When Stars Fall (The Star Scout Saga Book 4)

by GARY DARBY

  The mercenary watched under lowered eyebrows as Brant slid the vials into his vest and strode toward the door. Moments later, they reentered the room where a pale and gasping Sami lay motionless on the floor. Alena and Nase stood guard, leaving TJ to gently stroke Sami’s head in her lap.

  “Get busy,” Brant ordered.

  “Not yet,” the Faction thug replied. “My power packs first if you please.”

  Brant started to object, but Jones said, “Without me, your friend will be dead in less than thirty minutes. That’s about how long it takes for a full-grown Aal to suck a person dry.”

  Brant fixed hard eyes on the Faction hoodlum for a second and then demanded, “Where’s your ship?”

  “Small hangar,” Jones replied, “next building over.”

  Brant slapped at his comms. “Anyar, this is Brant.”

  “Go ahead,” Anyar replied.

  “Fly your Zephyr to the complex and land next to the building closest to the perimeter road. Nap-of-the-earth flying, keep out of sight, but I need for you make it zip.”

  “Powering up now,” Anyar replied, “ETA is two minutes.”

  “And Anyar, begin the power-up sequence on the two spare power packs we have in the cargo hold. We’re going to transfer those to another ship.”

  Anyar hesitated before answering, “Will do.”

  Brant faced the Faction member. “The packs are on their way.”

  Jones gestured at Sami. “My ship has a small med bay, and since you have to take the packs onboard, I suggest we take him there as well.”

  Brant turned to Granger. “Conduct a final sweep down here. Make sure we record everything. Then beat feet topside and help Anyar with the packs.”

  “Dason,” he continued, “you and Nase carry Sami. Alena, take Shanon out and meet the Zephyr. TJ, you and I’ll provide overwatch.”

  He waved his weapon at the Gadion mercenary. “Let’s go.”

  Dason slung Sami over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry with Nase helping to balance Sami on one side.

  Brant and TJ kept their weapons leveled on the Faction goon while Alena half-supported a weak Shanon out the door.

  They retraced their steps to ground level and minutes later entered a small hangar bay that held the Faction’s ship, a sleek, but small Star Sprite clipper.

  Brant took one look at the vessel and said, “Didn’t know the Faction was into luxury yachts.”

  “Some of us enjoy our creature comforts,” Jones answered with a cocky smile. “I’m one of them.”

  He strode up the entry ramp and swung open the airlock door. Dason carried Sami in and laid him on the padded med table in the small infirmary. Reading Sami’s vital signs off his vest pad, TJ said, “Breathing shallow, rapid pulse, blood pressure dropping into the red.”

  “Hemorrhagic shock,” the mercenary stated, “he’s losing blood too fast.”

  “TJ,” Brant ordered, “get Sami’s hemo-pac out of his med-kit and infuse him. Give him some morphinate for pain, too.”

  Jones shook his head. “You don’t want to be doing either of those if I were you; at least, not yet.”

  “And why not?” Brant demanded. “If we don’t, he could die from blood loss.”

  “Because,” the mercenary explained, “the Aal senses when the blood supply becomes depleted and slows down its feeding. You pump more blood in; it speeds up, takes more out than you pump in.”

  “And the morphinate?”

  Jones sighed aloud as if he were giving a verbal lesson to a stubborn child. “In humans, Aals go for the aorta. You savvy aorta?”

  “Of course,” Brant snapped in irritation. “It’s the largest artery in the body, transports blood from the heart through the torso and into the lower extremities.”

  “Right,” Jones replied. “The Aal anchors itself on the arteries’ exterior wall and punctures the aorta with two cannula-like pincers. The Aal squeezes the artery and the blood flows through the cannulas into its collection sac; somewhat like milking a cow’s teat.

  “Those pincers have barbs that latch onto the artery’s wall. If you try to pull the Aal out with those barbs still in, they rip the aorta wide open. The result is that you can bleed out in minutes.

  “Morphinate will put the slug to sleep with those barbs still embedded. We want the Aal to withdraw those pincers on its own and with it, the hooks.”

  “Wait,” Dason said. “If the Aal pulls its pincers out, won’t that leave holes in the aorta?”

