Across Our Stars: Victor

by A. Payne

  “What do you have to lose?” Victor asked softly. He grazed Trevor’s hand with his knuckles. I’m going to distract him so that the rest of you can take him down, mate. Tell Fairchild to sedate him. Have Zoe and Daniels secure him.

  He’ll shoot you. He’s a caged animal right now, Victor. Don’t do it.

  I won’t allow him to strike anything vital. Spread the message. That’s an order, Chief, Victor thought. Their mental conversation occurred in the span of a second.

  Under the guise of staving off the two women from using their guns, Trevor reached out and touched their wrists, as if urging them to lower their firearms. Both weapons dropped seconds later. Zoe also shifted to the left. Without making eye contact with Trevor, Fairchild unfastened her kit.

  Victor made his move and lurched forward.

  “No!” Hamish practically shrieked. He squeezed the trigger as if by reflex, with the barrel already trained on Victor. The impact knocked the doctor backward and shattered the plate of his combat armor. It punched him down to the bone.

  Gritting through the pain, Victor sat heavily on the ground and fetched a secondary tranquilizer from his personal medipack. His instincts were rarely wrong, and his intuition told him that Fairchild would need another dose soon.

  “We’re trying to help you!” Zoe grunted.

  Zoe pitted the strength of her cybernetic arm against Hamish’s weight to pin him down from one side. Daniels and Chang took him from the right and practically laid their bodies across his torso to secure him to the ground. He bucked wildly, a traumatized victim behaving beyond his own control, and drove one of his knees into Daniel’s side. The Commander grunted out in pain, injured despite his shock-absorbing armor.

  “Now, Fairchild!” Daniels ordered.

  Fairchild dove in and jabbed the auto-ejecting tranquilizer against the outer aspect of Hamish’s thigh. As she slammed it home, it cracked and the needle snapped.

  “No good!” Fairchild reported. “He’s got cybernetic muscle weave beneath his skin.”

  “Catch!” Victor hurled the second toward her. “Inject it into the jugular!”

  “I won’t go back there!” Hamish yelled, maddened. He threw an elbow back into Chang’s face, shattering the demolition grade polymer faceplate.

  “Holy shit! Cybernetic arms, too!”

  Hamish’s larger size and superior reach granted him the advantage in the fight, but Zoe moved faster and with more flexibility. She threw her weight against him and wrapped her arms and legs around the downed man in a full body hold.

  “Stick him already, dammit!” Zoe cried. Hamish struggled in her grasp.

  “Daniels, secure him from the right,” Victor barked out. “Raines has it handled on her side.”

  The injector pumped Hamish with milky fluid, and then the true fight began. He buried the soles of his feet against the ground and shoved. If not for Fairchild clinging to him like a toddler, he might have overpowered the combatants pitting their strength against him.

  “Hold him until it works!” Fairchild screamed.

  Between the combined efforts of the marines and the potent mix of sedatives, the fight slowly drained from Hamish Lockhart. He feebly pushed and shoved until his eyes rolled back and his jaw became slack.

  None of the soldiers pinning him dared to move.

  “Is he out for good?” Zoe grunted, wedged halfway beneath the heavy man. She tried to shove him off but barely managed to nudge him an inch. “How the hell much can one guy weigh?”

  Daniels helped pull her out. “Damn, he’s strong as an ox,” he muttered.

  “Sort of glad you put us through the ringer on the mats, Commander. Longest ground tussle of my life,” Chang complained. The man sagged against a tree while Davis tended to his bleeding face. Jagged shards from his shattered faceplate were embedded in his skin. Luck had been on his side since both of his eyes remained intact.

  Victor grunted from where he sat on the ground. While they were occupied with Hamish, he began his own field dressing. Applying it one-handed took more skill than he anticipated.

  “Here, let me help.”

  “I’ve got it. Raines, you see to Hamish.”

  Zoe ignored him in favor of kneeling down to pull at the shredded remnants of his shoulder piece, revealing the dark blood soaking the uniform beneath it. “Let me help you, Victor, your hand is shaking. Here, I can–”

  “I fucking said I’ve got it,” he snapped, jerking from her.

