by Lynn Rae
Avo shrieked and fell on top of her as she dropped back down onto the sand under his weight, breath pushed out of her lungs in a rush. She shoved and kicked and twisted under him, short of breath and wincing from all the pain.
Lazlo tried to calm his racing heartbeat as the sheriff pointed the stunner at him. He’d been negligent in keeping a sufficient watch on their location and now Del was paying the price, as that oaf tormented her under his boot. But overwhelming anger at her distress wouldn’t serve him well at this point and he tried to clear his mind and prepare to attack at the first, best opportunity.
When Harata pulled out the restraints, Lazlo knew what was going to come next—clipping them both, cutting their throats and then stashing their bodies somewhere remote, which was actually anywhere they were standing. They might even take turns raping Del before they killed her. So wrist clips could not be allowed. Their lives would be over the minute the sheriff bound him.
Del must have realized this too, because she reared up when Avo fumbled his catch and began to struggle against him. Lazlo couldn’t watch any longer because he used her resistance as the split second of distraction he needed to leap forward and slam his arm across Harata’s, sending the stunner clattering away into the rocks. Then it was a fair fight and Lazlo was nothing if not a dirty fighter.
Harata tried a few kicks and sidesweeps, which Lazlo eluded well enough, considering the ground was crowded with obstacles. Lazlo threw a few blows at the eyes and nose of the sheriff and allowed himself to feel a small thrill of pleasure as they landed and blood started to spatter. Lazlo watched Harata’s movements become more tight and erratic and knew that he had to obtain control over the other man as soon as possible. Del was thrashing under a screaming Avo and he had another awful vision of her being sexually assaulted.
With a quick duck, Lazlo pushed into Harata’s space, found an opening, elbow-punched his chest hard twice and palm-heel punched his throat once. As the other man doubled up, Lazlo flipped him over his shoulder onto the sand, immediately landing on him with knees in his stomach and hands twisting his chin forcefully to the side. Harata’s body tensed as he tried to get a grip on Lazlo’s head or face, but the torque Lazlo applied kept the sheriff’s torso averted enough that he could not get a solid grip.
As Lazlo bore his full weight down, the sheriff’s breath left in a burble along with his fight. Feeling nothing but determination to subdue his enemy, Lazlo pressed his attack. Flipping the man over and kneeing him in the kidneys, Lazlo swiftly pulled his own restraint clips free and snapped them over the sheriff’s wrists, yelling out to the sheriff’s guide.
“Avo Kirk, get off her now or I’ll break both your arms!”
The guide stopped moaning long enough to shriek his ribs were broken and Lazlo stood with a bounce, all the adrenaline in his system charging his body. He made sure the sheriff was secure after he clipped his legs together and rushed to Del, pulling the other man off her and tossing him into a large boulder where Kirk cried out and sprawled in the sand.
She blinked up at him, pale and covered in smears of wet sand courtesy of spittle from the man who had been howling on top of her. Lazlo turned and cuffed Kirk, drawing his arms back despite the other man’s cries that his ribs were broken and his lung was now punctured. A quick search of his person revealed only a knife in a boot, which Lazlo collected. He returned to Harata to search for more weapons. The sheriff was better armed—in addition to the thrown-away stunner, he had a handheld shocker, two knives and a strange device of unknown purpose.
Sheriff Harata was silent as he watched his guide sob and curl on the ground and he shot a hot look of hatred at Lazlo, who wanted to kick sand in his eyes. But instead he walked away and knelt next to the now silent and unmoving Del, tears leaking from the corners of her frightened gray eyes. She looked so small and helpless sprawled there in the churned-up sand that he was afraid to touch her.
“It’s over.”
“I’m hurt,” she whispered and all the intense energy from the fight disappeared as cold dread filled him.
“Where?” Lazlo struggled to keep his voice calm and quiet so that he wouldn’t upset Del any further.
