Authors: Pauline Baird Jones
“This is not an acceptable level of care for these girls. They deserve better. You owe them better. You owe them contact with their families—”
He brushed her comments aside as if they were a fly he was shooing away. “You are a doctor.”
It sounded like an accusation, like she was guilty of hiding something from them. Of course she was trying to hide everything about herself that she could. That’s why she’d hesitated to act initially. It went against her grain to give him any information about her capabilities, but it was still a relatively minor piece of information. She had bigger, much more dangerous secrets. Why did this one matter? It didn’t show on his stone face, but she felt it, knew it. All kinds of alarms went off inside her head.
“EMT training is SOP for my people.” She used the acronyms on purpose. The statement rang with truth because it was sort of the truth. She’d taken the training, even though she didn’t need to. She did a lot of things so the wrong people wouldn’t know what she could do.
He arched his brows. “EMT?”
“Emergency medical training. Babies tend to arrive when least expected, i.e. emergency.”
“SOP?”
“Standard operating procedure. That means something that is
always
done. Everyone gets the training because we don’t know who might need it.”
He didn’t believe her. She didn’t blame him. She’d had to
be
a doctor to deal with the delivery. If Doc hadn’t been there, mom and baby would have died. That’s why she was so pissed. Even if Bana had midwife training, she couldn’t have handled that birth. What she didn’t understand was why did he care, why did it change things? Was death by Conan off the table just because she was a doctor? Or had he put it to the top of the list again? She never liked not knowing her options.
“Was there something else you wanted to say? Because I need to sleep. In case you didn’t notice I was up all night and I’m whacked.”
He
so
wanted to say something, he vibrated with it. Last night had been her deadline, and the night hadn’t gone the way she planned either. They’d both have to deal.
He studied her, his usual frown pulling his dark brows together. Doc let him look. She didn’t have to pretend to be tired. The bags under her eyes were so big, even she could see them. He gave a short, sharp nod and stepped out of her way. Doc started toward her tent, but a rogue flow of air stopped her in her tracks. The wind whispered out of the tree line, lifting and swirling the dead leaves at her feet into a mini vortex. It rose to the height of her knees, circling her a few times, before it moved on across the clearing. She looked up. Studied the sky. Were the clouds moving in a curve?
She tipped her head to one side, then the other. Extended her arms so the air could travel across her skin. It was still hot and heavy with moisture. The heat had been beyond bitch levels since her descent into this primitive hell. Maybe there was a reason for it. She turned her hand, trying to catch small variations in movement and temperature, trying to home in on the core of her unease.
Exhaustion was a dead-weight on her concentration. She rubbed her face. Put her feelers out and started processing what was different today from the other days she’d been here. Was it hotter? Was it possible to get hotter? The wind was heavy with moisture, depositing more than it dried as it passed over her skin. It wasn’t just the intense heat. There was something else, something she hadn’t felt since Mexico. The Yucatan Peninsula. Hurricane season. Then, a storm was supposed to come ashore as a tropical storm, but the bitch ballooned into a cat three just before slamming into the coast. Doc had been impressed and that wasn’t easy to do. If the Major hadn’t kept her on a short leash, she might have become a storm chaser. It was a total rush.
If one of those bad girls was heading toward them, they wouldn’t be chasing it. It would be chasing them.
“How far are we from a coastline?”
Conan stepped into her bubble, like that would help him see what she saw. “Why?”
“Storm coming.”
“We are overdue for rain.” He sounded more curious than concerned.
This wasn’t Earth. Storms here might not be the same, might not feel the same. So the fine hairs on her skin were sticking straight up and her brain was playing “Bad Moon Rising.” It didn’t have to mean what it felt like it meant.
She looked around. They used small soft-sided bottles for their moonshine, kept them in baskets by the dwarves’ table. She crouched by the basket. The bottles were all deformed. Conan’s shadow fell over her.
“Why are they shaped like that?”
