Xander

by Vivienne Savage

  Oblivious to his pursuers, Kaiden stepped over his victim without batting an eyelash, intent on reaching his destination.

  “Mum taught us judo,” Gareth said in a rush, “but I’ve never seen him move that fast before.”

  “It’s the upgrades.” Xander said, equally shocked.

  “Go on, I’ll oversee all of this.” Kathleen knelt down to assist the nearest security officer. Xander crouched nearby and retrieved his baton.

  The two men trailed Kaiden to the main engine room. He pried the doors open, forcing the magnetic locks apart as if they were nothing more than Velcro. Then he stepped into the abandoned space and set his palms flat against the computer console on the main terminal. His expression remained as impassive now as it had when he first awakened in medical, like a wandering sleepwalker unaware of his actions.

  “What’s he doing?” Xander asked. He and Gareth remained in the passageway outside.

  “Best guess? He’s jacking into our propulsion systems. Give me a minute, there should be a panel out here I can hook up to.”

  They both crouched down in an alcove off the corridor, thirty feet from their target. So far, Kaidan hadn’t shown any hostility without provocation. Xander kept an eye on him while Gareth crouched down and hooked his tools into the ship’s diagnostic network.

  “What the bloody hell is happening on my ship?” Ethan’s furious voice echoed down the passageway. Kaidan’s head turned, so Xander grabbed his friend and pulled him out of sight.

  “I believe he’s interfaced with all the Jemison’s systems, sir,” Gareth answered. Streams of data flowed across the open space above them. To Xander it all looked like gibberish. “Shit. He’s burrowed in there like a tick.”

  “Unacceptable.” Ethan scowled and drew his firearm. “We go in there and we get him out.”

  “If we go in there, he’ll attack,” Xander argued.

  “If we don’t go in there, we risk the safety of everyone on this ship.” Ethan replied, as grim as Xander had ever seen him. “He’s done something to Jem and is mucking about in my ship’s systems. I want to know why.”

  “What if we shoot the console? Destroy it?” Xander understood the stakes, and he was certain Ethan didn’t want to take extreme measures against Kaiden, but he would if he needed to. As the commanding officer, the ship came first before a single man’s life.

  “He’ll just go to another and you risk causing an explosion in the drive systems. He picked his spot well.” Gareth’s fingers flew across the holographic interface. “God, he’s fast. By the time I manage to block him he’s opened two more pathways. He has an advantage over me I can’t overcome—he’s doing it by thought.”

  Ethan frowned, shook his head, and opened a line to their surface squads. “Jemison to all teams. We have a situation.”

  “What’s going on, sir?” Viljoen asked

  Ethan gestured for Gareth to pass on the details regarding Kaiden’s damage to the ship and systems. While the systems tech worked with the planetside team, Xander fell back a step and lowered his voice.

  “This didn’t happen until our team went planetside. That means the enemy is afraid, and the ground squad is too close to reaching them. Whoever is controlling Lockhart has to be in that facility.”

  “I hope you’re right about that, Xander. If the team can’t end that signal, we’ll be left with only one option.”

  Take out Kaiden, by any means necessary. The unspoken words hung between them.

  Gareth pulled up another screen on the panel and Xander shifted aside to grant Ethan more space to oversee what was happening. A gritty image from Creswell’s helmet occupied the upper left corner of the feed.

  “I’m looking through your video link now, Creswell. These are 250 zettabyte servers. Standard for cyberware corps. It’ll take you fifteen minutes to nab that much data on your equipment. We don’t have that kind of time.”

  “Abandon your work on retaking the Jemison and join me in this system. If we work together to sever the signal to your brother, the rest will fall in place.”

  The two techies put their best ideas out and tried several different methods to hack the planetside systems. Most of the jargon between them flew right over Xander’s head so he didn’t even attempt to make suggestions. Their bleak tones and colorful swears were more than enough to convey their failed attempts.

  “If you can’t shut it down, we won’t have any choice but to kill him,” Ethan told the ground team.