“My back. It hurts.” Anxiety whispered in his mind and Lazlo strained to remember his medic training. He might be able to stabilize her, but how long would it take before he could arrange emergency evacuation for her? If she had spinal damage or was bleeding internally—
Trying to dismiss panic, Lazlo focused on triage.
“Can you move your legs?”
“Crack it, that hurts.” She closed her eyes and winced as she shifted her boots in the sand.
“I hope you’re paralyzed, you dirty whore!” Harata shouted out in frustration and Lazlo glanced over at him. The man was still restrained and red in the face. No threat. But extremely irritating.
“I’m not paralyzed, you shit-eater!” Del shouted back and Lazlo grinned at her. She was a brave one.
“Can you sit up?”
“I don’t want to,” Del groused, but then slowly rose with a hiss of pain. She staggered and he helped steady her.
“I need to see what’s injured,” Lazlo warned her as he reached for the buttons on her shirt. She was paler and starting to shiver, unable to assist him, and he realized shock was setting in. Mumbling and wincing, she allowed him to pull off her shirt and lift up her tank. Her back was covered with already-purpling indentations from Kirk’s boot and Lazlo took a deep breath, trying not to be enraged by what had happened.
Her hands pulled up to her chest as he shifted her shirt and he thought she was being modest, but he noticed a dark stain on her tank between her breasts.
“Let’s see that,” he requested softly and Del glanced up at him, eyes watering as she awkwardly pulled her top down, revealing a large abrasion oozing bright-red blood between her breasts. Muttering under his breath, Lazlo shrugged off his pack and retrieved his first-aid pouch, ripping it open to get at an absorbent square, which he pressed to her wound. Del sobbed and he nearly withdrew the pressure, hating that he was hurting her.
“Hold it there, as tight as you can stand,” Lazlo ordered her and she nodded, head hanging low, soft hair dirty and mussed. The smallest person in the valley and she’d gotten the worst of the entire confrontation. But he needed to evaluate her condition, not become emotionally compromised. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“Don’t think so. Are you hurt?” Del asked in a quiet voice and he assured her he was uninjured. He didn’t say he wished that he were the one who had been wounded if it could have spared her. Breathing more normally, Lazlo tried to decide what to do next.
“You Browens are too slippery to get hurt. You’re like rats. I can’t wait to get back and knock down your gate and start to work on the lot of you!” Harata was trying to roll over on the sand, his dark eyes skewering Del with the same expression of rage Lazlo had seen on all sorts of criminals doing their best to intimidate a witness.
“Go screw yourself, Harata!” Del looked as if she wanted to bite the sheriff, and that wouldn’t be good. Lazlo hated the thought she’d get that close to the old reprobate. He rummaged in his pack and pulled out a spare pair of his socks, which he used to gag the other man.
“Don’t complain, at least they’re clean,” he advised Harata as the other man’s eyes bulged and watered.
“Hey, Casta, is it?” Avo Kirk spoke up from his wallow on the ground in a wheezing tone. “Just so you know, I was just doing a job out here. The sheriff, he threatened me—”
“You be quiet or I’ll gag you with rocks,” Lazlo threatened in a low voice. Both men stilled. “Nothing is bleeding on your back, Del, but I know it hurts. Stay still. Keep the pressure on. I’m going to call for help.” He pulled her shirt around her shoulders and then gave her his own shirt to add a layer to help warm her up. Stars, this was a complete mess—two prisoners—one of whom was the territorial sheriff—and poor Del was injured and going into shock.
Lazlo shoo
k his head and powered up his datpad since there was no need for stealth anymore. He sent a signal out to the new little drone circling far overhead, got an immediate acknowledgement and relayed his situation, location and request for backup to Major Sekar. Within moments, he had a message waiting.
Lt. Casta
Mobilizing appropriate response. Will arrive at your location within .75 hours. Check both assailants for recording devices.
Maj. Sekar
All of that sounded like a great resolution to his disastrous situation. Lazlo pinged an acknowledgement, checked on Del again and began to search Kirk and Harata more thoroughly. All he wanted now was for Del to be helped at the medical center and for his prisoners to be safely transported to lockup.
