Operation: Minerva
The phase objective was within
reach.
Events had accurately unfolded
along the linear time-line, as predicted by analysis of the Carey-Construct's
data.
Minerva and the McLaine unit were presently
vulnerable, units of the Spectrum sector scattered, isolated and operating at
less than maximum efficiency. Both the Black unit and the Carey Construct were
also - as yet unknown to the Spectrum units -
within target proximity.
Probability calculations indicated
that any future actions undertaken by the Spectrum sector to defend Minerva
were unlikely to affect the extrapolated outcome of this phase of the War.
It was an opportunity to collect
additional data, to further observe human reactions under adverse conditions.
Such information was deemed valuable, though the course that would elicit such
enriched data decreased the margin for success by a small, but acceptable
percentage.
The phase objective was within
reach....
A squall of sub-zero air blasted into the
entrance corridor as the door slid open, bringing snow and stinging ice pellets
with it. Ochre had plastered himself to
the wall at the inside lintel and he caught the brunt of it with his gun up and
his feet braced against whatever unknown assault might have been waiting
outside there.
Zil was
crouched low beside him, one hand on the door's control, the other ready to
reach out and grab Merlin by the collar just as soon as the door had opened far
enough---
Which she did. Before that door had slid even
halfway across the doorframe, she'd had the big mutt in hand and had hauled
him---willingly enough---inside the entry. She'd hit the control panel
immediately; the door slid home again,
sealing with a click, shutting out the chill and violent wind and any other
unknown, unrevealed threats with it. He flicked the inside lights back on.
Merlin himself was the very picture of misery.
Frigid-cold and bedraggled, his fur was lumpy with bits of ice and packed snow.
The dog whined once, claws scrabbling along the tiled floor of the entry
corridor and then he sat, hindquarters simply collapsing beneath him as he
panted and whuffed and blinked, utterly astonished to find his circumstances so
abruptly changed for the better.
The dog sat there, raising one paw like it
hurt, shivering violently as Zil let go of the collar and reached instead to
lift the mutt's muzzle and to put her nose right down to Merlin's.
"You idiot!" she cursed, with
no venom whatsoever and only heartbreaking affection in the tone. "Look at
you! Ninny. Dolt. Imbecile---there are not enough derogatory terms in
the whole english language for you---"
Mournful, dejected eyes stared back, and Merlin
licked her face, just once, before he laid down right where he was, exhausted
and frozen and suffering.
Ochre's heart went out to the poor beast,
having been in achingly similar straits so very recently himself. He liked dogs
in general, had come to like this one in particular and felt an irrational pang
of guilt that he'd been so willing to leave the poor, dimwitted thing out there
in that weather for as long as had been security-clearance necessary. He watched, gun still in hand, as Zil picked
and pulled iceballs from between Merlin's toes, finding footpads raw and
bleeding, and one claw cracked to the quick and tender to the touch. She paused long enough to run her hands over
Merlin's back and around ribs and belly, a quick but professional once-over, assuring
herself that the animal wasn't truly injured before she urged Merlin to his
feet and herded him further into the cabin.
"Com'on, you. The fire's still burning,
there's far better places to be than right here. Moron. Up. Inside. You can
walk that much farther and no one here's about to carry you. Com'on. Right now.
Let's go."
She tugged on the collar and Merlin lurched
unsteadily to his feet, favoring that right forepaw and limping with Zil into
the living area and to the hearth. The warm stone there must have made a
positive impression; Merlin thumped his tail twice, and laid down again as Zil
snagged one of the blankets and used it to begin to rub the dog dry.
Ochre closed the inside door, and chose the lock
option when the security screen on the control panel prompted him for it, Zil
having completely forgotten it needed to be done in her immediate preoccupation
with the dog. He watched for a moment,
wary of the dog's presence, despite Magenta's assurances that the dog had not
been seen recently at Demeter.
Magenta had not seemed concerned. But Magenta
had been gone most of the day. Magenta had had to ask. And Magenta hadn't met
Merlin, either.
Ochre added up the hours and minutes, his mind
engaging itself in a forensic time analysis.
