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DEEDECK DESIGN
Chapter 19
Moira felt the hinge of a security net digging into her shoulder blade and realized that she was pressing into the far wall with panicky strength, as if to escape through it. Escape probably would have been the prudent thing to do, running and hiding from the explosion of violence before her. But it had happened so fast, she’d barely had time to backpedal to the wall.
She’d never personally seen such deliberate violence. The occasional scuffle of hot emotions out of control had been the most she’d witnessed. The entertainment nets hadn’t prepared her for how brutally swift it could be, watching professionals do their job. She stared aghast at the litter of bodies, reaction sending ripples through her body like the aftershocks of an earthquake, triggered by flashbacks of the dark intent on her companions’ faces, the smooth competence in their big bodies, and the quick and easy carnage they caused.
Her stomach cramped with something close to nausea, but she forced her body into motion anyway, her training coming to the rescue. Hurrying over to the two men scattered inside the hatch, she checked their pulses, then lifted eyelids to assess their state of consciousness. Both out cold, but with strong respiration and heartbeats, stable for now. Triage dictated that she assess the others before she returned to examine them more closely for injuries.
Moving fast, she stepped through the hatch and cast a swift glance over the scene, judging where she needed to concentrate her efforts. Coltier had his back to her, crouching over a small, whimpering person who looked terrified, but otherwise unharmed. Connie stood over a prostrate man with his usual impassive expression, but with a ferocious light in his eyes as he watched his opponent hunch in a ball and spit blood. Another body lay closer to her, twitching spasmodically. The contact burn high on the left chest told her that he’d been shot with a stunner, the powerful blast of electricity overpowering his nervous system.
She darted to this man first, ignoring his muscles spasms in favor of his pulse. She found one, but it was thready and erratic. She was still carrying her travel case, which included a med kit among other things. She wasted no time opening it, refusing to be distracted by Coltier dragging the small man through the airlock to the pod. Connie followed his boss, hauling his prisoner with him. Moira was relieved to hear the bleeding man swear in a vicious and rather nasal way through his swollen face. Men who made that much noise weren’t typically critical.
Her diagnostic scanner confirmed scattered cardiac electric impulses in her patient, the nerves controlling the beat of his heart compromised by the power of the stunner. Fitting her hand with finger cardio-paddles, she gave him another focused shock to erase the erratic impulses so that a natural beat could resume. Then she injected him with medication to strengthen his heart muscles and nerves.
Reassessing his condition with her scanner, she was satisfied by the regular rhythm of his heart and the fair condition of the other systems of his body. Giving him a pain killer and smearing a reparation ointment over the scalded skin of his chest, she made him as comfortable as she could and rose to her feet.
Her muscles were still jellied with reaction, but she ignored the sensation, picking up her kit and entering the pod.
She was greeted by a voice on the edge of hysteria. “Leave me alone! You people are insane!” The small man and the one with the busted face had both been contained in security netting, and neither looked thrilled to be there.
“The man in the airlock needs to be in a hospital under observation,” Moira announced in a severe tone, running her diagnostic scanner over the two men lying just inside the hatch. At her voice, Coltier turned towards her while she continued, “You could have killed—oh, no!” She stared horrified at the burn mark over his chest and hurried forward, worried eyes taking in his clear gaze and strong stance. “You’ve been shot…haven’t you?” She touched the burn in his shirt with a frown of confusion.
“Body armor,” he responded, capturing her cold fingers in his warm ones and moving them so he could show her the thin, black material covering his chest under the shirt. She curled her fingers hard against his in relief, taking a deep breath to ease the constriction around her chest.
“Connie?” she asked, turning her head to run a critical eye over his big body.
“No injuries, ma’am,” he answered without taking his eyes from the two captured men.
“Good.” Pulling her hand from Coltier’s with a pang of secret reluctance, she looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “Now explain to me why we just took hostages.”
“Because they were about to take us.” His face hardened and his dark eyes took on a frightening coldness as he looked at the two men.
“What?” she scoffed, hefting her diagnostic scanner. Stepping close to the man that Connie had beaten, she ignored his snarled warning to stay away and assessed his injuries. “You don’t know that. You attacked before they could say anything.”
“Don’t be naďve, Doc,” he growled at her.
She sent him a black look before addressing her patient. “You have plenty of bruises, but the only serious injury is your nose—it’s broken.”
“Tell me somethin’ I don’t know, lady,” he muttered.
She pretended not to hear, giving him a cocktail of treatment medication and nanytes. “Hold still, please,” she ordered, placing temporary bracing foam over the bridge of his swollen nose. He winced, but didn’t pull away. “That’ll keep until you can get to a cartilage reconstructor. Don’t play with the bandage.”
He gave her a strange look and said nothing.
She turned to the small man, only to recoil at his purely acid stare of hatred as he hissed, “Stay away from me.”
“Play nice,” Coltier responded in a silky, threatening tone.
Swallowing her astonishment, she straightened her spine and asked, “What is going on with you people? I’m here to help.”
“Help,” he scoffed, glaring at her and squirming in the net. “How stupid do you think we are, doctor?”
“I haven’t decided, because you appear to be getting stupider by the second,” she snapped back, putting a hand on her hip and returning his glare with one of her own.
“Answer Dr. Bannen’s question, skinny,” Coltier said. “What’s with you people? Why the com silence and hostility?”
“Go ahead,” the man sneered. “Play your games.”
“Games?” Moira repeated with a baffled shake of her head. “What the hell are you talking about? This isn’t a game—I’m here because you have a deadly pandemic in this system. We need to stop wasting time and get to work on killing it.”
“Like you want to kill it,” he muttered in disbelief.
“Of course I do! I’m a damned doctor. What is wrong with you?”
Her outrage seemed to make an impression. The small man studied her face with a flicker of doubt. “You’re Doctor Moira Bannen from the DDEC, right?”
“Yes,” she said warily.
“We were told—” he started, then glanced over at his companion and fell silent.
“Told what?” Coltier prompted in a hard tone.
Uncertainty shifted across the man’s face like storm clouds, before his expression hardened into resolve. “We were told to detain her.”
“Why? By who?”
“By system officials. Orders signed by the governor herself. Didn’t say why, only that she’s a suspect in an investigation, and we can’t trust her.”
Moira felt her stomach lurch crazily and then swan dive straight past her feet. “A suspect?” she repeated in dismay. “Investigation of what?”
The man shrugged in his netting, face faintly petulant.
Coltier shifted, and though he didn’t move closer to the man, he suddenly seemed to loom over him. “What else were you told?” he asked in a low, dark threat.
“Nothing,” the station official muttered, turning his face away. “Nothing for sure. Just rumors.”
“What rumors?”
He didn’t respond for a moment, squirming in the net and sending Moira a furtive look. “That she cooked it. They were calling it the Bloody Baron, ‘cause patients bleed out like they were gutted, but name’s changed to the Bloody Bannen. Rumor says she’s here to take her virus home.”
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