“Pressure’s dropping and fast. Where I’m from, that would be very bad.” She stood up and looked at him. “Are we close to the coast? Is there ocean out there? A large body of water?”
“Yes.” He nodded in the direction of the curving clouds. “That direction. We often get storms from that direction. They are not so bad.”
Doc considered the situation. If the encampment got slammed, it would be a good teaching moment for Conan. On the other hand, if Conan had to evacuate his happy campers to his ship, that put a huge energy signature up there for a ship with feelers out. It was practically sky writing. Way better than a bread crumb. If the
Doolittle
got close, they’d be able to pick up her personal locater.
“This one is going to be a very big storm. You need to get your people out of here.”
His brows arched a bit mockingly. “
My
people?”
“Well, I think we both know I’d be an unstable element on board that ship you claim you don’t have. Besides, I like storms, the bigger the better.”
Conan snorted. He looked up at the wide, blue sky for a pointedly long moment, before returning his skeptical gaze to hers. “A storm?”
“A kick your ass all over the forest storm,” she corrected.
“Now you predict the weather?”
Doc shrugged. “Don’t believe me. Just wait—though while I was waiting, I’d nail down anything I didn’t want getting blown into next week. Or washed away—depending on how close we are to the coast. Storm surge is more of a bitch than I am.”
She felt, rather than saw, doubt hit him. She was playing him, but she was playing him with the truth as she knew it. She could be wrong, but wrong wouldn’t cost her anything she hadn’t already lost.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to check for light leaks.” She used the slang for taking a nap almost absently—an indication she was mainlining her military training.
She turned and walked away. She’d wanted to stalk, but that was Conan’s gig, not hers. Thankfully Bana wasn’t in the tent. Doc stared at her table, too tired to climb up and lay down. She frowned. It had been a long, difficult night, but that was SOP. She shouldn’t be
this
tired. She’d worked three straight days and nights on the
Doolittle,
after almost getting blown up, and had enough left in her to get hot and bothered over Hel. She was on short rations and had been pushing herself pretty hard. Lots of stress, too, but stress was her mother’s milk. She fed it to her demons and got sharpened acuity in the exchange.
This was more than exhaustion. Doctor kicked on, assessing symptoms. Her head felt thick and heavy, like her neck couldn’t hold it up anymore. Pulse was shallow and fast. Her throat felt dry and scratchy. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the butt if she were getting a cold?
She dug into her first aid kit and found a thermometer. While she waited the requisite time, she further parsed her symptoms. She removed the thermometer and studied it.
Crap.
102? It could be a cold or an earth-based flu, but she wasn’t in the Milky Way. What if she’d caught the Garradian Influenza? It was a nasty illness that was common among the indigenous peoples of the galaxy. For them it ranged from mild as a head cold to relatively severe—not unlike an Earth influenza outbreak. Since the expedition had different antibodies, it was bad for them. Six of their people had come down with it and all had died inside a week. Symptoms started out somewhat mild, but then progressed into a malaria-like fever and chills. All six had gone through a symptom-free period. Everyone thought the worse was over, then found out it wasn’t.
Fever had spiked again and their lungs began filling with fluid. Death had followed within twenty-four hours from resumption of symptoms. Doc felt a pang for Conan’s people. The brides and the baby should be all right. They were indigenous to the galaxy, but Conan and his boys were as at risk as the Earth expedition. They had people working on an immunization and a cure, but it had only manifested in the last month. No one was sure why. There’d been significant contact between the expedition and the people of the galaxy for the last two years with no discernable ill effects.
It was possible the Gadi knew why, but if they did that information was stuck in the information screen created by the traitors among the expedition and the Gadi. Or maybe Mother Nature had PMS. It didn’t matter. If Doc had contracted the Garradian influenza, death now dominated her short list of options.
* * * * *
She was sleeping on a
table
. Vidor didn’t know whether to laugh or curse. The woman refused to get into one of their beds, even when alone. She slept and still she managed to fight against him.