His own punishment would follow soon enough.
*
“Just relax,” Dr. Tradescans warned and then did something spectacularly uncomfortable with the skin on her sternum. Del tried not to cry or move as he quickly clipped and inspected her injury.
“Will you need to stitch it?” Del didn’t want to sound as weak as she felt.
“No, it’s not deep enough for that. But you’re going to have a scar and there’s a good chance of infection since I can’t seal it,” the doctor concluded pessimistically. But it seemed he was finished with hurting her, at least for the moment, and Del sighed with relief as he moved away. She was lying on a bed in medical, supported by a few half-folded pillows that did little to ease the pressure on her painful back. Every muscle felt as if it had been crushed. It hurt to breathe and to move her arms.
“I’m going to prescribe a wide course of antifungals and antivirals to start and if you notice any change other than healing, you need to come in and have it tested.” Dr. Tradescans looked at her sternly and Del nodded agreement. She was feeling a little dizzy, fluctuating from anxiety to exhaustion.
Del was still trying to piece together what had happened after Lazlo called for help and the sudden arrival of a flitter with several armored security personnel rappelling down the sides of the cliffs to where they were waiting.
She hadn’t seen much. Two security officers had hustled her into a lift chair and she was dizzyingly drawn up and out of the canyon and into the bright light before she could say anything to anyone. The pilot had flown her directly to the port landing deck—the journey, which had taken an hour and a half by cart, was over before she’d even had time to adjust to the interior of the flitter or the assessment of the smiling medic who had been waiting for her inside.
Del had been rushed to the medical center and she started to feel embarrassed, not at all certain that she was hurt enough to require such expedient treatment. Her back and chest hurt, but she knew neither was life-threatening. It was a far cry from the hours she’d spent trying to drag her father to medical care at the port after his fall.
“Your back is severely contused and there has been a lot of soft-tissue damage. You’re going to need a least a week to recover and then I will want you in post-care to make sure that there has been no damage. And I’m going to send over a mental diagnostician tomorrow to assess you as well.”
“Why?”
“You’ve been through a traumatic event and it’s possible you might suffer some long-term emotional injury that could take longer to heal than your physical injuries.”
“I’ll be fine, Doctor,” Del assured him, worried about her privacy. It was bad enough that several strangers had seen her breasts today, but the idea of someone she didn’t know prying into her thoughts and emotions was intimidating. And she couldn’t afford any time off.
“Those are my orders, Citizen Browen,” Dr. Tradescans countered severely and she swallowed. “Rest, recuperate, evaluate. Not argue and obfuscate.”
Del smiled at his rhyme and then felt another wave of exhausted anxiety wash over her. Dr. Tradescans watched her for a moment and called out for someone named Nino. A tall and lovely-looking man entered the room and the doctor instructed him to bandage her wound, fill her prescriptions and get her home safely. Closing her eyes, Del tried to not think about yet another person seeing her half-naked, not that she was wonderfully impressive to look at even when she wasn’t dirty, bloody and tired.
Nino proved to be impersonal and quick. She was cleaned up, bandaged, had her medications and discarded clothing neatly in a bag and was sitting up waiting for Dee Dee to arrive to escort her home in what seemed like one minute.
Her beautiful sister bustled in and did a quick look-over of Nino before she gently hugged Del, whispering in her ear that everything was going to be all right. Del felt tears begin again and she sniffled into something absorbent as her sister turned full-on sweetheart to the man gawping at her.
Nino ran through Del’s medical situation and assured Dee Dee that she would recover. Dee Dee smiled and nodded as Nino then offered to come by and check on Del and teach her sister how to change a dressing or apply topical ointments. The flirting was so obnoxious Del wished for a short-term coma.
“Let’s get you home, Del.” Dee Dee finally remembered her reason for being there and helped her walk to the door and exit the medical center, followed by a helpful and attentive Nino. Her sister had brought a cart and Del carefully sat on the seat, anxious not to put any pressure on her bruised back or aching chest. All she wanted to do was get to her apartment, get to bed and pile up enough pillows so that she could sleep on her side. Maybe take a shower first.
