Recon Marines II: Marine's Heiress, The (16 page)

“
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 guards
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.

The thin walls of the building only
muffled the curses and shouts from outside. At the top of the
stairs to the left a door closed off that entire end of the second
floor. The door was unlocked, opening into a plush lounging area
with soft chairs and fancy decorative items that appeared to have
no use. He slipped around the furnishings and through the next
door, finding a bathing room on one side and a kitchen on the
other. The last room abutted the front wall and contained a large
bed on one side and a work desk on the other.

Vin searched the desk and briefly
considered trying to break into the AI sitting in the open. The
device wasn’t as up to date as Vin’s but it was new enough to have
good spying protection. He didn’t have time.

Many medicines required refrigeration
so he went back to the kitchen. The cold storage held only food,
some of it exotic stuff Vin had never eaten. He left the suite of
rooms and jogged toward the door to the right of the stairs.
Through it he found a hallway that split a series of offices that
connected to smaller living quarters. The very last room had the
universal red cross of a medical office.

Vin burst through the door, knowing by
now someone had noticed the sabotage on the mine rigging. The
medical suite had four rooms, one with treatment tables, one for
the doctor to sleep in though it looked unused, one set up for
surgery, and finally the last one with supplies. Vin searched the
cold storage first and found many things Emma could use but none
labeled to fight unknown alien infections. Just as he decided to
search elsewhere, he saw a thin box pushed to the back of the
bottom shelf. He knelt down and pulled it out. When he opened the
lid, he found four small bottles surrounded by molded
cushions.

He plucked one out and read the
chemical name of a powerful antiviral drug. He’d been inoculated
with it years ago. Voices called out commands outside the thin
wall, ordering a search. Vin returned the bottle to its slot and
closed up the case. He slipped it inside his armor, against his
stomach where it wouldn’t get broken. He left the second floor with
more caution than when he entered. The scattered equipment again
provided cover. Near the far door someone had flung an oil stained
coat on a table alongside a pair of ragged gloves.