Carig was his most outspoken opponent. And he’d lost a son in the final conflict with the Dusan. He blamed General Halliwell and the expedition for igniting the smoldering conflict to a conflagration. He didn’t like suspecting the man, but facing hard realities went with the position. If Carig had managed to eliminate both him and the General, he’d have been better positioned to promote his agenda. The expedition had a strong position on the outpost, but if the Gadi turned against them, their ejection from the galaxy was inevitable. The Gadi outnumbered them in every way that mattered.
Hel had considered the move himself, many times during the negotiations of the past two years. What his people didn’t know, what they couldn’t know, was that the Garradian Key had gone to Earth. Hel had hoped for a return when Halliwell and the Doolittle did, but it seemed their scientists still thought they could figure out the Garradian technology without the Key’s help. The Key was about more than access to the outpost. Miri, the Garradian Key holder, was both a legend and symbol for their people. Many among his people believed the peace would not, could not, last without the Key’s return. If the Gadi ejected the Earth expedition and went to war, they lost all hope for a return.
And there were those in the galaxy who could and would use this to foment further instability in the galaxy for their own gain. Hel could not allow this to happen.
There was a slight chance the attack had not been instigated by his people. He had information of disaffected groups throughout the galaxy. He did not understand it. All had benefited from the defeat of the Dusan. Gadi efforts were focused on restoring order and freedom in the galaxy, not conquest. Unfortunately too many people didn’t know how to function in peaceful times. The Earth delegation had been useful in diverting some of that aggression away from the Gadi, but if it appeared they were close to gaining access to further technology on the Kikk outpost, then he’d have to act—assuming he survived this “rescue.”
Footsteps drew closer, heavy booted ones. The lights this duo carried were larger and brighter than ones carried by the first arrivals to the scene. They played across the main blast area, once again highlighting that part of the ceiling that had collapsed in the area closest to the explosion. They made no effort to approach him, nor did he see any sign of Gadi healers in the rescue party.
The part of the ceiling still supported by the pillar looked more unstable than his last view of it. Debris pressed up against it, including a large sister pillar, trying to bring it down.
“This isn’t good.” The voice was male, with that military inflection so typical of the Earth warriors, a combination of brisk and pragmatic.
Hel was forced to agree with his understatement.
“If that pillar gives way—” the other Earth man stopped.
He didn’t have to continue. It was clear a collapse would trigger a wider collapse of the ceiling—something that would make survival problematic for all those beneath it. He waited to hear the men suggest a general retreat. It was a reasonable choice. Why risk more lives in a dangerous rescue?
“What if you tagged that?” A third light traced the length of the problem pillar. “Transport it somewhere else?”
This voice was her voice, but it wasn’t just the unusual and elegant tone that intrigued him, though that did help. He had a weakness for unusual and elegant. She stood in shadow, separate from the two men and her voice, while confident, wasn’t assertive. It reminded him of jelem, the inner guide. Earth people called it a conscience, or sometimes, the voice in their heads.
“Can something that big be transported? And where would they put it?” The Earth engineer didn’t look at the woman, just continued to study the problem as if she were a voice in his head.
The other man was asking someone at the other end of the radio those same questions.
“Not into space,” she said. “Don’t want to litter an ally’s orbit. See if they can find a large area dirt side, one without life signs or structures.”
And then she turned, as if the problem no longer concerned her, her light playing across the ground. That light started to track his direction when there was yet another interruption.
Two more figures approached, their light falling on her like a blessing. It was Morticia. She was covered with blast dust and there were black marks, and streaks that might have been blood, on her face. He couldn’t tell if it was hers. Despite her general disarray, she projected an aura of calm competence, and no hint of that lethal quality that had caught his interest. This woman had many facets to her, like a rare gemstone.
“Corporal?” She lit them up with her light, but avoided hitting them in the eyes. “Is there a problem?”
“She said she wants to help.”