He'd landed the SPJ at about nine that morning,
local time. The airfield fiasco had followed - maybe five minutes worth of
crisis and catastrophe. He hadn't caught up with Zil until nearly four that
afternoon, precipitating another five minutes of scrapping and a polar dip. Not
quite an hour after that had put the two of them in the cabin, cold and
bickering---one more exceedingly unpleasant five minute interval. He'd reported
to Cloudbase, had coffee, stew and a nap. Eight o'clock, she'd said
then. Another report, some hot chocolate, and an unexpected romantic fireside
encounter, certainly not the least pleasant thing that he'd done all
day, only the least intelligent. Then a shorter, tandem-cozy kind of nap, a lot
of deep thinking. Ochre glanced at his watch. Was it really only just midnight?
Damn busy day....
When had Demeter lost track of the dog? How long had
it actually taken for the dog to make the trip up the mountain? And - had
Merlin managed to do so without incident? Even if the dog had been mere mortal
canine when he'd gone for the walk, it didn't mean that he'd finished it that
way. How had the dog managed a few of those steep climbs? Had Merlin taken
another route...a longer one perhaps, one that would have eaten up more time?
Factor in the weather, and---well, the weather wouldn't have helped at
all with Merlin's speed....
It wasn't impossible that Merlin had
managed to follow Zil. That was all he could conclude.
Someone at Demeter had to have been in charge of the
dogs. Surely someone would have an idea - even an approximate one - as
to when Merlin had walked off. Hadn't anyone
done a head count when the blizzard hit?
Hadn't anyone worried about the dog? Merlin was hard to miss, and
should have been conspicuous in his very absence.
Really need to talk to a few witnesses, he thought. Just can't tell
squat on circumstantial alone....
Zil was still muttering harmless imprecations
at the dog, in what was starting to look more and more like a very dangerous
proximity. "I need some real towels," she announced a moment later,
discarding the now damp blanket and tossing a drier one over Merlin as she
stood up and turned for the loft. "Be right back - he needs a wrap on that
broken nail, too." She paused only briefly in her mission, looking at him
quizzically. "Stop looking so
grim, Och. And I think maybe you can put the gun away now....he doesn't
bite, you know. Where have you been all week?"
Ochre shoved the electron gun back into its
holster and deliberately relaxed, consciously erasing the crease from between
his brows. He knew the expression she was talking about - one he'd actually
practiced in front of a mirror once-upon-a-time, when street-intimidation had
been - and still was - a sometimes useful law-enforcement skill. He'd slipped
into humourless-cop mode.
He was worried.
"He's okay?" Ochre asked, figuring
he'd best show some minimal interest in the dog's well-being, and - if he
didn't change his mind about it in the next few minutes - let her pamper the
thing under his armed supervision before he would have to inform her with no ifs,
ands or buts that Merlin was going to be locked upstairs in one of
the bedrooms as soon as she was done her veterinary routine. She would object,
he was sure about that, but he'd explain it, sanely, logically, clearly, so
that she'd understand it was a security non-option. For Minerva's safety.
Nothing personal. She'd buy into
that, after the lengths she'd gone to---
Meanwhile, Merlin would be safe and comfortable
and behind a solid door that either an ordinary or a Mysteronized dog shouldn't
be able to open....
If he could get the right answers out of
Demeter staff, then maybe soon enough he'd agree to letting the thing loose in
the cabin again.
If he got the wrong answers, well, then he'd
have to do something drastic about it. Mysteron reconstructions had a bad habit
of self-destructing in close quarters. When the Mysteronized Captain Brown had
done so, it had been enough to level Spectrum Security HQ.
The cabin wasn't nearly that big. Wasn't nearly
so well protected. And was every bit as vulnerable to that sort of attack and
would have been, even if they hadn't let the dog in, so maybe it didn't
matter that much that they had, looking at it that way----
Wish I'd thought of that sooner. Wish I had a
detector, dammit. I just hate this Not-Knowing business, always have, always
will hate it....
For sure, he wasn't going to be using
any kiss-and-tell methodology on the dog.
