by Susan Kelley
“I brought you something, Doctor Emma.”
Emma jumped at Vin’s quiet voice beside her. She hadn’t heard even a whisper of his approach.
Vin held a package wrapped in the rough blue cloth the depot used to package fragile items. He thrust it toward her.
Emma studied him as she took the gift. With her new knowledge of who he was, his cool expression seemed one of remoteness and caution. Except when wielding a weapon, everything he did was careful. But when the moose and jecks attacked, his reactions had been lightning.
The gift, from this unique, amazing man, touched something inside her no man had reached before. What inspired a Recon Marine to give a woman a gift? The package fit in one hand as she unfolded the cloth around the heavy object. Sunlight glinted on a gun like device. She’d seen lots of weapons over the course of her experiences but never handled one or fired one. This might be a gun but she wasn’t sure. Lifting her gaze from it to Vin, she caught a look of anticipation on his face.
His expression turned to a frown. “It’s a stunner. I know doctors have a reluctance to take life, but you still need protection. This can stop a moose on the right setting.”
Emma turned the thing over in her hand, finding it heavier now that she understood its purpose. She battled her repulsion, keeping her gaze on the stunner. She tried to fathom the reason for Vin’s gift. Did he want to please her or was his soldier’s mentality appalled by her lack of weaponry? Her instincts as a woman and as a doctor agreed on her answer. “Thank you, Vin. Perhaps you can show me how to use it.”
He looked uncertain but moved closer to her, covering her hand with his larger, browned one. “Your finger goes on this trigger. This switch regulates the amount of charge delivered in the laser. Always aim for the midsection of a man. You’re less likely to miss and even the weakest charge will drop a man.”
Emma looked at Vin, not at what his hands showed her. His smooth skin fit tightly over his cheekbones. This close his eyes reminded her of polished steel, not a hint of dark shadow. Fine metal and young. Younger than she’d thought and as eager with his toy as the children in the street with their gliders. “Who are you really, Vin Smith?”
She hadn’t meant to speak out loud, but Vin stiffened and stepped back from her. He looked at the sky and then hopped down off the walkway. His left hand dropped to the pistol he wore strapped to his hip. His gaze swept the sky to the north where the storm clouds gathered in dirty puffs.
“Vin?” Emma meant to apologize, but he held his hand up.
“Get the children off the street.” Vin pulled his gun free. “Now!”
Then Emma heard the low hum, felt in the bones as much as the ears. She didn’t recognize it but anything that alarmed Vin meant trouble. “Go home! Get in your houses! Run!”
The children froze at her screams, and a few doors opened along the street. Emma ran to the closest little girl and pushed her toward a doorway. The girl stumbled for the first few steps and then ran. The others followed her except one little boy who headed down the middle of the street toward Vin. Emma recognized Billy Denton. He lived on the north end of town. The frightened child was running toward his mother.
Three aircrafts buzzed over the north gate and then dipped down to glide at the height of a man along the street. Their long sleek bodies resembled miniature military fighting planes, but they weren’t large enough to carry a pilot. They spread apart the width of the street and started spitting fiery rounds from one side of the street to the other, laying a blanket of bullets as they came forward. Bits of wood and stone flew from the buildings, and dust kicked up from the road.
Vin stood in the middle of the street, his pistol returning fire at a steady pace. One of the attackers spun sideways and then crashed into the ground.
“Vin!” Emma shouted as Billy slid to a stop a few feet behind the marine.
Another of the attackers took a hit from Vin. It tumbled into the front of a house, cracking into pieces. Without seeming to look, Vin reached out and grabbed Billy by his collar. He dragged the boy into the shelter behind his body without pausing in his shooting at the last target. It didn’t stop shooting either. Dirt splashed up, walking toward Vin in three harsh lines. He crouched over Billy, covering the boy with his body.
