“No.”
“That’s too bad.” I would have trusted Tobias. Why? I don’t know. The man threatened to kill me more than everyone I’d ever met combined. The CeeBees had definitely rewired my brain wrong. I gulped down half my soda without really tasting the grape or fizz. I’d already given my life for the cause, how much would losing an arm hurt? “Let’s do it.”
Layla bustled over holding a microscope-like piece of equipment with the tubular part missing. “This should hold the Gruseation tube and her arm still while you work.”
Leaving my side, Tobias started opening and closing drawers in the bank of cabinets on the far wall. He paused over one drawer and removed a roll of white gauze.
Geez, once they were given the green light, these guys really hopped to it. I set my glass down with a thunk. I just hoped they reacted as efficiently if parts of me exploded.
Layla dropped the right bed rail and screwed the microscope onto braces that seemed to grow up from under the bed. After locking the braces in place, she thumped on the base of the microscope. “That should do it.”
Technician Minor smoothed his wispy moustache before tugging on the apparatus and nodding. “Yes, I think so.” He slid the purple flashlight into the empty rings of the microscope, then raised and lowered it.
The guy probably needed my arm in place so he would know how high to keep the beam. Taking a deep breath, I eased my arm onto the black platform.
Minor mumbled something and raised the flashlight and held it there. Without prompting, the rings collapsed to hold the flashlight snuggly.
I yanked my arm back. Whoa. Dude. Metal isn’t supposed to shrink like that.
Minor lunged for my arm and jammed it into place. “Strap her arm down.”
I gritted my teeth but didn’t fight the manhandling. Men had been punched in the nose for less.
“Next time you want Rae to do something, ask her Minor.” Tobias ripped open the package of gauze and unrolled it around my arm and the platform. “She’s a person not a piece of equipment.”
Crimson stained Minor’s smooth cheeks as he stared down the barrel of his flashlight.
I waited for an apology, some small speck that acknowledged my humanity. And waited. What a jerk.
“Wait.” Minor hummed a few bars. “The light stamp is not focused. She needs to move her arm up a little.”
She? What am I chopped liver? The guy could at least ask me. He wouldn’t even have to yell as I was laying not even a foot from his face.
Tobias shrugged and cut off the strip of gauze.
Clamping my lips together, I inched my arm forward.
“No, no, no.” Minor’s brown eyes rolled around in his head. “Forward,” he snapped. He grabbed my arm and scooted it an inch back toward my body. “How can you not know what forward means?”
“Do that again, Minor,” Tobias grabbed the technician’s thumb and bent it backward, “and you’ll be doing the procedure with one thumb.”
With a yelp, Minor stumbled right into Layla.
The doctor shook her head and scooted a medical table over to the other side next to my meal tray. The wheels of the silver tray table squeaked as she approached. “If I wanted to babysit spoiled toddlers, I would have transferred the Nursery Corps.”
Tobias released his grip with a toss of his hand and knotted the gauze holding my arm in place.
Minor shook his hand then blew on the red skin.
Layla unrolled a cloth containing gold cylinders tucked into the fabric like bullets. “Eat before your food cools.”
Right, eat. Turning back to my plate, I eyed the congealed blood on the white stoneware and my stomach cramped.
Layla walked over to my side and stole another Funyun. “Would you like me to raise a screen so you don’t have to see?”
“No. I need to see.” If I didn’t finish my dinner, she’d call off the procedure. We both knew it, but apparently my stomach hadn’t gotten the memo. Spearing a few pieces on my fork, I blew the bangs out of my eyes and stuffed the meat in my mouth.
“Don’t worry.” Layla patted my arm before stealing another yellow oval. “You’re in a medical facility. If you have to lose an arm, this is the best place to do it.”
The steak dissolved into mud in my mouth. I fought the gag reflex and swallowed the wad down.
“That’s comforting.” Not. Geez, was the empathy gene bred out of these space people?