  She flinched at the reprimand and dropped her hands. “As you say, sir.”

  He regretted his harsh tone immediately. Unfortunately, there was no taking it back. While Hamish and Trevor counted on them, they would have to cast aside their feelings; he needed an obedient marine, not a lover.

  Victor ignored the way his stomach twisted in turmoil. I shouldn’t have snapped like that at her. She was only showing concern. Bloody hell, if I were any other officer she would have listened, and if she were any other soldier I wouldn’t feel like shit for that. I can’t be the one to give her orders.

  Something would have to change.

  Chapter 26

  Zoe reclined on her bunk and gazed up at the ceiling above her. A poster collage of her favorite family photos decorated the former bland grey surface. She may not see eye to eye with her parents, but she still loved them deeply.

  “Sergeant Zoe Raines, there is a message for you from Commander Victor del Toro,” Jem’s voice informed her in a perfect, breathy sigh.

  Zoe jerked her attention toward the speaker aperture located in the corner of the room. “Go ahead and play it, Jem,” she replied to the ship A.I.

  “Report to my office in medical, Sergeant Raines. Now.”

  Shit. The usual warmth in Victor’s voice was absent. She hardly recognized the stern tone.

  “Uh-oh,” Angela muttered. “What did you do?”

  A shake of her head discouraged her bunkmate from pressing further. Zoe hastily slipped back into her uniform, heart pounding. She had a solid guess what he wanted to talk to her about. She dampened her fingers and ran them through her hair to tame the disheveled strands before heading out.

  Victor’s office door took on an intimidating presence, one she steeled herself against with both palms pressed over the cool steel. Once her racing heart calmed, she knocked.

  “Come in.”

  Zoe stepped inside, muscles tense. She closed the door behind her and stood at attention in front of Victor’s desk. She focused on a spot over his shoulder because she couldn’t meet his dispassionate grey eyes for more than a split second.

  “You wanted to see me, sir?”

  “Would you like to tell me what the hell you were doing down there, and why you disobeyed my order?” Victor demanded.

  Because you were hurt and I couldn’t stand to see it, she answered inwardly. It wasn’t an excuse and she knew it. Thankfully, Victor possessed no psychic ability.

  “I saw our medical officer bleeding out and struggling to treat himself, sir.”

  “I must be mistaken. I wasn’t aware of your medical training, Sergeant Raines.”

  Zoe opened her mouth to speak but quickly snapped it shut. She swallowed back her protest, stomach churning. It wasn’t the first time she’d been subjected to a reprimand or stern words from a ranking crewman, but it cut deeper coming from him.

  “There’s no room on our squad for a marine who can’t follow orders. I’ve put in notice to Commodore Bishop requesting your immediate reassignment to another team.”

  Cold seeped through her veins, followed immediately by a hot rush that colored her cheeks up to her ears. “Permission to speak freely, sir.”

  The momentary loss of his stoic expression indicated Victor’s surprise. Once the surprise faded, he nodded and leaned back in the seat.

  “With all due respect, sir,” Zoe snapped. If I’m going to get my ass handed to me I may as well go all out. “If you have a problem with me being on this team, then you need to deal with it. Yes, I tr
ied to help you instead of tending to Hamish, but did my actions hurt the team? Pulling rank on me like this is crap.”

  “Is that all?”

  She swallowed back another bitter retort and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re dismissed, Sergeant. We’ll speak later outside the office.”

  Zoe snapped to attention, turned about face, and strode out without another word. She didn’t trust herself, even if she had the breath to speak. Without looking, it felt as if every eye in medical followed her on the way out.

  She made it out the department’s door before the first tears slipped down her cheeks. The pressure building in her chest released as a choked sob which she quickly attempted to smother by ducking her head and covering her mouth with her hand. The path ahead of her became the least of her worries, right up until she sped around a corner and bounced into a solid wall of chest. The most muscled chest she’d ever seen beneath an officer’s uniform.

  “Raines?”

