Dana Cartwright Mission 1: Stiletto (2 page)

By the time the tub cleared her credentials, the Ambassador’s shuttle was overhead and descending rapidly. She’d missed the light show.

Commander Via watched and gloated as the Ambassador’s shuttle reached the hover point above the landing zone and then began its descent from three thousand feet. He punched the emergency siren button a split-second after the shuttle began a nosedive.
 

In twenty years, he’d seen perhaps a dozen shuttle crashes. This one should prove to be spectacular, especially from his vantage point in the tower.

His smile soon faded. What was that woman doing down there? Why hadn’t the tubs blocked her from the area?

Via scowled. “No one but Cray was supposed to be…”

The Blade Class ship hovered a few seconds too long at one thousand feet. Two of the drone ships pinged off the side of the shuttle, sending it careening to the deck. It crashed nose first, crumpling with a horrendous burst of sparks and flames, tumbling and collapsing into a massive pile of rubble.

Dana stared for a millisecond, horrified by the sight; then was knocked to the deck by the percussive force of the explosion.

“Oh, no!” She gasped. “No!”

People flooded out of the Observatory to see, crowding the railing. The robo-droids formed an impassable line, demanding, “Source and ID,” from the masses.

Dana Cartwright had the presence of mind to turn her medical scanner toward the wreckage, shouting above the din of screams and the massive hissing of automated fire extinguisher systems, “The Ambassador is alive!”
 

She threw off her multicolored wrap, revealing her rather plain, one-piece Medical Center uniform, and started toward the wreckage. The robo-droids had already ascertained her identity, so they let her pass. She had A-1 medical clearance, which permitted her access to just about any emergency scene.

Sirens wailed. Dana barely heard, totally focused on the readings of her medical scanner. “The Alphan Ambassador is alive!”

Skeller pocketed the transmitter box and rushed out to the landing zone, intent on stopping that foolish woman from going near the crash scene. The last thing they needed was some do-gooder rescuing the Ambassador.

The robo-droids were prepared to stop him. He flashed a Star Service identification card and fumed during the identity check and iris scan.

“Hey! Hey, you!” Skeller shouted at the woman, recognizing her uniform from Medical Center East. “Must be a nurse or something,” he grumbled.
Damn! She’s approaching the wreckage. Must stop her.
 

He lunged.

 
Someone shouted at Dana’s back, “You can’t do that! Get back! It’s too dangerous!” The robo-droids stopped him from stopping her, or, at least, detained him. “Hey, stop that woman!”
 

Dana ignored the shouts, stooping near the wreckage and, pushing aside a sheet of paneling,
 
began to crawl through the white powder and foam under the mangled wreck, into a dark crawlspace barely big enough for her to sidle through.
 

Her brown right eye adapted to the dark much faster than the left. With only the glow from her scanner, she proceeded to carefully inch forward, spotting a badly positioned right boot jutting out from under a support strut. The rest of the Ambassador’s body was pinned by cross beams.

Dana touched the gold voice-badge on her uniform left breast. “Doctor Dana Cartwright here! Medical emergency — upper landing zone at the Observatory. One Alphan male seriously injured. Can you get a lock on my signal and transfer?”

After an interminably long wait, the response came, “Negative, Doctor Cartwright, too much shielding.”

Dana swore under her breath.

“Emergency rescue teams are en route,” the MCE controller returned. “Situation?”

She scowled. “His vital signs are weak. I’ll do what I can to stabilize.”

Someone tugged on her boot heel. “Come out of there! You’re in danger!” She kicked hard to dislodge the man’s grip. “I see the Ambassador. He’s severely injured.”

“Right! Now get out of there and let the EMTs deal with it!” The guy reached in and caught hold of the tip of her braided hair, tugging on it.

“Ouch! You fool! I’m a doctor!” Dana
 
connected with a desperate kick to his wrist, and then scrambled deeper into the dark crawlspace.

The Ground Control Chief for the Observatory, Rocky Antonio, rushed up from the lower levels with his guys to survey the scene. He still had crumbs in his inch-long grizzled beard from his evening snack cake, and desperately needed another coffee. That was not to be.

“What a nightmare! Already tainted by do-gooders tramping over and around the wreckage!” He shouted to his team of six to clear away the civilians and even took hold of one man by the scruff of his fancy tuxedo jacket and tugged him clear.

