by Susan Kelley
“And there’s the way you don’t react to dangerous situations like other people do.”
Vin sighed. “I don’t understand.”
“You run toward danger without caution or thought to your own safety.” She gestured toward the stairs and his workshops below. “And you know so much about weapons and seem able to build or fix anything.”
“Many soldiers have skills as mechanics or weapon specialists.”
“But you are skilled in everything.”
“Not everything apparently. I did everything in the manner of a civilian. You should not have thought me any one special.”
“I’m sorry I used your tablet without asking, but I was rather sure of who you were before I looked at it. The only new thing I learned from it is that you’re supposed to be dead.”
“Most people think so.”
“So how did you plan to use me to find my stepfather?”
* * * *
Emma watched as emotions crawled across Vin’s fine features. For all his high intelligence quotient, he needed time to process words beyond their literal meaning. His careful answers exposed what he sought to hide. “I don’t intend any harm to you.”
“You came for my stepfather and vengeance for all that was done to the Recon Marines. Is he the last one on your list?”
Again Vin took his time with his answer. “Not for the Recon Marines. For Yalo.”
“The Giroux guard who was killed protecting the queen?” Emma couldn’t remember reading any details on the woman.
Vin looked away but not before pain flashed in his eyes. He stared at the floor. “She was killed by Geoff Hadrason. He wanted the queen so he could become richer and more powerful. Yalo threw herself in front of the queen after Hadrason decided if he couldn’t have Callie no one should.”
“But he killed Yalo instead.”
Vin lifted his gaze back to her, something hot in his. “Yalo was my wife, pregnant with my child.”
Emma tried to imagine Vin married and with a family on the way. How did one domesticate a Recon Marine? “Isn’t Hadrason in prison? I know my stepfather is one of the military men under investigation for his part in your court martial, but how is he connected to Yalo’s death?”
Vin took a deep breath and his eyes cooled off to their usual clear gray. “I wanted to kill Hadrason, but it would have ruined … things. So I’m taking something from him that he values more than his life.”
Things clicked into place. “You’re tearing down his empire.”
“Your stepfather is the last military man who helped Hadrason build his mining business and benefited financially from it.”
Emma tried to remember what she’d read on the tablet. How many men connected to Hadrason had disappeared? “Are you going to kill him?”
Vin’s expression didn’t change. “I don’t know yet.”
“Did you kill those other men?”
“One died running from me. Four ended up in law enforcement custody. The rest are residents of the Nye Moon.”
“The Nye Moon as in the prison planet?” Relief warmed Emma.
“The people who run those facilities are flexible with their entrance requirements. They always need more help in their mines.” Vin fixed her with an intense stare. “Now you know everything about me. Why are you hiding here, Doctor Emma?”
Emma stood up. “I’ll get you something to eat. And you don’t know me nearly well enough to know my secrets.”
* * * *
The next days passed slowly for Vin as he rested and recovered. He built two more wave blockers and had Vannie install them on the east and west fences. He also created a rig to hang the first two above the gates so they didn’t have to sit in the middle of the street. The devices protected the town from more drone attacks but who knew what might come at them next.
After the first two days spent mostly sleeping in his bed, Vin pulled a chair out onto the wooden walkway in front of his shop. With his gun at his side. He used the hours on sentry to work on the AI tablet and search for a reason behind the attacks. Why would anyone care about this unimportant little settlement?
It took him nearly an hour to find his way into the shipping manifests of the Hadrason Mine. Moe came out as the afternoon warmed, bringing a chair from the café and sitting beside Vin’s gun. “What are you working on today?”
Vin tilted the computer toward Moe. “Trying to deduce why they’re trying to chase you out of Hovel Port.”
Moe raised an eyebrow. “You’re in their databanks?”
“Look at what they’ve been shipping.” Vin pulled up a spreadsheet filled with numbers and descriptions of product. “I noticed when Dillon and I dumped our unwanted visitors that wood filled the cargo bays of the outgoing ships.”