  “Just for a second,” Jones replied. “The Aal exudes a gelatin substance that congeals the blood around its puncture sites and at its entry point.”

  He snorted and said, “They don’t want to lose even one drop.”

  Dason nodded his head, remembering the yellowish material that he had swabbed off Shanon’s wound and the lack of bleeding she experienced.

  Jones went on to say, “Once we get the Aal out, by all means pump your friend full of hemo and morphinate for all I care.”

  Brant studied the man’s face, searching for any clues that he might be untruthful. “I’ll buy your story for now,” he replied, “but if you’re lying . . .” his voice trailed off leaving the Faction hooligan to consider his implicit threat.

  Brant turned to TJ and directed, “Get the hemo-pac needle in him, set the pac up, but don’t push the blood expander until the Aal is out.”

  TJ got busy with inserting the tiny, sterile intravenous needle into Sami’s brachial artery. She ran the tubing out and connected it to hemo-pac. “It’s ready.”

  Brant turned to the Faction crony. “Now that you’ve got what you need, get it out of him.”

  “My power packs?”

  In frustration, Brant hit comms switch and bawled out, “Granger, do you have the packs?”

  “Got’em,” Granger replied, “we’re almost to the hangar.”

  Brant gestured toward Nase. “Go aft and open up the engine compartment. Make sure the injector couplings are off the nucleonic and h-drives, and both are entirely powered down. Once you’re done, come back here.

  “Dason, you and TJ stay with Sami. Make sure this slimy character goes nowhere, and one of you has your weapon on him at all times. I’ll go meet Granger.”

  Brant took a step to stand practically nose to nose with the Gadion. “If Sami dies because you’ve been misleading us, I guarantee you that Alena will have to fight off those who want to be the first to pull the trigger. You savvy that?”

  Brant turned and bolted out the airlock. Jones curled his lips in a small smile and said to Dason, “Strip off his camo jacket and vest, and cover him with that survivo-blanket.”

  As TJ kept her weapon trained on the Faction member, Dason undid Sami’s torso clothing and covered him with a thin, but insulated blanket.

  After doing so, Dason turned to the Gadion. “Were you part of the setup here? The ones making the positronic and nano-circuitry?”

  The Gadion laughed. “Bub, I have no idea of what you’re talking about. Like I said, I sell porpoise and Aal blood. That’s it.”

  “Uh, huh,” TJ muttered. “And your little operation just happened to be in the same building where they were manufacturing those SimLife components.”

  Jones shrugged. “I didn’t ask them what they were doing and they didn’t ask me. Besides, the rent was cheap.”

  He turned a syrupy smile to TJ. “I was what you might want to call a model tenant.”

  “Right,” TJ growled. “So how is it that you know so much about how to get one of these things out of a person?”

  The Faction mercenary laid out the medical tools he had gathered in the underground lab. “Simple. I am a man of many talents; in this case, knowing what I know could save a life. Meaning, mine, of course if I slipped up and let an Aal get inside of me.”

  Moments later, Granger and Brant pushed open the inner airlock door. Together, they manhandled a heavy silver and gray container into the compartment.

  The boxy device had several red-letter markin
gs that read, “INTERNAL RADIATION. USE CLASS ONE RADIATION PROTOCOL IN HANDLING AND INSTALLING.”

  On top were several dials and gauges that provided readings on the fission material inside and two nozzle-like projections poked out one side. A small compu-inset allowed the operator to program the pack to match the ship’s engine specifications for particle flow and exothermic pressures.

  Following close behind, Anyar and Josh, grunting from the heavy load, jostled the next container into the cabin. Brant stopped and sounding a bit winded, asked, “Your engines, they’re the standard H-series for this size craft?”

  The Faction gave a sharp nod. “Yeah, but you’re not going to synch the power converters and the engines. I’ll do my own programming. That way I’ll know there are no bugs.”

  “No,” Brant replied flatly. “While we’re installing the packs, you’re getting the Aal out of Sami. After we finish, and the Aal is out, you can check our work. I’ve fulfilled my end of the bargain. So get that thing out of him–now!”

