Dana Cartwright Mission 2: Lancer

by Joyz W. Riter

  The Dana Cartwright Series:

  Mission Two

  LANCER

  By

  Joyz W. Riter

  For Fran.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictionally. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 Joyz W. Riter

  Frisco, TX

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1490337821

  ISBN-10: 1490337822

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  Coming Soon

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  An obnoxious horn blared, alerting everyone working on the shuttle deck of the space station that it was quitting time. “Loud enough to wake the dead,” Dana Cartwright murmured, wrapping up her project and heading down the ramp of the older, Blade Class shuttle and tapping the hatch mechanism to seal the door.

  With the ship now secure, she removed her tool belt, stepped out of her overalls and gave them a shake, and then neatly stored everything for the night in her designated lockbox. Just before locking it, she spied a loose wrench down on the deck, scowled, and hurriedly retrieved it. Someone must have left it behind when working on the fuselage.

  Well, their loss… She added it to her collection of odds and ends. Next shift someone would come looking for it. Wouldn’t do to have something loose and floating about, if Shuttle Control should open the bay doors to zero gravity for an incoming ship.

  The dozen or so other members of the OAR-Station Four Mech-Tech crew cleared out fast, beating her out the main hatch by a good five minutes.

  Dana was in no hurry, had nowhere to go, and no one to meet. A sonic shower, a hot vegan meal and maybe some quiet time for reading about summed up her evening — every evening. She avoided the promenade restaurants, which catered to the many visitors and VIPs during their brief transits to and through the space station. She, also, stayed away from the pubs on the resident levels, finding them too noisy and overflowing with crew members from various docked ships. They tended to get brutally rowdy as the ‘night’ wore on.

  Her station mates often goaded her for not participating in the fun, calling her unflattering names to her face, and behind her back, but she let that go, shrugging off the worst and even laughing at some of the more creative ones. They didn’t know her very well; in fact, she never let them. Most were human, though not all from Earth, and just did not understand a hybrid empath’s need for solitude and meditation. They eventually stopped extending invitations to join them, which suited her just fine.

  The lights began to dim to energy-saver mode; and the hatch shut behind her — the last one out — with a loud clang.

  Dana let out a heavy sigh. One more shift ended; another year of them ahead.

  She headed down the long maze of corridors, intending to take the emergency stairwell up to Deck Ten and her quarters. Racing up and down the stairs proved to be one of the best exercises for keeping thigh and calve muscles toned and shapely, just as using heavy tools trained and shaped the upper body, and kept the muscles flexible.

  Just before rounding a corner, she heard the distinctive sounds of hand-to-hand fighting, punctuated by grunts and groans, and a few martial expletives. Then came the distinctive crack of a bone breaking, an agonized cry, and that of a body dropping hard to the deck. Muffled moans followed.

  She sped up, catching sight of two big men kicking a prone body before fleeing at the sound of her footfalls.

  Dana reacted, quickly tapping the voice-badge on her collar. “Security! Assault on Deck Twelve, corridor ten!” Then she dropped down beside the prone victim to offer first aid.

  Badly battered and bleeding profusely, he labored to breathe, a sure sign of rib and possibly even lung injuries. With the COM still open, she demanded, “Medical emergency: MAT transfer — two to infirmary intake — STAT!”

  Years of medical training kicked in, along with a calm professionalism she could never quite escape. The security detail arrived. She nodded in the direction the attackers had used to escape, hands too busy applying pressure to the femoral artery in the wounded man’s thigh. “He’s bleeding out! Where’s my transfer?” she shouted at the voice-badge.

  “Engaging now,” the computer voice responded.

  The MAT pod finally engulfed her and the patient, delivering them to the infirmary receiving unit. A trio of android nurses quickly pushed her aside, taking over. Commander Sanford, Station Four’s Chief Surgeon, arrived to assess the situation.

  “Don’t decon him — he’s lost too much blood,” she cautioned the ANs, knowing the programming would normally institute it unless overridden.

  The surgeon scowled at her as he scrubbed and sanitized his hands the old fashioned way, with soap and water. “What do you think you are? A doctor or something? Get back. You are not scrubbed.”

  She resisted spouting the angry retort on her lips. It was not the time to argue, though she maintained A-1 medical credentials and clearance, as high as, if not higher, than his.

  With blood still on her hands, and soaking the sleeves of her day uniform, Dana stepped back, nearly in shock.

  “You a Type-O blood donor?” Sanford demanded, looking over his shoulder for the briefest moment.

  She hesitated, mind racing, and then blinked to clear her head. “No, sir.”

  “Then clear the hell out of my infirmary!”

  Dana backed away another step, watching as the AN’s destroyed the wounded man’s uniform. She stared.

