Dana Cartwright Mission 3: Kal-King (7 page)

“Delete.”

Every day the same message awaited her and, thinking it something important, she rushed over to the Spaceport Administration building only to spend three planetary hours in the Commissioner’s waiting area for nothing more than a thumbprint on some foolish form that mattered to no one.

This time she would not jump at the blasted Commissioner’s biding. Besides, the clock read nineteen hundred hours — sunset.
 

“Let him come to me,” she thought, stretching both legs lazily and regretting it.

“Please restate command?” the hover ball sizzled.

“Shut up!”

The two-word command it understood without difficulty. It retreated to a cubicle beneath the counter that served as a desk and shut off as ordered.

Dana, why don’t you come
?
 

The voice inside her head pleaded. She shivered involuntarily, looked about the room with both eyes then up at the ceiling tiles overhead.

“Come where?”
 

The voice was unmistakably Kieran Jai’s, but it told her nothing — like when and where.

She closed her eyes, easily remembering the image of the Alphan as she last saw him, boarding a mercenary vessel, dressed in poorly-fitting body armor, impersonating some Crazorian-human hybrid at the sad, little spaceport called Decker Station, with his hair dyed a sad shade of red, and the rest of him dressed in rich man’s clothes as part of a disguise that might fool everyone else, including Star Service officers, but not Dana.

Why did thoughts of Kieran come to her now?

Four long years and half a galaxy away…

She shook off the memories and rolled off the hover bed. Straightening up took effort, and the pain in her wounded leg warned her not to move so quickly next time.

The thought of changing into the other jumpsuit crossed her mind, considering she’d worn and slept in this one for the last forty planetary hours, but the promised smell and taste of a steaming hot cup of real coffee with extra sugar lured her towards the door.

The caffeine would help rid her of the cloudy remnants of the sedative, and the sugar would quell the churning in her empty stomach.

She turned back to the bed to retrieve her pack from under the covers and checked that the link-reader had enough of a charge to last a few hours. With the pack slung over her left shoulder, she touched the thumbprint locks and listened for the loud click that signaled it released.

After carefully changing the code on exiting, Dana took the ramp to the side exit heading for the plaza at the marketplace. Not a bad walk once the sun went down, except for the throbbing pain in her left leg.
 

She thought of her dear friend, Francis Calagura, and how he would lecture patients. “Exercise strengthens muscles. Walking on level terrain is good, aquatic therapy is better. Doctor’s orders.”

Yeah, right!

She knew better. Only a second surgery could correct the damage. All her years as a surgeon and emergency room physician on Earth taught her that much.
 

She dreaded the idea, but was resigned to the prospect.

With the darkening sky, buyers and sellers began to flood the streets for some after-dark commerce, setting up shop along the promenade. Dana sidestepped robo-cabs, dodged runners, wove her way through some chatters, and took a shortcut, as she limped toward an open-air café.

A warning thermometer showed the temperature was already falling into the green zone, below 30 degrees Celsius. It might drop a bit more and even be bearable in another hour; maybe setting a new record low.

On Earth, where she was raised, there were places with steaming hot and muggy summers and others with warm winds. She liked the desert, especially at night, under a canopy of stars. Most of her life was spent in the Rocky Mountains, at Capitol City and Estes Park.
 

Thirteen years and thousands of light years would never erase those memories.

Dana smiled as she ordered an espresso coffee, extra sweet, savoring the smell of fresh coffee beans being roasted and swirled in a giant bin. Hot coffee still soothed her soul, even when the temps were ghastly. It cost triple the price of hot chocolate, her usual beverage, but it was worth every credit. Earth’s number one export to the galaxy made life out among the stars bearable.
 

Thank the galaxy for that!

She searched her pack for three one-credit bills before the clerk would even pour. Vendors here preferred payment in advance if you showed them the local currency.

The same happened on most worlds in the Republic. As Dana reached up, a tarnished, bronze-skinned, muscular hand reached past her offering the vendor a 10-C note. Her trained eyes recognized the scars on the knuckles before the hand covered her own.

