Hospital Ship (The Rim Confederacy #5)

by Jim Rudnick

  The large, square blue building dominated the other structures. In this building, the harvested trees and their secrets were being tested and then stored.

  Moments later, the sliding doors of the shuttle opened and Alver left in stride and marched past the landing officer who looked at him.

  "Sir—Sir—Major, you need to check in with me before you—"

  "At ease, Corporal, I'll be back to check in later. That's a sure thing," he said and never even looked at the man.

  Instead, he strode the few hundred yards to the big blue building and entered the sealed doorway where he was once again challenged.

  "State your business, Major," the armed Provost guard said as he held the major at gunpoint.

  A Merkel, Alver noted, safety off, and finger on the trigger.

  Ready to take out anyone who shouldn't be here, which was protocol. And expected.

  "Sergeant, I am Major Alver Stal, CIC of the Marine Corps here on Ghayth. I carry with me papers for Commander Williams. Papers for his EYES ONLY, Sergeant, but I ask that you confirm with the commander, please," Alver said and waited.

  The sergeant stared at him for a second. The guard's thumb slid the safety back to ON with a loud click, and the Merkel was lowered to the man's side.

  "Acknowledged, Major, I was told to expect you. You can go up directly, second floor, room 219, please," he said and Alver nodded and then turned to his left to climb the stairs.

  Once in the anteroom of 219, he looked down at the Navy lieutenant commander and noted her name was also Williams. Makes one wonder, he thought for a second, and then he ignored any thoughts of nepotism, which was probably a good thing.

  "Major, the commander will see you in a minute, you may be seated," she said and waved over at the two folding chairs that sat all alone against the far wall.

  He nodded and walked over to the chairs but didn't sit. Instead, he looked at the only thing on the wall, a hand-drawn map of the area around Base-5. To the north, there was empty space, and to the east, there were several red circles, some with a big blue "X" inside. A large oval labeled Base-5 was on the bottom, and to the west was a series of bright yellow circles. He knew what they were, and that was the issue for today's meeting.

  "Major, the commander will see you now," the lieutenant commander said, and she pointed at the doorway down on his left.

  He entered the office and made sure to close the door behind him.

  Facing the man behind the desk, he walked over and sat heavily in one of the two chairs in front of the desk that was full of folders and papers.

  He nodded to the commander and then gave him a quick smile.

  "Commander, good to see you again," he said and waited.

  "Ditto, Major—but enough small talk. What is the news from the Baroness today?" he said, his tone slightly taut.

  Alver slowly nodded his head up and down and then reached into an inner pocket and drew forth a thin sheaf of papers.

  "Orders, Commander. You are to increase your harvesting by forty percent in the next quarter. We will provide extra help with more shuttles, and we're planning to launch a set of five new satellites that we'll use to scour the planet for the trees and their telltale bio signatures. I am sorry about this, but it comes as always, right from the Baroness herself."

  The commander half-turned away in his chair and seemed to consider this set of orders. As if he could not comply, Alver thought, and that was just not a real consideration.

  The commander turned back to the marine who sat in front of him and shook his head.

  "How long we known each other, Alver?"

  "Three tours over on Turljis in the wars, one tour over on Neres when we got all those parades, and then maybe five years most recently. Course, you were my instructor at the Navy College on Eons before all of that happened. Why?" Alver asked.

  "Dunno, Alver ... I just wanted to know how long we've been under that woman's thumb. Forty percent, eh?" he said and he shook his head.

  "Those satellites should really help and with us taking up some slack with say five or six more shuttles for transport—it might be doable," he said.

  The commander nodded. "Yes, but why? What is the need to speed up the search for these units? There's no one else here looking for them; no one even knows about them, and more importantly, we have annexed the planet. Ghayth is ours. End of story."

  Alver nodded his head.

  "Which is why I suppose you and I are grunts and the Baroness is—well, the Baroness. Who knows, maybe someone else is coming to take over and she wants the planet empty before the aliens arrive. Maybe," he said and they laughed.

  Alver handed the papers to the commander and they shook hands. Getting up, he tossed his thumb toward the door and raised an eyebrow. It took the commander only a moment to catch on and he nodded back.

  "My daughter. She graduated from the Navy College over on Eons a year ago, and I was able to swing her posting to my command a month ago or so. She is a great aide, Alver—honestly," he said and his tone was honest.

  Alver nodded. "Sure, Bill, not an issue ... she's just a damn fine looking woman is all," he said.

  "Not the kind of thing a father would like to hear from a single officer. But yes, thanks, Alver ..."

  He snapped a salute to his major and the meeting was over.

  Later in the shuttle back to Base-1, Alver realized had he had the time, he would have tried to meet the woman socially—then he remembered that Base-5 had little opportunity to meet anyone socially, and he hoped she'd find a way to visit Base-1 soon.

  Soon, he hoped or he'd have to find a way to get back to Base-5 sooner.

  ####

  The room was bland. There could be no doubt about that, and as he'd learned just a couple of days earlier, it was bland for a reason.

  That way, he was the only thing of importance. He provided the color to the room when he answered his psychiatrist's questions. That was what being here on the Barony Hospital Ship was all about after all.

