by A. Payne
“Doctor Campbell, you have an eager visitor from the Royal Navy here to see you at your earliest convenience.” She paused, presumably to listen to Campbell respond from the other end of the link. “He claims to be Doctor Victor del Toro. Yes, I will inform him.”
Victor pretended to hold interest in the news feed scrolling across the wall instead of jumping to his feet.
“Doctor Campbell will be out shortly,” the receptionist relayed with a cool smile on her plastic face. Everything from the flawless arch of her immaculate eyebrows to her sculpted chin and nose advertised Campbell’s work. He’d always had a fantastic talent for reconstructive and cosmetic surgery, which he put to work on scarred soldiers.
“Thank you.”
Heavy footsteps announced his friend’s arrival. Doctor Campbell had always been a heavy man but his time out of the Navy had added weight to his already bulky frame, especially around his middle.
“Victor, you should have called ahead,” he said, offering out his hand. Perspiration dotted his brow along his hairline.
“I did. Or I tried anyway.” Victor put on a smile and shook Mathias’ hand. “Since we passed this way along our route to the next port, I wanted to stop in and say hello, as you asked.” He added a touch of passive aggressive emphasis to get his point across.
The pudgy man’s chuckle held a nervous quality to it. “So I did…” his voice trailed off and he cleared his throat. “I wish I could show you around, Vic, I really do.”
The hated nickname drew a wince. “The Jemison will be here a day at least. I can return tomorrow if that’s better. I’m really looking forward to seeing your work.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”
Genuine puzzlement creased Victor’s features. The man before him was a far cry from the colleague and friend he remembered. “Anything I can do to help take the load off while I’m here, Mathias?”
“That’s kind, but unnecessary. The fact is, I’m heading off to the neighboring colonies tomorrow to see private clients, so I really do need to get back to my packing. Don’t want to forget anything.”
“Do you need a hand?”
“No, no. I have it covered, thanks. Next time, all right chap?”
“Next time,” Victor agreed, cheeks aching from the stiff smile he forced himself to maintain.
***
“I tell you, it was dodgy.” Victor shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it over his arm. “The whole place gave me the creeps.”
“Lieutenant Amir stepped off ship for a time and returned with some troubling observations.” Ethan rubbed his chin. “Lockhart, too.”
“Something’s not right, Ethan. Campbell has always had a bad poker face and that hasn’t changed. I had the distinct impression he was hiding something. We aren’t wanted here, and my war buddy asked me to leave. He had no interest in showing me his greatest life’s work, when half a year ago he couldn’t wait for me to see.”
“So what are you asking?”
“Send a small team back in with me.”
“Granted. If they don’t want us here, well, they’ll just have to sod off and accept that we’re the ones with the firearms.”
Ethan never pushed his weight around and typically believed in allowing colonies to handle their own affairs. For him to take such a heavy-handed approach could mean only a single thing: the governor had rebuffed his warning of a very real danger. If the leader of a colony disregarded his warning and failed to keep the Empire’s citizens safe, it became a priority of the military to take prompt action.
“Give me an hour to call it in to United Command. I want to make Admiral Novak aware of what we intend to do in the event. Just in case this encounter goes tits up.”
“Fair enough.”
Their tactical response team received the go ahead in less than an hour. This time they took a small shuttle directly to the hospital helipad.
After the events on Athena, Lopez took over as pilot for Rogers and left the group without a communications expert. Eager to return his boots to actual combat, Trevor volunteered to fill the vacancy and Victor supported the appointment. They counted on his psychic abilities to provide an edge, a predictor against the unknown.
“DuPrie, when we get inside I want you to monitor the main entrance. Ears open. I’m sure they’ll have some things to say.”
“Yes, sir.” The activation of Saskia’s natural gene ability blended her into the slate gray shuttle background. Within seconds, her highly specialized armor had adapted to her camouflage. She moved alongside them outside while appearing to be little more than a barely visible heat wave shimmer in the air.
