by J. Naomi Ay
I looked at Thad. He shook his head. “Hydrate him and let’s get him back to the hospital or your ship or wherever in the hell you want him to go.”
“No synthy,” I said. “Find a vein somewhere and let's get out of here.”
“Are you a doctor, Thad?” Jerry mumbled. He started a drip in a vein in Senya’s abdomen. “Or do you just play one on the vid?”
“You want me to ring Donak right now, Jerry?” Thad asked, raising his voice. “Donak will tell you the same thing. We happen to know a little bit more about this patient than you do.”
“Guys!” I shouted. “Let’s stop arguing and move out!”
“By the way, Dr. Jerry,” Thad continued. “I may not be a doctor but about 10,000 of them on 4 different planets happen to work for me.”
“That’s enough, Thad!” I snapped. “Move out!”
The security team hosted Senya onto an inflatable stretcher and we floated him back to the plane as quickly as our feet would take us.
We had left Rozari and were in route back to Spacebase 37. I hailed the Discovery and advised them of our ETA. I was then patched through to Caroline and I told her that Senya was injured and we would be bringing him into sickbay. She wanted to know the details but I couldn’t even begin to describe it.
Thad pushed open the door to the bridge and came in to sit down next to me.
“How's it going back there?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the stars.
“Peachy,” he replied. “Is this the first time you’ve flown one of our planes?”
“By myself? Yes. It’s awesome. It’s almost like it knows what I want to do before I make a move to do it.”
“Neural networking in the control system,” Thad smiled, “your husband’s idea. You know, when we started to design and permit the SdK Campus, Kalika-hahr looked like the rest of Rozari. Your property on the coast was also nothing but dust.”
“I know,” I said.
“I went to Kalika-hahr with the building inspectors and we marked the corners of all the buildings and we poured the roads and parking lots. I didn't go back there for six months while we waited for permits. When I finally did, the property looked much like it does now. The trees weren't as tall but they were there. The grass and the flowers were there too. The soil was black and fertile. The lake was there. There were birds in the trees and squirrels. I didn't know how it happened.” Thad shrugged. “So I said to Ron, ‘What'd you do to this place? Reverse nuke it or something?’ He told me he was using a special blood meal fertilizer. I believed him."
"Very clever," I remarked drily.
“Shit, Katie. Karupatani is a huge continent, not a business park. Do you have any idea why he's doing this?”
“No,” I replied. “He just says he has to.”
Thad shook his head. "Maybe you can talk Ron into coming over to my dad's place and dumping some stuff on his tomato plants. Bigger tomatoes might make the Admiral less crabby."
"That'd be nice," I snorted. "Especially since I am the brunt of his crabbiness six months out of the year."
"Oh no, you're not," Thad laughed. "He's all sweetness and light with you, his surrogate daughter. I'm the brunt of his crabbiness, especially since my worthless brother lives 9 light years away. Hey, what’s that?” Thad pointed at a light blip in our upper right quadrant.
I adjusted the scans and guessed it to be a spaceplane. Curiously though, it appeared to be on an intercept course with us. I modified my track, switched vectors and sped up. The spaceplane adjusted as well. We were obviously his target.
“You think it's Loman's boys?” Thad asked.
“Or Akan's,” I replied and veered hard to starboard, causing the ship to roll a bit. I heard Jerry swearing from the passenger bay.
“He always yells like that,” I said, noticing that all color had drained from Thad's face. “You get motion sick?”
He nodded. “That's why I never joined Spaceforce, among other reasons, like your totally lame uniforms and lack of good food in the cafeterias."
“Get a barf bag,” I advised. “It's going to be a bit wild from here on out. I'm guessing that Mishnese plane doesn't have cool neural networking control systems. We're going to give them a run for their money and take this baby up to her limits. Strap in back there,” I announced into the passenger cabin. “We're hitting some turbulence.”
Thad used the barf bag.
