Dremiks (52 page)

As if to out-run his thoughts, the captain increased his pace. “Fortunas was in no position to be commenting, given where he spent the night.”

Maggie’s brain buzzed with confusing thoughts even as her muscles lost their cramped tightness. She tried to change the subject. “You still want to move the orbit, today?”

“Yes.” He ran for another meter before saying, “We know that the particulate cloud around Najif interferes with all radio and light communications. I would like to see how Ryan and Trell respond to losing contact with us, again. Ryan’s reaction to the news that we were moving Marissa back to the ship was telling.”

The wind picked up, howling out of the east. Dust swirled around their knees in blue wisps, occasionally lifting into their faces. Brett coughed and moved to place himself between the gale and O’Connell. She noted the protective gesture and shook her head in exasperation. The captain was by no means large enough to protect her from the wind.

“We’d better pick up the pace!”

O’Connell heard him yell and turned her head to ask what he’d said. A bright orange light flashed over Hill’s left shoulder. The silvery cylinder of an aerial mine arced toward them. She hooked her arm around the captain’s shoulders and pulled him to the ground. The mine exploded in the air above them, causing a fireball that sucked away the surrounding air and sound. Fractions of a second later the superheated air slammed down on top of them, followed by burning sand.

Hill jerked his head up and spit the sand out of his mouth. His ears rang. He was disoriented and not aware of much more than O’Connell lying prone across his back. O’Connell could feel bits of sand burning the back of her bare calves. She couldn’t decide if the humming noise in her head was the wind or the after-effects of the explosion. After wiggling her fingers and toes to make sure she was relatively unharmed, she rolled off the captain and turned him face up.

“What the hell was that?” He shouted the question.

She took that as an indication that he was still in control of his lungs and mental facilities.

“Aerial mine. No idea where it came from!” She coughed and spit to rid her own mouth of grit. Before she could say anything else, another mine popped up from the ground. Reacting from instinct alone, Maggie tugged on the captain’s prone form. They tripped and rolled from the new danger.

A third canister of death emerged from the sand practically at Brett’s foot. He shocked them both by slapping at the airborne mine with his open palm. Through some act of cosmic mercy, the mine didn’t explode immediately. It flipped end over end away from them before detonating. It was distant enough not to kill them, but the blast still knocked them flat.

Maggie struggled to her feet and motioned to a slight indention on the wall of the dome. It appeared to be an unused entranceway. They stumbled into the alcove. Brett keyed his communicator, but his ears were still ringing, making it nearly impossible to hear anything. He wanted to stop and think about who had launched mines at them, and how it had been orchestrated, but his head hurt too much. Looking down at Maggie, he suddenly jerked her left elbow into the air.

“You’re bleeding!” He ran his hand along her ribs where a sticky residue stuck to her shirt.

She looked down in confusion. “I am?” She pulled the captain’s probing hand away to look closer. “It’s not me.” Horror replaced confusion. Without warning she forcefully pushed the captain around, effectively shoving his face into the corner. Brett’s shirt was burned completely through in sections. There was a deep cut mark, halfway down the left side of his back. Maggie lightly probed the wound and heard Brett curse. He tried to turn around, but she pushed on his neck. “Hold still, damn you.”

“Excuse me?” His offended tone had no effect on her as she slid her hands over his arms, ribs, and back. He sucked in his breath, which hurt, when she ran her hands over his hips and down his legs. “Okay!” He pivoted, grasped her upper arms and hauled her upright. “I think that’s enough triage.”

Maggie snorted. She ignored his disgruntled look. “You also thought I was the one bleeding.” Before he could respond she raised her wrist and tapped an emergency beacon into action.

“Commander? State your emergency?”

“Price, we’ve had a small mishap here and need immediate medical care. Please have someone open the small door on section 57-A of the dome. Storm is moving in and—”

“Repeat your last. A storm has moved into your location. Communications are compromised.”

Maggie was standing so close to Brett that she heard him mutter, “Storms are the least of our worries,” beside her ear.

“Price, contact Ruger and have her prepared for triage. Have someone open the dome hatchway at my location.”