Wide-eyed civilians watched them enter the building and approach the receptionist with the phony customer service smile.
“No need to call for Doctor Campbell,” Victor gave the same receptionist a thin smile. “Go ahead and buzz us in.”
If the woman had ideas to argue, she never followed through on them. Her pale gaze darted to the various weapons and soon the security doors flashed green. Three guards met them halfway down the hall.
“Gentlemen, stand down.” Daniels grinned at the men. “Royal Navy. We’re here with the full approval and authority of the United Command.”
It’s like he’s almost hoping they’ll put up a fuss, Victor thought with a shake of his head. To their credit, the guards backed off and allowed them to pass unhindered.
“Something doesn’t feel right here, Commander Daniels.”
“What do you mean, Lockhart?” Daniels asked in a low tone.
“I can’t put a finger to it. It’s just like… everyone is hiding something.” Trevor shook his head and cast a wary glance around the sterile interior. “And… the background noise is excessive. Too much of it for so small a place and what they have listed on their patient registry.” He raised both hands to his temples and shut his watery eyes, clearly afflicted with one of his migraines.
“We’ll keep an eye out. Are you going to be okay here?”
“I’m fine, Doc. Which way is his office?”
Victor gestured down the hall. “It should be down this way. He always liked to be back by the labs.”
“You didn’t meet him in his office before?” Zoe asked.
“No, and that was another tip off. He made me wait in the lobby and came out to me.”
Six rooms lined the hall, but Victor spotted a patient in only one of them. Nothing they had seen so far indicated any surgical or time-consuming procedures. Whatever has been keeping Mathias busy, it’s not his normal patients.
“Hold up a minute. It’s this way.” Trevor stopped by a door marked as a restricted area. “I know the office is down the hall but… this ominous feeling, it’s coming through here.”
Victor hesitated, but he trusted in Trevor’s abilities.
Daniels led the squad through the door and down a single staircase that emptied into a green-lit corridor. Each of the four rooms they passed housed a mechanical rig as lavish as Victor’s surgical theater on the ship.
Where the hell did he get all of this? Certainly not on the Empire’s budget. He can’t afford it either.
“There’s blood on the floor,” Zoe muttered. Her enhanced sight picked out obscure details the others missed.
“Raines!”
Daniels knocked the smaller marine to the floor and threw up his arm to block the security laser aimed at her back. The beam cut through his armor and seared his skin, filling the hall with the smell of burning hair and skin. Zoe rolled to her back on the floor and took out the machinery with two well-placed shots.
“Here, let me look.” Fairchild moved to the injured commander’s side and inspected the wound. “It’s not deep and it’s cauterized at least.”
“Are you okay?” Victor asked quietly while helping Zoe up from the floor. She nodded, but the doctor left nothing up to chance. A bio-scan assessed her condition and confirmed that she’d emerged unscathed from the incident.
Trevor searched the w
all for an access panel and hooked his computer in. “It was operated remotely. Someone clearly doesn’t want us snooping around.”
And when I find out who… Victor’s fingers tightened into a fist at his side.
“Can we expect more tricks like this?” Zoe asked. She supported Daniels’ arm while Fairchild wrapped the injury.
“I can try and hack into the system,” Trevor offered. “If we’re lucky I can gain all remote control, or at least lock out any other consoles like this.”
“Do it,” Victor said.
They lurked behind him in the chilly hall while Trevor toiled at the device. Anxiety bubbled in the pit of Victor’s stomach and drove him to pacing.
“There. I’ve disabled all the doors and security. We shouldn’t have another surprise like this. The room at the end is the only one in use.”
“Let’s go say hello then,” Daniel grunted.
Frosted glass on the door blocked their view of the room within. Daniels put his hand on the knob, made a silent count to three then slammed the portal open. Zoe, gun out and extended, rushed through first with Abernathy a step behind her. Daniels followed with the rest of the marines and then Victor and his medics.
“Oh my god…” The nightmarish scene scorched itself into his mind and turned his stomach.