It was one of the female servers. Hel frowned. Why would a server be offering to help?
“Are you trained in healing?”
Part of him was surprised Morticia knew the right terminology, the rest of him wanted to provide the answer. Of course this girl wasn’t trained to heal.
The young woman’s chin lifted, as if the question puzzled her. For the space of several breaths the two women stared at each other.
Morticia smiled.
And hit the girl in the chin with her fist.
* * * * *
The young corporal managed to catch the server, despite his shock.
“Ma’am?”
Doc pulled up her pant leg and extracted a knife from a holster strapped to her lower leg. “Lower her to the floor.”
Her tone of command had the desired effect on her unwilling assistant, and he did as he was told. Doc knelt next to her and slid the knife under the edge of the girl’s top, cutting it open in a quick, fluid motion. She pushed back the sides and the corporal inhaled sharply.
“Son of a bitch. I’ll call EOD—”
Doc studied the timer on the bomb as her brain kicked into a predictable kaleidoscope of higher gears. Despite the surge of data, there was a precision to it, as if her brain were a Swiss clock on steroids. EOD—Explosive Ordinance Detail—wouldn’t make it. She had maybe a minute to defuse it. The good news, a “Doc minute” was more than enough.
“Shine your light on that for me while you make that call.”
The corporal did as directed, directing his beam on the woman’s chest. “How did you know?”
“Know?” Her tone was absent as she studied the pattern of wires and explosives. It felt like time elongated and slowed, though she knew it wasn’t possible.
“That she was wired.”
“It was a woman who set off the first bomb. The insurgents in Iraq used to do that, wait for help to arrive, then send in round two.” In the shifting patterns in her mind, the right one came to the front.
“Oh.” Silence. “But how did you know?”
“Her eyes were totally dead. She was probably a Dusan ‘companion’ prior to the war. They were programmed to do anything they’re told.” Her mind tried to jump on the distraction and take her into this unhappy place, but it was easy to resist with the timer ticking down to the Gadi equivalent of zero. She felt no fear. One had to dread death to fear it.
“Even to blow herself up?” The young soldier sounded shocked.
“They probably didn’t tell her that part.” Doc’s tone was dry. What she found even more disturbing than using these women—captured when the Dusan invaded their worlds and turned into slaves—as tools. Their C-4 was wired into the bomb. Like secondary explosions, questions without answers tried to erode her focus on the task at hand.
Behind her in an odd, background drama, the problem pillar disappeared in a transport wash. The two men turned to leave and then spotted Doc and the explosives. One of them started to curse. Doc ignored them, her attention on the woman and the bomb. Doc didn’t fight against the multiplying thought streams, just let them spin around the core concern, her focus never straying from the heart: the bomb wires.
“How much time, ma’am,” her assistant asked, a slight tremor to his voice.
“About thi
rty seconds.”
The two men cursed again, but didn’t move.
“Where the foxtrot is EOD?” one of them snapped.
“Do you know how to defuse a bomb, ma’am?” The corporal’s tremor was worse.
The question was a good one, though a bit late in the asking. She found the wire she wanted, tracing it with her thoughts as the timer moved closer to detonation.
“No, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.”
The spurt of laughter from the men eased external and internal tension. Doc channeled the positive energy as she eased her knife under a wire and severed the connection. She cut the other side, lifting the detonator clear with five seconds to spare. She didn’t use the spare time congratulating herself.
“Hold that.” She handed the detonator to the corporal. “Need to check for secondary triggers.”
“A Holiday Inn Express? Last night, ma’am?” Relief colored the young man’s voice.
She smiled and shrugged, as she let her whirling thoughts move on to the next problem. One clear thought emerged from the clutter: when she’d planted the idea of transporting wounded Gadi to the Doolittle, she’d thought it would be safer. The attack had happened here. It was reasonable to assume the threat was here. But the presence of C-4 removed that certainty. She frowned. Though it couldn’t have come from the Doolittle. It had been out of galaxy for the last two years. Still person or persons had been either selling military supplies and/or conspiring with someone among the Gadi. The secondary assassins who’d come after the bomb weren’t from Earth, though she didn’t know if they were Gadi.