“Roger.”

A gust of wind swirled into the alcove, kicking up the sand. Maggie coughed. Brett pulled her head into his shoulder in an unconscious gesture of protection.

“You’re a closet chauvinist, sir,” said the muffled voice from his shoulder.

He chuckled before gasping at the resulting pain in his back. He let go of her neck but showed her the blood on his palm. “I think this
is
yours.” He pulled her head sideways to examine a long scratch.

“Nicks and cuts, Cap’n.”

He didn’t miss the sudden tension in her neck and shoulders. “You’re a lot of damned trouble, Maggie.” He didn’t mean the complaint to come out quite so husky. He felt a shudder run down her back. Before either could respond further, the door behind them popped open.

Dr. Ruger awaited them in the medical office. “What happened?”

O’Connell tugged on the captain’s arm, trying to lead him to the treatment area. “Aerial mines. Captain has a shrapnel wound, lower left quadrant of his back. Need it treated, ASAP. Then we’re getting the hell out of here, whether you’re ready or not.”

In front of an examining table, Brett dug in his heels and pulled his arm out of Maggie’s grasp. “I’ve had about enough of you dragging me about and making free with my body.” He lowered his head when speaking so that his nose almost touched Maggie’s forehead. While she gaped at him in shock, he grabbed her waist, picked her up, and sat her on the examining table.

“Speaking of making free,” she hissed at him.

Brett didn’t respond. He stood there, staring at her face, hands resting on her hip bones. She dropped her gaze. His fingers flexed, briefly squeezing, before he let go and backed away.

Dr. Ruger watched this interaction with a touch of impatience. “Let’s cut that shirt off her, Johnson. We’ll have to micro-debride the wound.” She pointed to another examining table. “Captain, over there, please. I’ll be with you in a minute.” She yanked a curtain closed around the table where O’Connell sat. “Johnson will check you over and treat those abrasions. You’re sure all of the blood is the captain’s?”

“Most of it, anyway. Except for my hearing, I’m fine. Go see to the cap’n.”

Cassie gave her one more assessing look before ducking out of the curtained area. Medical technician Lewis had the captain’s shirt off and was spraying his torso with an antiseptic wash. “Pants also, captain. Then, I need you to lie flat on your stomach so I can examine this incision on your back.” She ignored his damn eyebrow when it creased upward. This was her domain. She didn’t have time for his modesty or his intimidation tactics. She flat out ignored his grumbling. It took her the better part of an hour to clean the injury and apply a skin graft.

True to her word, O’Connell hurried the captain, Dr. Ruger, and Marissa Hill to the lander just as soon as the captain’s wound was dressed. They didn’t make it off the surface, though. She and Captain Hill stood aghast in front of their disabled transport. Wires hung haphazardly from five different flight control panels.

“Seriously?” she shouted.

“Apparently,” the captain said, drily. “How long?”

Breathe hissing through her teeth, she replied, “Two hours at least. Best get them back in a safe area.” When he looked like he might hesitate, she waved him on. “Faster if I’m not worrying about them being exposed out here.” Before he’d escorted the other women back through the landing area, Maggie had the toolkit cracked open.

***

“How’s it going?”

Maggie shook her head and took a deep breath before turning around inside the tight confines of the lander. “How’s your back, sir?”

“It hurts. Where’s your protective detail?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere safe?”

“Where’s the petty officer I sent over?”

“Are you ready to go?”

“Don’t avoid the question! Where’s the man I sent to stand guard?”

“Don’t be such an ass, and you might get a polite response.”

The captain stared at her in shock. O’Connell had been glib, sarcastic, insulting, even vaguely flirtatious, but she had never dared to raise her voice and snap at him. “Excuse me?”

She jerked her chin in the air and returned his stare. “You heard me.”

Brett’s fragile hold on his temper snapped. “You’ll stand at attention when addressing me, Commander.
Especially
when you are bucking for a court martial with every word that comes out of your mouth.”

She had the gall to roll her eyes and slowly slide to attention. She stood there, a perfect picture of military discipline, staring straight ahead, barely blinking.

