Laura got a message on her comm, too. “Chan says Minutio is not on the space station.”
“He’s not on the ship,” Hailey asserted. “Where’s Um’am?”
“She’s on deck nine.”
“She didn’t go to her supervisor’s office for her debrief.”
“Another comm from Chan,” Laura announced. “Agent Um’am has disappeared from his map.”
“How can she disappear?” Hailey asked. Then she remembered that Chan’s location map worked off bio signs. “Where on deck nine?”
Laura and Hailey ran to Agent Um’am’s last known location: her quarters. They forced the door open and found her lying on her bed with one foot on the floor and her arms laid out to the sides. Her eyes were open but stared lifelessly at the ceiling. Hailey approached the engineer, listening intently for any life signs: breathing, heartbeat, anything. She studied the body and found a warm spot on the agent’s neck, just below her hair line. Upon closer inspection, Hailey saw it was an injection site. She immediately hoisted the engineer onto her shoulder and headed for sick bay.
Laura hurried after her, asking what she knew.
“I think she can be revived,” Hailey said. “She was injected with something; hopefully we have the antidote.” Laura slowed her walk and commed ahead to sick bay. By the time Hailey got there, they were ready to take the victim into their care and attempt to bring her back. Hailey watched from the corner of the room, her arms crossed over her chest.
Laura arrived shortly. She went straight to Hailey. “What are you thinking?” she asked.
“I don’t understand why he keeps hurting other people,” she said quietly. “This has got to stop. Where is he?”
“The geeks on the subdeck insist he’s not here.”
“Then how did he stick her in the neck?”
“He could have done that earlier. Maybe there was a time-release involved. Oh, and I solved your riddle.”
Hailey looked at Laura. “Really? Well aren’t you the clever handler. What is it?”
“The horizon.”
“Of course. Well done, Lucky. The question is, what does that mean in psycho-speak?”
“Maybe it’s just a password. Try it on that comm you got.”
Sure enough, with the password Hailey had access to a message from her stalker. “It says, ‘You may move towards me, yet distant I stay. Like a person you know, not too far away.’” Hailey dropped her hands to her sides and stared at Lucky. “What kind of hit-man runs away from his mark? He wants to hide from me?” She looked at the comm again.
“I don’t know, Comet.” Laura stood helplessly by while Hailey reviewed all the words, messages, and riddles Raven had said or sent to her. She thought there must be a pattern, a clue to his mental workings, but she found none. She and Lucky found a couple of chairs and waited to hear news on Agent Um’am. She was the only one on the transport who saw Sam on the ship.
Lucky broke the silence. “How’s Carter?” she asked.
“OK.”
“Maybe I’ll look in on him. I haven’t seen him since that mission to Abraxas.”
“Yeah, me too. It was nice to see him. He looked happy. Until a truck ran over him,” she amended.
“He’ll heal,” Laura assured her.
“Yeah, but he felt really bad about losing Raven. I should’ve shot the bastard when I had him in my sights,” Hailey said unemotionally.
Laura looked at her. “You can’t just up and shoot people, Comet. There’s due process…”
“Twenty-seven people,” Hailey said without explanation.
“Twenty-seven people,” Laura echoed. “What?”
“That’s how many people died on Sigmatál because I didn’t shoot Sjorn when I had the chance.”
“Well, it’s not our mandate to shoot criminals left and right. We are to bring them to justice.”
“And what good does that do? Someone I brought to justice is orchestrating a hit from prison. How many other hits on other people are being ordered as revenge from people I should’ve just put in the ground? And twenty-seven innocents. They were just moms and dads and young people. Dead. And Sjorn is alive. It’s not right.”
Lucky put her hand on Comet’s arm. “You can’t save everyone, and you can’t anticipate the outcome of every action you take. You’re too hard on yourself.”
“I’m not mad at myself, Lucky. I’ve just decided on a new MO, given all the statistics at my disposal.”
