Smuggler's Dilemma (28 page)

Downtown Coolidge was smaller than Puskar Stellar but its layout belied its founder's roots in the naval hierarchy. All of the buildings were neatly organized and spotlessly clean. Some sort of central planning board had probably made sure all buildings met the standard. The white structures with large glass panels were separated by well-manicured green spaces. For someone who had spent most of their time in space, it was as impressive as it was beautiful.

The cab dropped me in front of one of the buildings. I pushed my way through a swinging door and walked up to an information console.

I need information on Tabitha Masters. She should be arriving on the hospital ship, Hope
.

I probably didn't need to stand at the console. My other option was to stand in the atrium talking to myself.

Liam Hoffen, access granted. Tabitha Masters arrived forty hours ago having been transferred from the Hope
, my AI informed.

Locate Tabby, I want to see her
, I said.

A translucent blue vapor trail led to a bank of elevators. My heart raced, she hadn't contacted me. Did that mean she hadn't regained consciousness, or did she not want to see me for some reason? I steeled myself. We'd get through this no matter what.

As I exited the elevators, I was intercepted by a middle-aged woman in a naval uniform.

"Mr. Hoffen?" she asked politely. She had, no doubt, been alerted to my presence when I signed into the information console.

"Yes, I'm here to see Tabby Masters," I said.
Duh
, I thought to myself. It's not like I was here to deliver pizza.

"I'm Sonia Lemaigre, I've been caring for Tabitha. I'm glad to have been here when you arrived. Could we talk?"

I accepted her offered hand. I recognized the golden comet pin on the collar of her grey shirt, which designated her as Lieutenant Commander.

"Certainly, Commander, and please call me Liam." I'd learned that it was appropriate to shorten titles in greetings.

She led me into a small room with several comfortable chairs. She sat on the edge of one and gave me an earnest look, then laid her hand on my knee.

"Liam. Tabitha is at the beginning of a very long journey. A journey that can be made easier with friends." She stumbled over what sounded like rehearsed lines. "May I speak plainly?"

"Please," I encouraged her.

"I understand that you and she are very close. We have a lot of experience with recovering veterans. Tabitha's personality profile tells us that she will adapt to her body's new configuration over time. What she will struggle with the most is rejection from her family group. Fair or not, Mr. Hoffen, your response is critical. To say it more plainly; if you're not in this for the long haul, it would be better if you simply turned around and left right now."

Blood rushed to my face and I started to stand involuntarily. Commander Lemaigre didn't rise with me, but sat, passively watching. For reasons not entirely clear to me, I wanted to punch her.

"I want to see Tabby," I said through clenched teeth. Annoyingly, she returned my stare with that same passive expression. I felt like she was studying me.

"Your anger is understandable, Mr. Hoffen. What happened to Tabitha is a tragedy. Please understand, you and I need to make sure we don't compound that tragedy. Perhaps you should take a few days to think about this. We have counseling available to help you. I'm not sure you're in any state to see her yet."

I found it hard to hear her words through the rushing sound in my ears, but I now recognized that she stood between me and Tabby. I needed to get hold of myself or I'd be locked out. I exhaled, sat back in the chair and focused on relaxing my hands.

After a few minutes I felt like I had recovered enough to speak. "I do not need a couple of days to figure out who Tabby is to me." I was surprised at how angry I sounded.

"Who is that, Mr. Hoffen?" she asked.

She had me there. I didn't have a word or single phrase that would adequately describe how I felt about Tabby. "Look. I don't know what you're looking for here. I don't have everything worked out, but if I know one thing, it's that I will not abandon Tabby."

"For her sake, I hope that's the case. By stepping back into her life right now, you are in a unique position to help her through this transition. If you get cold feet and abandon her, it will have a devastating impact on her life," she said.

"Will you let me see her now?"

"Yes, of course. She is currently asleep, but she has been asking about you."

It peeved me to learn that my attempts to contact Tabby had been blocked, but Lieutenant Commander Lemaigre was up and moving. I wasn't about to say something that could jeopardize me being able to see Tabby.