"Yeah, he'll be okay---he's a bit
hypothermic." Zil answered. "Happens to animals, too. He could use a
bowl of water, if you're not busy."
"Right." Ochre agreed to that
absently, his hand still on the butt of the electron gun, backing a step toward
the kitchen as she headed up the stairs. Merlin hadn't moved, was simply lying
there on the hearth under the blanket, all limp-relaxed and with eyes closed.
Exhausted. Certainly not looking as if he was about to detonate.
Zil had been right there, face-to-muzzle with
the dog - an opportunity to kill her, surely, that the Mysterons might have
taken advantage of, if things truly weren't as innocent as they appeared.
Ochre decided he'd get the bowl of water, right
then. Get that done and free himself up from any other minor tasks before Zil
got back and he'd have explain why he wasn't going to leave her alone
with the dog, not even for the minute it might take to run some silly errand.
He could see a jug of water sitting on the counter near the coffee maker,
hadn't a clue where any bowls might have been stashed....he spared a glance at
the still motionless dog. The kitchen wasn't big, opening a couple of cupboards
couldn't take long.
He was two steps into the kitchen when his
shoulder epaulettes flickered unsteadily with the rapid flash of an incoming
urgent message - the flash was deep red, it was Scarlet wanting something----
His head had turned at the flickering, the
signal degraded by scan-shielding, his eye caught by the indicator lights and
that, possibly, was the only thing that saved him. His peripheral visual field
had come around just far enough to see that Merlin was suddenly not only up,
but was hurtling toward his unprotected back as if the call had been a cue for
attack; Ochre whirled reflexively and caught the animal in mid-leap, lost his
cap and all of his balance under the driving impact and went down hard beneath
almost two hundred pounds of mute, Mysteronized canine fury.
And what Scarlet was yelling about wasn't even
news by the time his back hit the floor.
It was the beeping of the epaulettes that had
awoken him.
Or at least, he thought so.
Scarlet sat up groggily in bed, sure that he'd
heard the familiar sound. He'd locked his transceiver open, one of the last
things he'd done before finally turning in, so that his cap's processor would
pick up a call to any Spectrum personnel there at Demeter, and not just to his
own specific frequency, a kind of rank-sanctioned eavesdropping.
Despite his many apprehensions, he'd gone out
like the proverbial light when his head had hit the pillow. It had been a long day. A long and not such a good day besides.
His recap sessions with both Lieutenants and
with Magenta afterwards had only been useful to a small degree and had largely
failed to answer the many questions that had arisen throughout the course of
the day's events. Those questions had
continued to roll around inside his head as he'd restlessly paced his assigned
guest room until he'd finally made up his mind that he wasn't going to resolve
any of them without a proper rest; so he'd adopted Magenta's advice, and
decided he'd sleep on them.
He'd learned long ago how to fall asleep when
he needed to - an ages-old soldier's skill that he fell back on whenever there
wasn't a Room of Sleep handy. Fatigue,
however, must have caught up with him -
for all of the tensions and unresolved questions, he'd been slumbering more
deeply than he'd imagined he might have. Whatever the call had been about, the
conversation hadn't lasted long enough for him to have come to sufficient
consciousness to catch any of it.
No one had seen fit to alert him as to the
content of that missed conversation, so it couldn't have been too terribly
important. Surely he could just roll over and go back to sleep....
But he was awake now, and it wouldn't hurt to
ask.
His glance went to the clock. It was just shortly before midnight. The blizzard
was still raging outside, though the scans had predicted the worst of it would
peak before dawn. It was an intense weather system, but it was moving quickly,
and would pass the Demeter area before the following noon.
Scarlet rolled out of bed, clad still in his
uniform trousers and the universal black shirt. The colored over-tunic was too
stiffly uncomfortable for sleeping, and it bristled inside and out with pocket
kits, utility clips and weapons holsters. He stepped into his boots and
fastened them before shrugging himself into the tunic without bothering to zip
it up. Hopefully, he'd be out of it again in only a few minutes.
The communications room was down one level and
halfway along the corridor. Magenta was still on-duty there, absorbed at one of
the computer terminals with Taylor leaning over one shoulder, the two of them
probably reviewing the security records.