  “Pull the power,” Gareth said after a long moment of silence. He continued, detailing out his idea to Creswell while Xander and Ethan peered down the corridor to see if Kaidan had moved. He remained at the terminal, still as a statue.

  “You think that’ll be enough to do it?” Ethan asked in a low voice.

  “We better hope so,” he muttered.

  The footage wavered as Creswell moved positions. Xander’s throat constricted when he caught a too-brief glance of Thandie in the video while her team discussed shutting down the facility’s power, thus severing the signal to whoever controlled their fellow marine.

  Another alarm tone blared through the ship.

  “No! No, no, no.” Gareth slammed his hand against the wall. “Kaiden started the depressurization process in the cargo bay.”

  They had five minutes before the Jemison became a floating tomb.

  An entire string of swear words left Ethan’s mouth. Over the comms, Xander listened as the team debated blowing the facility. His heart sped. If they blew it, the ground squad wouldn’t have the time to clear the building. His last words in the hangar would be the final thing he’d ever said to her—too few, too little. He should have told her he loved her, but hindsight was always a thousand times clearer than the present.

  Gareth’s face went chalk white as he finished discussing options with Ethan. “The only safe method for powering it down is to hit the deactivation switch. It’s going to take half an hour to go cold. Minimum.”

  Time they didn’t have.

  Ethan leaned out into the passageway and took aim. “I’m sorry, Gareth.”

  A second after his somber apology, Ethan squeezed the trigger. The bullet snapped Kaiden’s head back, then he tumbled to the deck and lay on the floor.

  The first sob from Gareth broke Xander’s heart.

  “I’m sorry, mate… we did everything we could.” Sighing in defeat, he lowered one arm around his friend’s shaking shoulders, while Ethan crouched beside the body. Then something tugged at his subconscious. Something wasn’t right. Why wasn’t there any blood? “Ethan, get away from him!”

  A split second later, Kaiden’s fist shot up, but Ethan staggered back, narrowly avoiding a blow to his chin. “Shit! He’s not down.”

  Kaiden moved too quickly for Xander’s mind to register what happened. A fist hit Ethan’s ribs, and then he was airborne. The back of the man’s head struck the deck, but he never lost control of his pistol.

  “Ethan, no! Get out of there!” Xander called to him.

  Ethan fired three more point-blank rounds at Kaiden’s chest. One missed outright, the second clipped him in a metal-enhanced rib, but the third entered between the bones into actual biological matter. Despite the blood spilling from the circular bullet wound, Kaiden never uttered a single sound. Nothing changed.

  “Take it down now!” Gareth yelled to the surface team before hurling his own body at his brother. Kaidan batted him aside.

  Xander activated the shock baton in his hand, igniting a sizzling arc of electrical current at its tip. Against cyborgs with older, unshielded equipment, the baton could be devastating. He wasn’t counting on it to knock Kaiden’s electrical systems offline, but he did hold on to the hope that it would knock him out, or at least slow him down.

  Before he could maneuver into place, Kaiden swung around with a punch aimed for Xander’s face. He ducked aside, and touched the live end of his baton to his attacker’s elbow, but Kaiden shrugged it off without any reaction.

  Kaid
en landed a glancing blow across Xander’s shoulder, which almost made him lose his grip on the baton. He gritted his teeth, fingers tingling with pins and needles, and drove his weapon against Kaiden’s thigh. The cyborg’s knee buckled, then an invisible force thrust Kaiden away into the wall where his big body left a person-shaped dent. It had to be Gareth.

  “Gareth, catch!” Kathleen called.

  Another shock baton arced toward them. Gareth caught it out of the air and lunged back into the fight.

  Kaiden avoided one strike after the other, weaving in and out despite Xander and Gareth’s joint effort to take him down. They narrowly blocked his attacks with their weapons, but Xander lacked Gareth’s agility, balance, and telekinetic ability. Kaiden’s fist came dangerously close to splitting open his head until Gareth spun a roundhouse kick that knocked his brother off the mark.