Emma raced toward them, knowing she could do nothing except throw her body on top of them. She could hear slugs of metal hitting the dirt above the grinding hum of the machine. They sounded different as they struck Vin’s body, a dulled thud. The strikes knocked him to the ground with Billy screaming beneath him.
Even wounded Vin fired at the flyer as it passed over him. The drone coughed, sputtered and then the guns and humming quieted. It sank gracefully to the street, skidding for a few feet before halting short of the south gate.
Billy’s cries filled the silence left by the cessation of shooting. Emma hurried the last few steps to Vin. His blood soaked her knees as she knelt at his side. So much of the bright red fluid colored his shirt that she didn’t know where to touch him.
Along the street, people ran about collecting their children. Emma heard Billy’s mother shouting for him. Taking a deep, bracing breath, Emma grasped Vin’s shoulder with one hand and his hip with the other. She rolled him over in the accepted manner when a spinal or head injury was possible. Her heart felt like it stopped when she saw all the blood pouring from the wounds on his torso.
Emma only had Vin rolled partway over when Billy wiggled free. The little boy leaped to his feet, unscathed though spots of bright blood soiled his clothing.
Vin groaned, blinking his eyes a few times before they stayed open. At least two rounds had passed entirely through him. How many more had jiggered through his body and stayed inside him? He still held his pistol in one hand and sought to cover his wounds with his other. “Is the boy all right?”
Emma nodded, trying to use her hands to staunch the blood flowing from his side. Her tears ran nearly as fast. She shouted around her sobs for help but everyone seemed busy grabbing the children and running for cover. “Help! Someone help me!”
“Nobody else is injured?” Vin gasped.”
“No, you saved the children.” Emma wasn’t used to treating battlefield injuries. Should she run for her supplies or stay with Vin? Should she treat him on the spot or have him carried into her surgery? She hadn’t even gotten to know him yet, hadn’t helped him, hadn’t even kissed him.
Vin covered her hand with his blood-covered one. “This is who I am, Doctor Emma. I’m the body that stands between civilians and the bullets. It’s what I was made for.” His hand dropped away along with his consciousness.
“No, Vin, you’re more than a shield.” But he was beyond her hearing.
Chapter Eight
The shooting and screams brought the men running back from the river. Emma wrapped some loose bandaging around Vin’s torso before she allowed them to move him. As Moe and Vannie lifted Vin, blood dripped from his body and splashed into the crimson puddle pooled beneath his body.
Emma wished Vin would cry out in pain or flinch as she examined his wounds on her surgery table. Her friends helped strip away Vin’s blood saturated clothing, all of it ruined beyond cleaning. For a space of a few breaths, they all stared at his perfectly sculpted body, now marred by oozing wounds. She shook away her awe and started the intravenous feeding artificial blood and liquid nutrients into his veins.
She gathered what she needed from the fresh supplies Vin had delivered to her less than a day before. Her professional distance faltered as she recalled his strong hands carrying the supplies into her office and the way he hesitated as if to witness her joy at the bounty.
“Emma?” Moe asked. “Are you okay doing this?”
She wasn’t but he would die if she didn’t. “I’ll need you two to help me.”
Vannie and Moe stayed with her for the entire four hours she needed to suture the wounds. She removed two small metal projectiles from Vin’s back, one stopped by his scapula and the other turned asi
de by a rib. The rounds that had passed through his body had missed his heart and lungs, nipping the edge of his stomach.
The stomach wound worried her the most as she cleaned the area and then cleaned it again. Infection from such wounds killed as easily as blood loss but in a longer, more painful manner. After that she sealed the wound with the organic compound that would stop bleeding and stay in place until skin grew under it. Not even a scar would be left.
“You’ve done all you can, lass.” Vannie rubbed his back and started for the door. “I’m going to have the men drag those drones into Vin’s shop. Might be he can tell us where they came from when he wakes up.”
Moe helped Emma clean and put away her instruments. “Let me get you something to eat and drink, Emma darling. We’ll not open the café tonight.”
