Recon Marines II: Marine's Heiress, The (31 page)

“
You destroyed parts of
his frontal lobe?”

“
Nothing so archaic. Just
a few neurons, a few synapses that won’t fire.” Ben leered at her.
“For example, now that I know you like laboratory meat between your
thighs, I could order Nemon to strip you naked. But unless I give
the command, he wouldn’t have his way with you. These other men
might be overcome with lust, but Nemon follows orders. He can make
decisions on how best to complete his assignment, but he will
complete it.”

“
What kind of people are
you to do that to someone? You took away everything that makes him
human. You made him into a machine.”

“
Machines are more
efficient than men. It’s what we attempted with the first batch but
it didn’t work out as intended. We thought training them the
correct way would instill obedience but since it didn’t we had to
consider other ways to get the soldier we wanted.”

“
But he’s nothing but a
thug, not a soldier. I know you didn’t have official approval to
create another group of super soldiers.” Emma had read reports of
the political and social pressure that forced the military to never
experiment with epigenetics again after they created the original
fifty Recon Marines. Fifty? Did dozens more Nemons exist also?
“Where are the rest of them?”

Ben’s superior smirk soured. “Not
something I’m likely to tell you. The new papers will be ready this
evening. We made some modifications in your room that will make
your stay more comfortable. You have a few hours to contemplate how
you want this to go. It’s not like I will leave you penniless. I’ll
see you can continue to live in your rich, brat style.”

Emma didn’t react to the lie. The
papers probably gave Ben complete control of all the Brand assets
and named him as the only beneficiary of her will. In a year or so
she would suffer an accident and Ben would have it all. “At the
end, my mother knew what you were. Your charm wore off like a coat
of thin paint. That’s why she changed her will so I would get
everything, including majority shares in Hadrason Mining. And now
that Hadrason is a convicted felon, he forfeits his shares to me.
My father insisted on that clause in their partnership.”

“
Your stupid mother only
slowed me down. By tomorrow this time, I’ll be the richest man
ever.”

“
Perhaps.”

“
Nemon, escort her to her
room. No one goes in not even the maid.” Ben gave Emma a mock bow.
“You look like one of those peasant miners yourself, Emma. Why
don’t you get a bath and change your clothing? It’s going to be a
long day.”

She hated thinking someone like this
monster walking beside her had been in her room and among her
belongings. But as she trudged in front of Nemon, sympathy rose in
her. This poor young man had been turned into a soulless slave by
her stepfather and other arrogant men. Had they bred his large size
into him or jiggered his pituitary gland to achieve great height
and then added hormones to grow all the muscle? Nemon had had no
choice in his own destiny, but there could also be no cure if they
had cut and sliced around in his brain.

They’d welded bars across her windows
and bolted the connecting door to the maid’s room. But her prison
had lots of her very own clean clothing and a luxurious bathing
room. After Nemon locked her in she hurried to her desk. No paper,
no pens or writing material of any kind. Damn.

She searched her wardrobe
for a plain white shirt and found one made of synthetic silk that
would do. On her makeup table she selected a bright shade of lip
paint. Her all-male jailers lacked imagination. She wrote a short
message on the shirt.
Fine until tomorrow.
Help on the way. Vannie injured and with military. Don’t come
here.

She recapped the bitty stub of lipstick
and then turned out all the lights she’d turned on to brighten the
pre-dawn gloom. Two of the windows in her room overlooked the
courtyard. She slipped her hands between the new bars and pressed
the shirt against the glass.

If Vin lurked out there, he would by
spying on the admiral. She feared he’d witnessed Nemon bringing her
into the manor. Vin would try and save her. Now that she knew for
sure that Ben hadn’t recaptured Vin, she expected her marine would
still be on the hunt for his prey. She held the message against the
window for a count of five hundred and then hung it among her
clothing again where no one would see it.

After drawing a hot bath, she soaked in
it for a long time. At least this time Ben had imprisoned her in a
comfortable cell. And soon her friends would be free and safe from
her stepfather’s games. If only Vin stayed out of it from here
on.

* * * *

Vin worried what method they’d used to
force Emma to hold the sign up to the window. He’d seen them carry
her in and been helpless to stop it. Not even he could take on
twenty armed men plus Nemon. He wanted to invade immediately, but
Lester needed her alive. So he waited, not patiently, for them to
relax their vigilance.

Then the light came on in one of the
third story rooms and he saw Emma through the windows using the
goggles. After only a few minutes, someone extinguished the light
and then Emma held the cloth up to the window with the
message.

They wouldn’t have made her do it
unless they suspected he watched them. His position no longer was
safe and the coming day would make him more visible to an
accidental sighting. But it was time to leave anyway. He had a
castle to storm.

Chapter Nineteen

Vin paid a visit to a shop he’d noticed
on his way to and from the port. This business had better security
than many retail stores. He found the energy line leading from the
building to the underground conduits for all utilities on the
street. He severed one of the major lines so any alarm sounding
would be general and not for the specific store he intended to
rob.

He shouldered his way through the back
door, feeling the urgency of imminent daylight. Sturdy locks hung
on every display case but the glass fronting them broke easy
enough. Taking only the tools and gadgets he needed as well as a
small backpack to carry them in, Vin ran out the back door even as
stealthy feet crept down the stairway leading to the sleeping
quarters above.

Stealing bothered Vin, but Emma’s life
meant more than his ethics. If he survived he would reimburse the
owner of the hover and the merchant he’d just made a few coins
poorer.