“There’s a woman under there,” the bozo protested.

“I don’t care if there’s an ambassador under there. This is a crime scene, jerk-o. You can’t be contaminating evidence.”

Rocky’s men had gloves and tools and powerful strobes. They had training and procedures. Each wore a hardhat helmet with a camera that snapped stills and recorded videos. His guys dove in. Rocky ordered the robo-droids to clear all gawkers from the LZ.

“The Ambassador’s alive,” the guy Rocky roughed up insisted. “At least, the woman that crawled under there said so.”

Rocky slapped a tag on the man’s shoulder, saying, “Tell it to the investigators.” The emergency MAT tag activated. Bozo jerk-o was instantly enveloped in a bubble and vanished. He hadn’t even gotten the guy’s name. Oh, well, the investigators could handle that.
 

Just as Rocky dropped his seven-foot frame to the deck for a peek into the crawlspace, a boot slammed the left side of his head, knocking his hardhat askew. “What the?” He rolled aside.

“Sorry,” Dana offered, snaking all the way out. “Hey, Rocky.”

“Doctor Dana, you pulling nights now?” He wondered, rubbing his bruised cheek.

“Just happened to be on the deck,” she responded. “Sorry about the kick, I thought it was the guy that pulled my hair.”

“I MAT’d him!” Rocky said it with a chuckle. “What’s the sit?”

“Not good, Rocky. The Ambassador’s right leg and left arm are pinned by heavy beams. His right hand is bleeding profusely. I need a torch…” She pulled one off Rocky’s utility belt, “…And gloves…are these new?” She nabbed a pair tucked into the pocket of his gray overalls. “And I need a med-evac shuttle on stand by with a C-FIIN.”

“A coffin?” Rocky scowled. “Is it that bad?”

“Worse,” Dana snapped, already preparing to dive back under with her acquisitions.
 

“You are one brave lady, Doctor Dana,” Rocky mumbled, peering after her into the tiny crawlspace and using his helmet cam to document the situation. “Nobody else would even dare crawl under there.”

She called back to him, “I tried to MAT him out, but there’s too much shielding. Try to get the big beams off first, please.”

The Chief scowled. No two wrecks were alike; and so, no two recoveries were identical. He started slapping shipping tags onto pieces, just as his guys were doing. Every piece, no matter how small, went to a small craft hangar at Capitol City Spaceport, where they would be inspected and logged by the investigators.

Rocky quickly realized he’d need a heavy toxin team for the fuel rods and touched his voice-badge on his collar. “Ground Control, this is the Chief. Got us a real mess on the upper level. Need four keg lights and a robot-crane,” he told the Star Service Flight Investigation Dispatcher. “Plus a fuel rod disposal team. Oh, and Doctor Cartwright wants a med-evac and a coffin. We need ‘em ASAP - that means pronto, booby. Got a trapped VIP down under.” He always — always — had to clarify a time frame because those jokers at FIT often took their good old time about sending stuff — especially on the night shift.

“Who’s the VIP?” The dispatcher demanded.

“Beats me — check the chatter.” Rocky tapped the voice-badge and kept on tagging. He knew full well who was aboard the shuttle; at least, he knew who had clearance for arrival. “Pity the poor sucker on Flight Control tonight. He’s going to get hammered for this one. Hope it was mechanical failure and not his fault.”

 
Via did a three-way transfer to cover his tracks, ending finally in a deserted warehouse halfway around the globe from Capitol City. Only two other members of the hit-team had the location, Skeller and Taupin. The ‘King’ liked to have a plan B incase something should go wrong.

Well, something had!

Ambassador Cray survived the crash. Damn that woman doctor from the Medical Center. And damn Skeller. He was supposed to make certain that no one was out on the landing deck when the shuttle crashed.

Via tapped into a computer terminal and used a code to bypass security tracking. Who the hell was she?

“Dana J. Cartwright, MCE Neuro-ophthalmologist…Adopted daughter of Doctor David ‘DOC’ Cartwright, the former Director of Competency at the science academy…Crap!” Via snarled.

“Well, at least she’s no relation to Admiral Barrett Cartwright; that would be impossible,” he grumbled, reading a bit farther, then balled up his fists and pounded the off button. “Damn, of all the luck!”