“I heard there’s a market for some of the lumber that grows here. It resembles Old Earth oak. Synthetic wood furniture isn’t good enough for the rich. They want real wood. If they’d move out of the big cities and live a while on the outer worlds, they could find all the old fashioned natural products they want.”
Vin didn’t understand what Moe’s last statement meant though he sensed sarcasm, a difficult language quirk to interpret. “Look at this manifest of the silver going out over the last sixty days. And here is the sixty before and the sixty before that.”
Moe frowned and scooted his chair closer. “Less each time. Their mine is running dry.”
“It would seem so. They’re supplementing with lumber.” Vin closed the shipping files and pulled up a map of the area.
“This doesn’t explain chasing us out. They’re taking a huge risk by killing people here. They wouldn’t want an investigation.”
Vin shook his head. “The people who run Hadrason Mining can make anyone disappear, including this entire settlement. But I don’t know why they would want to.”
Moe looked toward Emma’s surgery. “Some of the owners of that mine wouldn’t approve of their methods if he knew what people lived here.”
“But the admiral doesn’t know Emma is here.”
Moe jumped to his feet, towering over Vin. “How do you know who she is? What the hell are you doing here?”
Vin rechecked the map on the screen. “This map has been altered.”
“Vannie and I look out for Emma. We’ll protect her from anyone who comes after her.”
“Look at this.” Vin angled the tablet so Moe could see it.
The big man glared at him. “Are you hearing me? Any threat to her has to get through me and Vannie first.”
Vin deduced Moe spoke so as if to intimidate him though he wasn’t sure why. He stood up and faced the big man. “You and Vannie weren’t there to protect her from the drones. It doesn’t seem that difficult to get past you.”
Moe’s eyes widened and his mouth flapped like his brain didn’t know what to say. Vin wondered if he wore a similar expression sometimes. Emma burst out of her door and saved Moe from searching for an answer.
“Vin, I need your help.” She ran back inside, leaving the door open.
A woman had carried a small child into the surgery a short time ago, but Vin had thought little about it. The children suffered small injuries all the time. They played fearlessly with no concept of how fragile they were.
Vin followed Emma and found her leaning over the little girl with the mother hovering on the other side of the table. He heard Moe’s heavy tread tagging along behind him. Sweat filmed the child’s red face and soaked her thin shirt. Her chest rose and fell in quick, uneven bursts. He could feel the heat pouring from her without touching her.
“I hope I didn’t infect you both by asking you in here,” Emma said. “Vin, I’ve know you’ve traveled a lot to different worlds. Her blood shows no known bacterial infections and the tests can’t identify a virus though I suspect that’s what it is. I’m giving her IV fluids and trying to bring down her temperature. Have you seen anything like this?”
Vin touched the little girl’s arm, finding her skin smooth, soft and
very hot. “What is her name?”
“Julie Denton,” the mother said in a raw voice. “Billy’s little sister. Can you save her too?”
Vin had seen many exotic and alien illnesses during his service years. Too many to guess at what this might be. “This is the next attack.”
“What do you mean?” Emma asked.
Moe cursed softly. “Is it something that will spread through the entire town?”
Mrs. Denton choked back a sob. “I don’t understand. First they try to shoot my Billy and now they poison my girl. Why?”
“I need better equipment to diagnose this.” Emma looked at Vin.
“By the time you do, it….”
Emma pinched Vin’s arm hard, flicking her gaze to Julie’s mother and back. Moe stepped around the table and wrapped his arm around Mrs. Denton’s shoulder. “Let’s go check on Billy, make sure he’s not coming down with this. Let Emma take care of Julie for a bit.”
Mrs. Denton looked over her shoulder, but Moe gently led her out the door.
Emma waited until Moe closed the door before speaking. “You can’t tell her mother it will be too late.”