“Comet,” Laura started, but was interrupted by the appearance of a doctor.
“Agent Ramirez? Agent Um’am is asking for you,” the doctor informed her. Hailey brightened and jumped to her feet. She followed the doctor to the bedside of the engineer.
“Agent Um’am, how are you feeling?” Hailey asked, following the social script she knew normal people followed.
“Not well, but I’m told that’s better than not alive – thanks to you. Twice.”
“I’m glad you’re recovering. Can you tell me anything you remember about the stowaway?”
“Yeah.” She paused, apparently trying to settle a queasiness in her stomach. “I, uh, was prepping for launch and he popped out of the service compartment in engineering. He held a pistol on me and told me to stay quiet. Then he made me sit down on that stool … by the diagnostics computer … you know, where you found me?” Hailey nodded, prompting Um’am to continue. “Well, he told me about the explosive under the chair and how he could make it blow anytime he wanted to, or if I got off the chair, so I’d better just sit still. He told me if anyone came in and I told them what was happening, he’d detonate the thing.”
“Then he hid again?”
“Yeah. He pulled the grate open and went half-way down the ladder. Then he pulled out a tiny little pistol and shot me in the neck. Hurt a lot, but I wasn’t bleeding or anything. I just felt kind of woozy. I put my head down on the console until the nausea passed.”
“You closed your eyes?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you hear anything?”
“I heard him close the grate,” Um’am reported. “When I started to feel a little better, I sat up and looked over there, but from that angle, I couldn’t see him. Then you came in.”
“That was two hours after take-off,” Hailey said.
“That was two hours… after take-off…” Um’am repeated confusedly.
“No one came in before I did?” Hailey asked.
“I didn’t see anyone. On a short trip like that, I’m usually alone in engineering. There’s not much to do in compression…” She rubbed her hand on her forehead. “Two hours?”
“What happened when you got here?” Hailey asked.
“The station?” she asked. “Are we on the Scabbard?”
“Yes. I sent you out of engineering and you…”
“I told the pilot there was a bomb on board. He told me they’d comm SWORD. I went to the airlock to…” she closed her eyes tightly and rubbed her temples. “To meet the bomb squad… and take ‘em to…” Um’am turned to the side and vomited into a receptacle next to her bed.
“Doctor,” Hailey called. “Agent Um’am seems to be in distress.”
He went to her bedside and handed her a wet cloth and shot a needle full of liquid into her arm. “That’s it, Marelle. You’ll be OK. I know you feel like crap, but it’ll get better.” He turned to Hailey. “The poison made her drift in and out of consciousness until a final release of the pellet was meant to put her to sleep forever. If you hadn’t found her when you did, she wouldn’t be with us right now.”
“It released in stages?” Hailey asked.
“Yes, one dose when she was hit with the pellet, and a triple dose two to three hours later.”
“He’s getting better at hitting his targets, even on the Scabbard,” Hailey muttered.
“Who?”
“The maniac who did this to her. He’s attacked several people now but hasn’t managed to kill anyone yet. Is she going to recover completely?”
“Yes, we’ll make sure of that. I hope you get the sonuvabitch,” he said, turning back to his patient.
“From the time I went in to engineering, I had my eye on that grate,” Hailey told Laura over scalloped potatoes and ham, with mixed vegetables. “He didn’t come out while I was there, and he didn’t come out before because I searched the whole ship. Engineering was the last stop.”
“Maybe he got past you, mid-search,” Laura proposed.
“Ship’s not that big. I don’t see how.” Hailey took another bite. “I like these potatoes. There’s cheese in them, right?”
“Yeah. Well, he didn’t get off the ship after you docked. He didn’t get off the ship, period. He’s not on the Scabbard. Both Agent Chans are positive about that.”
“He has to be here. Maybe on the transport or a different transport,” Hailey said.
“Or hanging outside the station,” Laura said sarcastically.