"She's right in here," she said, gesturing to a room with a wide door that was mostly closed. She stood back, making no effort to enter the room. If she thought I was lacking courage, she was nuts. I'd spent several days with Tabby while she was in the tank.

I pushed the door open and slipped into the room. I'd expected to see tubes and vid screens everywhere, but instead there was just Tabby, lying under covers, slightly elevated, with her head on a pillow. If not for her bald head that was just now growing a fine layer of fuzz, I could easily imagine that nothing had happened.

I took off my coat and holster, laying them on a chair. I kicked off my shoes and removed my prosthetic foot. From experience, I knew that her stumps would be almost fully healed at this point. They might be tender if she'd started working with a prosthetic, but I knew what I needed to do. I hopped to the side of her bed and lay on top of the covers, on her right side, where her arm was missing.

She stirred, but didn't awaken. I snuggled in next to her and laid my arm across her chest, like I'd done so often before. Unconsciously, she tipped her head toward mine and I felt the anxiety of the last several weeks finally start to drain from my body.

LEVELING THE FIELD

"Hoffen, wake up. You're drooling on me." Tabby's voice was raspy, like a loud whisper.

The smell of the hospital's sanitizer struck me first and then her face came into view. My back hurt from lying in a single, uncomfortable position all night. As soon as I adjusted slightly, I rolled off the bed and landed on the floor.

"Frak," I said. The pain helped my head clear and I picked myself up off the floor, grabbing my prosthetic. "How long have you been awake?"

"A couple of hours," she said. She was studying my face. "Did you really mean what you said to Sonia?"

I was sure I'd never heard that name before. "Who's Sonia?"

"Doctor Lemaigre."

"How do you know what we talked about?" I said.

"It's part of my therapy. She recorded your conversation."

"That doesn't sound legal."

"She said that I was going to have a hard enough time dealing with my condition and I needed to know who was in my corner. You don't need to stay, Liam. I'd like more for your life than spending it taking care of me."

"That one was free, Tabby. You won't get another one," I said.

"What was free?"

"Don't play dumb, Masters. I don't want you questioning me on this. I'm here. You need to deal with it."

"Do you know what's weird?" she asked in a softer voice.

"Tell me."

"I knew you'd come."

I nodded. I didn't know what to say.

"Where are you with rehabilitation?" When I lost my foot, they'd given me a small amount of instruction and a subroutine for my AI. Otherwise, I'd been left entirely on my own.

"I spend a few hours a day with a prosthetic arm. It's hard to control and of course I can't feel anything, but they say I'll be able to pick things up once I get the hang of it."

"Any word from your family?" I asked. Something in the back of my mind suggested that her grandfather lived on Mars. I had an ulterior motive. Her family had real money and I hoped there was some possibility they'd pay for at least one of the optional surgeries.

"I've been exchanging comms with Dad. He's talking about making a trip out here," she said.

"I'd heard your Dad had holed up with a bunch of the refinery staff. Is he doing all right?"

"Yes. He wanted me to pass along his thanks for the warning."

"We got lucky," I said.

"You make luck, Hoffen." She smiled at me and it melted my heart. "But you have weird pillow talk."

"Yeah, sorry."

"So, I'm sure you already know that I've been discharged from the service," she said.

"That's the rumor."

"And that the Navy won't pay for reconstructive surgeries?" she asked.

"I'd heard that."

"Well, if you're thinking my family will come up with the money, you'd be wrong there. My dad would, if he actually had money, but Grandpa still owns the corporation and there's no way that's going to happen."

I nodded. I wasn't sure where she was going with all of this.

"And you're good with this?" she asked, deliberately forcing me to look down at her. "We can't have a normal relationship. Best case is me in an arc-jet chair with one good arm."

"Are you going Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on me?" I asked. If there was something I recognized, it was when she was feeling insecure.

"What?"

"You heard me." I was surprised at how instantly pissed off I'd become.