  Damn, they were both so quick. Xander had never trained with Gareth before to see him in a combat situation, but it quickly became evident he could have never stood against Kaiden on his own, despite the advantage of his Lexar traits. He rolled his shoulder, glad the minor damage had already mended.

  Gareth’s baton struck Kaiden in the lower spine. He arched his back but inevitably recovered seconds later to sweep Gareth’s feet out from beneath him. With murderous intent, he crouched above his twin and raised Gareth’s head by a handful of hair.

  Seeing his chance, Xander leapt forward and extended his baton toward the back of Kaiden’s head, touching the arcing prongs to the base of his skull.

  All of Kaiden’s muscles seized then he collapsed. This time, Xander was positive he would remain that way. At least for a little while.

  Kathleen beat Xander to the punch, producing a set of medical restraints from her field pack. “See to the big boss. I’ve got this.”

  “Good timing, you showing up when you did. Thank you.” He clapped Kathleen on her shoulder and moved over to Ethan. “Still breathing?”

  Ethan groaned from the floor. “Lockhart, get in the system and shut down what he did or we won’t be around to save his life.”

  “He’s already on it.” Xander assured him. “Be still, mate. You won’t be breathing easily for long if you try to trot back to the bridge with fractured ribs.”

  “Who’s trotting?” Ethan’s chuckle swiftly turned into a pained wheeze.

  Kathleen kept guard over Kaiden, out of his reach. After everything they’d witnessed, they didn’t trust the wrist restraints to slow him down if he regained consciousness.

  “Decompression sequence aborted,” Gareth relayed. “Communications are up. I’ll get Jem back online in a few minutes.”

  “Are we back in contact with our teams?”

  “Not yet, sir. Scanners show there was an explosion in the facility. Looks like it was contained to the lower level.”

  Xander’s fingers stilled against Ethan’s chest. A chill crawled down his spine and his pulse quickened, a sudden sense of dread overcoming their recent triumph in subduing Kaiden.

  “Hold on,” Gareth spoke up suddenly. “Incoming message on the back-up channel.” He switched through the frequencies until a familiar voice crackled to life over the static.

  “Jemison, this is Creswell. Requesting immediate emergency trauma response. I repeat, immediate emergency response.”

  “Xander, I need you to stay here with Kaiden. Hart, get a full team together now and whatever extra marines you can fit on the shuttle. I’m not losing any more people. Not today.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  By the graces of adrenaline and stimulants, Xander remained on his feet for over seventeen more hours to provide the care Thandie needed. It wasn’t the longest time he’d spent working above her on an operating table, but it was the most desperate. She coded twice during the surgery.

  Losing Ylona had been beyond his power. He hadn’t been there. He understood and relinquished his guilt the moment the trauma team wheeled Thandie in on the gurney. There’d been nothing he could do for his wife.

  But he could save Thandie. Her mangled body needed his expertise, and he threw everything he had into resuscitating her, until Death surrendered the fight and decided the tough cyborg had more to do out in the galaxy.

  He worked above her to the point of exhaustion, personally applying aerosolized replacement skin after removing damaged tissue. A sense of unnatural focus came over Xander that guided his hands with superhuman dexterity. By the end of it, he could barely tell anyone his name, let alone power-down his surgical laser.

  Kathleen had to pry it from his fingers and deactivate the tool herself after he slumped onto a stool beside the operating table. The other doctors had been in and out, swapping as necessary to provide their unique specialty services.

  “We will transfer her to a room,” Lilibeth assured him gently. “Please. You are in our way.” A tiny smile accompanied her words, smoothing away some of the grim mood.

  Xander reluctantly stepped into the hallway while the two women applied nanogel and Bio-Tape to Thandie’s numerous injuries, the latter a thin membrane designed to promote healing in fresh skin grafts. Oshiro waited for him, open concern etched into his tired features.