  As the mercenary and Brant locked hard eyes Jones said, “Just so we understand each other, before I meet the deal’s next part, I will personally check the synch program, remember that.”

  Brant and Granger squatted down, heaved the pack up, and shuffled down the passageway toward the engine compartment. The Faction turned, brought out the vial of green liquid, and held it out. “Which one of you is going to do this?”

  Dason’s eyes went first to TJ and then to Nase with a questioning look. “Do what?” he asked the renegade. “What are you talking about?”

  “Removing the Aal,” Jones replied, “I’m not.”

  “Hold on,” TJ stammered, “you claimed you could take it out.”

  “No,” the Gadion replied, shaking his head.

  “I said I would tell you how. I never said I would remove it, and I’m not. If I try and he dies, you’ll blame me. I’ll talk you through the procedure, but if he gives up the ghost, it’ll be on you and not me.”

  Balling his fists up in anger at the man’s obstinate stance, Dason reached for the vial. “I’ll do it,” he breathed out.

  With a smug smile, the thug handed Dason the small glass tube. “Three or four drops, no more, in his mouth. Make sure he swallows.”

  “What is this stuff?” Dason asked.

  “A mild blood toxin made from fairly harmless bacteria,” the ruffian replied.

  Nase shot out his hand and grasped Dason’s wrist preventing him from moving the vial to Sami’s mouth.

  “Blood poisoning could kill him,” Nase stated.

  “No, this won’t cause septicemia or anything similar,” Jones countered.

  “What will happen is that his body will react to the toxin and overload his system with neutrophils, a type of white blood cell. You know, when you squeeze a pus-filled zit, the whitish stuff that squirts out? That’s dead neutrophil cells.

  “To an Aal, those white blood cells taste as if you had taken a big bite out of a moldy, rotten onion. Once it gets a sip of that, it’ll let go of the artery, but it won’t leave the body on its own, so we have to pull it out.”

  He held up the long, padded forceps. “With these.”

  “Now,” he said to Dason, “if I have to describe the reason behind everything I tell you to do, we may as well not do this because he’ll die by the time I’ve finished explaining. So, do you want to know why, or do you want that thing out of your friend?”

  Dason eyed the Faction member and then tapped three greenish drops into Sami’s mouth. After Sami had swallowed the liquid, the outlaw handed Dason a pair of surgical gloves. “Put’em on,” he ordered.

  He held out a finger-length scalpel. “Take the bandage off and slice through the whitish membrane covering the wound. Don’t worry, it’s not flesh, just hardened Aal gel. He won’t feel a thing.”

  Dason took the keen-edged blade and keeping his hands as steady as he could, made a clean incision through the gel mass. He straightened and muttered, “Done. It’s open.”

  The Gadion glanced down to inspect the incision and nodded. “Good.”

  He handed Dason another instrument. “This is a gooseneck retractor. Push the two long curved sides into the opening and carefully spread the hole as you work the retractor downward.

  “You shouldn’t have to go too far before you’ll see the Aal’s tail. Stop there and lock the retractor in place so that it keeps the cavity open and the Aal exposed.”

  Dason’s breathing had become rapid and tiny beads of sweat dotted his forehead. He pressed the retractor’s flat, elongated ends into the wound and rocked it back and forth to spread the tissue in a gentle fashion.

  Working downward, he stopped when an undulating whitish, thick tentacle came into view.

  “Is that the tail?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Jones replied.

  Dason locked the retractor in place and raised his head toward the mercenary. “What now?”

  “Take these,” Jones instructed, holding out the padded forceps. “And this is the tricky part. If the Aal feels the forceps, it’ll jerk away, go deeper into the abdominal cavity. You don’t want that. If it does, it’ll be impossible to get it out with what we have here.

  “So, open the forceps wide, get’em over a meaty part of the tail and then snap them shut. Don’t miss or the game’s over.”

  “Do we know if it’s let go of the aorta?” Dason asked intensely.

  The mercenary gave an indifferent shrug. “No. The toxin should have worked by now, but there’s not much choice at this point. It either did or it didn’t and we can’t give more of the blood toxin.”