“Can we just go back to Rozari?” he asked when he came up for air.
“Too late,” I said. “We're closer to SB 37.” I hit the afterburners and we took off at LT +2 on a 342 degree vector. Jerry was cussing all over the place and Thad lost his breakfast, lunch and dinner from the last week.
“How can you do this?” Thad gasped.
“Just watch the course track,” I replied, noting that the Rehnorians were still on intercept. I sped up another +2 which was about the max this plane would go. Spacebase 37 was less than 4 clicks away so we should have been able to get there before I burned up the engines. I shifted course track 180 degrees and though it caused Thad to heave everything else, the Rehnorians were above and behind us now. Then I ran another 180 degrees and headed out in a whole new vector.
“Two more clicks, Thad,” I said. “I'm going to swing under the base and then up and around to the docks. Once we are in the bay, we need to get ready to bolt into the airlock as soon as the pressure light goes out. We're going to have to run for the lifts and go up four floors to the Spaceforce docks. The Discovery will have a shuttle waiting for us. Once we are aboard their shuttle, we will be in the clear. We can move LT -1 in those shuttles and carry enough to blow a couple of those spaceplanes away.”
Thad nodded.
“Just watch the course line.” I pointed at the grid. “Keep focused on that. Don't let your eyes try and follow our movements. Hold on tight!” I yelled to the back. “Here we go!”
Chapter 6
Caroline
As soon as Katie rang, I readied the ER and then headed out to the Spacebase. I waited above the docking bay, pacing by the windows, fretting and worrying. In what seemed like just about forever but was probably less than a few hours, a plane came soaring into the bay at double the speed of everyone else and nearly slammed into the dock before it set down. There was a huge SdK logo on its tail. I ran for the airlock. Jerry and two guys came right through it pushing Ron on a gurney and Jerry holding an IV bag.
“Move Caroline, move!” Katie screamed at me while she and another guy took up behind us. “Get to the lifts.” Just then, I saw another ship approaching the docking bay going nearly as fast as she did and it wasn’t an SdK plane or anything that I recognized.
“Move, move, move!” Katie yelled, pushing us all into the lifts.
We started heading up the four floors but that damn lift kept stopping on every one of them. While some old purple lady with red hair wobbled aboard on the third floor, I glanced over at the gurney, at poor old Dr. Ron all covered in red mud. Jerry had a drip going through his abdomen, which was one of the last resort places for doing a drip in my mind. The door finally opened on the fourth floor and Katie held up her hand and stuck her head out.
“Okay, go!” she said. The purple lady must have thought Katie was talking to her because she took her walker and wobbled out in front of all of us. “Come on, come on,” Katie urged, but Granny must not have understood her because she took her sweet old time. One of those guys that came off of Katie’s plane picked up Granny and carried her out of our way. Her little old legs hung in the air, all three of them waving about like she was riding some kind of bicycle with three pedals.
In the meantime, we all ran out of there, followed by Katie and another guy who had a laser in his hand. Katie had a Glock and a laser, one gun in each hand, on account of she could shoot both at the same time, which is a skill that won her a ribbon on more than one occasion a few years back.
It was smooth sailing as far as I could tell but I didn’t know who we were running from anyway. I found out p
retty quick though because right around the next corner, just before we got to the Spaceforce shuttle docks, there was a whole bunch of those guys. These would be the same guys in the same uniforms swinging the same light swords that kidnapped Katie last time.
I guess I must have just lost it right then because it all started coming back to me now, watching my beau, Elton be sliced in half right there in front of the Golden Arches.
Jerry slapped my face and told me to shut my mouth and duck behind a corner with him and the gurney. The two security guys had their weapons out and Katie and the other guy, who Jerry later told me was Thad, were asking the enemy guys who they were. It seemed pretty obvious to me since it was Rehnorians who got her last time and they were wearing these uniforms.
“What do they want?” I whispered to Jerry.
