Delta Fringe Series Boxset: Books 1-3

by Heather Lee Dyer

  24

  All is Lost

  Stuck underneath Derek and wedged between Zion on one side and a table on my other side I assess my situation. I've found in overly emotional or stressful situations it's best to break down everything into small bits to analyze. Otherwise our human minds tend to freeze up. In my job I don't have that luxury. No matter how bad a death scene is, it's my job to investigate the scene and what happened at the scene. And then make sure the bodies are taken care of.

  I smile to myself. So far we're still alive and have oxygen. That's a big plus.

  My small med pack won't have enough oxygen masks or supplies for this many people. I need to find out if anyone here knows what else is in this room. I twist my head toward Derek.

  "Stay still Bren," he rasps into my ear. "There's a table wedged over our heads. I'm afraid it will fall."

  "Are you all right, Derek? Did it hit you?"

  "I think I was hit by many things, but I don't want to test the table." I feel a short rumble through my back as he lets out a chuckle.

  "Zion? You all right?"

  "I think so—"

  Another tremor shakes the room and rocks and dust again rain down on us. I hear Derek groan as something hits him. The room fills with dust and smoke as the tremor eases away.

  "Derek? Was that the table hitting you?"

  "I think so, yes. I was right. It wasn't pleasant." He nuzzles my ear. "I think we need to work on a plan to get out of here. With all this chaos one of the doors has got to be ripped open, right?"

  Hope warms my insides. "Yes, possibly. We need to move cautiously so we don't disrupt the tables and rocks anymore around us. Zion? How about you?"

  "I think Derek's table has trapped my legs."

  "Not my table," Derek teases. "Just stay still, Bren, I'll move first." He places a kiss on my temple before he slowly starts moving.

  A crash from behind us has Derek freezing in place. "No one move yet," he says toward the noise. "Wait for me to see how bad our situation is and then I'll come help you. Moving around now might make the debris fall and hurt you more." We hear a few weak acknowledgements in the dust cloud.

  Derek and I carefully untangle ourselves and sit up. Zion is pinned beneath the table and I place a hand on Derek. He glances down and frowns.

  "You hold the bar that's over his head." Derek scoots over a few feet to the other end of the table and waits.

  "Zion, are you all right?" I brace my hands on the metal lying over his body.

  "Not helping my headache," comes the soft answer.

  I smile, tears sliding down my cheeks. "Just hang on. We're going to get this thing off of you. Don't move until we say you can."

  "Yes, ma'am." Zion's face is away from me, but I know he's got at least a bit of a grin on his face.

  I nod to Derek and we slowly lift the table off. Zion groans when the weight is gone and my heart pounds in the seconds it takes us to place the table carefully back on the ground on the other side of him.

  "Zion, what hurts?" I start my routine check for broken bones and bruises. I look sideways to see Derek is motioning toward the others and then carefully picks his way over the debris. I turn my attention back to Zion.

  "Everything, B. But I don't think anything is broken." He flinches as I push on his chest. "All right, maybe a rib or two where the table hit."

  I growl in frustration as I look around the room. There has to be a medical kit here somewhere, right? The dust is still too thick to see the walls so I'll have to wait until I can go around the room and look. I start coughing and so does Zion.

  I pull my pack out and grab a few of the oxygen masks and fit them over our faces. I look into my small med kit and make a noise. Only three oxygen masks left, and a roll of med tape and several packets of pain meds.

  "Did you just actually growl, B?"

  Zion's eyes are crinkled and I know he's smiling at me without even seeing his mouth.

  I let out a breath. "It's just frustrating not having my med supplies. I need to find some." I motion around the room.

  "Bren, I could use your help here," says Derek several meters behind me.

  I help Zion sit up and brace him against an overturned table facing the door we came in. "You keep watch and let us know if anyone comes in that door."

  He nods grimly as he holds his ribs.