“Would you like to revise your previous response, Commander?”

She didn’t move or speak. He very much wanted to get in her face and shout her down, but he knew he couldn’t control the urge to shake her if he got within arm’s reach. That realization, his frayed temper, the pain in his back, the entire interlude from the previous night, left him on tenuous ground.

“Well?” He managed not to yell the single word but simply spit it out.

“The captain will get a polite and appropriate response when he stops acting like an over-protective mother bear and lets his pilot do her job,
sir
.”

“The captain will get an abject apology and an answer to his perfectly appropriate question
now
, or he will personally throw your insubordinate ass in the brig.”

“My apologies for saving you, sir. I should have let you get your fool head blown off.”

Brett opened and shut his mouth and then realized he probably looked like a floundering guppy. “Are you
drunk
? Did that blast knock something loose inside your skull? Drugged? That’s it. You’re obviously on pain killers.”

“As the captain wishes.”

He sat down, heavily, on a bench seat. “The captain wishes for his world to go back to its neat, orderly, arrangement. The world where the chief scientist wasn’t sleeping with the doctor young enough to be his grand-daughter. The one where his pilot was a professional officer, albeit an occasionally egotistical and stubborn one. The world where I’m not referring to myself in the third person! Damn it Maggie!”

“The world where you didn’t shout at me, and use my first name like a curse? The one where someone wasn’t trying to kill you?”

Brett hadn’t realized he had used her first name. He frowned up at her. “Sit down.”

She hesitated.

“I swear by all the saints, woman, I
will
be moved to physical violence. Sit down,
please
.”

Seeing his jaw flex again, O’Connell decided a strategic detente was in order. She sat and waited for him to speak.

“I’m sorry for snapping at you. If you would just tell me why you sent away an armed guard—” He looked up when he heard a dull thud. In exasperation with his persistent protectiveness, O’Connell smacked her head against the bulkhead behind her. “Stop that,” he snapped. “I just need a few minutes to sit and talk this thing out. I didn’t want you charging off. I’ve got enough to worry about without you going off half-cocked.”

Maggie leaned down to re-lace her boots. “I wasn’t going anywhere half cocked. But I’m not going meekly back to the
Hudson
after someone tried to kill my captain.”

“Has it occurred to you that whoever set the trap wasn’t aiming for me?”

From the look of confusion on her face it was quite obvious that the idea had
not
occurred to O’Connell. “Why would anyone want to kill me?”

The captain chuckled softly. “Oh, I can think of one or two reasons.” He smiled at her to soften the jab. “Look, I’m not the one who goes for a run every morning at the same time.”

“I run the decks on the
Hudson
. I’m rarely down here in the mornings.”

“Granted, but it wouldn’t be much of a mental leap to assume the path you would take if you were here in the morning. It’s not like the interior of the dome is conducive to a good jog.”

“Fine, but that doesn’t answer the original question. Why would someone, seriously, want to kill me? I think we can safely rule out any of the officers of the
Hudson
doing this, if for no other reason than that their movements are easily pinpointed. So it has to be one of the colonists. I haven’t angered any of them. Well, Trell maybe.”

“Trell couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the sole.”

O’Connell choked on a laugh.

“What? A captain isn’t allowed a colorful euphemism now and again?”

“Few and far between, sir. It’s not good for my mental balance.”

It was the captain’s turn to snort. “Moving past the far too obvious rejoinders about your mental faculties, I can think of one person you irritated quite recently.”

She stared at him, thinking. The captain leaned back to let her figure it out and promptly sat straight again. He’d forgotten about the tender wound on his back.

“Uh, sir, your brother’s intentions last night were of the, um, amorous nature. I don’t think he was sufficiently wounded by my rejection to decide to off me a few hours later.” Maggie could feel herself blushing. She jumped up and grabbed her flight jacket to cover her unease.

“I know what it was he wanted, O’Connell,” the captain replied, dryly. “He is, after all, my brother. It is possible, though, that he was trying to silence you last night and, having failed to do it with charm, he chose violence.”