It wasn’t a medical laboratory; it was a chop shop. Fairchild appeared green in the face and Trevor backed out of the room entirely.
The pain must be excruciating for him to feel. Victor didn’t envy the psychic’s ability.
A cold corpse lay on the examination table. The young man, barely out of his teens, showed extensive cybernetic modification -- but most of the components had been removed, leaving yawning holes in their place. A shallow pan of pink-tinged solution lay to the side of the corpse on a metal tray, filled with gore-covered cybernetics. The lone doctor had begun reclaiming them from his failed project. Three more bodies were laid out on cold tables at the back of the room.
Mathias Campbell stripped off the bloody sani-gloves and discarded them into the bin. Wise enough to understand the gravity of the situation, and that his guards wouldn’t be coming to his aid, he stepped away from the table with his hands raised in a gesture of surrender.
“Victor, I wish you had listened. You should have gone.”
He didn’t think, he acted. Victor crossed the room and caught Campbell across the face with his fist. Cartilage cracked and blood splattered from the man’s hooked nose.
“You were supposed to help people. You took an oath to do no harm!” Victor raged at him, punctuating the harsh words by striking Campbell in the mouth. The force cracked a tooth and scraped Victor’s knuckles, but twice wasn’t enough, and he quickly had to follow suit with a third. No amount of physical violence seemed large enough to wipe away the debt Campbell owed to society.
The other marines stood back and said nothing. No one spoke or admonished Victor for the loss of temper.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Victor demanded. “Why would you do this to your own patients? To anyone? Answer me!” He slammed his fist into Campbell’s mouth again, dislodging another tooth in the process. He shook the heavy set doctor who no longer deserved the title. A doctor was a person who healed; Victor held a killer in his hands.
“It all seemed so right. The research will save countless lives. You don’t understand, Victor. They have power. They promised to help us–”
“How in the bloody fuck is this help!?” Victor raised his fist but the other man shrank back and screamed.
“Don’t hit me again, no wait, wait! I can give you information. I can tell you anything.”
“You’re going to do that anyway, whether you want to or not,” Trevor spoke up quietly from the doorway. “You pathetic bastard.”
“They brought research and medical necessities that we needed. We were forgotten by the Empire and left on our own here! Your Empire abandoned us.”
“Of course they brought medical research, they experimented on innocent civilians.”
“I didn’t know… I didn’t know, Victor. Please. You must believe me.” Campbell sagged in Victor’s powerful grip. Bloodied spittle trickled from his mouth. “They brought prisoners at first. Murderers. I thought… I was doing what we talked about! I thought we would make new discoveries to advance science. To help people with debilitating brain injuries.”
“And then what happened?” Zoe asked. She raised a hand toward the young man on the table. “He doesn’t look like a murderer or a prisoner to me.”
“They blackmailed me. I didn’t have a choice! I would have lost my license if I didn’t continue.”
Victor shook him again. “That’s your excuse? Nothing justifies this depravity. Who are they, Campbell?”
“They’re–” Campbell’s facial muscles tightened and twitched. He arched his back and stiffened without warning.
“Campbell?”
“Oh shit,” Daniels swore.
The man didn’t respond. A shake began over one side of his body and then the convulsion gradually spread. The doctor collapsed to the floor and seized, his arms locked against his body until he finally stilled.
Zoe touched Victor’s arm and wordlessly drew him back. His limbs shook, indignation and fury taking firm hold.
“They must have put a chip in his head,” Victor said numbly. He touched Zoe’s hand to signal he was all right, and then he knelt beside the corpse to run his bioscanner over Campbell’s head. “They cooked his brain remotely. Whomever this enigmatic ‘they’ happens to be.”
The hydraulic laboratory door sealed shut with a sudden slam, its lock clicking into place. Above them, small nozzles that resembled a fire extinguishing system began to emit a barely audible hiss.
“Masks!” Fairchild called the warning, prompting them all to don their rebreather masks.
