For so many years the saving of every life had left behind nightmares, and this pathetic creature had used that for his own advantage, for his own greedy purposes.
Nightmares…
It took him only a moment to reduce Valdemar to total unconsciousness, and a few moments more to pull the familiar icy cloak of full trance about himself. Anger faded. Hate dissolved. Everything but cold directed will leached away, leaving only himself, his patient, and the cure.
He wrapped his immaterial hands around Valdemar’s head, fingertips sinking inside the man’s skull. “Remember me,” he rasped, his touch and deep trance guaranteeing that he was heard.
“Resign. Stop turning MedArm into garbage. Give up Maxx or die.” He could feel brain activity sputtering and flickering under his fingers, knew that his every word was being incised inside that skull past any erasing.
“If you disobey me, I’ll come back for you. Remember me and what I can do to you. Remember…”
He shifted his grip. A touch here, there, saw to it that Valdemar would not waken for several hours.
Letting go of Valdemar he stood back, shrugging off the trance state, then turning his back on his patient to reattach his silver arms.
He knew he should be ashamed of what he had just done. Maybe he would be. Yet he wouldn’t take it back even if he could.
At that moment all he could think about was getting to his ship and getting his ass back to Ananke as fast as he could, because there was someone there who needed him.
Returning to his ship was no problem. It was upon reaching the berth where it was docked that he ran into an unforeseen complication.
His ship’s airlock door gaped wide open.
He stood there staring, knowing damn well that he’d left the craft locked up tight when he left. It was doubtful that old Fist had tried to escape. Not only was he too weak to walk and buried under a sleepfield to boot, he had every reason to want to remain hidden while the ship was on Botha Station.
That left one logical conclusion. Somehow, someone must have suspected Fist’s presence on the ship. There was no way to guess how. The important question was: Had they already spirited him away, or was the kidnapping still in progress?
There was only one way to find out. He continued on inside, moving quietly, cautiously, his home suddenly hostile territory.
The dimly lit main compartment was deserted. He crossed it, soft-soled shoes whispering across the carpeting, straining to hear any telltale sounds over the anxious thudding of his heart. The clinic’s door was open, bright light flooding out. As he drew closer he heard voices. Moving with all the stealth he could muster, he crept to the doorway and peeked inside.
Two men were struggling to pull Fist over the high sides of the unibed. The burly one dressed in the red OmniMat Security uniform had his arms wrapped around Fist’s thin chest. Marchey watched the old man turn his head and spit in the man’s face.
“‘Old skig spit on me!” he cried, his mouth curled in disgust as he rubbed his cheek against his shoulder.
The other man, dressed in a dark blue ’xec’s tailored onepiece, laughed. “I’ll teach him some manners.”
“Damn well better!”
Onepiece let go of Fist’s feet, stepped around to the side of the bed, then backhanded him hard enough to snap his head back on his scrawny scarred neck. “You behave, grampa.” He grabbed a thin wrist. “Act up again, and I’ll break your goddamned fingers.”
Fist’s head came back up, and he glared at onepiece, those carious yellow eyes blazing with sneering malevolence. His bloodied mouth moved as he whispered something that made the ’xec’s face redden. Fist laughed, a moment later whispering something else that made the ’xec let go and clench his fists. One drew back in threat. Fist laughed again, daring him.
Marchey almost had to laugh himself at the ornery old bastard’s absolute, unbreakable cantankerousness. But he knew he had to do something before the old man goaded them into killing him, thereby taking all of his secrets to the grave.
He scrubbed his mouth, trying to figure out the best way to deal with the situation. No great plan came to mind. He was tired and impatient to be on his way, and he’d had a bellyful of deception, intrigue, and taking the subtle approach.
“Screw it,” he muttered softly, squaring his shoulders and striding on into the clinic as if he owned the place.
“Who the plug are you?” onepiece demanded, dropping his clenched hands and stepping back.
“Don’t worry, I’m a doctor,” he told them with a reassuring smile as he sauntered toward the security man at the far end of the unibed. The guard let go of his burden and reached for the holster strapped to his hip.
He never got a chance to touch the weapon inside. Marchey, still beaming happily, stepped in close and put his broad shoulders behind a roundhouse punch that drove his biometal fist into the cleft in the man’s chin like a silver sledgehammer. His blow knocked the guard clear off his feet and into the bulkhead behind him. He slammed up against the padded surface, hung there a second, then crumpled bonelessly to the deck.
Marchey gaped in amazement at the results of the first punch he had ever thrown in his whole life, then spun around to confront the other trespasser, brandishing his fists and ready for round two.
Onepiece took one look and fled.
Marchey flung himself after, crashing into the ’xec’s lumbar region. They both went down, Marchey on top.
The ’xec’s head bounced off the deck with a sickening thump that made Marchey wince.
“Bravo… Doctor!” Fist called from inside the unibed. “A remarkable… display… of fisticuffs!”
“Just shut up,” Marchey grumbled, climbing off the ’xec’s back, then rolling him over and peeling back an eyelid. The man was down for the count, but fundamentally undamaged. He crossed the compartment to check on the security guard.
In the process of checking pupil response he found out that he had knocked the man not only cold, but cross-eyed.
Forty minutes later he was already undocked and on his way back to Ananke. He had taped up the intruders’ hands and feet, put a sedative derm on each to give him more time to make his escape, then stuffed them into an equipment cabinet in the lockbay.
Fist had suffered only a few minor cuts and bruises from his manhandling. Marchey treated them and put him back under the sleepfield. The old man had kept laughing and calling him by the name Ali, whatever the hell that meant.
Now that the battle of Botha Station was over, he was dead on his feet and more than ready to sleep. But there remained a couple loose ends he wanted to tie up before he let himself collapse. So he drew a cup of coffee with just a hint of brandy in it to offset the caffeine, seated himself at the commboard, and called Dr. Moro.
The bearish, bearded physician came on, his face knotting into a look of tight-lipped distaste. “You again.”
“Valdemar is still an addict,” Marchey informed him without preamble. “His condition remains fundamentally unchanged from when I arrived, though he will probably stay unconscious for at least another six hours.”
Surprise replaced Moro’s disapproval. “Why?”
Marchey told him.
Raphael Moro turned out to be a very good listener. The few questions he asked led Marchey to tell him everything: the Helping Hands visit to Ananke and Valdemar’s place in the scheme; how he had gotten to Ananke and what had happened there; how the Bergmann Surgeons had been co-opted by a tainted MedArm, and how Sal Bophanza had fled the Institute. It took him almost an hour to lay out the whole story. By the time he was done Moro was looking at him in a very different manner.