After Moe left, Emma pulled a stool up beside the surgery table, fatigue crawling up her legs and into her back and neck. Performing surgery on Vin had drained her more than anything she’d ever done. Tears built behind her eyes as she stared down at Vin’s inert body. Even swathed in bandages, he commanded a powerful presence. Too powerful to die from mere gunshot. But his last statement haunted her as she sat there holding his hand.
People don’t lie while their life poured from their body into the dirt. The truth as Vin knew it was that he’d been created to shield civilians with his body. Would he drift away now because he believed his duties fulfilled? She squeezed his hand, willing him to live.
Moe returned with a carafe of cool juice and a plate of cold moose cuts topping thin slices of yesterday’s bread.
Emma tried to eat but food stuck in her throat. Moe didn’t push her.
“Anyone else hurt?” Emma should have asked before but hadn’t thought beyond saving Vin.
“A few splinters from the shots hitting the buildings but nothing serious.” Moe put his sandwich down also. “I look at this full grown man shot full of holes and can’t help imagining what those drones would have done to the children playing in the street if Vin hadn’t been there.”
“Billy would have been killed for sure. The other children wouldn’t have run until too late.” Emma shivered, seeing Billy running toward the miniature planes in his panic.
Moe tucked the blanket around Vin’s shoulders though Emma had already done it twice. “I’ve lost track of the times the lad saved us.”
Emma busied herself by touching the monitor screen of the device keeping track of Vin’s vital signs. Moe would have too many questions if she cried. It indicated only a slightly elevated temperature, not unusual after an injury. But infection might already grow inside him somewhere, ready to spread and flourish. “Can you sit with him for a bit, Moe? I’m going to check Vin’s medicinal supplies. He gave me a powerful antibiotic for Russ. I’d feel better if I could give it to Vin.”
Moe shooed her toward the door, returning to his meal.
Emma invaded Vin’s living quarters with only a little bit of guilt. Nothing had changed, everything in its neat little spot. The simple blanket stretched tautly across the narrow cot, making it impossible for her to imagine Vin curled up asleep in it. Her curiosity urged her to linger over his things, learn a little more about him, but her worry drove her to a shelf above a small, humming refrigerator. The neat rows and stack of medical supplies made it easy to find the Fusomycle antibiotic. He had five doses of the expensive medicine.
She only took one dose of the Fusomycle and turned to leave. But her gaze snagged on a rectangular device on the tiny desk squared up with the far corner of the loft room. The newest interstellar communicators were rarer than the drugs Vin had in such enviable supply. Hovel Port had no means to keep up with the news of the greater universe. They didn’t even have old fashioned solar powered radios.
Emma picked up the small computer, only twice the size of her hand, and tucked it beneath her shirt behind her waistband. Moe wouldn’t like her snooping in Vin’s things.
Guilt chased her down the stairs, but she reasoned with her conscience. She only wanted to help Vin deal with the ghosts haunting his beautiful eyes.
* * * *
Vin drifted in a dark void where he only existed as memories and emotions. Reliving his childhood memories now that he’d actually seen glimpses of what a normal childhood should be illuminated the horrors of his early years. The physical regimen alone fit the description of child abuse and torture. He and his brothers hadn’t know better, hadn’t known life could be different, and there’d been no one to speak for them. For the first years after they’d started fighting combat missions, they hadn’t noticed how differently civilians lived. Their handlers had kept them isolated.
They’d served their first mission at age sixteen, a battle with pirates on a distant world. Joe, the leader of the Recon Marines, had first voiced the doubts hidden inside their empty hearts. Together Joe and Vin had worked to keep their brothers alive as their assignments grew more and more deadly, more impossible. The people who had created them hadn’t taken into consideration the intelligence they’d bred into their living weapons.
Vin’s drugged thoughts skipped to his time on Crevan Four and Yalo, the warrior woman who’d taught him to love. And how losing that love emptied a man of everything. Everything except a burning need for revenge.
