“Thank you, grandma.” Orion said with a smile, his father’s luminescent green eyes shimmering under the light. Then he returned to playing with his tablet.
“It’s so nice to have intelligent grandchildren.” Grandma Jezebel beamed, making it sound as though she were taking credit for how smart they had turned out.
“I’m sure their grandfather would be proud.” Aster quipped.
Madam Jezebel’s implacably superior composure cracked. It was difficult to describe the expression she now wore on her face, but it was definitely not a calm one.
“On their mother’s side, of course.” Aster added, satisfied that her barb had worked.
“Bring me the data-chip,” Madam Jezebel instructed her daughter-in-law imperiously, “and there won’t be any problems.”
“Understood.” Aster replied as she got up to leave, “time to go, sweethearts.”
Obediently, the children gathered up their things and lined up to say goodbye to their grandmother. Grandma Jezebel’s composure returned as she kissed her grandchildren goodbye, then she snapped her fingers at one of the servant androids.
“Summon a taxi for five.” She ordered the android.
“Thank you.” Aster said with a courteous smile.
It was the least her fleekster mother-in-law owed her.
Without getting up from her seat, Madam Jezebel waved goodbye to her grandchildren. When the door had shut behind them, her smile disappeared.
“Frontier bitch.” She muttered.
* * *
Gabriel forced the captured jumper’s hand against the biometric scanner, and the door to the medical bay opened. Viker secured the room whilst Gabriel strapped his captive down to an examination bed using the patient safety restraints. Meanwhile, with immense care, Cato and Bale laid the unconscious and badly wounded Doran down on a surgical table, and a suite of robotic medical arms descended automatically from the ceiling to assess him.
He was barely alive.
“The room’s sealed.” Viker told everyone, “We’re secure in here.”
Having tied down the prisoner, Gabriel came over to join the rest of the squad.
“Doran’s suit’s taken too much damage,” Cato explained gravely, “his shields and armour saved his internal organs from being crushed, but he’s out of this fight.”
“Will he live?” Bale asked.
“The nanobots in his bloodstream should stave off the worst of the damage,” Cato explained, “but the best we can do right now is stabilise him.”
The robotic medical arms paused in their work. The holographic patient monitoring screen displayed an error message: “obstruction detected”.
“It’s his armour,” Cato explained, “We need to remove it.”
“Well, let’s do it, then!” Viker demanded.
“Only the commanding officer can do that.” Cato elaborated, looking to Gabriel.
“Well, fricking hurry up and open it–” Viker began to shout frantically.
“STAND THE FLEEK DOWN!” Gabriel barked, the volume of his voice making the rest of the squad flinch with surprise.
The squad, including Viker, stepped back as Gabriel approached the surgical table and placed the palm of his gauntlet against the cheek-plate of Doran’s helmet, establishing a peer-to-peer connection between his own suit and Doran’s.
“Override: Lieutenant Doran, disassemble suit.” Gabriel instructed Doran’s suit computer, “Victory. Sovereign. One. Seven. Zero. Seven.”
The voice command was accepted and Doran’s suit began to unlock and disassemble, the pieces unfolding and retracting like a sentient jigsaw puzzle. Only his respirator remained secured to his face. Doran’s skin, visible through the under-suit, was a mess of fresh red bruising. His head looked unharmed, but lack of consciousness and a brush with death had turned his skin ghostly pale.
The error message disappeared and the robotic medical arms resumed their work, cutting open Doran’s under-suit with an incredibly fine circular blade, and subjecting his torso to a series of microinjections, targeting the areas of most serious injury with cocktails of drugs mixed into a solution of nanobots.
“It’ll take a while to stabilise him.” Cato explained, “But we can’t be certain if he’ll make it, we need to get him back to a proper DNI facility.”
“We still have a mission to fulfil.” Gabriel reminded everyone.
“Frick the mission!” Viker exclaimed, “Ogilvy’s missing and Doran’s close to dead. The mission parameters have changed!”
“The mission parameters change when I say they change.” Gabriel shot back, shutting Viker down without raising his voice.
“Respectfully sir, they HAVE changed.” Captain Bale pointed out, attempting to defuse the building tension, “We can’t rescue Ogilvy AND look after Doran without splitting up.”
“Then splitting up is exactly what we’ll do,” Gabriel replied with steel in his voice, “This is still an IRS op., which means we still have to investigate the nature of the xenotech being studied here and find out how J.E. Co. acquired it in the first place. If you would prefer to abandon the mission, so be it.”
“You want to go alone, sir?” Cato asked, his tone reflecting the squad’s incredulity.
“Going alone is the whole point of a voidstalker.” Gabriel replied coldly.
The squad was silent.
“Are we that much of a burden to you?” Viker asked, a note of anger creeping into his voice, “or did the DNI assign us to you as cannon fodder for this suicide mission?”
“If you were mere cannon fodder to me, I would have left Doran to die and Ogilvy to his fate.” Gabriel replied truthfully.
The squad was silent again.
“Tell me when Doran’s condition improves, and see what you can find in the computer systems,” Gabriel instructed the squad, “I need to have a word with our prisoner.”
“Computers are Doran’s field.” Bale said doubtfully.
“Then learn fast,” Gabriel ordered him, “we need as much intelligence as we can get, and right now the best place to find it is the computers.”
Gabriel turned away and headed over to the captive. Besides the skin-tight flight suit, the jumper’s entire head was contained inside a bulbous helmet with a reflective black visor. Its right arm had been cleanly severed at the elbow joint, and yet it made no attempt to struggle or break free. It didn’t even show any signs of being in pain.
Gabriel reached under the jumper’s helmet, feeling under the rim for a release switch. There was no switch that he could find, or any other means of removing the helmet, but he still needed to take off or cut through the jumper’s helmet to speak to him.
Before making a run for it, the jumper had retrieved his sword, giving Gabriel an idea. The sword’s sheath was actually a magnetic plate on a strap slung over the back of the jumper’s suit, strong enough to hold the sword in place, but weak enough to allow the wielder to draw the sword by simply pulling.
Drawing the sword and placing the tip on the ground, Gabriel found that it came up to his hip, with the handle alone accounting for a quarter of the length. At the base of the handle was a little switch, and Gabriel flicked it with his thumb, causing the blade to shimmer.