“Kieran!”

“You found me,” he whispered in her ear, bending his head down to place a sweet kiss on her cheek.

The sound of his voice massaged her from the inside out. She melted against him and his solar cloak encircled her as they embraced.
 

The familiar feel of his strong arms coursed like a narcotic through her weary body. Without asking permission, he slid the fingers of his left hand up under her braided hair along the nape of her neck in the Alphan way to establish a telepathic connection.

In one flash of imagery, he saw the horror of the explosion, from her point-of-view, and felt the pain of her struggles since, as though he’d been there — with her — experiencing it all.

He hugged her that much tighter; a tear trickled down his cheek only to evaporate before it reached his chin.

“You’re a brave woman, Dana J,” he said, but he’d told her that many times before.

He left the change upon the counter and took up her carafe of coffee. With his left arm and cloak still protectively about her shoulders, Kieran guided her toward the periphery of the café, where they might sit in the shadows and have a bit more privacy.

He found a table for two, slid his chair close so that their shoulders touched and his arm was protectively about the back of her chair, close enough to reassure, telepathically saying,
I am here
.

Finding words proved difficult, but Dana ventured to ask, “What are you doing here?”

“I felt your pain…”

His blue eyes gently scanned her mismatched eyes. The brown one was closed. She seemed suspicious of his motives. “I wanted to find you without revealing my identity to the spaceport officials. Damned bureaucracy… As a last resort, I thought I might tell them I was your only living relative and even toyed with the idea of bribing the Commissioner…” He let the thought trail off. “For the last few nights, I have been here at sunset hoping you would come.”

“I heard you…in my mind, but you never said where to meet you.”

He laughed and gave her hand a soft squeeze. “I’ll have to remember to be more specific next time.”

She took the carafe of coffee, sipped some, savored the taste, then asked the most immediate of her million questions, “What are you doing on Tonner III?”

He countered with a question, “What are you doing out of uniform?”

She sighed at his diversion and averted her eyes. “That’s a long story; I’ll tell you sometime when we have hours to…”

“I can get the answer quite easily,” he reminded, again sliding his hand to the nape of her neck for a telepathic link. She didn’t fight him, but closed her eyes and seemed to enjoy his gentle probing into the details of her struggles. However, he had a difficult time because of the pain in her body.
 

“You need comforting,” he whispered, this time kissing her upon the lips, not caring what anyone at the plaza might think.
 

I love you
, he told her telepathically. It seemed the most important thing to say.

“Come,” he invited, after she’d sipped about half the coffee. He took it from her, throwing its contents away onto the parched ground, which swallowed it up greedily. Then he collapsed the container and hid it in a secret pocket of his tunic as he led her by the hand. They left the marketplace, now bathed in a shimmering, cool artificial lighting pink glow, deluged with life forms, small to tall.
 

Kieran escorted, carefully setting a pace Dana could keep, to a full-service cab. Once they were inside, he gave the driver the name of Tonnertown’s most lavish resort hotel, Wind-o-mar.

“I spent the first night there,” she told him, “because Ambassador Taurian prepaid for us.”

Kieran sighed, “I know all that. I saw the incident report.”

She seemed close to tears. “No one believes me. It was no accident. The Ambassador wasn’t strapped in. I gave him the approach warning. He was searching for something among the luggage. And then, there was an explosion. It was…”

“Hush,” he whispered, pulling her closer so they could cuddle together during the remainder of the ride and during the wait at the resort under the awning as other robo-cabs discharged passengers. The driver diverted, since it was already dark, and helped them both out of the cab at a side entrance that avoided the crush of the lobby.

Kieran’s room pass took them to the palatial penthouse suite, one floor above the one she’d occupied the first night. It boasted a steamy water-spa, which he instinctively knew would ease some of the pain in her leg. He pointed her toward it, while securing the door and watched as she wandered about, drinking in the luxurious smells of evergreen scented candles and exotic off-world plants.
 

The spa area had the look and feel of an earthly flower garden.
 