Hailey sighed and rolled her eyes. “Seriously, Lucky, I’m worried that he’s targeted someone else I know. That little rhyme he wrote, about someone I know who’s also far away, even as I get near. ‘You may move towards me, yet distant I stay. Like a person you know, not too far away.’”
“A person who’s like the horizon. Someone who’s not far… from here? Who stays distant…”
Hailey and Laura looked at each other, and at the exact same moment said, “Ram.” They screeched their chairs on the floor in their hurry to get out of the mess hall and over to Director Mendez’s office. Hailey outran Laura and arrived first, grabbing the door frame to make the turn. When Laura got there, she found Hailey kneeling on the floor next to Mendez. “Lucky! Ram’s been shot. Get medical!”
Laura immediately commed the med bay. “They’re on their way, Comet. Is he…?”
“I hear a heartbeat, but it’s weak. Very shallow breathing. He was shot from behind, through the scapula.”
“How did Raven do this? He’s not here!”
“Obviously, he is here, Lucky! Somehow he’s masking himself so he’s not tracked on the station.” Hailey looked back at the bleeding wound in her father’s shoulder blade. She held her hand over it, applying pressure to slow the bleeding, but the blood stilled oozed through her fingers. “Where are the medics?” she demanded.
Laura went out into the hall to see if they were near. They nearly ran into her as she was coming out of the office. “Right in here. Gunshot wound to the right shoulder. He’s already lost a lot of blood.”
The medic applied a clotting agent to the wound which instantly clogged the flow of blood. Carefully, they lifted him onto a gurney and checked his vitals. With a shot of this and a spray of that, they got his breathing and pulse stable.
Hailey followed the medics and the gurney out of the office and down the hall. She switched her conscious mind to the fact that Raven – despite all claims to the contrary – was on the Scabbard. He could shoot her from any dark office she passed as she walked toward sick bay. But he wouldn’t do that, she thought. What fun would that be? No, Raven wanted to play. He enjoyed outsmarting the Wraith, giving her clues and riddles. Hailey was over it. She wanted to face him: Wraith versus Wraith.
The procession arrived at sick bay and Ram was taken directly to surgery. “We’ll talk to you soon,” the nurse said reassuringly as he blocked Hailey and Laura from going any farther. Hailey turned to Um’am’s room. At least they could check on her progress. As Hailey approached the bed with Agent Um’am resting on it, she saw blood splatter on the patient’s face and hand.
Hailey grabbed Um’am by the neck. The engineer opened her eyes in horror and let out a strangled cry. Hailey growled, “You shot Ram!” Um’am jerked her head left and right, panic in her eyes. “Where’s Raven?” Hailey demanded. The woman’s face began to take on a shade of purple. She slapped at Hailey’s arm and hand.
Laura intervened. “Comet, calm down! Let her talk, dammit!” Hailey held on for one more second, then let the patient go. Marelle Um’am sucked in air, then coughed it out. After a minute, she, too, calmed down and looked at Hailey.
“You shot Ram,” Hailey repeated.
“No. I told you on the ship: I don’t have a gun. I don’t have training. I don’t like guns!” Marelle insisted. “I’m just an engineer.”
“Where’d you get all that blood on your face and arm?”
Marelle looked at her hand. She wiped it with her other hand, but the splatter was dry. “I – uh, I don’t know. I haven’t left this room. I haven’t even gotten out of the bed. I swear!”
Comet and Lucky knew by her biological signs that Um’am was telling the truth. Another nurse heard the ruckus and came into the room. She saw the blood on the patient and asked what happened. “I don’t know,” Marelle insisted.
“Has she left this room?” Laura asked.
“Not that I saw,” the nurse replied. “We can check the security recordings.”
“C’mon, Comet. The footage will tell us what we need to know,” Laura said, leading Hailey out of the room. Laura turned back to Marelle and offered her a weak smile. The poor engineer had been through way too much for one day.
“OK, here’s where I really excel,” Laura made small talk as she brought up the security footage on a library computer. “Here we are. Sick bay, starting, oh, one hour ago. That’s when we left her with the doctor.”
