients?” another one of the medics asked him.

  “There's two, but neither look like they have severe injuries,” Kei said. He picked up his medical bag and jogged over to the limousine, but as he ducked inside he saw that the girl had already been bandaged up.

  “Huh, no faith in us,” Nina said. “You do know that you're not the only one that knows first aid.”

  The younger child spoke up. “Mommy. Where's-”

  “She's being taken care of,” Kei said. “She'll be fine.”

  He didn't know that for sure, but at this point she was in the best hands possible. Kei felt a rush of wind and heard the sound of straining engines. The air ambulance had arrived.

  “Looks like we might have trouble,” Griz said over the radio.

  Nina frowned. “What kind of trouble?”

  Kei looked back out of the limousine and saw what he was talking about. A young police officer approached, escorted by one of the other guards with a nervous expression on her face. She headed straight for him.

  “I'm sorry to inconvenience you, but I need to gather a report on the accident,” she said. “Can I get a statement from you?”

  Kei glanced back into the cabin.

  “Of course. How many statements do you need?” Nina asked. “We'll be happy to cooperate of course.”

  Kei wanted to groan. This was going to take a while.

  “HUH, I was wondering how long it was going to take you to show up,” Erik said as Nina stepped into the office.

  “Well, I'm sorry that we were caught up in an accident on the highway.”

  “Minor fender-bender?” Edwin asked.

  “For us, but not for one of the other victims. There was a fairly severe injury.”

  “I assume that you stopped to assist?” her father asked from his seat behind the desk.

  Nina shrugged. “Of course. Why wouldn't we?”

  “That puts you in a fairly dangerous spot, exposed out on the open highway,” Erik said.

  “Oh, I didn't get out of the limousine. My bodyguard team forced me to stay inside and took care of the issue themselves. A good thing too. The paramedics credited Mr. Maeda and Miss Bradley with saving the life of the patient.”

  Edwin smiled. “Always nice to know that we're able to do a little bit of good.”

  “Quite. But I think there might be another issue involved.”

  “Oh?” her father said, clasping his hands.

  “I didn't see it, but from witnesses in the second car say there was a black vehicle that was behaving somewhat erratically. It was weaving through traffic, almost like it was trying to follow us. But it never ended up right behind us. Every time they did they backed off.”

  “So you think you were being tailed,” Erik said. “That's a lot of trouble for a whole lot of nothing. If someone's bothering to follow you then you'd think they'd know your likely destination.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe they were unsure of whether we'd be returning to headquarters or going to one of our other locations,” she said. “Of course, I didn't want to take a chance getting ambushed on the highway, so it's a moot point.”

  “Yes, we received notice that the package arrived safely at research and development.”

  “Whatever the case, someone wants to get their hands on it,” she said. “And they're willing to expend a lot of time and resources to get it. This might just be the latest in a long line of attempts.”

  “Noted, but this is just one of many espionage attempts we've dealt with over the years. We have countermeasures in place to take care of any would-be spies or thieves,” Edwin said. “Your find is safe for now.”

  Nina nodded. If only she could be so certain of that fact.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Heard you all had a little incident
on the way here,” Soko commented as the rest of the team filed into the common room. He looked at Kei. “And you look like you went through the worst of it.”

  Kei just shrugged. He still had blood on his shirt, and he felt tired from the day's events. Adrenaline had fueled him, and his duty as a paramedic pushed him forward, but after that had all worn off he felt exhausted. A round of questioning wore on him further, and the rest of the ride back to headquarters had been a somber affair.

  “You two got the lucky job,” Rappa said.

  “I'd say that you two got the exciting job is more like it.”

  “I don't like pulling kids out of disaster zones, so I'll take boring over something like that, Soko.”

  “Can't blame you there. Might want to take the time to wash up, everyone. Since you were gone so long I had time to cook.”

  Everyone seemed pleased by that. Soko was the best cook in the unit, and when given good ingredients to work with he could do wonders with them. And it would be a welcome change of pace after subsisting on freeze-dried and frozen food for months on end. They were filling and palatable enough, but they didn't compare to something made with fresh ingredients.

  Kei headed into his room and closed the door behind him, then tossed his bag on the floor. At the very least he needed a quick shower and a fresh set of clothes. His current outfit was probably done for, but he could always get a new one from the quartermaster. Skare Interstellar paid their specialists and bodyguards well, and that included extra compensation like lodging, food and clothing.

  Right now a shower and a good meal seemed like the best things in the world after a day like today.

  LAUREN FOUND her designated quarters and was about to flop down on the bed when the communications terminal beeped.

  “Answer,” she said.

  “Hello Lauren,” Nina's voice said. “Are you settling in fine?”

  “Yes we just got back,” she replied, wondering why she was being contacted. There was a lot of work to be done, but she thought it wouldn't start until tomorrow.

  “Good, good. I'm sorry for the short notice, but you've been invited to dinner. My father wants to meet you. Think you can make it?”