Lance was curled into a compact lump of fur nearby, and Weller's dog
spared him only a sidelong glance as he came in, not even bothering to get up.
Things looked pretty tranquil.
"Can't sleep?" Magenta asked, looking
up at his arrival. "It's not even four hours yet."
"I was," Scarlet replied. "But I
thought I heard a call come in. Was I dreaming? Things look calm and cool
here."
"Just Ochre checking in."
It seized his attention, the bad feeling back
again, sudden and unexpected for all the evident tranquility. "Everything
all right?"
"Seems to be---he wanted to know if we'd
seen the dog. Seems he's just turned up there and Ochre wanted to be sure
that---"
"What?! Merlin?!"
"Yeah, he said that----"
"Merlin's dead! Merlin was with Weller
and Prince!" Scarlet's hand was on his cap mike in that instant. "Ochre!
Ochre---don't let that dog in! That's a Mysteron! Ochre!" He shouted
Ochre's name, trying to gauge the time elapsed since the call.....
How could he have been so stupid? How could he
possibly have failed to mention that to Ochre? Or to Magenta? Both of whom had heard about Weller
and Prince, and neither of whom had been there to see the bodies or know that
the dratted dog had been in that doomed lift too---
It all came together in his head in the space
between two heartbeats. He and Roan had seen three living things climb into
that lift. Teal had welcomed only two downstairs. Roan had - doubtless by Mysteron design - been peeved enough with
Weller's antics not to have remembered that the dog had tagged along...and
after that, everyone had been upset enough over Weller and Prince not to
even care about the dog---the dead dog being little more than a
piece of low priority collateral damage, at best.
Out of sight, out of mind. He heard his own
words echoing in his head...
I doubt you want the details.....that was what he'd said to Ochre.
And to Magenta: Extrication of a couple of
bodies.....
Two equally empty and useless statements. Vague.
Non-specific. Worthless.
The details were in his written report
to Cloudbase. Which, again, Ochre and Magenta had not seen,
because Ochre had been out in the bush battling the elements and Magenta had
been on a time-critical touch-and-go round trip to Cloudbase and back.
He thought about the dog....poor, not-so-bright
Merlin. Silly, friendly beast. Not a hazard anywhere, unless it was to
foodstuffs not nailed down. A clumsy, pony-sized puppy-mind that could be sent
slinking, tail down, with nothing more than a harsh word.
Grey had been checking Lance out with the
detector the week long. Lance looked like he could be potentially
dangerous.
Ochre --- Ochre had called to check up
on Merlin's possible whereabouts, had been thinking exactly down the right
lines and had asked----
And had gotten rotten, lousy misinformation
back.
Both Magenta and Taylor were staring at him,
aghast. Taylor hadn't known either - evidently Sanchez hadn't thought to pass
along that same bit of information to her either, the big news, again, being
the untimely demise of SWC magnate and heir Andrew Weller and boy genius Arthur
Prince along with him. Big, bad news that had severely disturbed all of
the remaining staff. The bodies hadn't made it upstairs; the bodies were in
storage down in one of the cold labs, awaiting transfer to Cloudbase's
morgue as soon as the weather cleared.
A simple, visual count of the body-bags would
have told the whole story, had there been a general viewing.
One of the missing pieces had just
turned up and fallen horribly, blatantly into place, leaving Scarlet hoping
with a fervent desperation that the body count wasn't about to go up----
Ochre's cap had landed upside-down when it had
hit the tiled kitchen floor - in the overworked corner of his eye he saw it
spin slowly to a stop with the mike sticking up into the air, activated.
There had been an incoherent shout gathered in
his throat, lost when the impact against the tiles knocked the wind from his lungs
with a painful jarring of spine and ribcage. He fought for air, fought to keep
his elbows locked and his hands clenched in the fur at the scruff of Merlin's
neck----instinct did that much for him, his mind being otherwise completely
engaged, overwhelmed by the imminent hazard of snapping teeth and the all too
evident bone-crushing strength in the jaws restrained scarce inches from his
own jugular.