“But it will. Even if you started right now with the best equipment, it could take days.” Vin looked down at the child, sleeping or unconscious. “This little bit of girl might last another day at best.”
Emma put her hand on his arm. Vin jerked it away before she could pinch him again. She huffed out a sharp breath. “I didn’t ask you in here to tell me what I already know. Tell me what we can do, not what we can’t.”
Vin had walked through a pirate enclave once after a rival group had unleashed a viral toxin on the inhabitants. The deaths had been grotesque. Only a few miles away, the Recon Marines had found the attackers, dead from their own weapon. They’d forgotten an important precaution when using such a dangerous, illegal assassination tool. “There are too many options as to what this might be. I’ll go over to Julie’s house and see if I can find the source of the illness. Whether I do or not, I’ll have to go to the Hadrason Mine.”
“If we find the source, we might have been able to figure out what it is. Why do you have to go to the mine?”
“They wouldn’t have used something they didn’t have the antidote to.” Vin took a last look at Julie. The needle in her thin arm looked obscene, something a child should never experience. “Somewhere in their camp is the cure in case they accidently infected themselves.”
Emma reached out and grabbed his arm. Vin braced himself for another pinch, though he wasn’t sure what the first one meant. “I’m sorry, Vin.”
He looked at her hand and thought about that small, delicate hand touching other parts of his body, parts this woman woke after months of celibacy. “It didn’t hurt.”
“What?” She smiled though the expression managed to look sad. “I mean I’m sorry for asking you to do this. For expecting you to fix it when you’re still recovering yourself.”
Her words made less sense than the pinch. “I’m just doing what I do.”
The sad smile again. She stretched up on her toes and kissed his cheek. Her scent washed over him, and his arm reached out to steady her. Then his arm acted on its own to pull her closer. She stared up at him, his mouth slightly open and her chest rising nearly as fast as Julie’s. He kissed her.
Her lips felt soft and warm beneath his, welcoming his hesitant quest with shyness greater than his. But her arms crept around his waist and her hips snuggled up to his. Everything Vin knew about kissing he’d learned from Yalo. He jerked away as memory of her invaded his thoughts. Julie moaned at nearly the same moment.
Emma turned to her patient, giving Vin time to regroup. He cursed himself. Using Emma as bait was loathsome enough without adding in his lust for her slim, petite body and his yearning for her soft voice.
“I’ll go see if I can find anything in her house.” Vin didn’t wait for a reply but turned and retreated. He had memorized where all the people lived in the settlement the day he moved into his shop. He jogged to the Denton’s two story house and found Moe just leaving. After telling Moe what he needed, the man reentered the little cottage. It only took a few questions to the mother for Vin to understand he needed to search the garden in back.
Billy pointed out the spot where his sister kept her collection of pebbles and shiny stones. Vin saw the bright pink balls right away. Half a dozen of the bean-sized waxy weapons mixed in with river-polished quartz and slivers of mica.
“Dad brings the mica home for her,” Billy said.
Vin waved Moe over and used a stick to push at one of the pink balls. “These are the agents. Nobody should touch them. Start a search but don’t pick them up.”
“How did they get here?” Moe asked.
Vin watched Mrs. Denton pull Billy into the house. “They could have been here for a while, scattered over the fence or dropped by a drone that wasn’t noticed. It could take days after contact to make someone ill.”
“Do you know what it is?” Moe backed up a few steps.
“I don’t. No one should touch these, including Emma. I’ll bring something back to take care of it and treat the little girl.”
“Back from where? Do you need me to go along?”
“Tell Emma I’ll be back as quick as I can.” Vin went into his shop and gathered up what he might need and then ran to the hopper they’d taken from the thieves. It was too big and slow for the mission. He flew it to where he’d hidden his small hover craft. Within ten minutes he skimmed the treetops on his way to the mine.