  I grab my pitiful med kit and crawl over to where Derek is hunched over a body. Most of the council members are sitting up holding their heads or arms, but for the most part don't look too severe. I get to where Derek is and a stabbing pain shoots through my heart as I see that the grouchy councilwoman has been speared through the chest by a broken table leg. Derek is talking softly to her while pressing some sort of cloth around the injury to staunch the bleeding.

  "Derek?" I whisper.

  He leans away from her to whisper in my ear. "I don't think we can remove the metal leg without her bleeding out instantly. Do you?"

  I scoot over to the woman and give her my best smile for situations like this. "I'm going to just take a look all right?"

  She hesitates, looks at Derek first, but then nods.

  As I unwrap the cloth and note that the leg probably goes all the way through her chest. Derek's right, we can't remove it. I place the cloth back and look around. I spot one of the women that the grouchy councilwoman was sitting with. The woman has dried tears on her face, but is helping those around her sit up and has found strips of cloth to bind their wounds. She must have some medical training.

  "Can you come over here please?" I motion to her.

  She crawls over to us and gasps when she sees the councilwoman.

  "Grace, just stay still."

  Grouchy woman's name is Grace? I almost chuckle to myself.

  "Ma'am, can you stay with Grace and keep pressure on her wound? We need to find more med supplies and call to see if someone is on their way to help."

  "How would they know to find us? Jeffs brought you in secretly, and this location was classified as old and abandoned decades ago."

  I hold up my wrist. "My friends have been tracking my implant. I'm sure they'll be here soon."

  "I hope they get here before the rogue forces do. Jeffs has hundreds of them down here."

  I look at Derek and his horrified face matches my thoughts.

  "Hundreds?"

  "Yes, we thought they were on our side, just security until you showed Jeffs for who he really is." There's admiration mixed with anger in her voice.

  "I'm sure our friends will find him and stop him." My palms start sweating.

  "Until then those galactic security forces have been ordered to follow only Jeff's commands. Don't trust any galactic security that comes through those doors, Brenna."

  My mouth gapes open. I wonder where Jeffs' galactic security forces are right now? Digging their own way out of the collapse?

  "I'm Councilwoman Webb by the way," the woman nods to Derek and me. Derek introduces himself as I try to push away the anxiety fog.

  "And there should be medical storage through the kitchen on the far wall, if you can get there." Webb is pointing across the wreckage where we can see sparks and glowing dust through the open pass-through window to the kitchen.

  I look back at Councilwoman Webb.

  She gives a small laugh. "I'm also a doctor on my station. I always make sure where emergency supplies are kept wherever I travel." She smiles at me before turning her attention back to Grace.

  Confident we're leaving our patient in good hands, Derek and I carefully make our way through the rubble. As we pass men and women helping each other my chest constricts at the beauty and hopelessness of it all. Near the wall, where the first round of injured were sheltered, someone has covered up one of their bodies. It lies still, cold and alone from the others. The woman who Zion and I couldn't help.

  I grit my teeth and keep going. I remind myself this is what I do; I deal with blood and broken bones and death everyday.

  So why does it feel so
personal today?

  I wipe away tears as Derek and I get to a place outside the semi-circle of tables where we can finally stand up. Derek stretches and then turns toward me. "You all right, Bren?"

  Why do people ask that question when it's obvious that person is not all right? I know he just cares about me, but the question starts the tears flowing that I was working so hard to keep back. He reaches out and pulls me to his chest.

  I hug him back tight, not wanting anything around us to be real. I bury my face into his chest, ignoring all the red dust he's covered with. He strokes my hair until I stop crying.

  I pull back and wipe my face. "Sorry." I glance over his shoulder to see if anyone is watching. I meet Zion's watery gaze. I give him a quick smile and take a deep breath.

  "It's a bad situation. You have every right to your emotions, Bren." Derek rubs my arms.