Tobias finished tying my wrist to the platform. He tossed what was left of the gauze roll from hand to hand before clapping Technician Minor on the back and shoving him against the foot of my bed. “Why don’t you explain what you’re doing?”
Minor shook his hand once more then sidled closer to the Gruseation tube. “That might be distracting.”
Tobias tightened his grip until his knuckles shown white and Minor cringed. “It will reassure us that you haven’t forgotten a step. We’ve all had the training.”
“Yes. Yes. Of course.” Minor sighed when he was released and ran his fingers up the body of the flashlight before peering down the top part. “Right now I’m aligning the Gruseation tube with the light patch.” A circle of white light appeared on my forearm and completely circled the blue tattoo. “It is important that the optics focus on the entire patch or the data may be corrupted.”
And I could loose my arm and life for nothing. I nodded and lanced the last bites of steak. “Hence the strapping down of my arm and the equipment.”
“Precisely.” Minor cleared his throat then cracked his knuckles. The pinched look left the sensitive skin around his eyes. “It’s good to note that the CeeBees didn’t completely obliterate your higher reasoning functions.”
Ah, so he finally acknowledged I wasn’t a complete idiot. Nice to know he didn’t think of me as disposable as the animal he blew up.
“It might have made me smarter.” Layla’s eyes lasered onto me. Right. Alien humans didn’t have the same sense of humor. I dropped my fork onto my plate. “That was a joke.” I daubed at the corners of my mouth. “Although I’m not a technical person, I understood everything he said.”
Minor twittered. “Well, I haven’t exactly been speaking scientifically—dumbing it down to fit in with the locals, you know.”
Tell that to my brain. And as a local, I felt mildly insulted. We weren’t stupid; we just didn’t have all the advantages of fifty millennia of study. I reached for a handful of Funyuns and began nibbling at the pieces sticking out.
Hey, I knew when to shut up.
Most of the time.
Still giggling, Minor returned to staring down the barrel of his purple flashlight.
Layla and Tobias continued to study me.
Note to self: don’t ever mention the CeeBees again. I pulverized the rest of my chips and washed down the crumbs with a gulp of soda. A flicker caught my attention. My tattoo was now bathed in red, orange, yellow, green then blue. “The light changed color.”
Minor leaned back to look at the light show on my skin. “Right now it is selecting the best wavelength to extract the data.”
And surprise, surprise that seemed to be blue. I gritted my teeth as a thousand ants seemed to march across my forearm. Itchy, Itchy. My free hand curled into a fist and I punched the mattress by my leg. “My skin is tingling. Is that normal?”
Minor frowned. “But I haven’t done anything.”
Tobias joined the doctor on the left side of the bed and set his hand over my fist. “Can the CeeBees cause interference?”
“CeeBees?” Minor smoothed his moustache and stared up at the ceiling. “I’ve never heard of them being used in conjunction with a Gruseation tube.”
Uh-oh. I didn’t like the sound of that. I glared at the tattoo. The stupid thing had better be worth all this bother.
“Rudd Torunn had been assassinated and his body was getting ready to be recalled to the ex-fil site.” Tobias stroked the inside of my wrist and my fingers uncurled.
Again with the touchy-feely. Not that I m
inded, but he certainly sent mixed signals. Seductive one minute and threatening the next.
“Why didn’t you just lop off the arm and bring it to me?”
I glared at Tobias. That was never mentioned as an option. I’d just been told to get the data, and, voila—instant tattoo.
He ran his hands through his short hair and cupped the back of his head. “We had to act as if we never received the data. UED Control has an inside informant. They made sure Rae didn’t get any data on the Torunns, and that their arrival information came too late for us to reach the landing site. No one will know we have the data until we’re ready to act.”
Okay, when he explained it like that I could forgive him, even if my arm blew up. But why were these guys acting like this is the first time they’ve heard about the mole? Why hadn’t they been briefed earlier?
Layla stroked the blood trails on my arm. “So Ulla Torunn didn’t inflict this damage to retrieve the data?”