  “He’s a Commander. Must be new to Four,” she mumbled, not recognizing the strong, angular face. He had jet black, closely cropped hair. She guessed it was dyed because no one at his age had that color naturally.

  He turned his head to look at her with dark, stern, no-nonsense, commanding eyes; the type that drill all the way through you. Though smaller than average, he had a muscular torso, and the appearance of someone skilled in martial arts. He also had a regulation, neatly trimmed, dark, thick, beard and mustache.

  Something else about him made her stare.

  They locked eyes, making a deep, empathic connection. Dana’s lips formed an ‘O.’ Then she gasped, feeling a stabbing in pain in her ribcage.

  He gave her a perceptible nod and mouthed a ‘thank you’ before the AN affixed an oxygen mask. He soon succumbed to the painkiller, which Sanford administered using a DIA-injector, and drifted off into an anesthetized coma.

  Doctor Sanford ignored her, logging the patient into the medical scanners as “Brandt, Neville, r
ank Commander, Lancer” before tackling the punctured lung, cracked ribs, and the fractured leg.

  Suddenly, overwhelmed by gut-wrenching, intense pain, Cartwright looked down at the red, human blood on her hands, and understood the reason for the empathetic flood of emotions. She stifled a scream only by gritting her teeth and attempting an Eridani technique of pulling a mental circle of energy about herself to create a buffer.

  Having done all she could and was required by regulations to do under the circumstances, she bolted out the double doors of the infirmary, just as two security officers were heading in. They ignored her. She kept going, frantically taking the stairs down four flights to her small quarters.

  Once inside, Dana let out an anguished moan, holding her ribcage, remembering the first time all those years ago that she’d experienced an empathetic reaction.

  The vivid memory came flooding back. A woman had attempted suicide. The EMTs brought her in at Medical Center East, Capitol City, Earth, where Dana was on the ER staff.

  It all resurfaced, along with the reason she’d left medicine and left Earth.

  “I should never, ever, have become a doctor,” she lamented.

  Grumbling over the past did nothing to resolve her immediate issues and concerns. Neville Brandt’s strong energies continued to overwhelm. She shut her eyes tightly, fighting off vertigo. None of the Eridani techniques were helping. All the training in the galaxy could not totally block them. Nor could the N-link device about her neck stop her from sensing something more.

  She glimpsed memories of strange scenes from distant worlds — Neville Brandt’s past and present memories. He was on an emotionally charged, covert mission, and not merely on a stop-over at Station Four between assignments. She knew it to be true; his blood screamed it at her.

  The really nice thing about being a Mech-Tech “ship doctor” — and something her mentor all those long years ago at the academy hadn’t told her — ships didn’t bleed.

  She rushed to the lavatory to wash the blood away, just as Sanford had scrubbed before attending his patient.

  It didn’t help. Frantic now, she tried to recall an archaic Earth saying…a biblical quote.

  “For the life of a creature is in the blood…”

  That has to be it!

  She quickly removed her voice-badge, tossed it upon her bunk, and then stripped off the bloodstained, day uniform and under things, sending it all down the recycling chute. She even disposed of her leather boots, fearing they had blood on them, too. Still she sensed Neville Brandt’s essence upon her psyche.

  Unbraiding her waist-length, cinnamon curls, she darted into the sonic shower, setting it for maximum decontamination. It vacuumed away every stray, nonbeneficial particle from her skin and hair.

  Only then did the haunting, residual energies from contact with Commander Neville Brandt go away.

  CHAPTER TWO

  TO:

  MED-SCI EARTH, Office of the Director of Competency, Doctor Francis Calagura

  FROM:

  Lt. Cmdr. Dana J. Cartwright

  Dear Francis,

  Was so good to hear from you, my friend. Congratulations on your promotion to Director of Competency at MED-SCI; I will refrain from calling you “DOC” for obvious reason.

  I’m still here at Station Four. The Star Service, in its infinite wisdom, has done it again: Transfer request denied. So, I’m marooned for at least another year. I came with the personal mission to locate my birth records at the genetics center, only to learn everything has been moved to the medical center on Scanlos and all the historical records are now archived and sealed.

  I’ve been offered a promotion to full Commander, but haven’t yet accepted it. There are strings attached. For now, I remain at Lt. Commander, Senior Grade, though they gave me a pay raise. Either way, my security clearance isn’t high enough to grant me remote access to those genetics center records. Perhaps I can visit on my next shore leave some months from now.

  I’ll have to go in person to Scanlos, or have someone higher up — someone with clout — make the request. (Hint)

  Wonder what’s in those records requiring such heavy duty security? What is the Star Service hiding? What experiments were they running at the genetics labs? As a former doctor — and having a vested interest — I want answers.

  With some degree of certainty, I know my DNA is continuing to mutate. I can’t be certain of the cause.