  I nod and try to break out of the brain fog. I hear coughing in the background and I can smell electrical fires all around us. My instincts kick in and I turn back toward the kitchen and climb over rocks and pieces of broken tables and sections of walls. I finally make it to the kitchen window and look around for the closet.

  My heart drops and I bite my lip to stop the tears. Derek catches up to me, his breathing ragged from his oxygen filter being clogged.

  I just stare straight ahead.

  "Um, Bren. Where did she say the supplies were?"

  I point to a huge hole in the wall that's on fire. The fire suppression systems in the ceiling are just spitting drops of liquid. The lines are probably broken somewhere in the walls.

  At least the fans are still working because we can see the smoke being sucked upward instead of out into the main room.

  I turn and slump down the half wall and sit hard on my butt. Derek follows and wraps an arm around me.

  I tap my ear comm, but get nothing. Not even static. I wrap my arms around my knees and rest my forehead on them.

  "From what I hear from your boyfriend here, this kind of hopeless situation is your specialty, B."

  I look up to see worn boots encrusted with red Mars dirt touching the toes of my equally dirty shoes. Zion is standing above us, his arms wrapped around his ribs.

  I wince. It must've been painful for him to crawl all the way over to us. I smile up at him. "Is that so. So I'm expected to get us out of this mess? Is there anything else I should know before I deal with this 'hopeless situation'?"

  "Yes, that someone's coming toward us," his voice trembles as he stares toward the dust-filled doorway we came in.

  I quickly get up and lean around the corner to listen. The visibility is zero outside of the door, which is hanging crookedly on its side. None of the lights are working in the smoke filled corridor.

  It's the sound of military boots that Zion heard. My head pounds as I look around the room we're trapped in. There is only one way in or out, and most of the injured aren't ready to move yet. Electricity zaps throughout my body as fear grips me.

  "Scarp it all, we're trapped," I hiss. I move in front of Zion and Derek stands up next to me as we wait for the rogue security team to discover us. My heart beats painfully in my chest and I feel like I'm going to throw up. I hear Zion's fast breathing behind me, and my mind races to figure out a way to defend ourselves.

  Derek grabs my hand and squeezes and I look over at him and smile. He's smiling back, but I can tell in his eyes that he knows there's nothing more we can do here either. All of our emergency training and investigating comes down to being trapped in a collapsing room hundreds of meters below the Martian surface. At least the vids were released. Commander Guram will make sure that everyone will know what happened down here.

  I look forward again as red dust rolls into the room. My stomach churns as I wait for it to settle. There's no use letting the others know, they would just panic. Maybe they won't want to deal with injured prisoners.

  Just as I feel like I want to scream, a familiar face appears out of the cloud of dust. Commander Guram. Titan's moons he came down here for us.

  I drop to my knees and laugh hysterically as troops file in behind the commander and look at me like I've lost my mind. I laugh until I'm crying again. Derek picks me up in his arms and presses my head to his chest.

  25

  Endings and New Beginnings

  Zion walks slowly behind us as we follow Guram's troops through the maze of rock piles and electrical wires sparking overhead in the corridor. When I hear the guys ahead talking about nearing the spaceport I wriggle down out of Derek's strong arms.

  "You all right to walk, Bren?"

  I nod. "I can't let Red see me like this. He'd tell my dad." I grin up at Derek as I smooth my curls back and try to wipe the dried tears off my cheeks.

  Derek stops me and swings my backpack off his other shoulder. He rummages through it and comes up with some med wipes. He gently washes the red mars dust and encrusted tears off my face and neck. "There. That's better." He kisses my forehead. "It's acceptable to show some weakness though, Bren. We've just been in the heart of a major war, and come face to face with the most dangerous man in the galaxy. I'm sure your dad would understand if you're a bit upset." He grins back at me, that crooked grin of his that shows off his dimple.

  "My turn." Zion steps next to Derek and tilts his face up to him, a huge grin on his face.