Via had read enough of her file to know she would be trouble. She knew her stuff. Cray would survive the crash. She’d transfer him to MCE.

“Maybe I can…”
 

Via began to hatch a back-up plan. Hacking into the MCE computers would take some time. He dove right in. Before the med-evac shuttle
 
transported the patient, he should have full access to the controller system. The nice thing about MCE — they depended almost exclusively on ANs, and android nurses were all programmed alike.

Kieran forced his eyes to open. They didn’t want to. His whole body seemed to be in mutiny mode, disobeying direct orders. His hands burned. His lungs burned. His eyes burned. “This must be hell,” he decided. Except, it was dark, way too dark to be Tartarus, the Alphan equivalent of the mythical Hades of Earth literature. Or was it the dungeon in his most recent fiction adventure? Or the dragon lair from the one before? Or… No, it had to be hell, and he couldn’t move.

Something bright and amber approached.

“Argh!” He shut his eyes and gasped. The light was blinding. He felt something crawl closer and ordered his body to retreat but it didn’t obey. “I must be caught in a wizard’s spell,” he grumbled. “Can’t move my legs.” His brain seemed sluggish and his heart was pounding. “I can’t move my…”

“You’re pinned under a beam. Please stop struggling.”

Kieran panicked. “Who’s there?” He forced one eye to look, but the light was too bright for him to keep it open.

“I’m Doctor Cartwright,” a soft, female voice soothed and a gentle hand patted his left elbow.
 

Under other circumstances, he might have been intrigued. “What a lovely voice...” He was far too frightened, hearing strange sounds in the distance, like metal clanging and then the musical tones a MAT pod made. Other sounds were closer
 
and stronger, growing faint then louder. Still, the bright light blinded.

“Am I dead?” He blinked and tried to turn his face away from the light.

“If you can ask, you’re not,” the woman responded.

She was now lying right beside him, so close he could feel the shape of her breasts against his shoulder.
 

“Who are you?” he pleaded, so dazed and confused he could barely get the words out.

“Doctor Cartwright, Dana J.”

“J?”

“January?”

He tried hard — really hard — to reach out telepathically, but even his sixth sense wouldn’t obey. “I can’t feel my legs,” he repeated.

“Bet you weren’t wearing your safety bar,” she scolded.

“Safety bar?” He puzzled. And then his brain snapped to attention and it all made sense. “
Stiletto
crashed!”

He opened both eyes. The light was now near his left shoulder, just out of sight, though it bathed the crawlspace with an amber glow. His left hand was pinned above his head by a lateral support beam. He tugged but only succeeded in causing agonizing pain to shoot down to his shoulder. His right hand he brought to his chest, bouncing it off the panel not more than five inches above his face. Blood oozed from his fingers and palm.

Peering over at him from his left was a young woman, with cinnamon colored hair that framed her oval face. A long braid snaked down along her body beyond her waist. She was beautiful, absolutely captivatingly beautiful.

Kieran blinked, noticing something unusual. It took him a long moment to realize why. “Your eyes…” Even bathed in amber from the torch, he noticed they were different. They just stared back at him — one blue and one brown — captivating and mesmerizing. “Who are you?”

“Doctor…”

“Cartwright…Dana January…” His brain barely retrieved the information. It was protesting, on overload, too many pain receptors firing.

She waved something before his eyes. It sparkled. “You have a concussion, Mister Ambassador,” she cautioned, now focusing on his bleeding right hand. In the limited space — mere inches from his nose — he watched her use a medical device to sanitize and heal the lacerations on his fingers and palm. Then she slid a glove on it.

“For protection,” she mumbled.

He stared at the gray glove; barely realizing the hand was his own. “
Stiletto
crashed.” His eyes widened with a moment of lucidity. “Doctor Dana? You shouldn’t be here. It’s too dangerous.”

Her magical eyes met his and his brain short-circuited again. “Your eyes,” he whispered. Her eyes smiled.

And then the fog rolled in and everything seemed cloudy and distant, like the time he was under water, cave diving on Talentia III and someone up ahead had stirred up the flow and the visibility was barely three feet in front of him.

“Ambassador?” She seemed so far away. “Ambassador Cray?”

He didn’t understand why she was calling for the Ambassador. Her face was close, their chins touching. And she was forcing his eyes open one at a time; the little sparkles were right there inside his head.