Merlin twisted and pulled within his grasp,
snarling deep and low, trying to bite laterally at his arm, to loosen that
desperate grip and seize at something more susceptible to a quick and savage
killing. Ochre tried to roll, to pull up one knee and get it under the dog,
looking for leverage enough to get himself out from beneath an adversary that
outweighed him---but the dog would not stay still, was lurching wildly
side-to-side, lunging at him. One massive paw landed on his face and slipped
floorwards...he felt the skin at his cheekbone tear under the claw that caught
it and finally found enough air to yell----
"Zil!"
He was not going to win this one himself. He
simply could not get at his weapons, could not free up a limb long enough to
reach for a gun without sustaining a critical, likely fatal injury. He didn't
know if Zil had heard the commotion, didn't know if she still had her head
buried in a closet looking for towels and a first aid kit. He was perhaps all
of thirty seconds into the attack, she could be any place upstairs and still unaware...
Because this Mysteronized animal had
come after him with an uncanny, unnatural kind of stealth and timing. Aside
from his own frantic shout, there had been precious little noise made in the
short course of the scuffle that might have alerted Zil to the fact that there
was a problem.
It was as if the shout had changed the rules,
as if the Mysterons knew that it would soon be two against one - the dog
growled aloud, a vicious, menacing sound, redoubling its efforts to shake his
hands loose and coming close to doing just that. With his left hand Ochre managed to snag the dog's collar, giving
him a firm, harder-to-dislodge hold on the beast. He hauled downwards, rolling
his own weight in the direction of the pull, trying to bring Merlin's center of
gravity over - if he could only wrestle the dog down onto its back, take the
legs out from under it, get a knee onto the thing's ribs and his own mass
leveraged to pin the animal down, a few seconds was all he'd need after that to
get one of the guns out of its holster again and----
The flaw in that sequence was that his own arm
hit the floor first - as the dog toppled and twisted, claws scrabbling,
Merlin's snout came hard up against his shoulder still biting and snapping, and
finally found solid purchase.
Ochre heard the fabric as it tore, felt the
teeth as they pierced skin and flesh just below that shoulder and at close
range saw in one terrible time-stretched instant the instinctive wrench and
shake of a predator ripping into its prey. He lost any remaining grip he'd had
on the dog in a rolling wave of raw visceral horror and excruciating pain;
blood spattered the tiles beside him as something clattered and clanged to the
floor nearby, a sudden, nonsensical sound he couldn't place or identify. Then
Merlin let the mauled muscle of his bicep go, a snarling recoil that he watched
in surreal slow motion, as the Mysteron drew back and then lunged directly for
his throat---
---movement that seized up short and was thrown
bodily to one side as Zil loomed abruptly into view behind the dog; with both
hands she wrenched that killing strike away.
She was white-faced and shaking, but she dropped down beside him, picked
up the wrought-iron poker from where it had landed on the floor and then
crouched there with it in a solid, double-handed grip. She made a defensive
barrier of herself while the Mysteron skidded and scrambled to its feet before
turning their direction again.
For a brief second, maybe two, things hung
suspended in a silence broken only by their own hard breathing and the tiny,
distant shout of Scarlet's voice in the cap speakers.
" ---a Mysteron! Ochre, do you copy?!
That's a Mysteron---"
Now he tells me.... Ochre thought dizzily, groping after
the two weapons holsters at his hip, righting himself and trying not to pass
out with the effort of just coming up to his own feet. A few seconds, just a few more damn
freaking seconds----
The Mysteronized Merlin was squared off for
round two, and launched itself, not at Zil directly but at him again, he
evidently still being the greater perceived threat with his electron gun
halfway from the holster than Zil was with her iron poker raised and at the
ready. She swung that poker
nonetheless, cracking the dog broadside across the ribs as it came within
range, a strike that had to have hurt, but hardly slowed the Mysteron down. In
desperation, she threw herself sidelong into a physical body-check at the
thing, contacting hard across the rump and spinning the dog's hindquarters
ninety degrees, buying Ochre that necessary window of opportunity...he fired---
A heart-stopping near miss.