  The doc asks, I answer, and the room lights up.

  As he perused the bookcase and read the titles of the books he found there, he was surprised his doctor had authored a couple, and then he realized that if the man was good, that was to be expected.

  A doctor, an author, and an Ishtar citizen who loved guns. There is a story there for sure, and he grinned to himself.

  While Tanner read the titles of anatomy textbooks on another shelf, the doctor bustled in.

  "My apologies, Captain Scott, as I was called away for an emergency care situation with a patient who—never mind. I am sorry. Please excuse my tardiness, and let's get started," he said as he took his seat behind the desk. Waving at the chair in front of him, he thumbed his tablet to login and then looked at the screen while Tanner sat and got ready for the next session.

  One down, and tons to go, he thought. Perhaps that was the real problem—his time here had shrunk only by five days so far, and that meant more time ahead than he wanted to countenance. He mentally shrugged. No way around that.

  "Uh ... okay ... I see we're still talking about the fact that you're unarmed—that is, you've not yet gotten a sidearm out of the Navy armory, which leads me to the most obvious question, which would be why, Captain?"

  When the doctor said that, he glanced up at the top shelf of his bookcase on the wall to his right, and Tanner wondered why. There was nothing up there but a couple of books, a few wooden display boxes, and a stack of old magazines.

  He looked back at the doctor and realized he was trying to skirt the question.

  Tanner had thought this might come up, so he'd worried a bit about the answer, but then he'd decided the truth was the best tactical thing he could do. So he'd tell the truth, as simply as possible. And here goes.

  "Doc, the answer should be pretty obvious—the last time I was armed, I killed two people. Up close and in person," he said softly.

  He squirmed a little in his chair and noted if he leaned on his left leg, the bounci
ng stopped, and he did just that.

  "And while one of them was a convict who was trying to kill the Caliph—the other was his sister, with whom I had started to have a personal relationship with," he added.

  Thinking back, he faced what he'd not faced in a while, and the memory came crashing back.

  Planning a revolt on Olbia, one of the Caliphate realm planets, Nusayr al-Rashid had been found out, and he was sentenced for his sedition receiving twenty-five years along with others who had tried to revolt. He failed to take the planet away from the Caliphate, and found guilty, he was sent to Halberd, the RIM Confederacy prison planet.

  His sister, Tibah, had then emigrated to the prison planet, brought her group of scientists and farmers and mounted a well thought out and planned escape for her brother. It had taken almost a year to setup the escape plan, and the only change to it happened when a celebration of the 100th Anniversary of no successful escapes from the prison meant the Caliph would attend and be in reach.

  When the convicts rioted and they mobbed the stage, Nusayr had a stunner and he tried to kill the Caliph with it. Tanner shot him point blank—then Tibah, who had smuggled in a Merkel rifle, took aim at the Caliph, and he had to shoot her.

  Point blank. Shoot to kill was how he had been trained and that was how he had performed.

  He had been able, along with his XO, to quell the convicts' riot and that was a good thing.

  The killings not so much.

  There was no way around the fact—truthfully—that he had taken two lives.

  And he now no longer owned a gun—nor, truthfully, did he want one—at least right now.

  He looked up at his psychiatrist who was studying him thoughtfully.

  Nothing was said for a minute.

  The doctor nodded finally.

  "Okay, then we can come back to that. May I change the topic of our discussion to a time long ago? Let's talk about your Academy days—in the Earldom of Kinross—do I have that correct, Captain? What can you tell me of those college days ..." he said as he made some keystrokes on his ever-present tablet.

  Tanner nodded and put the memory of Tibah's feverish violet eyes out of his mind.

  "Sure, Doc ... not a problem ... let's see, I was at the Earldom Naval Academy about fifteen years ago, and before you ask, no, I was not number one in my graduating class—I was number two. That's a sore point, but one that I can live with. Had as much fun as anyone else ever did in college and loved that the Earldom Navy would be my new home. Made some lasting friends—" he choked up for a moment and then shook his head.

  The doctor leaned forward but Tanner held up his hand.

  "Sorry, Doc ... that memory is a wonderful one—but it also reminds me that many, many of my friends from the college, from the navy to crewmen and associates, died in the war with the Franauts."

  He had been a captain of the cruiser Gillmarten and had used his best tactical skills to fight the enemy, and yet during the final battle, he had killed hundreds of crew on the admiral's flagship via an accident. Admiral McQueen was that admiral, and that was a whole other series of issues that again, Tanner didn't want to face right now. When Admiral McQueen had accepted the job of leading the RIM Confederacy Navy, he had offered to take Tanner with him and he'd accepted. And he'd learned to self-medicate with Scotch, the hundreds of deaths on his hands. It was something not to be proud of, no matter how often the admiral tried to take the blame.

  He shook his head one more time, as he didn't want to remember he'd not seen the admiral now in months since he'd simply resigned his commission and moved over to the Barony Navy. And the captaincy of the Atlas ... truly the best ship on the RIM. That at least got a smile from him, and he raised his eyes to look at the doctor.