“They want Ron,” he guessed, even though only Thad seemed to be able to speak their language.
Jerry nodded in the direction of the hallway and then he and I and the gurney slipped away along the security passage and headed toward the shuttle airlock. I heard the hiss of those damn light swords from down the hall and I went shaky and weak and could barely hold the IV bottle in my own hands.
There were some laser blasts and I ducked because one hit the wall right above me. I heard some gun shots, probably from Katie's Glock, and I started to pray to the Good Lord that if He got me out of this mess, I would do everything in my power to transfer off of this damn ship and work in a VA hospital like I had always planned.
We were pushing that gurney right into a stairwell and we weren’t going any further because there were four steps going up and if we even tried to do it, Dr. Ron would go tumbling down in the opposite direction.
“Ron,” Jerry slapped his face, “Ron, I need you to wake up. Come on, buddy. You can do this.” Jerry was slapping him back and forth and finally he got a groan out of Ron and then he started mumbling something but it wasn’t in any language that I ever knew.
“Come on buddy, you need to stand up here.” Jerry was pulling Ron’s arm and hauling him up as best as he could, swinging Ron’s legs off the gurney. I was still holding the IV bottle and between the two of us, we were thinking Ron could put an arm around each of our shoulders and we could half drag, half carry him up the four steps to the next passage.
“Come on, Honey Pie,” I said, hauling him up.
Somehow, we did it and we made it to the passage. Our shuttle driver was standing there smoking a cigarette as if there weren’t a fire fight going on just one deck below. He saw us though and took over for me and we got Ron aboard the shuttle, safe and sound.
We took off and left everyone else. Jerry called Captain Richard and told him about the Rehnorians attacking and as we docked back on the Discovery, which I was ever so glad to return to, two more of our shuttles headed out. We got a new gurney for Ron but he was half-conscious by now and instead, stumbled with me and Jerry toward sickbay. Ron didn’t seem to know where he was or why the heck he was covered in mud but he was sure cussing up a storm because I heard a few English four-letters there among a whole bunch of foreign ones.
We got Ron to sickbay and set him down and I told him, “Honey Pie, you need to be laying down.” I saw by now that he was seriously dehydrated and looked like he lost about thirty pounds. On top of all that, he had these strange cuts all over himself, not to mention the mud. His eyes were mostly grey and not glowing with their own kind of light which was how they always were whenever I had seen him before. The SdK monitor was telling us that he was low on potassium and magnesium and iron and just about everything else because he was down about a liter or more of blood.
“Lay down!” I ordered him because anyone missing a full liter of blood ought to be knocking on death's door not trying to get up. He pushed me away though and stumbled back out the door, so Jerry ran after him, yelling at him to at least drink something. Ron was heading back to the shuttle bay. “Damn!” I cried because I was so foolish that I followed him too and jumped through the airlock before it closed. I had just promised myself to stay on board the ship where it was safe and here I was flying back to that Spacebase where all hell was breaking loose.
Jerry brought a couple bottles of Hydroade and Ron drank them which was probably the only reason he was still standing at that point. It seemed to revive him a bit because by the time we docked again, he was running instead of stumbling.
A whole team of our security people were jumping off the shuttle and I heard from someone's cell that the fight had moved down two floors and into the atrium. On top of that, the base was now on auxiliary power, so all the lifts were dead. There were casualties and they were calling for the medics, which was good because we were already there.
Immediately, outside the airlock, Katie's two security guys were dead as well as one of those Rehnorians. Jerry and I stopped to check them, but only for a moment because Ron had run off.
We chased after him. He headed back to the stairwell, which a short time ago he could hardly climb up. We were all stopped there because the whole damn thing was blown away. Two stories were completely gone with nothing left but a bunch of twisted wire and gaping holes.
“How the hell are we going to get down two floors?” Jerry muttered.
Jerry went with our security team back to the shuttle for ropes and I can tell you, there was no way I was going to climb down a rope through what used to be a stairwell.
