Recon Marines III: The Marine's Doctor (9 page)

This time Mak paused in the doorway of
the sprawling room and looked around. Where would he place traps?
The communications unit made perfect sense. Anyone investigating
the abandoned station would turn that equipment on looking for
details. Pirates would try to steal it.

Mak avoided the comm unit, moving
around the rest of the workspace. He found a pressure sensitive
explosive in front of the elevator, waiting for someone to step
out. An old computer sat with tempting clarity on the commander’s
desk. He turned from it and found another small bomb attached to
the star chart table. He examined it closely, finding it wired to
the touch pad for scrolling through searches. The exact information
he’d hoped to find.

With a sigh, Mak took a small knife
from his belt and set to work on the explosive. The bomb was crude
and designed more for stealth than complexity. It took only two
minutes to disarm it. Dewell, a planet on the far side of this same
galaxy, had been entered as a destination for the last five ships
that had left this station nearly two years past.

Mak finally went to the communications
station and knelt to look at the trap Pender had set off. His
stomach tightened when he saw the live explosive still connected to
the switch. Perhaps because of a faulty setup or the passing of
time, only the preliminary charge had fired. Though it had caused
extensive damage to Pender’s arm, if the main bomb had gone off, it
would certainly have killed the soldier and maybe even
Mak.

He stood up and looked around some
more. The command center had dozens of other stations that had
controlled everything from the shipping dock to power usage on the
lower levels. One long stretch of old computers managed the
scanners, their screens filled with empty space from all quadrants.
There could be another hundred booby traps hidden about.

Mak retraced his steps, avoiding the
splashes of blood on his way to the stairs. Damn his carelessness.
If he and Pender had been killed, it would have left the doctors
stranded out here on the edge of communications range with little
shipping activity.

The doctors still surrounded Pender
when Mak returned to the ship. He stayed out of the way and went to
his room where he stripped out of his blood-soaked pants and shirt.
After a brief shower, he put the stained clothing in the washer
tubes. They would be clean and dry within two hours. He dressed in
his black outfit, the one reserved for night work but it suited his
mood.

Corporal Box sat in the copilot’s
chair on the bridge, staring at the scanners. The man’s stiff
posture spoke of tension and perhaps fear. Apparently escorting
science teams through space didn’t prepare soldiers like Box for
emergencies. He looked over at Mak as Mak settled into the pilot’s
seat.

“
Plot a course for the
nearest place with a good-sized port. Military or civilian. We’ll
leave as soon as the doctors are ready.”

“
Yes, sir.”

At least the last few hours’ events
had knocked the attitude from the corporal. Mak still wished he
could replace Box, but that could wait. He walked back toward the
lab, his steps slow with regret. What if they’d had to take
Pender’s arm off? One couldn’t pilot a ship like this one with one
arm and not even the best prosthesis could replace the sensitive
fingertips needed to navigate through a meteor storm. Mak cursed
himself again.

Molly stood beside Pender, adding
something to his IV while the other two doctors washed up at the
sink. She swung her gaze to Mak, fatigue darkening her hazel eyes
to the color of old moss. “He’ll be fine with a scar to brag about
to the ladies.”

“
Brag? Carelessness caused
that scar.”

“
I’m sure he’ll leave out
how careless he was.” Molly smiled.

“
I was the careless one. I
reacted too slowly to stop him.”

“
Mak, it’s not your
fault.” Molly’s smiled melted into a frown.

He sighed. “I felt something wrong
here from before we landed. I should have gone upstairs by
myself.”

“
Then you would be the one
lying on the table.”

Mak thought she looked serious. “No, I
wouldn’t. I would have seen the trap. I won’t be so careless from
now on. I promise.”

Molly put her hand around his wrist
and led him toward the door. “This is not your fault. We all knew
this trip could be dangerous. Pender is a soldier. He knows every
mission could result in injury.”

“
My orders from the
general was to keep danger from you.”

“
And you have. Pender will
make a full recovery.”

Mak knew she was wrong. “We’re going
to resupply. I have to pick up a few things I don’t have on board.
Think about what you need. Take off in five.”

The warmth from her fingers lingered
on his arm as he walked back to the bridge. He worried the general
would pull him from the mission. Though Mak hated seeing the
evidence of human torture on the trail they followed, he enjoyed
being back in the sky. New places, new worlds and stars to see. And
a lovely doctor to watch over. But damned if he hadn’t failed when
they’d faced the first real danger.

Box had the flight plan ready. Mak
wished the ship beneath him was a warship instead of the science
vessel. He would blow the cursed space station out of the sky. He’d
have to ask the general to take care of that as well as report his
own failure.

Chapter Five

Molly only saw Mak during his brief
but frequent visits to Pender. Twenty-four hours after his surgery,
Andy and Mak helped Pender move to his bed and off the hard lab
table. She lost track of the hours as she and the other doctors
processed the small bits of evidence they’d found on the space
station.

“
The blood scrapings
didn’t tell us much,” Hector observed when they all took a break to
eat.”

Molly sipped on a nutria-shake,
promising herself she’d have at least one real meal while they
resupplied. “But we’re agreed it has come from people more than
thirty-five years old?”

“
Yes,” Helen said. “And
there’s some evidence of tampering on the cellular level, perhaps
an attempt to change their DNA. Do you think they took some of
their lab subjects with them?”

Mak walked into the cafeteria,
glancing at the doctors but otherwise ignoring them. The ship
wasn’t that big, yet he’d managed to avoid them most of the day.
With Pender on bed rest, Andy spent most of his time on the bridge
with Mak even though the corporal wasn’t a pilot. Mak selected a
nutria-shake out of the cooler and then left without a word to
them.