  "And yes, that is when I discovered that the use—medicinal, of course—of Scotch as an agent to help one face those issues worked for me. I say worked as it's been awhile since I have had any ... the Hospital Ship is dry, of course," he said.

  The doctor looked at him and pursed his lips before he spoke.

  "Captain, while I appreciate that you feel that you caused the deaths of those crewmen in Kinross, your file quite clearly shows that you are guiltless in that battle. Maneuvers notwithstanding, you chose, the file says, to disengage the saucer-disk of your ship and split the target for the enemy. The fact that the other part of the ship that you were not in took heavy fire and then spun into the admiral's flagship is not your fault. Could have quite easily have been your saucer that took the same fire and you and the saucer crew would have been killed. This is fully spelled out in your file and I see—" he said as he looked down at the open folder now in front of him, "and this report is from the admiral himself. No blame."

  He closed the folder.

  "And no blame should also mean no guilt. And no need therefore to treat oneself with Scotch to make the pain go away as the pain shouldn't be there in the first place, Captain," he said quietly and smiled.

  The room was quiet for a moment. Tanner looked over to his left at the bookcase and was going to ask about those books that listed his doctor as the author, but then he quit that thinking, not wanting to change the topic.

  "So this night out at the OneTon bar—in Neres City—what happened there? And why did I do what I did? I have—as you may know, no memory of that evening much past about 2100 hours. And that's not a lie, Doc ... I have no idea why that happened."

  The doctor nodded and then checked his tablet for a moment.

  "I see, Captain, that the victims that evening—and there were nine Caliphate forces men, six navy and three marines, were badly beaten. Two we had here for a couple of days, and after rebuilding some bones and a nose via our robo-docs, they were released. But the number isn't really important. What is important is the fact that they were Caliphate forces. Same nationality as the two dead Royals on Halberd ... comments are welcome on that, Captain," he said and Tanner thought his fingers were poised above his tablet, ready to key in Tanner's comments.

  And he had none.

  He really didn't remember the nationality of the other men.

  But he wasn't really surprised.

  Why had he fought with these men?

  Why had some Baronial Navy men come to his aid?

  What had prompted this incident?

  He thought on that for a while and the room was silent. .

  ####

  Head of research Alex Toombs was frustrated yet again. He shook his head and this time decided not to throw the petri dish that was the culprit, as if a dish could be a culprit of anything. In fact, it was the solid light blue color of the agar growth medium across the bottom that was the real culprit.

  Not one single viral bloom was there. The light blue color stretched from edge to edge with no results showing up in the agar.

  He'd checked now four times; the agar, or the growth medium that received the virus DNA, was properly made.

  He'd overseen that the master batch was made using warm liquid distilled water containing agar and a mixture of specific ingredients that included nutrients, blood, salts, carbohydrates, dyes, indicators, and amino acids.

  Once completed, the bacteria were successfully grown in the blue agar to provide hosts for the viral DNA, and he'd tested too that the bacteria specially chosen, bred, and pure should be the perfect host for the virus.

  And those inoculations using the microbe-laden viral sample were also done according to the book.

  He smiled as he remembered it was he had written the book on viral inoculum procedures too.

  Every single item, no matter how small or inconsequential it seemed, had been done according to his book, and still, no growth.

  The Ikarian virus appeared didn't want to grow anywhere but in an Ikarian.

  And they had only one such test subject, in cryo-sleep, but still not enough to use to help break the lock on the viral key.

  He shook his head, tossed the petri dish back into the bin, and then went over to his desk and console to kill D-
25 and begin all over again.

  He'd leave the Animal Test Lab purge to Ward for tomorrow and began to close up for today.

  This was not good; he'd not ever been unable to get the basics of vaccine development to start.

  And it was the end of this string of viral DNA tests; the D series was done.

  And so far, can't even grow a thing. And we're killing mice by the hundreds too.

  Perhaps tomorrow, he thought, with E-01, and that was always the way any scientist thought ... perhaps tomorrow ...

  ####

  She wondered who had ever chosen this room to hold the executive committee meetings in, and then the Baroness smiled to herself. It must have been a long dead Junovian as this was the worst of possible choices for a Royal.

  There wasn't a single nice thing here in the room. Plain brick walls were on two sides and one wall of windows was totally covered in some kind of decades-old drapes. The third wall held bookcases that were full of books. She'd never actually gotten up to look at any of them, and she had no intention of ever doing so either.

  The room was on the top floor of Navy Hall on Juno, which was supposed to be a solemn location that may have carried some heft a hundred years ago, but no longer.

  She pushed her bag to one side and took her spot at the table.

  Flicking her hair to one side, she sat gingerly on the plain stacking chair and noted the seven seats were carefully spaced out around the round table. Each place had a desk pad, an Agenda, paper, and writing items. Power cords hung at her side at the edge of the table for tablets and the like. According to the name place cards, one seat was for the chief of staff for the RIM forces.

  The admiral was already seated and using the console to look at something, but she couldn't see from here.

  He had nodded his head to her in deference to her Royal status when she arrived at the meeting, but that hadn't fooled her one bit.

  The animosity between the two of them was almost palpable, but she just nodded back.