Chapter Eleven
As Beth fell to the floor in convulsions, Carter tackled Cornelius, wrestling for control of the weapon. In his peripheral vision, he saw Vincere hustle Mikala onto the dais and lift off, removing her from harm’s way.
“In-infidel—dog!” Cornelius tried to turn the blaster on Carter.
Bone snapped as he slammed Cornelius’s wrist against the floor. The aide screamed, and the weapon discharged a burst of energy into the air.
Still fighting, the aide flailed with his good hand. Carter deflected the blows and landed a punch. Proximity limited the force, but with his cyborg strength, he broke the man’s jaw.
Beth had gone still. If she was dead…no, no…she couldn’t be… Anger threatened to obliterate self-control, the urge to choke the life out of Cornelius shuddering through him, but he needed the man alive for interrogation. Beth had been hit, but Mikala had been targeted—that meant an attempted political assassination had just occurred.
Beth lay so still. Not dead. Please not dead…
“Who sent you?” He closed his fingers around the aide’s throat. Cornelius’s eyes bulged, and he clawed at Carter’s wrist with his good hand.
“Carter, stop! You’ll kill him!” Vincere shouted.
Beth could be dead, and the secretary general worried about this scum? “Who sent you?” he growled.
Cornelius’s mouth worked, but no sound came out. He began to convulse. Foam bubbled at his lips. A trickle of blood seeped from his eyes.
What the hell? Carter released him and rolled away.
The aide arched, his back bowing at a spine-snapping angle, and then he collapsed, motionless.
He did a quick check for a carotid pulse, but knew before touching him he was gone. “Dead,” he pronounced and leaped over the body to Beth. Please, please, please. Don’t you be dead. He knelt and pressed two fingers to her neck.
The dais lowered to the ground, and Vincere and Mikala ran to them. “Is she…is she…” Mikala asked.
His heart nearly gave out in relief to find the steady thrum of her pulse. “Alive,” he said.
Vincere moved to peer at his aide. “He’s not.”
“I didn’t kill him,” Carter said. He’d wanted to, but he hadn’t.
A paralyzed Beth stared at the domed ceiling. Tears and terror welled in the eyes she couldn’t blink.
Every nerve would be sensitized. He stroked her cheek very gently to avoid adding to her pain. “You’re going to be okay. The photon blast was set to stun. It’s painful, but the effects will wear off.” He’d been shot enough times to know what she was experiencing. White-hot needles stabbing from head to toe. Muscles cramping. Paralysis.
It could have gone tragically worse. He cared about the well-being of all his staff, but Beth mattered more than the rest. Losing her would have devastated him. She wasn’t merely an employee. The epiphany stunned him.
As his human side dealt with his emotions, his analytical cyborg side fired off questions: Why wasn’t she dead? Why had the blaster only been set to stun? Why shoot without intent to kill? Had Cornelius meant to take Mikala hostage? Or had he bungled the assassination by failing to correctly set the photon blaster? And, what had killed Cornelius?
He held Beth’s limp hand. “When you can, squeeze my fingers.” He’d never forgive himself for the harm befalling her. Who would have expected an attack from the secretary general’s staff? Did Vincere screen his people at all?
Beth wasn’t a security officer or an operative. She worked logistics! She never should have come close to danger. What the hell had she been thinking to throw herself in front of Mikala? As soon as she recovered, they would talk. Under no circumstance was she ever to do this again.
Vincere tapped his wrist comm. “I called for a medtech.” He knelt beside Beth. “It’s going to be okay. Help is on the way,” he told her in a soft voice.
Carter would have Swain examine her, but having a medtech check her now was a smart move. Vincere was good for something. Well, two things. He’d reacted swiftly to get Mikala out of harm’s way. Grudgingly, Carter had to give credit where credit was due.
However, he couldn’t forgive the lax employee screening that had allowed an assassin to get close to Mikala and shoot Beth in the first place.
“I feel responsible,” Vincere said, his voice heavy with regret. “Cornelius worked for me.”
Carter jerked his head at the body. “This is why we need top-level security and airlock-tight background checks on every single Summit attendee.”
“You’re right,” Vincere said.