Molly excused herself from her
comrades and hurried after him. “Mak.”

He stopped and waited for her a few
steps from the bridge. “We’ll make landfall in three
hours.”

“
Great. I’m looking
forward to eating something that has more flavor than strained
grass.”

Mak looked at his shake and then
lifted his eyebrow at her. Just the reaction she’d hoped for. “At
one time, I thought this was as good as food could
taste.”

Her heart did a funny little skip, and
she thought of the poor abused and abandoned men they’d left behind
on Julian. And all the blood they’d found in the space station. “Do
you think they took some of the lab subjects with them when they
abandoned the space station?”

“
I think they killed them
all, another failed experiment. Nemon was only two or three years
older than me. That place was one more stepping stone toward him.”
Mak shook the drink in his hand. “I sent a secure radio message to
the general. He’ll see that the space station is destroyed before
anyone else gets hurt in those traps.”

“
Good idea. I would like
to stay a full day on…. Where are we going?”

The eyebrow went up again, and this
time he blessed her with a smile. Molly’s heart nearly stopped. As
a physician who specialized in disease and pathogen studies, she
often saw a lot of ugliness. But Mak and especially Mak smiling,
might have been the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. “New
Venus. They export aluminum and cotton. There’s a good-sized
trading port. I’ve already made arrangements for a surgeon to check
Pender out as you suggested though I believe you and other doctors
fixed him as well as anyone could.”

“
Maybe.” But his
compliment warmed her. “The real factor in saving his life was how
quickly you brought him to us. He could have bled to death in a
short time.”

“
We weren’t that far
away.” Mak hesitated and then lowered his voice though Molly was
sure no one could hear them. “Is Pender healthy enough to continue
with us?”

“
I think so, but we should
listen to what the surgeon says. I could have missed a ligament or
something that will require additional surgeries.”

“
If he needs more
treatment, we’ll have to ask your father for another
man.”

“
We have Andy.”

Mak’s expression hardened, the
difference so small she was surprised that she noticed it. “We need
someone we can trust to think before he shoots. I need someone I
know will follow orders. We also must have a second
pilot.”

Molly hadn’t thought of the pilot
issue. No wonder they hadn’t seen Mak. With Pender down, there was
only him to fly the ship. “Have you slept at all since Kory was
hurt?”

“
An hour here and there.
But our next trip will take more than five days. I can’t continue
my current schedule for a long period of time.”

“
Can’t Andy take over for
a few hours?”

“
He’s been watching the
autopilot to give me breaks.” Mak held up the shake. “But he’s
untrained in even simple evasive maneuvers should we encounter an
unexpected asteroid or meteor. Most of space in this sector is only
generally mapped.”

Molly hated the idea of bringing
another stranger onto her ship. Though it surprised her that she no
longer thought of Mak as a stranger or an impediment to her control
over her team or their mission. Then she thought of him running
down five flights of steps after ordering Kory to hold on. An
amazing feat but now dark circles of exhaustion nearly matched the
color of his eyes. “Let’s wait and see what the surgeon says about
Kory. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait for a
replacement.”

Mak nodded and started for the bridge
again.

“
Mak.” But when he
stopped, Molly didn’t know what she wanted to say to him, only that
she wanted to spend a little more time with him. “After we get Kory
to the surgeon, would you have dinner with me?” She wondered if a
Recon Marine understood what having dinner meant.

He again looked at the shake in his
hand. “At a real restaurant?”

He did know. Molly fought a grin.
“With real food. It’s a date.”

****

Mak left Pender under the surgeon’s
care. The doctor praised Molly’s work but intended to do some scans
to make sure the repairs looked as good inside as outside. The best
news was that Pender would be fit for light duty such as being
Mak’s copilot.

Box had escorted the doctors on the
resupplying chores. All of them were to meet at an inn near the
spaceport. Mak experienced only mild discomfort walking through the
streets of the small town. His months on Giroux with Acacia had
given him lots of practice being out in public. Civilians moved
with aimless ease from place to place, sometimes lingering to look
at an oddity or stopping in the middle of a walking area to speak
with one another. Even the useless items in shop windows didn’t
distract him. Shiny baubles and fanciful clothing for men and
women. Nothing of use. Not to a man like him.

Except what kind of man was he? A lab
creation like those poor bastards on Julian? The Recon Marines had
convinced themselves they had souls like other human beings, but
seeing the experiments that had been the predecessors to the marine
program or an attempt to emulate it gave Mak doubts. Was he any
better than those animals struggling and starving on Julian? He’d
overheard the doctors talking. The blood on the space station had
been from humans with some of their DNA altered. Like his genetic
makeup had been constructed to make him different. He wished his
brothers were with him to assure him of his humanity.

The inn with its fancy eatery took up
an entire block of the town. Box and the doctors sat at one table
together. The kind of team dinner he’d avoided so far. But Molly
stood up and walked to meet him.

“
I have a small table for
the two of us over here.” The little round table sat near the front
windows, allowing the last rays of this world’s sun to sneak in
through the windows.

Mak used the manners he’d learned on
Giroux and pulled her chair out for her. An order taker hurried
over as Mak took his own seat.

Molly ordered a glass of wine and then
looked to Mak. He’d eaten in such a place a few times but Acacia
had always ordered for him. “Water, please.”

Molly waited until the young woman
walked away. “Don’t you like wine?”

“
I only tried it once. It
doesn’t taste like fresh juice.”