Kieran dimmed the lights with a verbal command and soothing instrumental music from a lyre began to issue from the speakers.

“Very nice,” she said, dropping her backpack on the carpeting as he slid off his solar cloak and outer robe, draping them across the back of the common room sofa.
 

“Enjoy yourself,” he offered, while moving purposefully about the suite, to closets and such, returning to her side with fluffy bath towels, lush robes, a hairbrush and a toiletries kit, which he set down on the carpeting near the spa.

He knelt at her feet and undid the fasteners on her boots, letting her lean upon his shoulder as he pulled them off one by one. With a frown he noted the hidden sheath always concealed in her left boot was missing, along with the vintage, Sterilian dagger.

Like a loving caretaker, he helped her out of the jumpsuit, kissing her tenderly, hands caressing, erasing all doubts and cares. She clung at first, then allowed his strong arms to guide her first step into the warm water.

She seemed painfully thin to his observations; her always narrow hips now almost skeletal. Her waist and the mounds of her breasts seemed adolescent as she sank down, shoulder deep in the steamy oasis.

It didn’t take much medical knowledge to realize her left knee did not conform to the right, and the ankle was swollen and bruised. It hadn’t healed properly. She could barely stretch out her leg to full length.

Kieran turned on the timer and the therapeutic jets churned and swirled the water. “Is it too hot?”

He felt and heard her sigh. “It’s lovely.”

Silently, he undid the braid of her waist-length, cinnamon-colored hair, and let it drape over the side of the spa, kissing the place where the part met her forehead, eliciting a girlish giggle.
 

“Don’t…”

“No, I want to,” he whispered, gently brushing her hair free of tangles, enjoying the silky feel of the natural curls. “I remember the first time we met,” he whispered, his eyes misting up with the memory. “Your hair was so soft. It’s so much longer now. That coconut oil smell drove me mad. And when you wear it loose, like Lady Godiva, hiding your treasures…” He buried his face against the back of her head. “Ah!” he sighed.
 

She laughed and teased in return, “I remember you had false hair and a beard, and you wore the robes impersonating the Alphan Ambassador.”

He chuckled, “That was a very strange mission…”

“More than strange,” she taunted, recalling it vividly.

“Rest,” he whispered hypnotically, kissing her sweetly upon the lips. “I’ll join shortly. Give me just a minute.”

She nodded, eyes closed, all the tension draining from her weary body.

Kieran took up the toiletries kit and dashed into the first master bedroom, carefully closing the door. His purpose was to extract from the kit what appeared to be a shaver, clicking off a concealing cap that contained a microphone and an ear receiver. He hesitated for just a moment before activating the communicator. By involving the Star Service and his SSID staff, he crossed a fine line between privacy and duty. Yet he could think of no other options. For Dana… He had to…
 

The device glowed a pale blue as a communication signal was detected. “SSID,” came a voice.

“This is C-Jai.”

“Good evening, Commodore, enjoying your personal time off?”

“I was. I need the best reconstructive surgeon you can locate in the vicinity of Tonner III spaceport. I’m at the Tonnertown resort, Wind-o-mar. MAT him or her to my private suite. Use these coordinates. Also retrieve all investigative records pertaining to the crash of the private yacht,
Seraph
, and its passengers, including Ambassador Taurian and retired Star Service Commander Dana J. Cartwright. Retrieve all her personal accounts, finances, and records; seal them from spaceport control and make them accessible only to my code name: Alpha-One.”
 

Kieran paused.

“Retired Commander Dana J. Cartwright…aye, Commodore. Is there anything else?”

“I’ll need a wardrobe for a woman…”

“Size?”

“Extra-small…or petite…not quite sure...”

“Formal or informal?”

“Hmmm…both…and a solar cloak. The sun here is brutal.”

“Yes, sir. Do you wish to retrieve your messages now, Commodore?”

“Save them, I’ll check in again later. Tell Colonel Xalier this was no accident. Something in the luggage compartment exploded just after touchdown. Xal will know what to do.”