Seeing her like this, with her face relaxed in slumber, made him realize how much she hid when she was awake. She looked younger, almost vulnerable. He recalled the first time he’d watched her sleep. Four days—such a short time for so much to change. There was before and there was after. Would he go back to before if he could? He did not have to think about it. Even suspecting that she was the one, he would not change anything.
Tonight he would claim her. He’d searched for, and he’d found a law that allowed him to bypass the naming conventions and claim her as his wife. He was glad to have found legal precedent, but he and Bana knew he’d have claimed her without it. He would do what he needed to do to secure his people’s future, and he would have her as his wife. She could not be allowed to return to her people, but there were other places they could live. To have her, he’d give up everything.
She would not react well to this claim. Now that he knew who she was, he could see how she’d done what she did to their people, though thinking about how it had happened made his head hurt. How could she be here and be then, too?
If not for the storm, he’d have given her one more day to choose. And if she’d been sharing their food, he could have used it as his medium for the compound that would make her easier to manage. He studied her belongings. Her bag was open, some of the contents tumbled onto a chair, as if she’d been looking for something. There was a box with red lines crossing and some packets of, he suspected, the food she’d been eating instead of theirs.
He took care removing the cloth Bana had given him. The compound was absorbed through the skin and very fast acting. And it took very little contact for a satisfactory result. Keeping the salve side away from his skin, he rubbed the cloth across several of the tumbled items, careful not to shift or move anything. It would be like her to notice. He also rubbed the top and sides of the red crossed box. He made no sign that might alert her to his presence. When he finished, he used as much care as he stowed the cloth.
He should leave, but the compulsion to look at her kept him there. He would have preferred her conscious compliance, but that would come in time. He fought the longing to run his finger down the side of her face. Soon he would touch her where he wanted and when he wanted.
He left as silently as he’d come, meeting Bana’s questioning look with a slight nod.
He keyed his transmission device. “Evacuate the compound.”
There was a single flash and everyone but he and the woman were transported to his ship.
In an interesting twist, Bana had agreed that the storm incoming might be serious. And if it turned out to be less than predicted, well, there was nothing wrong with some private time with his woman before they left the planet behind for good.
* * * * *
Hel saw his scanners light up and knew he’d run out of time. This wasn’t an anomalous energy signature. This was a whole ship, parked planet-side on Feldstar. Transport signatures followed, then it cloaked again. They’d dropped shields to transport. Were they leaving? Was Delilah among those transported to the ship? Would he be able to see her personal locator through those shields? He triggered the secure channel to Halliwell, even as he set up a hyper jump to the planet. One must play the game.
“General, I believe I’ve found something interesting. I’m sending it to you in a secure data burst.”
“Our people saw it, too, Leader, but thank you for confirming our sighting. We’re sending a squadron to investigate.”
So the
Doolittle
wasn’t moving? That was unexpected. Or was it? The General might be concerned about Gadi ship movements and war worries. Whatever the reason, it gave Hel an edge,
if
he found Delilah. The smaller ships lacked the scanning ability of the
Doolittle
.
“Then I won’t send my people there.” When Delilah disappeared, Hel wanted the General to have no one to blame but the original kidnappers. “Though you have only to say the word and I will send them in.”
“Thank you.” Did the good General sound relieved to believe he was backing off a rescue?
Hel missed the video link. It told him more than voice only, but Hel couldn’t afford to let the General know Hel was out in the galaxy as Kalian.
“I’ll wait for further news—good I hope.” Hel cut the connection. He would arrive well ahead of the
Doolittle’s
squadrons. He wasn’t worried about them. If this was where Delilah had been taken, it was possible the hostile ship was preparing to leave. He was confident he could track them now, but that would take more time. There was a point he’d have to break off the search and return to his flagship. And if his timing was off, he might be returning to a Gadi civil war. This was why he felt anxious, not the thought of losing Delilah. If she did not return to her people, she would not succeed in her mission.