I snorted. “No, she did it because she’s a psychotic bitch.”
“You owe your swear jar another dollar.” Tobias stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a shiny silver dollar. “Even if your assessment is correct.”
When I reached for it, he rolled it across the back of his fingers and it disappeared. Just when I was beginning to like the guy, he acted like a douche. I resisted the urge to stick out my tongue at him. “I think I’m entitled to a few choice words. The woman killed me after all.”
Technician Minor snapped off the Gruseation tube and the spotlight on my arm blinked out. “The CeeBees will have made it a permanent fixture on her arm.”
“What?” I don’t want that thing on my arm forever. My parents would kill me. Although they lived an avant guard life, they drew the line at tattoos. I had something against tattoos. The government could track you with them because some places inserted GPS chips into the ink. Good God, what if Ulla and her thugs could track me? “Get it out of me.”
Tobias looked at Minor who in turned stared at Layla.
Great. Nobody knew what to do. So much for being an advanced society. I scratched the itchy tattoo. I was so going to loose this thing tonight even if I had to chew off my own arm. “Give me a Smartphone.”
Tobias finally met my gaze. “Rae, I don’t think—”
“That’s obvious,” I snapped. “You blow hot one minute, cold the next. But that is not the issue. This stupid tat is. Now get me a Smartphone. The CeeBees put the thing on my arm with it maybe they can take it off with the cell.”
Layla pulled a cell out of her back pocket and slapped it onto my waiting palm.
“Thank you.” I twisted the phone around so the fish-eyed camera lens aimed for the tat. “Alright CeeBees, time to transfer the information to this cell.”
The skin around my tattoo itched then tingled. Slowly the blue ink faded.
“Remarkable.” Tech Minor leaned over my wrist and eyed the screen. Hieroglyphs, Chinese characters and Arabic letters ran down in the display in a blur. “It’s actually working.”
I smiled. Not such a dumb Earthling after all. “What does it say? Does it identify the spy?”
I spied pictures of faces. Maybe one of those identified the traitor.
“I don’t know.” He jerked his own cell from the front pocket of his uniform, aimed it at the phone in my hand and pressed the send button. “But we’ll find out as soon as the data is processed.”
Red strobe lights flashed on and an alarm blared in the hospital room.
Son of a monkey’s butt! Raising one shoulder, I tried to shield my ear from the sound. Unfortunately the other got hit with the full sound tsunami. Gritting my teeth, I kept streaming the data. “What’s going on?”
Tobias knocked the cell from my hand. A knife flashed in his hand when he leaned over me.
Aw snap! I’d done something wrong and now my arm was going to explode.
Chapter Seventeen
Turning my head, I scooted away from my strapped down arm. I’d already been doused in my own blood, splattered by gooey remains of others and now I was about to be sprayed by chucks of my own arm. And for what?
I’d failed.
I rubbed at the tears stinging my eyes. Right, and crying would change everything. I was such a loser God should just brand a big fat ‘L’ on my head. Then everyone would know.
The security officer sprinted through in the doorway. “The self-destruct countdown has begun. You have five minutes to load all Spec Forces equipment before evacuating.”
Self-destruct? My brain tripped over the word. “My arm’s not going to explode.”
Tobias sliced through my restraints. “No, but the facility is self-destructing.”
Oh, well, that’s so much better. I rubbed the feeling back into my arm. The frickin’ tattoo stared back at me. “Why? What did I do?”
“Nothing.” Tobias lifted me from the bed and held me until my rubbery legs solidified.
Layla threw open the cabinet door and began yanking out aluminum suitcases and piling them onto carts.
Technician Minor yanked his Gruseation tube from its holder, tucked it under his arm and sprinted from the room.
“Yeah. Right.” I patted his hands and took a step toward the door. Self-destruct meant boom and I didn’t care to be anywhere in the vicinity when that happened.
Tobias kept pace with me. “Torunn must have grafted a virus onto his data. It infected our systems. We don’t know how much information it relayed about this base so we have to evacuate before the enemy arrives.”