The charge failed to connect, it just
skimmed and singed Merlin's fur with little or no effect and seared into a
cupboard door, grounding out on the hinges in a shower of blue and white
sparks. The dog lurched around to come at him once again, and once again Zil
swung her iron club, aiming for the dog's skull. The hooked end of the poker
inadvertently caught under the collar; she was able, against the dog's forward
pull to haul and hold it back, her bare feet more effectively braced than
Merlin's - whose claws were rasping uselessly against the tiles. Ochre's finger
closed over the firing stud and then he hesitated to depress it in a fractional
second of dread realization---
Wrought iron.
"Zil..." he
breathed her name once, scarcely even an audible whisper, gathered air for a
desperate shout. "Drop the damn lightning rod! Now!"
A single discharge of the electron gun packed
sufficient voltage to kill a Mysteron.
Sufficient voltage to kill a human, too.
Her eyes went wide. She let go of the poker and
Merlin, free of that restraint, surged forward as Ochre fired the electron gun
at point blank range - there was a pained yelp from the Mysteron and then Ochre
staggered back as Merlin's limp mass hit him. His spine came flat up against a
wall with the momentum of that dying charge and he went down a second time
under the dog's weight, as his own flagging strength simply deserted him in a
moment of mind-numbing relief…
The stench of burnt dog hair, electrically
scorched flesh and the scent of ozone filled the air. His gut revolted - he
really didn't feel well. Not at all.
Zil stared at him from across the floor. He
blinked back, just trying to catch his breath, realizing that he was suddenly
cold and starting to shake. In a lucid, short-lived second, he knew that he was
falling off the ragged edge of an adrenalin rush, pitching headlong into
shock----
"Och!" she moved finally, after what
seemed an eternity but was probably no more than a few heartbeats. Heaving
Merlin's dead weight aside, she got one shoulder under his undamaged arm and
maneuvered him first to his knees, and then to his feet, dragging him the few
feet necessary to deposit him into one of the kitchen chairs. The blood left his head and he greyed-out
briefly, leaning heavily on the tabletop; he plain lost track of where he
was, lost track of her…..
For few seconds, he thought, when his vision
cleared. Only a few seconds. He heard
fabric tearing again, but it was Zil doing it that time, she was getting the
sleeve of the uniform out of her way and wrapping something soft and dry
tightly around the torn and bloodied arm that he hadn't even gotten a good
enough glimpse of to properly assess the damages.
A towel, he thought vaguely. One of the ones she
found for the damn dog…
So, surely the first aid kit wasn't far away
either.
Ochre concentrated on taking a few slow, deep
breaths, wanting as much oxygen as his depleted blood supply could carry to his
brain, wanting---God, no--- needing to stay conscious----
"How bad?" he heard himself ask,
pragmatic habit in an emergency. Especially in one in which he figured rather
prominently, and which wasn't - in all likelihood - over yet.
"Could have been worse."
"Evasive…." he murmured, letting his
forehead rest on the table. Glancing sideways, he saw his cap was still laying
on the floor, on the far side of a puddle of blood - his own - and a dead
Mysteron. "Dammit," he cursed again. And then, more loudly:
"Shutup, Scarlet! I'm alive and breathing!"
Because Scarlet was still there on the open
line, still trying to raise an answer of out either one of them.
Zil finished with the towel, and moved to scoop
up the cap. She slapped it onto her own head, turning with her jaw clenched and
a taut, tightly controlled fury in every single syllable that followed.
"Is there maybe something important that
you forgot to mention today, Captain?!"
And it really was too bad, Ochre thought
dimly, in perverse black humour, that Scarlet wasn't there to see that look on
her face….
Lance was no longer curled into a comfortable
knot in the corner. Weller's wolf-dog was up and pacing the communications room
uneasily, agitated by all of the yelling and the tension in the air.
Ochre's line had been active and transmitting -
and it hadn't been terribly difficult to follow the events as they had audibly
unfolded on the other end of that open channel.
Scarlet paced along with the dog, perturbed,
angry. And when his path inadvertently crossed with Lance's and the animal
snapped at him, he had to consciously restrain an urge to kick the thing.