  "Not even if the galactic supreme commander ordered me to," says Derek as he nudges Zion with his elbow.

  Zion tries to act insulted but he winces instead as the movement pulls on his broken ribs.

  I laugh and hand Zion a wipe. "Try not to do anymore damage to those ribs, Z."

  The troops behind urge us to keep walking. Knowing I'll be leaving Mars soon I'm feeling a mixture of relief and sadness. It would've been nice to visit Mom’s office and colleagues and Zion under much better circumstances. Instead, I'm heading home not even sure yet how many Martians have died during the last few days. And there might be irreparable damage to the main mine.

  "So what are you going to do now, Z?"

  "I'm not quite sure yet. As soon as my head stops pounding I'll let you know."

  "Yes, I think we'll all feel better after we've been patched up and get some food and sleep."

  "Are the hospitals back up and running here on Mars?" asks Derek.

  "I think I heard Guram say there were several hospital ships stationed around the planet. That means the ones down here are probably without power or personnel," I say, my voice cracking as I remember all the Martians that the council turned their back on. Almost half of the security and medical staff under Zion's supervision were killed in the attack.

  I pinch my nose to keep the hot tears back. The strip lights in this part of the tunnel are spasmodically flashing and farther down the tunnel white lights shine bright.

  Zion is quiet and keeps his head down, as we get closer to the space dock. My heart hurts for him as well. He personally worked and lived with all those people we lost. He was one of the main supervisors in the mine, and was training to take over as deputy medical examiner. The weight of responsibility for those lives will never leave him.

  I let go of Derek's hand and slip next to Zion. "Z, you know that none of this was your fault. You did your very best to get your people to safety."

  He looks sideways at me with those dark eyes and long eyelashes. I can understand Derek's jealousies with my closeness to Zion. He's model perfect and smart and has a strong sense of community and curiosity. Everything any girl would want in a boyfriend. But Zion and I have only ever been friends.

  "But I am responsible for them, B. They counted on my leadership to keep them safe."

  "You couldn't have seen this coming. No one, not even the council members knew that the EPL was quietly rising to power again. Charon's ice, Z, they had the head of the EPL as their leader. So maybe you shouldn't be so hard on yourself." I grab his arm and squeeze. "You should just concentrate on the future and what you're going to do next. Will you stay here and rebuild? Keep goin
g for the medical position? You have so much going for you, Z. Don't let the past stop you in your tracks. You can honor those we lost by your future actions."

  Zion gives a single chuckle. "You sound like an inspirational poster."

  I pinch his arm.

  "Ow."

  "I was being serious."

  "I know you were. And thank you, I appreciate your support."

  A large pile of red rocks that have slid out of the ceiling partially block the corridor, so I have to let go of Zion to climb over the rubble.

  After that we all walk in silence until we reach the space dock. The troops open the double doors and I immediately feel a cool breeze blow over us. I smile as the familiar scent of energy and engines reaches my senses.

  We file into the huge space dock a few at a time. When I get through the door I'm immediately tackled to the wall in a giant bear hug.

  "What the—"

  "You're in so much trouble with how much you scared me, Bren." I can't see my attacker, but I recognize the voice as Markov's. I relax into his hug and wrap my arms around him, knowing there is no other choice with him.

  Satisfied that I'm alive and real he pulls back and holds me at arms’ length. "I heard you were down there when several of the attacks happened. I can't believe you all made it out alive."

  "Most of us did," says Zion to my left. "B, are you all right?"

  I grin at Zion who is looking like he wants to take Markov down. "I'm great, Z. This is my friend Markov. He works on one of the hospital ships. He's been through a few of the attacks with Derek and me." I glance over at Derek who looks amused. He's probably glad he's not the only one feeling protective of me.

  Markov is assessing me as he works his hands up my shoulders to my head. I pat his arms away. "There will be plenty of time to get me checked out. Zion here needs medical attention first, and we have many severely injured council members behind us that need our help."