  The annual physical does not require that sophisticated a review; and, the symptoms are not visible. I won’t be growing a second head, or webbed feet, or anything like that.

  I need your help, Francis. The mutations are disturbing. You may recall the empathetic reaction I had to that suicide while at MCE. Well, I now have empathetic capabilities beyond the highest scoring Eridani empaths, and telepathic abilities bordering on the natural skills of most Alphans.

  All the ‘chatter’ in my mind would be very disturbing, if I did not wear an N-link to block it, and use my training to mask it. I might be summarily ‘discharged’ from the Star Service as a security risk, should these mutations continue. Can’t have mutants — with the accompanying mental health issues — in positions of authority. As long as I don’t physically touch people, I’m fine.

  With your clout at MED-SCI, is it possible to get permission to unseal my birth records, for scientific study?

  I’ll be thirty-four Earth standard years old very soon. It’s been a full ten years since the initial DNA scans were completed by geneticists there on Earth. Tracking the mutations could be very valuable to the genetic and scientific communities, though I do not intend to become a lab rat for them to poke and prod.

  I can trust you, Francis, to be discreet.

  I have to locate my birth mothers. Can’t give up. My birth father was right there, in the most unlikely of places — literally right in my old back yard. Now, more than ever, I need to find my birth mothers — and any possible siblings. I’ve expended just about every other avenue left to me, save for resigning my commission and traveling to the Galactic Colonies of Enturize to demand a full genetic evaluation at one of their top rated centers. My human father is there, somewhere in the GCE territories. The last option would be to go find him again and beg for his help. He knows people and has a great deal of clout with their Star Service, which remains a separate entity from the Order of Allied Republics. That’s my final ace — the last card to play — though I must admit, I’m not much of a gambler.

  In the meantime, Station Four Shuttle Control has me restoring an Alphan Blade Class shuttle — one of my very favorite vessels to fly. In a few short hours, Trident will be ready for a test flight. They’ve re-named it Trader One — not sure why — but I have a fond history with it. I shall always remember my very first flight and landing, when it was the personal shuttlecraft belonging to Ambassador Kord of the Alphan Delegation. His son and I made an impeccable team at academy. Wonder where Prince Korwin is now?

  The repair order requires this shuttle to be mission worthy ASAP. Just like Shuttle Control to let a good ship sit and rust for years, and then demand miracles on short notice.

  However, I am a miracle worker, of sorts. I have the specs and diagrams for these older shuttles stored in my photographic and eidetic memory. If anyone can get it ready, I can. And, I must say, flying these older shuttles brings a great deal of joy to what would otherwise be tedious and extremely boring days.

  Working on this Blade Class is a bright ray of sunlight in the humdrum, monotonous darkness.

  Please respond as soon as possible…or come and visit. The Star Bar, on the Promenade here at Station Four, is every bit as good a restaurant as The Viewery at Station One. We could have dinner and play ‘catch up.’

  Big medical conference coming up. You shouldn’t miss it. Would be wonderful to see you, my friend. So, come… “Doctor’s orders…”

  DJC

  CHAPTER THREE

  Full of pre-mission anticipation, and with no other outlet for it, Captain
Janz Macao enlisted his Chief of Security, Jay Gordon, in a wrestling match. Though Gordie out-weighed the him by two stone (maybe more) and out-trained him, daily, they went at it on the mats in Lancer’s gymnasium/workout room as equals, to Macao’s distinct disadvantage.

  Stripped down to undergarments, they both pulled on the standard Star Service wrestling black, fila-cut singlets, added sweat bands about wrists and foreheads, and then tossed and tumbled in hand-to-hand combat. The native of Alpha Centauri Prime did his best to counter the Earth-human’s skill.

  “You’re rusty,” Gordie taunted, throwing the Captain for what seemed to be the hundredth time, albeit far more gently this time.

  Macao landed flat on his back, wincing and gasping for breath. “I always preferred Greco-Roman…”

  “How archaic!” Gordie let out a belly laugh. “We need to do this more often,” Lancer’s Security Chief mumbled, leaning down, offering a helping hand. “My guys and I practice alternating forms — even Imperial free form now and then.”

  Macao remained on the mat, looking up at his good friend, resting and sighing. “Perhaps I should stick to Alphan meditation?”

  “Never was much for that sedate stuff,” the big black man stifled a groan, “with all that fancy breathing and chanting.”

  Janz shook his head. “It’s not all that fancy. Alphan’s require it to keep their telepathic powers in check.” He held up a hand. “I think I’ve had enough mat visits for today.”

  Gordie shrugged and changed the subject. “We’re a day out from Station Four. Have you had any mission news?” They shook hands to officially end the match.

  Macao didn’t respond right away, mulling over something he couldn’t exactly define — something gnawing at him — perhaps it was trepidation over the mission.