Nothing that had happened was Lance's fault. He nonetheless glowered darkly at
the show of canine aggression, and Taylor immediately took it upon herself to
remove the dog from the communications room.
Taylor was unhappy and upset too - and was no doubt about to rouse out
Sanchez to ask him the very same question that Godzilla McLaine voiced only a
moment after Taylor's departure.
For once, both the tone and the question were
justified.
"Good question," Magenta muttered
under his own breath, sitting motionless in the seat at the workstation,
sitting there deliberately biting back what had to be a similar harangue; Ochre
and Magenta were close as partners, as close as he and Blue were, and Magenta
was exercising an uncommon, monumental restraint holding his current silence.
"That would be an affirmative, Doctor
McLaine." Scarlet replied, all contrite and remorseful. "And I think
you already know just what that oversight was."
"Oversight." She simply repeated the word. Ice
cold and furious.
"For which you have my most profound
apologies, Doctor. Now, may I please
have either Captain Ochre on the line or your report on the current
situation?" He kept his voice level, calm.
But he was seething.
How did they even know?
Roan's earlier, anguished question rang though his skull. Only Scarlet was asking that question for
himself, angry and frustrated. How---how
had the Mysterons known enough to time such an attack such that the only
duty officers available for Ochre to ask had been probably the only two that
hadn't known about Merlin's demise?
Teal and Roan---both off-duty---knew. The two
of them had pulled the carcass from the wreckage. Sanchez had known. So had the
techs. The techs had likely reported it to Demeter's security – because
Spectrum had delegated charge of the staff to them, while Taylor and her crew
had been out and engaged in the unpleasant task of collecting Mysteron bodies from the airfield after
Magenta had flown back to Cloudbase. After that, Taylor wouldn't have heard about it because
at that time, he and Taylor both had been preoccupied and arguing with
Demeter's Security chief over the communications blackout that he'd imposed for
the duration of their initial investigation. Finally - and with Cloudbase's
knowledge and consent - he'd nailed a highly unpopular lid down on all
external communications - because word
of Weller's death was going to have far-reaching repercussions, both corporate
and otherwise, the very instant that word leaked out.
Scarlet could well imagine that Spectrum HQ had
people working overtime on damage-control, this round.
In any case, from the techs the word would have
spread amongst Demeter's staff – where news of the dog's unfortunate end would
have registered far, far below that of Weller's or Prince's.
The entire point being, of course, that no one,
therefore, had been looking for Merlin.
Futura, Scarlet thought bitterly. It's like Harris.
They put their reconstruction somewhere else – after the fact. Gravener's
driver had been missing and presumed drowned after that incident. The only
people that had been looking for Harris at the time had been police divers,
searching downstream of the car wreck.
Ochre would never have believed that anything
human might have come knocking. But the dog----
There had simply never been a precedent for a
Mysteronized animal - and the dog was therefore very possibly the only thing
that had stood any sort of a chance of getting into that cabin. It was a
heinous ploy. Heinous and insidious and very nearly successful, that
too.
"I am going to refrain from further
comment." Godzilla's
response was terse and carefully measured. "I want Cloudbase medical staff
on the line."
Magenta moved on that, instantly, his worried
frown deepening by the second.
"In the works," Scarlet replied.
"How serious is it, Doctor?"
God, the size - the size and weight of that dog, he thought with
an inward shudder. The hazard of it turned vicious. At least, however,
at the very least she had some relevant professional medical experience, enough
to handle the situation---whatever it was.
"Could've been worse." It was
Ochre answering for himself in the background. "Give me the damn cap,
Zil!"
Scarlet exchanged a long, inexpressibly
relieved look with Magenta - that tone out of Ochre, even under the
circumstances, said loud and clear that Ochre was not only still alive and
breathing, but kicking too.
"He's lost some blood and he's in
shock," she reported, something sensible and informative at last.
"He's chewed up a bit. But it could have been much worse. Tell him he's
off-duty. I'll be right back with the med-kit."
There was a few seconds of general, low-level
noise over the background static, as Ochre recovered his cap. "I'm
fine," Ochre said, not very convincingly.