  “You should shower and rest, Xander. Kathleen and I will take turns sitting with her,” Oshiro promised, pressing a small cup of tea into his hands. The fragrant steam wafting upwards was familiar, a family remedy Oshiro had pressed on him a few occasions in his lifetime. He accepted the cup then shuffled down the hall without a word.

  He didn’t feel like arguing with Oshiro but already planned to clean up and sit with Thandie himself.

  Xander washed his face, changed out of his scrubs in the locker room, and then settled behind the desk in his office for only a moment to enjoy the tepid cup of green tea. He was asleep before he set the empty mug on his desk.

  He’d been too out of it to realize the damned man knew how to drug him.

  Soothing notes from the strings of a cello gradually slithered into Xander’s hazy consciousness. A few more minutes passed before the increasing volume pulled him completely from sleep to the dim interior of his office. The automatic desk chair had leaned back and tilted into a perfect incline. Someone had also sprawled a medical warming blanket over his chest. Cozy heat radiated from the double-insulated piece of material.

  “The hell?”

  “Good morning, Doctor Vargas,” Jem greeted him. The office lights gradually brightened to their normal daylight settings.

  Xander jerked upright in a panic, only to realize someone would have retrieved him if Thandie had taken a turn for the worse. “What time is it? How long was I out?”

  “Ship time is 0216. We allowed you to sleep for eight hours.”

  Despite the protesting of his back and sore muscles, he rose from the chair and tossed the blanket behind him over its arms. “Status on Thandie Kruger?”

  “Sergeant Kruger remains in stable condition. All vitals are within normal limits.”

  “Status on Daniel Viljoen?”

  “Commander Viljoen has been released from medical.”

  “Did we have any other major injuries from that skirmish?”

  “Negative, Doctor. All further injuries were minor and treated by medical technicians.”

  “What’s the status on Kaiden Lockhart?”

  Jem’s silky voice took on a chilly edge. “Kaiden Lockhart is awake and requesting your presence. Commodore Bishop is with him now.”

  “I didn’t go into his braincore yet.”

  “Commodore Bishop would not allow Doctor Oshiro to wait until you awakened,” Jem informed him. “With the blueprint Lieutenant Creswell obtained from the laboratory, and my assistance, they were able to safely perform an emergency craniotomy to remove the guidance chip without causing further harm.”

  “How long did that take?”

  “Less than one hour. Doctor Oshiro is an accomplished neurosurgeon. Kaiden awakened only an hour ago.”

  The fine hairs on the back of Xander’s neck ro
se. Did Kaiden recall anything about their frantic efforts to bring him down?

  Rested, but still emotionally exhausted, he shrugged into his lab coat and stepped into the hallway. His route took him past Thandie’s room, where he peered in at her through the observation window. Floating vitals with large green numbers confirmed Jem’s assurances, so he sucked in a relieved breath and watched her for a while.

  Once completely satisfied with watching the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest and stabilized vitals, Xander drew up her chart for a quick look. Good. Oshiro kept his promise. Kathleen and Davis were the most recent to enter and leave, maintaining a steady supply of drugs to eliminate Thandie’s pain—and also keep her heavily sedated. He reviewed everything else on the chart and estimated another two hours until she awakened.

  Someone had set the glass observation panel to Kaiden’s new room to privacy, transforming the clear glass to an opaque mirrored hue. By habit, Xander knocked first before entering.

  “Finally awake, eh? You look a sight better, mate.” Ethan offered him a steaming mug of coffee before the door even clicked shut. “By the way, you were drooling in your chair. Thought you should know.”

  The friendly taunting put Xander at immediate ease and diffused what he expected to be an awkward meeting. Kaiden ducked his head shyly and focused on his hands, both of which were folded over his lap.

  “Kaiden, this man is Doctor Vargas. We’ve got him to thank for having you back,” Gareth said gently.

  “Hello, Doctor,” Kaiden said in a hoarse whisper. He barely made eye contact. His right hand raised briefly then lowered with a dull slap against his hospital-gown-covered thigh again. “Thank you.”

  Xander offered his hand. “Call me Xander, please.”