* * * *
Emma talked Moe into taking a break as evening settled on Hovel Port. Vin hadn’t moved and his vitals remained worrisome. His blood pressure stayed below healthy levels even taking into consideration his excellent physical condition. Though his temperature didn’t rise, she added the Fusomycle to his IV anyway. She hung another bag of artificial blood and checked Vin’s bandages.
Satisfied she could do nothing more than remain at Vin’s side, Emma settled back on the stool. She took out the computer and had to lift Vin’s limp hand and use his palm to unlock the screen. It lit up, tuning automatically onto the intergalactic info waves. But the little machine continued linking, opening icons to every database she’d ever heard of. Military, news, law enforcement, navigation, science and anything that could be searched for on the waves.
One touch of her finger took her into the best known news feed. Fighting to scrape out a living on Merris Five minimized the concerns of the greater world. She touched a few more spots in the news feed, narrowing her search to information on the Recon Marines. The screen filled with layer upon layer of recent news.
It took her an hour to compile a clear story of Vin’s last few months. A military judge court-martialed the Recon Marines but the soldiers had escaped into the unknown. They’d turned up months later in the service of Queen Callie Adell of Giroux. As a physician, Emma knew of the queen and the famous elixir her line produced to offset space sickness. The queen had bullied the Galactic Ministry into pardoning the Recon Marines. Four Recon Marines now lived as free men on Giroux. The news feed claimed all the other Recon Marines were dead including two who had died in the rescue of the queen. Yalo Pangol, the queen’s body guard, had also died on some outer world planet called Crevan Four.
Next Emma dove into military records and found Vin listed as killed on Crevan Four. Between the military information and that on the news feed, Emma read the story of the scandal uncovered during Queen Callie’s defense of the marines. A deep ugly well of corruption led from Geoff Hadrason to numerous army officials. The scandal had sent Hadrason to prison after he attempted to kidnap the queen again.
Skimming over more recent news connected to Hadrason’s saga, Emma discovered that four more mining officials and two army officers under suspicion for being on the mine owner’s payroll had disappeared or turned up mysteriously on the doorstep of law enforcement. Only one military officer, one known to deal with Hadrason but also involved in the creation of the Recon Marines and responsible for the court martial, remained unaccounted for. Civilian and military law enforcement searched for Admiral Ben Lester. After the other men involved in the wide spread criminal ring started to drop from sight, Ben Lester went into hiding. Some of the news
services speculated that Lester had his partners killed to wipe away witnesses to his involvement.
Only one law enforcement report mentioned Admiral Ben Lester’s stepdaughter. The officer writing the report suggested finding the stepdaughter might provide a fresh lead to the admiral but no one knew where to find her.
Emma set the device aside. Someone had found the stepdaughter. A supposedly dead Recon Marine had tracked Ben Lester’s stepdaughter to the home she’d made for herself far from the poisons and betrayals of her former life. She’d thought to help Vin heal from his previous life but realized he hadn’t left it behind at all. He was a Recon Marine on the hunt and had positioned himself beside the one person who might lead him to the last man on his hit list. Despite all his social ineptness, Vin had cleverly done what no one else could do.
Vin stirred but didn’t wake. Did he feel guilt at using her to complete his revenge?
She couldn’t believe he’d covered Billy with his body as a way to ingratiate himself with the town. He’d had no reason to help save Russ or protect the village from dangerous wildlife. Stopping the robbers and seeing the village received its needed supplies didn’t fit into a plot of vengeance.
Perhaps she was naïve, but she believed Vin couldn’t help himself when it came to protecting the innocent. It was bred into his psyche as well as his bones. And her stepfather was far from an innocent. Vin likely thought of Emma as bait, not knowing she was hiding from Ben Lester. He must expect her stepfather to show up on Merris Five at some point or for her to leave and join the admiral. Only a few other people knew the truth of Emma’s relationship with her stepfather. But with Vin at her side, might it not be time to enjoin the final confrontation with Ben Lester? Instead of Vin using her, she would use him.