  Kill me, now. Please. Running into the CO, literally, seemed like the worst sort of luck on top of a day gone so horribly wrong.

  “What’s wrong, love? What can I do for you?”

  “Nothing, Commodore,” she rushed out, face warming to a feverish temperature. “I’m so s-sorry. I should have been paying attention.”

  “Toss the formalities into the rubbish for a moment. Now what’s wrong? What have I missed?”

  Zoe shook her head, wishing she had a hole to crawl away into. If it was possible to die from shame, she’d be a stone cold corpse at his feet.

  “It’s n-nothing, sir.” Another sob escaped her lips.

  “We’ll have a jaunt through the bio-farm then. Come on. I’m told by one of my officers that it’s the cool place where all of the kids like to snog these days. Let’s go have ourselves an eyeful.”

  Commodore Bishop left her little choice in the matter. His hand settled on her back between her shoulder blades, guiding her down the passageway.

  He even offered her a handkerchief. The gentlemanly gesture caught her by surprise.

  “Take your time.”

  His kindness opened the floodgates. Zoe couldn’t stop her tears, so she focused on not blubbering. Get it together, Zoe! No way you can cry to the CO. Not about this.

  Numb, Zoe was dimly aware of passing trees and carefully tended rows of vegetables. She focused on her breathing and pulling it back in like a proper marine.

  “Are you feeling better now?” Once she nodded, he continued. “Perhaps this is too personal to ask, but would you kindly tell me why Victor’s requested for your transfer? I’d like to hear it from you first.”

  Great. Zoe twisted the damp square of cloth between her hands and drew in another deep breath. “I didn’t follow an order, sir,” she replied in a carefully measured tone.

  His features softened and for those seconds, Commodore Bishop wasn’t the hard-ass commanding officer of the ship, he was any sweet, fatherly figure showing concern for a person in his care. “I assure you, Sergeant Raines, I haven’t asked out of duty to a friend. You have my word that nothing said to me here will condemn you or return to the doctor. What order?”

  “I…” she blinked, spilling another tear down her cheek. “The marine we were sent to find, he shot him, sir. After assisting in taking him down, I went to check on Vic–Doctor del Toro. He was wounded and… and looked as though he was having trouble. I offered to help and he told me he had it and to assist the other members of the squad. I tried to help him anyway. As I saw it, sir, our doctor was wounded and there were plenty of others on top of the situation with Hamish for the moment.”

  “The poor sod didn’t dress you down in front of the rest of medical, did he?”

  “Doctor del Toro called me to his office, sir, to address my insubordination. He was right to.” Doesn’t make it hurt any less.

  He punched in something on his personal datagram. A subtle beep from her badge indicated a change in her duty status. “Good. Go clean up and lay in your cot for the day. I’ll handle our mutual friend. As a squad leader, it’s up to him whether or not you’ll remain on the team, but I will offer my recommendation to rethink his request.”

  “Thank you, sir, but you don’t need to do that. I didn’t mean to trouble you.” Zoe offered the handkerchief back to him.

  “Keep it. I’ve got a thousand of them for the enlisted.” The commodore grinned at her and strode away.

  Zoe remained beneath the trees a few minutes longer.

  Chapter 27

  Victor loathed invasive neuro procedures most of all. Arms and legs were basic performance modifications, but none of those were potentially life-threatening issues. If he botched a job by misplacing a cybernetic leg’s nerve connection to the hip socket, no one died. He simply opened the patient’s incisions and tried again.

  The human brain required absolute precision to a degree beyond human capabilities. Doctors like Victor relied on virtual enhancements, droid-assisted surgery, nanobots, and software protocols to perform necessary neurosurgeries. For that reason, and that reason alone, he had no intention of physically delving into Hamish Lockhart’s skull. And thanks to the blueprints and work left behind by his former pal Mathias Campbell, he wouldn’t have to. An hour of exploration with the NORI machine told him everything he needed to know and confirmed the blueprints in Campbell’s database referred to Hamish.