Dawn arrived by inches on this planet
but many street lights brightened the area around the castle
frontage. Vin took one of his stolen items out of the pack and
aimed the heat laser at a selected street lamp. Unlike shooting out
a light, overheating one caused the bulb to temporarily shut down
to avoid a burnout or fire. He moved as soon as it winked out and
used his deep vision goggles to check the position of the roving
guards on the other side of the wall. He waited a minute and a half
for a gap between two of them. He heated up the wall of the retail
building closest to the right corner of the castle wall. The metal
structure, made to look like wood, could withstand the temperature
rise but the security camera would see only a large blob of heat.
It wouldn’t notice the human form passing through its field of
view.

He didn’t have time to do anything
about sensors on top of the wall so he took a running start and set
his hands on the top for only an instant to help him vault over.
They might think it a bird or a glitch. Or not when combined with
the other things happening in their security perimeter. Once over
the wall he used the heat laser to melt the camera’s lens, pleased
with the power of the little gadget considering it came from a
civilian shop.

As he suspected from his surveillance,
the castle walls had been constructed of old fashion masonry,
mineral composites shaped to look like real stones. Only the very
rich could afford such. Did it belong to Lester? Had he built it
with the riches made off Hadrason’s illegal dealings and on the
backs of miners treated like slaves?

It didn’t matter now except that the
cracks and crevices created by mortaring stones together allowed
for easy climbing if one’s fingers were strong enough. Vin’s were.
Booted feet approached below and someone spoke into a comm unit
about the broken camera.

Vin reached the eaves. He grasped it
and swung out dangerously with his legs dangling free while he
pulled himself up and over the edge of the roof. Various wings of
the sprawling castle jutted their own sharply inclined sections of
the roof toward the starlight. The window where he’d spotted Emma
on was the only room with bars. His plan counted on there not being
alarms on the upper floor windows either.

He jogged across the roof, well back
from the edge though he didn’t expect any of the guards to look up.
Earlier he’d selected the window he would enter through but he had
to do so without alerting the guards below with the breaking of
glass. He found the chosen spot and swung down over the eaves.
After assuring himself of his grip, he let go with one hand while
he wielded the laser again. He used a sharp focused beam that cut
through the glass with swift ease. Using his foot to put pressure
on the glass, he kept it from falling outward as he finished
slicing a rectangular piece from the bottom.

After stuffing the laser behind his
belt, Vin set his feet on the narrow window ledge. Letting go of
the eaves required more agility than climbing up them had. He once
again gripped them with two hands and hung for a moment to rest the
arm that had held all his weight for a time. Then he pushed off
with his feet, swinging out slightly from the roof. On the return
arc of his swing he let go with one hand and reached for the window
ledge. He grasped it with just his fingertips and at the same time
let go of the eaves with the other. His body slapped against the
wall as he got his other hand on the ledge. He hung there for a few
minutes, hearing a guard moving beneath him. Even if the man looked
up, he wouldn’t spot Vin in his camouflaged armor.

As soon as the footsteps faded Vin
again transferred his weight to one arm and reached through the
opening in the glass and unlatched the window. It swung in on
silent hinges, pushing aside heavy drapes. He vaulted inside and
rolled while pulling out his pistol. He found the room empty of
people and furniture. Storage crates sat against one wall. A good
place for ingress.

The door to the room opened to a wide
hallway that led to an even wider stairwell. He suspected an
elevator serviced the upper floors of the castle, but he wouldn’t
use such a device that could turn into a trap.

The fake stones comprised the floors
and stairs also, formed into artistic patterns. At least he thought
he thought they were meant to be artistic though what pleased his
eye might not be a true measure of art. He drifted down the curving
stairs quieter than the warm draft touching his face. He paused at
the next floor’s landing. He heard movement to the left, the
direction of Emma’s room.

Vin went the other direction,
suspecting from the shape of the building that the hallway formed a
rectangle with rooms both inside and outside it. He tried one of
the doors on the interior wall. It opened to storage as did the
next. He approached Emma’s room from the rear of the building and
hoped the guard he’d heard moving about would watch the
front.

He came to the last corner separating
him from Emma’s hallway and pulled the small mirror he’d stolen
from the shop from his pack. Squatting down so it would be below
eye level, he angled it so he could see the length of the
hall.

One guard, fortunately not Nemon, stood
outside Emma’s door. The man walked a few steps and then turned and
walked back. Trying to stay awake but his pacing about didn’t help
his concentration. Not many men could maintain an alert state in
what they thought was a safe environment. Forty feet of open
hallway lay between Vin and his target. Even an incompetent sentry
might get off an alarm by the time Vin could transverse it. A shout
in the quiet house would alert everyone.

No choice. Vin stowed his mirror back
in the pack and stood up. He listened to the pacing and timed his
charge. His boots made no sound on the stone floor, and the guard
died without ever hearing him. A simple lock bolted the door to the
frame. A quick search of the guard revealed no key. The heat laser
proved itself invaluable as the lock gave way before its beam. He
eased the door open and found the room dark behind the drawn
drapes.

A large bed sat to the right of the
window, neatly made with a fluffy covering except for a small lump
in the middle. Something relaxed in Vin’s chest at the same time
the sight of how small she looked all alone in the bed gave birth
to a need to protect her so fierce a tingle chased its way across
his entire body.

He approached her on silent feet,
catching the scent of her clean hair and hearing the steady rhythm
of her breathing. He looked down at her sleeping and knew he would
put aside all his need for vengeance to keep this woman
safe.

Mired in his anger and revenge over the
last six months, he’d lost track of the prime directive of his
life. To protect civilians, innocent and good, like Emma. Like
Vannie and Moe. But Moe was dead, and it was his fault. He’d failed
Hovel Port. He’d known what kind of man Admiral Ben Lester was and
hoped that man would come for Emma. Yet he hadn’t prepared
properly. Even this minute he operated without a firm plan of how
to lead Emma out of the castle.