“Now what?” I mumbled to Dr. Ron who looked like he was about to jump.
“Close your eyes,” he said. Actually, he just about ordered me. So I did, thinking this was a good sign because he was speaking English again. At any rate, I heard this strange whooshing noise and what sounded like big old wings flapping and the next thing I knew there were claws gripping my arms and I was dropping through the air and screaming my head off. I landed on my two feet right at the bottom of the stairwell. Dr. Ron was crouching next to me but he had gone deathly pale and was breathing hard.
“You okay?” I said and he nodded a bit and started to straighten up, but it was obvious whatever happened had just about knocked him flat again.
There was some more shots fired and I smelled the carbon of those light swords and that all seemed to revive Dr. Ron a little bit because he was up and dragging his ass down the hall toward the fight.
I followed him and discovered one of our guys lying on the floor with a hole in his belly and next to him, a bunch of civilians in various stages of distress. Our guy was coughing up blood but alive enough to tell us there were wounded in the next corridor too. I had sealant in my kit and did my best with his wound, leaving a marker on him so that he could be evacuated as quickly as the next team could get here.
I kept my head low as I ran through the corridors. Gun shots and laser bursts were flying every which way over my head. Dr. Ron was racing ahead of me, not bothering to duck at all and Lord Almighty, he too had one of those fricking, carbon smelling light swords in his own hand. He got to the atrium, way ahead of me, and the door was blocked by a couple of those nasty Rehnorians. I don't know if they were planning to let him in or not but they never got a chance because by the time they were raising their own weapons, Dr. Ron had already taken off their heads. I was screaming my heart out again because there ain't nothing worse than seeing a couple of heads without bodies rolling on the floor in your direction. I was standing there clutching the wall until the rest of our security team came and Jerry with them.
“What the fuck is that?” Jerry said, pointing down at those two heads which were way too close to my feet.
“Heads!” I cried.
He must have figured out right quick that the only reason I was standing there was because I couldn’t move, so he yanked me away and I got my momentum back and started running with him again. We entered the atrium where a whole bunch of our people were crouched with their weapons taking pot shots at people and getting shot back.
Poor old mud-covered Dr. Ron was walking up through the middle of this as if he wa
s wearing some kind of laser proof armor. He was dragging his light sword at his side and he was breathing hard but he had his sights set on this guy who was wearing the fanciest damn uniform I ever saw. The guy was kind of a skinny runt with brown hair going grey but even so, it was plenty obvious that he was in charge because he had his arm around Katie's throat and a gun poked in her ribs. Other guys were surrounding them with their own light swords raised like they were just waiting for poor, sick Dr. Ron to take them on.
Dr. Ron started yelling something and then everyone must have figured this was the time to stop shooting and start paying attention. The whole room went silent except for the nasty guy yelling something back at Dr. Ron. The two of them were going at it in the verbal sense while Ron kept moving forward but he wasn’t dragging his sword any more. He was swinging it and anyone that tried to stop him got themself cut into pieces or vaporized. Ron got about half way across the room when Katie started screaming something too, trying her best to get loose of the bad guy without getting herself shot or sliced. Ron was swaying on his feet and looked to be on the verge of toppling right over but before he did, he raised that damn sword and threw it in the air like a javelin. It lit up the room as it flew right over our heads and landed at Katie's feet.
Chapter 7
Katie
The light sword landed at my feet, scattering Akan's guards. Akan stumbled backward, giving me the chance to break away from him. I jabbed my elbow in his ribs and then whipped around and landed a foot in his solar plexus. He fell back on the floor and his gun clattered to the ground as I reached for the light sword.
It was a lot heavier than I imagined and it throbbed and hummed in my hands. I could barely lift it even if I weren't exhausted from fighting for the last thirty minutes. I heaved it though, with both hands clasped around the hilt and I swung it wildly knowing full well that whatever I hit would be vaporized including my own limbs.