“Puking her guts out,” Hailey added.
“Thanks. OK. Fast forward, the doctor comes out, nothing, nothing, nothing, she comes out.” Laura slowed the vid and ran it at actual speed. “We can track her with security cams through the halls.” Marelle donned a robe and walked with her hands at her sides. She went straight to the hangar and entered the transport she and Hailey had been aboard earlier that day. Laura didn’t have access to any cameras inside the ship, but Marelle emerged a few minutes later with her hand in her robe pocket. She proceeded directly to Ram’s office. She disappeared into his office, then emerged a few seconds later with a blank look and blood splatter on her face. Marelle calmly went back to her hospital room.
“I said she shot him,” Hailey stated.
“But she said she didn’t, and she wasn’t lying.”
“You just saw it yourself!”
“I know what I saw, but I’d like to see it again. She looked like a zombie.”
“I’ve got the whole thing in my head. I’m going back there to have a word with her.” Laura hurried after Hailey, worried that she’d do something untoward to Marelle or the doctor.
Hailey replayed the security vid in her head, slowing down the parts where Marelle’s face was clear. It was true: she looked possessed, yet catatonic. Her eyes were open, but rarely blinked or looked anywhere but directly forward. Hailey slowed so Laura could catch up. “You’re right. Something was wrong with her. But what happened?”
When they got back to sick bay, they questioned the attending physician. “What was the poison in her system?” Laura asked.
“We detected stagmoniacin, cantrallic figosal, and thurillium. Three toxins from three different colony worlds.”
Hailey searched her vast memory for anything about those substances. She had never come across them before. “What do they do?”
“Stagmoniacin is a drug used to make other people do things. It renders the victim acutely susceptible to suggestion, to the point of losing the ability to resist, even the will to resist. Cantrallic figosal and thurillium combined make a deadly mix which is probably what brought her down when you found her.”
“The first one, when did she get that?”
“Like I told you last time you were here, she was drugged twice, basically. One time when the pellet lodged itself in her neck. The second, here on the station. I don’t know if she got a little of each on the ship and a lot here, or the stagmoniacin first and the others later. Definitely, she was dosed with a deadly amount of the other two on the station when she was in her quarters.”
“And if I didn’t find her, she couldn’t have
shot Ram.”
“She shot Director Mendez?” the doctor asked, clearly surprised.
“Yes,” Laura interjected. “But I believe she was coerced with that drug.”
“What if she has more nefarious orders to fulfill?” Hailey asked.
“We’re flushing the toxins out of her body. It takes time, but she will eventually be free and clear of all of them.”
“She needs to be under constant guard until she’s well,” Laura advised.
“Yes, ma’am,” the doctor replied.
“And please get us a status update on Ram,” Hailey requested. The doctor departed to fulfill his orders. “I’m going to check on Carter.”
Laura and Hailey visited with Carter Flynn for a few minutes before the doctor found them to relay the surgeon’s information. “Ram is doing well. The bullet missed his heart but nicked his lung. They’ve repaired the damage and say he should be awake within the hour.”
“What? Ram’s been shot?” Carter asked.
“Yes,” Hailey replied.
“Well, that’s a bit of news I think deserved top billing,” he exclaimed. He shook his head and chuckled. “Limbic monitors,” he muttered. “So, what’s your next move?”
“I need to know his next move,” Hailey answered, referring to Raven. “I wanted to ask both of you how you transitioned from daily action to … whatever you did when you retired. Is Sam bored? Is he crazy?” She looked at Carter and Carter looked at Laura.
“Well,” Laura started, “it was not an easy transition for me. I felt restless and purposeless.”
“Yeah, that’s a good description,” Carter put in. “As a Wraith, you have a purpose every day – a meaningful purpose. Without that, I felt useless.”
“But Sam doesn’t feel,” Hailey pointed out.
Hailey's Comet Anthology Page 21