  Dason held the tongs in his hand, opened and shut them several times, to get a feel for how they worked. He began to push them into the opening but stopped. His hand trembled at the thought of what might happen if he botched the attempt.

  Worse, what would happen if the bloodsucker still had its barbs embedded in Sami’s aorta, and Dason pulled out the Aal too soon.

  TJ put a gentle hand on his forearm. “TL, you can do this,” she whispered. “I know you can. Sami knows you can.”

  Dason met her eyes and gave a little nod. He lowered the thin forceps to just over the fleshy tentacle. He moved it closer ever so slowly and then–snapped it shut.

  The Aal jerked but too late; the metal tongs’ jaws had a firm hold on the thing. “Easy,” the Gadion grunted, “pull it out nice and slow and stop when I tell you to.”

  With the forceps wriggling back and forth in his fingers from the Aal’s struggles, and with great care, Dason pulled the sandworm back through the hole. Engorged with Sami’s blood, it was much larger than the creature he had pulled away from Shanon.

  The Aal was nearly a third of the length of Dason’s forearm when the Faction ordered, “Stop.”

  He handed Dason a viselike set of padded pliers. “You’ll see a dark band, squeeze this around it, that’ll hold the head in place. Otherwise, it’ll come after you once it clears the hole.”

  He held out a large plex-glass jar. “Drop it in here and I’ll do the rest.”

  A moment later, Dason had the vise around the thing’s neckband, followed by a squirming head whose circular mouth opened and closed as if it were sucking on air.

  The Faction crony pointed at two small indentations just behind the creature’s head. “It pulled its pincers out, the toxin worked.”

  Dason dropped the Aal into the jar and with a rapid twist of the flex-top, the Gadion sealed the container. Dason turned to TJ and ordered, “Start the hemo.”

  He removed the retractor and slapped an InstaHeal gauze over the wound. With gentle fingers, TJ began to squeeze the hemo-pac’s contents into Sami.

  The Faction collaborator held the clear container up for a second as if examining the Aal. Noticing how the Faction eyed the creature, Dason asked, “Is it normal for them to get that big?”

  Jones glanced over at Dason and grunted, “Depends on how much blood they suck out.”

  Dason turned t
o TJ. “Push a second infusion. From the looks of that thing, it took a lot of Sami’s blood.”

  Feeling a presence behind him, Dason turned to find Brant nodding in satisfaction.

  He placed a hand on Dason’s shoulder and squeezed. “Well done, scout,” he said gratefully. “You’ve given Sami a fighting chance.”

  With a hard glare, Brant turned to the Faction mercenary. “The packs are in and synched, the Aal is out. Now, what about Tor’al?”

  Jones set the jar down and wagged a finger at Brant. “Not until I’ve inspected your work.”

  He brushed past Brant and headed aft to the engine compartment. “After you infuse Sami with the second hemo-pac,” Brant quickly remarked to TJ and Dason, “we’ll move him over to the Zephyr.”

  “Sir,” Dason said, “we need to get Sami to a medical facility with a doctor. Just getting the Aal out isn’t enough. He’s in pretty bad shape, and InstaHeal isn’t going to close his open abdominal wound sufficiently. That’s a pretty big hole he’s got.”

  “I know,” Brant replied. “And we will as soon as possible.”

  With that, he turned and went aft. Several minutes went by before Brant and the Faction mercenary returned. “Satisfied?” Brant asked the Faction conspirator.

  “For now,” Jones replied tartly.

  “Good. Tor’al’s location,” Brant demanded.

  “Not yet,” the Gadion replied. “Once I give you the information, there’s nothing to stop you from turning me over to the authorities. So here’s what we’re going to do.”

  He reached behind him and pulled out a memory shard and recorder. He gestured toward a small locker set into the bulkhead.

  “There’s a fully charged disruptor in there. I’m going to take it out. Everyone is going to get off my ship, except for one person of your choosing. I’ll record the information you want on this memory shard and give it to your stay-behind.”

  “How do we know if you’ll even put anything on the shard?” Brant declared.

  “I guess you don’t,” the Faction loyalist retorted. “But that’s a chance you take.”

  “A standoff,” Dason muttered.

  “That’s right,” Jones answered. “You get what you want, I get what I want.”