  Fairchild dabbed Victor’s brow with a cloth while he made the incisions with his surgical laser. Anxiety beaded his forehead with sweat, almost to the point of distraction. One wrong move could activate Hamish’s internal defenses and instantaneously detoxify the sedatives from his bloodstream. One miscalculation in their dosage estimations would be enough for Hamish Lockhart to awaken from his drug-induced sleep. They didn’t want that happening.

  “He’s so bloody complicated. Never seen anything like this,” Victor muttered as he opened a window into the cyborg’s chest. The layer of synthetic skin peeled away to reveal Hamish’s metal-plated bone structure. Plasteel-laced bone guarded his interior organs, most of which appeared to be improved or replaced. They had practically hollowed him.

  “As you can see, they’ve augmented roughly 60% of his skeletal structure with a reinforced periosteum. Both arms are prosthetic with reinforced shoulder joints.”

  Davis took her position at the opposite side and assisted with holding the small incision open. His sternum split open down the middle once unbolted and pried apart, designed for easy access.

  “Overhead lights: swivel fifteen degrees starboard, thirty degrees downward,” Victor commanded the surgical theater’s artificial intelligence. “God, would you look at this, Oshiro.” The micro-camera on his tools projected a live-time feed on the monitor to the other doctor observing on the other side of the glass. “His heart has a complex filter to separate the cybernetic lipids from his bloodstream. You see, humans need blood, but blood clots in cybernetic parts. Causes blockages. Hamish doesn’t have to worry about that.”

  Or plenty of other things, Victor realized. The boy was an anomaly, constructed piece by piece to such a degree that more machine existed than man. At the very least, the ratio was close.

  “According to the notes from Campbell’s files, they added a failsafe. If I remove it now, that’s one less concern to trouble us later,” Victor muttered.

  “His vitals are holding steady. The suspended microparticles seem to be holding the sedatives in his system,” Lil reported from the side of the room. Her sole job was to keep Hamish under.

  “All right, I’m going in.”

  A series of leads connected to Hamish’s heart, wiring him like a ticking time bomb. First, Victor snipped the signal relay. Someone out in the galaxy held Hamish’s life in their hands, and Victor would be damned if they ended it now. Second, he cut the feed from the electrical current along with its backup supply to be absolutely safe. Victor performed the operation as dictated by the manual until the sadistic cardioverter was no longer a threat to Ham
ish’s life. He dropped the sinister device into a metal tray O’Reilly held.

  If I didn’t get that hunch about Campbell, this wouldn’t be possible. I’d be floundering in the dark and this entire thing would have gone tits up, he realized.

  It took less time to close Hamish up than it did to open him. In ten minutes, Biosutures and medical grade glue restored him to near-perfect condition. Their patient was none the wiser, but his medical staff only relaxed once they returned him to observation status.

  “Do you have that thing cleaned up, O’Reilly?”

  “Right here, sir.”

  The round device looked like any other pacemaker at first glance. They worked off a kinetic power source, converting movement from the beating heart itself to keep their charge. This one had been heavily modified to release a lethal shock and to slay its wearer, but once it was rinsed clean blood and oily residue, Victor saw the detailed electronics encased in the protective clear case.

  Victor set it beneath a magnifying scope and brought the image up on screen.

  “Did it serve an actual practical purpose?” Oshiro asked. “Will he be all right without the simple pacemaker, that is?”

  “I don’t think he’ll require one,” Victor replied, turning the medical tool slowly beneath the scope. “All we can do now is monitor him. If he does, we can put one back in.”

  “One that will not kill him on a whim.” Oshiro sighed and shook his head. “To see them take something designed to prolong and assist life, then subvert it to such a cause.”

  “I know, Yuki. Power and money appear to have corrupted these doctors.”

  “Ah, there, is that what you were looking for?” On the screen, the enhanced image showed the small details the human eye alone would miss. A small series of numbers were etched into a chip on the cardioverter next to a faded pictogram. Oshiro magnified the image further. “It looks as though they tried to acid wash the serial away.”

  “Yeah, but they couldn’t all the way without compromising the integrity of the chip itself. This logo looks vaguely familiar, too.”