"Och!" Tylan McLaine's receding voice snapped
irritably. "Does that blood on the floor register with you at all? You're
not fine! Don't believe him, Scarlet!"
Scarlet ceased pacing, closing his eyes.
"Ochre?"
"Yeah, it's me."
"Sorry about that, Rich. Should've thought
of it. That's entirely my fault." Agitated still, feeling guilty that
time, Scarlet resumed motion.
"Don't waste your breath. It's a moot
point, Scarlet. It just wouldn't have mattered, even if we hadn't let the
stupid thing in."
"Could've saved you a little pain, not to
mention bloodshed."
"Doubt that. Use your head. The thing just
would've sat an inch outside the door and detonated there - and I wouldn't even
have seen it coming, in that case."
For a second time, Scarlet stopped abruptly in
his pacing. That possibility hadn't crossed his mind as yet. "Good
point," he conceded.
"They're still playing, Paul. The
game's not over yet."
Scarlet exhaled slowly. They were still, even now, missing a
few important pieces in the game. Both Black and Carey were unaccounted for.
"You're saying that was just a feeler?
That they were testing your defenses?"
"What would you call it?"
"I'd call it attempted murder."
Scarlet sighed again, glancing over as Magenta motioned to him that Cloudbase
was online. "Standby, Ochre, we've got Fawn on the line for you."
Scarlet very quickly briefed Doctor Fawn on the
situation, listening as Godzilla found her way back into radio proximity with
her med-kit and he made the long distance introductions. She spoke with Fawn,
civilly and professionally, outlining Ochre's injury in precise clinical
detail. No nonsense. No hesitation. Tearing wound to left bicep, bleeding under
control, treating for shock and blood loss....
“Not an avulsion, then?” Fawn asked.
“No,” she replied. “Lacerations. Moderate to
deep. Puncture wounds. No evidence of arterial damage. He was damn lucky.”
“That's good. You have suturing?”
“Yes.”
“Stitch him up, then, Doctor. Keep him warm.
Keep him quiet. If he can hold it down, give him fluids. If you have any, a
general antibiotic. He's not allergic.”
Scarlet listened while he paced, as Fawn
exchanged pharmaceutical information and medical talk with Godzilla, clearly
imagining the sour expression that had to be there on Ochre's face. As a
patient, even when it was in his own best interests, Ochre was only marginally
tolerant of treatment, loathed time spent in Sickbay and invariably made
himself a thorn in med-staff's collective sides on the apparent theory that
they'd toss him out of the Infirmary all the sooner if he did.
“Great,” he heard Ochre complain on the other end.
“While you're at it, ask her if she's got any horse pills that'll keep me on my
feet.”
“Behave yourself, Captain. I'd tell her to give
you a horse pill that would knock you right down if you weren't stuck on the
active duty roster. Do I have to make it an order?”
“Save it – I catch the drift.” Ochre was
irritated. “Damn Inquisition...." he grumbled under his breath.
“Is that an affirmative, Captain?” Fawn pushed
for the response he wanted. Ochre also had a way of side-stepping issues by
simply not answering questions, and Fawn knew it.
“S.I.G., Doctor!" Cranky and hurting, Ochre was cross
and touchy, right to the point of insubordination. "I heard you the
first time!”
“Keep the blood pressure down, Ochre. It
sounds to me like you're going to live. Now---“
Whatever instruction Fawn was about to dispense
was lost as a siren wailed abruptly all over Demeter's PA systems, echoing
through the corridors, as startling and as unexpected as it was loud.
Magenta swore as he spun his seat around and
hit the security key on the console there behind him – the security schematics
flashed live, auto-tracking the breach to source, and Magenta swore a second time,
just as Scarlet reached the console in two wide strides.
“Intruder alert.” Magenta identified the
klaxon, up out of the seat and moving for the corridor.
“Where?” Scarlet demanded, torn for an instant
between trying to read the screen or following Magenta, who obviously already
knew where they were going.
Magenta didn't hesitate to reply, specifically
and with urgent haste.
Not to mention with one hand on the holster at
his side.
“Residency,” Magenta answered. “Weller's
quarters.”
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