Carter did a double take, and Mikala dropped her jaw.
“We’ll increase security to the highest possible levels. We must prevent anything like this from happening again.” Vincere pressed his lips together.
Finally, the man got it. Too bad someone had to suffer for it. Carter had opened his mouth to tear into him when Beth squeezed his hand—and the medtech rushed in.
She appeared to be half-Terran, half-Andaluvian. Her features were more or less humanlike except for vertical pupils and the pinkish scales trailing over her bald head and her neck. “Two photon blast victims? I was informed there was one.”
“My aide is dead.” Vincere pointed at Beth. “She’s the priority.”
She crouched at Beth’s side. “I’m Krovac,” she said. “I’m here to help you.” Carter was eyeball-to-alien-eyeball with her, but she peered up at Vincere. “How long ago was she was hit?”
“About five minutes,” Carter answered.
“What was the photon setting?”
Vincere picked up the weapon. “Level two.”
Carter recognized the blaster model right away. Its level one setting would get someone’s attention, two would incapacitate, three would cause irreparable damage, four would kill. The secretary general tucked the blaster into his tunic.
“That’s evidence.” Carter glowered.
“The AOP will conduct a full investigation.”
Considering how the AOP operated, their “investigation” would rank somewhere between inadequate and useless. Should have grabbed the damn weapon myself. Had this been an ordinary crime scene, he would have, but concern had overridden standard operating procedure.
Krovac ran a portable scanner over Beth. She peered at the screen, her expression unreadable.
“Is she all right?” Carter asked.
“Pulse and blood pressure are elevated, respiration is depressed, nerve conductivity is hypersensitive, and muscle fibers are contracting at the cellular level. Everything you would expect from a level two blaster shot. She’ll recover. Just needs time,” Krovac said without sympathy. Her patient could have been an amebic life form for the concern she displayed. Obviously the Andaluvian race’s lack of affect dominated over human compassion.
Carter slid his arms beneath Beth’s shoulders. Nerves would be hyperresponsive to stimuli, and the slightest movement could be painful. Despite his care, when he lifted her, she moaned. He hated hurting her, but the return of her voice was a positive sign. “Easy, honey, easy. I’m sorry.” He cradled her against his chest.
“Honey?” Vincere arched an eyebrow.
Mikala wiped a smile from her face.
The medtech moved to Cornelius. She adjusted the settings and scanned him. “He’s dead,” she confirmed.
“Can you determine what killed him?” Carter asked.
Krovac shook her head. “That would require an autopsy.”
Vincere tapped his wrist comm. “I’ll take care of it.”
Over his dead body. He couldn’t do anything about the loss of the weapon, but he’d be damned if he let the AOP bungle the post mortem. He accessed the encrypted wireless channel in his processor and shot a message to Brock Mann back at HQ. Who do we have close to the moon? We need a body retrieval stat. Clandestine level three.
Full cloak mode. Roger. Cyber-1 to rendezvous in fifteen minutes, Brock replied.
Perfect. They didn’t need a fighter craft equipped with the highest level of offensive and defensive weaponry—any Cy-Ops vessel would do—but time was critical. They had to snag the body before Vincere got to it.
Who are we retrieving?
Cornelius Corvalis, aide to Vincere.
Does the secretary general know you’re taking the body?
Negative, he replied.
Okay. No one will see us remove it. However, he’ll suspect you were involved.
Suspecting and proving are too different things.
He hoped this didn’t jeopardize the secretary general’s agreement to ramp up security, but Vincere’s support wasn’t required; they’d planned to work around him anyway.
Beth’s head lolled against his shoulder. “Everything…hurts,” she moaned.
He ducked his head and almost kissed her forehead before he caught himself. The others watched. “You took quite a blast. It will get better. Promise,” he said.
“She should be taken to the infirmary,” Vincere said.
“I’m taking her back to Terra.”
“She’ll feel more comfortable going home.” Mikala offered her diplomatic support.
“I understand.” Vincere approached and looked at Beth. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. I feel responsible. If there’s anything at all I can do to make this up to you…”
“Not…your...f-fault…” she whispered.
“You’re very forgiving,” he said, “but that doesn’t relieve me of the responsibility.”