“DuPrie. What’s happening?” Daniels asked over the comm.
“I killed the receptionist. She began punching a bunch of buttons at her desk. I believe she fried your friend’s noggin and sealed you in.”
“What about the guards?”
“I put them down, too,” Saskia replied nonchalantly.
“Can you unlock the doors? She’s gassing the room.”
“This is a little foreign to me, but I’ll try.”
Within seconds, the gas began to flood through at an exponential rate until a heavy cloud filled the air. Whatever Saskia did, it worsened it.
“Goddammit! Trevor, can’t you do anything?” Daniels demanded.
“I’m trying!” Trevor found the nearest console and jacked in with his persocomm. A brilliant green user interface expanded to surround Trevor, alive with flashing symbols and numbers.
Clueless about hacking and overrides, Victor stood by as helplessly as the other soldiers.
“This stuff is burning my skin. What is it?” Daniels demanded.
“No idea, but we’re going to need one hell of a decontamination if we make it through this,” Victor muttered.
“Trevor, hurry!” Fairchild cried.
“Doin’ the best I can. I’m in the system, lass. Just a moment.”
The doors flew open and gas spilled into the corridor. They didn’t waste a second. Once they fled the gassed chamber, Trevor contacted the Jemison to relay their findings. Ethan was furious.
Apparently the city council had attempted to pull a fast one to force the Jemison to vacate the planet, citing legislation written by Parliament. It allowed freely founded colonies the rights to live peacefully without military and government interference as long as they acted within the law.
“They’re certainly not acting within the laws of the Empire here. That’s why they want us to leave, sir. We’ll hold it down until you arrive,” Trevor told him. “Once the room is clear, we’ll begin our investigation.” He ended the transmission and turned back to face the squad.
“Well?” Daniels asked.
“The Jemison is sending reinforcements to lock down the fac
ility. The Bridewell is en route, too, to pick up anyone we arrest. Estimated time of arrival is midday local time six local rotations from now,” Trevor relayed. The Bridewell operated as one of three prison ships in the United Empire.
“Good.” Once the gas cleared, Victor reentered the room and sat at a medical terminal. “Here, have a look.”
He pulled up the screen into a 3D display for Trevor’s perusal. “They were playing around with concepts I never even conceived. Nanofiber filaments spread through the frontal lobe.
“Most of these corpses are children, mate. Why children?” Abernathy asked. He and Fairchild pulled a sheet over the young man on the table.
“The preadolescent psychic brain is incredibly malleable and plastic. We once believed they could recover from many more traumas than an adult,” Victor said. He didn’t move from his seat at Campbell’s work station. He had to read it all. He needed to. “We had a theory once, but we dismissed it… I thought. I never imagined he could do this.”
“It’s disgusting,” Zoe said. “Hurting kids. Using them like this.”
“There are few things lower than harming a child,” Victor said darkly. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back to breathe. His heart pounded frightfully fast and the world around him shimmered. He blinked through his blurry vision and inhaled a few deep breaths.
“I’m going to leave Chang, Fairchild, and Abernathy here with you, Doctor,” Daniels spoke up. “The rest of us plan to clear this facility.”
“Go ahead. I’ll remain here. I need to get this sorted.”
A week later, reinforcements arrived from the Empire, but by then, the Jemison’s crew had figuratively whipped the details out of most of the so-called villagers. They were all employees and actors, hired by a faceless corporation no one could name. When Trevor and Nisrine prodded them with psychic mindscans, it proved they were telling the truth. They were paid to do Campbell’s bidding, and to occasionally fly off the planet to abduct more victims.
Most of the original inhabitants of the settlement were long gone, used as experimental fodder in Campbell’s grand scheme. A probe determined that the two outlying colonies had no idea about the atrocities committed in their sister community. Many families received closure at last and mourned the loss of their own children -- those whose care they had entrusted to Doctor Campbell, their sole medical provider. Records showed six months of questionable deaths and sicknesses.