“So tell me what happened!” Dee Dee ordered as she drove the cart quickly along the Boulevard heading for the port gates in the quickest and most direct fashion, cutting close to pedestrians and vehicles as she sped along.
Del recapped the day, leaving out the whole recovering of long-lost weapons side of things, and modified the confrontation with Harata and Kirk into a dispute over jurisdiction. Dee Dee nodded and shivered, exclaiming at all the exciting parts.
“Did you tell Ma and Pa?”
“Surely did. They’ll be after you when we get back. So before we get there,” Dee Dee said as she turned a corner with a deafening squeal of the tire’s axle, “what did Lazlo Casta have to say?”
“Not much. They lifted me out of there while he was busy with the prisoners. I didn’t really talk with him after everything.” Del felt sad at the thought. She doubted she’d see him again, since her job was done. Unless her pay didn’t come through her account, that is. Then she’d be calling.
“I’m sure he’ll be by tonight,” Dee Dee assured her with easy confidence. Of course, if Dee Dee had been in that situation, Kirk never would have laid a hand on her and Casta and Harata would duel over her. Del, on the other hand, was mauled and forgotten.
“No, he’ll be busy.” Lazlo and the other security personnel would probably be out all night retrieving the weapons from the obstructed cache. And once everything was safely back under codelock at the port, the whole episode would be done. And that was good. She was very tired and starting to stiffen up.
Chapter Nine
“Good work,” Major Sekar said quietly as he watched two port engineers inflate a hydraulic bladder to move an enormous slab of fallen rock a few meters out of the way. It had proved too difficult to remove the packed cases with the opening to the cavern blocked as it was, so the major had calmly ordered the entire area cleared. It was late in the evening and the canyon was shadowy and forbidding.
There were at least twenty people milling about in the ravine he and Del had discovered. Temporary lights blazed and power equipment grumbled and thudded. Lazlo tried to look and feel alert but he was exhausted. Between the morning spent hiking, the confrontation and bureaucratic requirements of the arrests, and his return to the site of the weapons cache, he had been on his feet for nearly twenty hours.
His commander glanced at him. “Have you heard how Citizen Browen is?”
“Yes sir, I checked a few hours ago and she had been dismissed from the medical center. Her sister picked her up and took her home.” Lazlo wanted to see her but there hadn’t
been an opportunity to get away from his responsibilities.
Major Sekar nodded and kept watching the engineers inflate the bluish-green bladder between the cliff and the fallen stone. Little puffs of dust rained down and everyone backed up even farther as the slab started to move.
The engineers looked at each other and took three steps back and Lazlo smiled weakly. If he’d been standing that close, he would have started running to get away from several hundred tons of slowly moving rock.
With a sighing hiss, the slab shifted, leaned and then slowly fell on its side. A dust cloud rose in the canyon and people coughed despite their respirators, but the debris settled, leaving people and equipment pale pink in the harsh artificial light.
The major nodded at a cluster of personnel and they headed into the newly cleared opening.
“Sir, do we have any idea how the sheriff knew about the weapons?”
“Not yet, but it’s clear that I need to do some investigating. People talk, so someone will let something slip.” The major looked grim and determined and Lazlo was glad he was clearly not a suspect. Then again, had he spoken about this with anyone he shouldn’t have? Trixie? Detective Chin?
“Who knew you were out here?” Major Sekar asked as if he had read Lazlo’s mind.
“Trixie Rupti. She calibrated some equipment for us, so she knew we were out here. And Detective Chin loaned me some supplies. Both thought I was testing new monitoring equipment,” Lazlo answered truthfully.
“Understood. Lieutenant Casta, it seems as if we’re well on our way. You’ve been out here long enough. Head back with the first group of cases and go home. Take the morning off tomorrow and check on Citizen Browen. Report to me after lunch, wherever I happen to be.”