Damn straight it didn’t.
Vincere approached Krovac. “Have Cornelius’s body moved to the morgue and prepped for transport.”
She tapped into her PerComm. “I placed the order. They’ll be here soon. Do you need anything else?”
“No, thank you.”
She departed, and two orderlies entered with a hover gurney. They loaded the corpse onto the floating litter and left. Carter hated to let the body out of his sight, but he couldn’t protest without arousing suspicion. The morgue was the logical place to store a body. He hoped that was, in fact, where they were taking it. He wouldn’t put it past Vincere to have the corpse loaded onto a shuttle.
Suspicious, much? Vincere had no reason to lie.
Send the team to the morgue, he shot to Brock. Every space station and lunar outpost had at least a small morgue where the deceased could be placed in cryo. While insects and microorganisms didn’t exist in outer space, the body harbored its own bacteria, which began decomposition upon death.
Mikala peered at Beth. “How are you feeling?” she asked in a low, concerned tone.
“My entire body is buzzing,” she said. “Like when your arm falls asleep. Only the pins and needles are burning and jabbing everywhere. And when I try to move, I can’t. See?” She wiggled an index finger. “That’s all I can do.”
Her recovery was actually pretty fast.
Mikala nodded. “Listen—what Vincere said. I, too, feel responsible. You were caught in a photon blast intended for me. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”
It was unanimous; they all felt responsible, but Carter bore the lion’s share of the blame. He was the director, and Beth had been nearly killed right in front of him. She never should have been in such a vulnerable position. If something had happened to her… His heart contracted with the painful realization of what he’d almost lost—and how dense he’d been. It had taken a near tragedy to wake him up.
Mikala sought his gaze. “Please don’t tell Penelope about this. She’ll worry unnecessarily.”
The unnecessary part was arguable—Mikala had been the target—but he understood her motivation. As a parent, she sought to shield her daughter from worry. Every cyber operative with a spouse or a family faced the same: how did one remain honest in a relationship while still protecting loved ones?
“I have to inform Brock,” he said. He’d been about to brief him when Mikala had approached. His second-in-command was her son-in-law.
“I understand. Just…let him know my feelings regarding Penelope.”
“Of course.”
Cyber-1 is orbiting the moon, Brock said. The pod has landed, and they’re making their way to the morgue.
Roger that. Listen, there’s something else… Mikala is unharmed, but she was the target of an assassination attempt. Cornelius was the shooter.
Brock swore.
Mikala asked you not to tell Penelope.
I wouldn’t tell her. If it comes from anyone, it will have to come from Mikala. No doubt Brock had spared his wife the knowledge of his close calls.
Beth, however, was hit, Carter said.
Brock swore again. How is she?
She’ll recover. He tightened his hold. Her arms came up and weakly hugged his neck.
Wait a minute…he intended to shoot Mikala, but stunned Beth, and then he died?
Doesn’t make sense, does it? If Cornelius hadn’t died, he would have been interrogated. He might have committed suicide to prevent his capture and questioning, except he hadn’t ingested anything—unless he’d already had a capsule in his mouth before attempting the assassination.
Do you have the blaster? Brock asked. I’ll send it to forensics.
Wish I did. Vincere has it.
Well, that’s fucked.
Tell me about it.
Here’s some good news: I got word the team has recovered the body and is back on the pod and headed for Cyber-1. Full autopsy, I assume?
Correct.
Anything else?
Have Swain meet me at my apartment to examine Beth. I’ll shoot him my ETA when I get closer, Carter said.
Will do, he replied, and signed out.
Brock hadn’t inquired why he was taking her to his private apartment. Carter wouldn’t have had an answer, other than an urgency compelling him to get her away from Luna Center, Aym-Sec, Cy-Ops—all the ugly business.
“I’m heading back to Terra,” he announced. He caught the secretary general’s attention. “Perhaps you’d like to accompany us to the shuttle to say your goodbyes?”
Vincere looked surprised. “I’d like that.”
Mikala frowned, a question in her eyes, but there was no way to explain. Having Vincere accompany him would delay him finding out the body had vanished and alleviate suspicion Carter had had something to do with it.