The Recon Marines had disobeyed direct orders when they’d been expected to do war against civilians. The greedy cowards who’d been behind that kind of atrocity weren’t confined to the military. Vin had had enough. Emma knew what he was and why he was on Merris Five so no reason remained for him to hide his identity and abilities. At least she wouldn’t be shocked when he taught the bastards attacking Hovel Port what war really meant.
Chapter Ten
Vin left his hover and rifle hidden in the jungle abutting the sprawling mine camp. He changed into his form-fitting body armor and then covered it with the gray pattern camouflage appropriate for urban incursions. He strapped on his weapon belt, not knowing what he might need but hoping he had it.
The jungle had been cleared for a quarter of a mile around the gray sheet metal buildings making up the settlement. But nature worked to reclaim its ground. Bushes and young trees sprouted like a thick, uneven carpet right up to the sides of the nearest buildings. A few determined vines climbed the gray walls and if given time would pull the sturdy buildings down.
Vin crouched at the edge of the trees and studied the structures. The space port sat on the far side from his approach, the only part of the settlement he was completely familiar with. But Merris Five was the fifth mining planet Vin had visited while hunting down Hadrason’s accomplices. The four story windowless building abutting the cleared field would house the workers, most of them low waged and loyal only to their paychecks. They would be rough men and some criminals. Ex-military men composed the security, hired to protect the silver. He moved through the brush and then around the corner of the barracks.
Many of the largest production mines worked overlapping shifts so the digging never stopped, but Vin heard voices from the front of the building. A few dozen men stood in small groups or sat on a scattering of wooden furniture, playing at cards or just talking. Complaining at not getting paid or being asked to cut lumber instead of the digging they’d signed up for. A series of metal skeletons marked the mine entrance fifty yards beyond the other end of the building.
An open courtyard, a wide dirt street actually, separated the workers’ quarters from more buildings made of the preformed metal walls except the one across the way had windows. Three doors, each with an armed guard, sat along the front of the building. Fat pistols hung from the hips of the big guards, all with wide, strong shoulders though two of them had thick bellies. Vin recognized the guns as civilian models. The gu
ards focused on the idle workers while blocking the doors. Vin suspected what he needed was behind those doors.
He retreated and ran along the back of the workers’ building to the other end. Every minute counted for little Julie. The brush hadn’t been allowed to grow near the mine entrance and gravel had been spread about, probably to offset the rainy day mud. The metal structure running skyward for six stories supported an elevator of some sort. Metal couldn’t burn for a distraction but it could melt.
Vin had learned how handy a laser saw could be in the last few months when breaking into various facilities. Now he always carried it on his weapons’ belt. Six metal legs, each as thick as his waist, served to support the elevator shaft. He doubted they were solid.
He stretched out flat on his stomach, in plain sight of the guards and workers but trusting his camouflage. The powerful little laser might have been visible in the dark but no one could see it in the sunlight. He aimed at one of the back supports, hoping to hide any sparks the saw might create. It took five precious minutes to cut through the leg. The skeleton creaked but held. He took aim at the rear center leg, spreading the beam out so it melted a wider area. The metal giant leaned back, a slow tilt that began to pick up speed with each degree of angle it gained.
Vin scooted back into the cover of the building. Metal screamed as he raced back toward the other end. He heard shouts and the stomping of boots on hard ground. As he’d hoped the guards ran toward the disaster along with the workers. No one saw him cross the street and slip in the nearest door. A repair and storage area took up the entire ground floor. Multiple sets of stairs ran up the rear wall.
Heavy feet stomped down the near set and then more down the far set. Vin ducked behind a disassembled mine crawler, but the security guards sprinted toward the door without looking around. Assuming the near steps led down from the guards’ quarters, Vin slipped around the broken machinery to see who came down the far set.
A short, heavy man descended the third set of stairs followed by three other men, none of them dressed as laborers. Underboss and his crew leaders? They lumbered toward the nearest door. Vin started up the steps they’d come down as soon as they went outside.