“You’re a pistol, ma’am.”
She half grinned, even as her brain produced more areas of concern. The bombing had to have been planned to foment more distrust between the expedition and the Gadi. The conspirators hadn’t meant for this bomb to be defused. Their investigators could have identified the C-4 from the residue, but would the Gadi have allowed them dirt side for that investigation if there’d been two explosions? And would the expedition have sent anyone—risking more expedition lives?
Doc had a feeling that if the Leader and the general were among the dead, the answer wouldn’t just be no, but hell no. And if the General had died on Gadi soil? Bad enough that they’d lost people here, but in the confusion following the loss of the General, who would have assumed command? It would be useful to know chain of command—civilian and military.
A transport wash flashed in front of her, and when it was gone, six tough-looking men with strange gear stood there.
EOD had arrived to take charge of the bomb. Doc hoped they didn’t “accidentally” lose it.
Chapter Three
Doc rubbed her eyes, but it didn’t help any more than the last thousand or so times she’d tried it. Lieutenant Simmons, who looked a bit wavy around the edges, waited patiently for Doc to respond to her request. It felt like being back in medical school, which was kind of comforting in a weird way, though she couldn’t explain why or how.
“I feel like I didn’t sleep.” Doc admitted this with a rueful chuckle.
“You haven’t slept, ma’am. Sorry.”
“Oh.” So she felt like she was supposed to feel.
“Can I get you some go juice, ma’am?”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Coffee does seem indicated.” She tried the eye rub thing again, with the same result. “Where did you say I need to go?”
Doc had some experience with blast injuries so semi-autopilot was possible despite her fatigue. It was also not that dangerous to her patients, since she was being given the lower-tier patients.
Simmons paused in mid-point. “Shouldn’t you get dressed, ma’am?”
Doc had used part of her curtailed break for a two-minute shower, which hadn’t helped as much as she’d hoped. She looked down at her tee shirt and military issue drawers, exposed by the open bathrobe robe.
“It’s laundry day. I’m out of ABUs, and I don’t have scrubs.” Scrubs weren’t issued to diplomats, even diplomats who were doctors. She pulled the sides together and loosely knotted the ties, staring down at her bare feet without a sense of recognition. She needed to get tired like this more often. They were just a whimper in the distance.
“I’ll see if I can scare something up for you. And put someone on your laundry problem.”
Doc blinked. “Thank you.”
After another period of inactivity on Doc’s part, Simmons pointed toward a partially opened doorway.
“In there, ma’am. Your patient?” She held out a medical file.
“Right.” Doc flipped it open, registering the details as she made her feet move toward the opening. The patient had been thrown by the blast, but lacked the telltale “butterfly” pattern in his chest x-ray that would indicate blast lung, a good thing, since it was usually fatal. No sign yet of abdominal or brain injuries, though he was being monitored for mild concussion and possible tertiary injury. Sutures required on various lacerations. No sign of infection. Vitals good.
Doc shrugged on her doctor façade and repeated in her head, “You’re doing as well as can be expected.” Didn’t stumble over the words, but she hadn’t tried the sentence out loud yet. Good thing she could talk the talk with her eyes closed. Now all she needed to do was walk the walk. Though better to do both with her eyes open. A sleepwalking doctor didn’t inspire confidence. She straightened her shoulders, shook her head to clear it—that just made the hallway do a one-eighty—and pushed the door wide enough to allow her to pass through it.