I walked faster. My bare feet slapped the cold floor. “I can’t believe he betrayed us.”
I can’t believe the tattoo didn’t help the UED, but hurt them. Someone better have a plan ‘B’. I hugged the wall as the security guard zipped by pushing a cart piled high with silver luggage. Humid air washed inside the hallway as the double glass doors opened. A white sphere hovered just on the other side. The back hatch flipped up, revealing the two seats inside and empty space suitable for storage.
Someone had hover cars in the Twenty-First century.
“It was a long shot that a person that high up in Fourth’s powerbase would turn away from all that power.” Tobias grabbed my arm as we passed a door and drew me to a halt. Twisting the handle, he quickly opened the door and slipped inside.
I leaned against the wall as the guard drove his cart back into the building. Maybe I should offer to help.
“Four minutes until detonation.” A computer voice counted down in monotone.
I rubbed the chill from my arms. Yeah. I definitely should help. After all, I’d unknowingly released the virus on them. But how? I drummed my fingers against the wall before reaching for the door where Tobias had entered. No sooner had I opened it then he pushed a cart loaded high with black duffle bags.
He peered over the top of the pile and smiled as he pushed the cart over the threshold. “Thanks.”
Nodding, I stepped back and opened the door wider. Sure, I could be a doorman. “Should I go and help the others?”
Tobias aimed his cart toward the door. “Nah, they’ll be coming in a minute. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to bug out.”
As if on cue, Technician Minor shot around the corner. He took the turn wide because behind him were two tandem carts loaded with silver suitcases. A small one balanced on the top kept going straight while the others took the turn. Minor winced as it landed with a loud thump. He pivoted about, placed both hands on the cart and pushed to slow it.
“I’ll get it.” I released the door I’d been holding and jogged down the hallway.
“Thanks.” Minor waved as he switched positions and began pulling the cart again.
“Not a problem.” Skirting around the wobbly cart, I dashed for the suitcase. It lay on its side against the wall. Slipping my fingers under the molded metal strap, I lifted the bag. Or tried to. Holy Toledo! The sucker was heavy. Wrapping two hands around the handle, I heaved the bag upright, bent my legs and straightened up t
o lift it off the floor. My muscles trembled and a burning sensation cut across my shoulder blades. Good God, what had he packed? Meteorites? I carefully scooted one foot along the floor. My knee flared with pain. Come one, Rae. You can do this.
“I’ll get that, ma’am.” The security guard jogged toward me lugging his own wagon train of three carts. He guided them around the corner and let it keep rolling toward the exit before he turned toward me. Smiling, he lifted the bag out of my arms with one hand. “You single gravity worlders are quite weak.”
“Thanks.” I managed to lift my spaghetti arm with a wave. Not that I had a clue what he was talking about. I definitely should have paid more attention in science class. How many gravities were there?
With the yellow Funyuns bag in one hand, Layla strolled around the corner walking before four carts that seemed to guide themselves. “Don’t mind him, Rae.” She joined me while her train glided by. Literally.
I bent down. Yep, no wheels. Hover cars and carts? Dang but that was cool.
Layla tucked her arm through mine and guided me toward the double doors where the others pushed their supplies into an oval the size of a semi. “Kuma is from a world with one-point-five-two Earth gravities. As a result his muscle is much more compact and he appears stronger than those of us born on one gravity worlds.”
Ah, now I understood. Nice to know there was only one kind of gravity. Layla’s cart trundled up the ramp and glided between the rows of other carts before stopping.
Security guard Kuma jumped down from the bed of the semi while the ramp retracted on its own. Pulling an electronic pad from his shirt pocket, he ran his thumb over the screen. A clock materialized.
Crap on a cracker! Was it really two-forty in the morning?
“Good work people.” The guard tapped a button on his phone and the truck’s cargo door rattled down. “We beat our old record by a tenth of a second.”
What an idiot I am. That wasn’t the time; that was a countdown.
Blue Maneuver Page 21