"How sweet. Your first quarrel." A heavyset, older woman entered the room. "No doubt you were about to work out your angst about living together with long-term disabilities. Let's just put a pin in that and do something useful. For that, I need this one to leave and not come back until after 1800." She jabbed a finger at my chest.

I looked at Tabby questioningly, whose eyebrows were raised and whose mouth formed a perfect 'O.'

"Off with you. You can come back at dinner and get all self-righteous and ignore the reality of your new lives together. Or, maybe you'll figure it out and go back to making googly faces," she continued. "And if this one gets to work, maybe she can pick up a cup and show you what a good girl she is."

I must have given some clue that I was about to go off on this little goblin, because Tabby stopped me.

"Go, Liam. I've got this," she said.

I leaned in and gave Tabby a long kiss. When we separated, I gave Ms. Troll a once over and stalked out of the room. Surprisingly, she didn't toss any new jabs my way, so I was able to shrug it off by the time I made it to street level.

One of the advantages of the highly structured downtown was access to mass transit. I had taken a cab from the MAG-L terminal to arrive here and when I asked for another, my AI recognized my mistake and projected a path to a public transportation hub. It was a fifty meter walk from the hospital's front door to the pickup point of a four-seater arc-jet ground vehicle. I waited less than thirty seconds for the shiny, blue translucent vehicle to arrive. I sat down next to a Navy Lieutenant, no doubt on her way to the terminal on assignment. In the city, people didn't make small talk while on the public transit system, so we exchanged smiles and then politely ignored each other.

The four-seater dropped us at the main terminal, which served both the space elevator and the MAG-L system. After a short twenty-minute wait, I boarded the train destined for Puskar Stellar.

"Nick, I'm free for a few hours and headed back to Puskar," I said. He wouldn't answer if he was busy.

A short communications delay alerted me to the fact that Nick was likely up at the warehouse.

"Jack and I are on our way back with the second load of domes. Can we pick you up on our way through?" he asked.

"Sure," I said. "I'm going to run by Ballance Electronics first. Tabby doesn't have her earwig anymore."

"That works. I need to rent a couple of bots. I'll find someone close to where you're going. How's she doing?"

"Pretty much what you'd expect. She's trying to drive me off, but I know she doesn't mean it."

"Do you think she'd mind if Jack and I came by?" Nick asked.

"I think she'd like that. I'll talk to her. It might be easier when she gets her chair. She has a hard time moving around right now."

"Understood. See you in forty minutes or so," he said.

I picked up the highest quality earwig the store sold. I hoped she'd like it. The only difference between this earwig and her previous one was the ability to change the color of the small band that ran from her ear along her cheekbone to project the HUD on her retina. She could select any color or pattern, including chameleon mode, which would mimic her skin color and make it virtually invisible.

I caught up with Jack and Nick at the rental store. They'd rented a maid-bot and a construction bot that was considerably smaller than the one we'd needed to take apart the warehouse. It was a tight squeeze for the three of us in the front of the pod-jumper, but it felt reminiscent of so many deliveries we'd made back at Colony 40.

"We'll finish this so we can head back to University Hills. We're meeting with Jake at Megliano's for a late lunch," Nick said as we landed in a wide open field of rugged vegetation.

From the air, I'd been able to pick out Tali's old homestead house easily. On the ground, the terrain made it so we couldn't see any part of it. Marny waved as we jumped out of the vehicle. I, for one, was glad to have enough room for my shoulders to operate freely. The pod-jumper was clearly designed for two people, not three.

"Have you seen Tali?" I asked.

Nick nodded and said, "Yup. She came out and walked us around. Jenny seemed pretty excited to have a neighbor."

"Celina and Jenny are still living with her?" Celina Dontal had moved into Tali's home after Tali and her special ops group had helped rescue Celina's sister, Jenny, from slavers - which was, of course, an interesting story all on its own.

"Tali was asking about Tabby. If you recall, Tali had quite a bit of reconstructive surgery after her service," Nick said.

"That might be helpful." I knew everyone meant well, but wasn't sure Tabby was in any shape to have a lot of people visiting.