“Hello.” The generic greeting was necessary, since she didn’t know what part of the day it was. “I’m…”
She was halfway to the bed when she realized the patient was “her” guy from the reception. She felt a tsunami of un-doctor-like pleasure at the sight of him, followed by a comparable wave of curiosity. What was it about this man that made her long-dormant hormones come online? In romance novels, the women feared the flood of feeling, but Doc only feared them. Feeling sparked her curiosity. Curiosity kept them busy, so curiosity was good.
“Morticia.” His voice was rich and faintly accented. “I am pleased to see you are well.”
The theme from The Addams Family started to play in the void inside her head. It always did when someone called her that. A smile tugged at the edges of her mouth, further eroding her doctor persona. She should have been analyzing and cataloging this new experience, and maybe she was, somewhere inside her head.
He’d said her name almost as if he savored the sound of it, while his eyes revealed he was savoring the sight of her. His gaze peeled back who she tried to be and exposed someone she’d never met. She wanted to analyze that, too, but he dominated the landscape inside her head. Her feet carried her forward, without help from her quiescent brain. A small flicker of self-preservation tried to wave a warning flag, but curiosity trumped that, too, as a flood of interesting and new sensations flooded through her.
Her hand was still extended for a professional handshake, but when both his hands closed around it, professional went missing in action. The feel of his hands around hers cut through the fog of exhaustion with the precision of a laser lance. There was heat, pleasure, a feeling of unfurling, as if her insides were creaking open after a long sleep. Maybe she did like to be touched, at least by this man. That took her full circle to, why him?
Skin slid against skin as he turned it to find the pulse beating at her wrist. Holding her gaze with his, he pressed his mouth to the pulse point. Her core body temperature increased. So did respiration. Logically she knew both were side effects of desire, but logic couldn’t tell her why. She didn’t like not knowing why, but she liked this. Interesting.
“Morticia.” He breathed the word against her skin, making her pulse skitter.
“That’s,” she had to swallow once before she could finish, “not my name.”
She knew the nickname came from her dark hair and pale skin, and that it wasn’t meant to be kind. She bothered people. She bothered herse
lf, sometimes. Just because she wasn’t normal, that didn’t mean she didn’t know what it was.
He looked up, his head at a mathematical angle that delivered maximum impact to her solar plexus. His precision was impressive. Breathing became difficult.
“It’s not?”
She shook her head, the movement languorous. “Morticia’s a kind of nickname.” Her voice didn’t sound like hers. And it was unlike her to be so imprecise. Or to sound so dreamy.
“What is your name?”
His hands still stroked hers, the pads of his fingers abrasive in a good way. It didn’t feel real. The words and feelings were right, but she was wrong. She tightened her grip on the medical file to keep it from sliding out of her weakened grip. For a few seconds she couldn’t remember her name, but then it emerged from the fog of sensation, not unlike a lighthouse beam in a storm.
“Delilah.” She hadn’t meant to say that one. No one called her Delilah, though she did have much in common with her namesake. It was a bad idea to trust her.
“Delilah.” His gaze fastened on her mouth, heat flaring in his eyes when she used her tongue to moisten her lips in a way that lacked planning, but filled a deep-seated need. For the first time in her life, she felt like a Delilah.
She wanted him to kiss her. She had since the first moment of seeing him. He’d be good at it. She knew it, felt it in a place deep inside, a place she thought nature had forgotten to give her. It was a shock to realize Delilah had been dormant inside her waiting for the wrong moment to make an appearance—not unlike the Bible version.
Warmth pulsed through her and with it a longing that had nothing to do with doctoring and everything to do with being a woman. Had she ever been a woman? She kept her backbone straight, though it was a near thing. She wanted to lean in and inhale his scent and feel his warmth wash through her in slow waves.
As if he heard her thoughts, his mouth curved into a smile that threatened the structural integrity of her knees. Her bare toes tried to curl into the floor. His gaze found them, then traveled up her ankles, lingered on legs exposed by the robe, took their time passing by the gap left by the loosely knotted tie, before returning to study her face.
Girl Gone Nova Page 3