Abandoned, p.22
Abandoned, page 22
part #2 of Donovan Series
“Safe?” Talbot countered. “Mundo Base is falling apart around your ears. Kylee’s here because the lift cable broke. Where the hell was the safety brake?”
“Rondo took it off. Used it to clamp two broken trusses together under the dome floor. The weld broke in a high wind a while back. He was going to weld it, but was killed before he could get to it.” Rebecca winced. “We just sort of forgot about it.”
Talbot nodded. Hell, he spent his days trying to keep the place in repair. “It’s time to face facts. From here on out, everything we eat, study, or work on up here has to be carried up the stairway. That’s a huge inconvenience. Now you tell me that some of the structural framework for the dome is damaged? How long since anyone has inspected it?”
Rebecca shrugged.
The sound of pounding feet preceded Dya’s arrival. Panting, she burst into the room, grabbing up Kylee’s hand, asking, “Baby? Dear God, what happened?”
Talbot stepped over, reading the terror in her eyes. “She’s sedated. It’s bad, Dya. Broken pelvis and femur. Maybe more.”
She glanced at him, tears welling. “Can we cast it? Put her in traction of some sort?”
“She needs surgery. To have the bones pinned.” Rebecca said, walking up to put her arm around Dya’s shoulders.
“Talbot wants to take her to Port Authority,” Su said bitterly. “I say no.”
Dya reached down, running her fingers over Rocket’s head as tears leaked down her cheeks. “Port Authority? Take her to those monsters?”
“They have a surgeon, Dya.”
“You took a CT right? Let me see the image.”
When Rebecca handed it to her, Dya bit off a cry—and her desperate gaze turned to Kylee.
Rebecca said, “Better to kill her now than to let her live like this.”
34
The endless forest passed below as Talbot flew Kylee, Dya, and the terrified Rocket north. Below the speeding Beta aircar, the tops of the great trees created rounded and irregular mounds of various greens, turquoises, and teals. They had left the deep forest behind, and since they’d crossed the southern arc of the Wind Mountains, the country had turned more to a scrubby forest. What Dya called the bush. Occasional patches of brush and grasslike vegetation could be seen in the openings.
Talbot couldn’t help but flash back to the first time he’d flown over this same terrain. He, Garcia, and Shin, marveling at the endless carpet of green over which they passed, never having a clue about the world that lay beneath, or its dangers.
The Beta skimmed effortlessly northward, clipping along at two hundred kph. Talbot had had his doubts getting the machine prepped, charged, and airworthy. He’d prayed it would fly, that it wouldn’t drop them somewhere in the trackless forest.
From the chronometer, they had less than a half hour’s flight time to Port Authority. At this altitude he could just see the faint blue line of the Gulf off to the east. The Wind Mountains had faded into a hazy smudge in the distant west.
Dya crouched at the bench seat in the back and made her latest check on Kylee. Rising, she stepped around Rocket and up beside Talbot, her attention fixed on the northern horizon. “She’s still stable.”
Talbot glanced back where Kylee rested under blankets and atop the padded litter they’d fashioned. Rocket, ever faithful, had curled himself on the floor next to her seat. The little guy was nearly comatose. Flying terrified him; the entire trip, a dazzling display of color had played across his hide. Mostly he kept his head down, eyes clamped tightly closed.
It hadn’t crossed Talbot’s mind that they’d have to take Rocket. But then, without him, there was no telling what the impact of separation would be. On either the quetzal or Kylee.
And then there was Port Authority to think of. As Talbot recalled, they didn’t exactly like quetzals there.
Dya, gaze crystalline blue, mouth set, looked as if she were at the end of her endurance. “I hope this isn’t a mistake.”
“Makes two of us.” Talbot reached out an arm and laid it across her shoulders to give her a reassuring hug. “I’ve taken the serial number plate off the frame. There’s nothing to link the aircar back to Mundo Base. You and I, we’re just farmers from a holding out to the west. There’s nothing to link us to the south. Even if I’m recognized and arrested, I’ll tell them Garcia, Shin, and I went west. Just like Cap did. When Kylee’s well, you can fly back south. No one will be the wiser.”
She shot him a sidelong, worried look. “You know I can’t fly this, don’t you?”
“What?”
“None of us can. We never learned.”
“Now you tell me?”
No wonder they mothballed the aircars; but then, if they hadn’t, that last power pack would have been worn out years ago.
Lashed on the trunk were two cases, each filled with jars of Dya’s various salves, pastes, poisons, laxatives, painkillers and medicines. The results of her years of study as she distilled and experimented with the various forest plants.
The most valuable trade they had to offer in return for Kylee’s care.
“There,” he pointed, recognizing the scar from the clay pit, having seen it on the numerous times he’d ridden down on Turalon’s shuttle.
He turned the wheel, correcting course, and heading for the distant domes.
“I never thought I’d be back here.” Dya ran nervous hands over the backs of her arms. “Pak and Paolo must be weeping in their graves.”
She’d told him about Pak, her first husband. Kylee’s father. How he’d given Clemenceau an ultimatum. How he’d been shot down in the street when Paolo pulled a gun in a bid to keep them from being arrested for desertion. How it had broken her heart. Even considered suicide rather than live without him.
Her second husband, Torrey, had been a geologist. The most she’d say about him was that he was Tuska’s father, and a good man. He’d vanished in the forest, went prospecting along the rim where it sloped off to the south of Mundo Base and never returned. Damien had found his pack beneath a rock outcrop a couple of years later.
Talbot studied Dya from the corner of his eye. The wind was ruffling her yellow-blonde hair, the set of her firm jaw indicated a steely resolution. The way she gripped the hand rail, the tension in her broad shoulders and stiff back, spoke volumes about what this was costing her.
From behind, suffering sounds could be heard deep in Kylee’s throat.
Talbot ground his teeth and wondered how he’d come to love her so completely that he’d have traded places with her in an instant.
Dropping altitude, he circled, coming in from the west. They passed over the last of the bush, farmland now beneath them. Here and there, people working the crops and tending to the farmbots looked up and waved.
Ahead, Port Authority lay behind its ditch and high fence, the lines of domes ivory-colored in Capella’s hard light. The clutter of wood-and-stone buildings packed in among them like some medieval hodgepodge.
Talbot flew over the aircar field, then the fence, setting his sights on the hospital dome where it stood next to admin, the shuttle field fence behind it.
“You ready?” he asked. “This is it.”
Dya’s jaws were knotted. She gave him a short nod of the head.
Talbot set the Beta down in the street before the hospital’s double doors. His heart beat anxiously in his chest, muscles charged, adrenaline pumping. Felt like combat.
Out of second nature he grabbed up his rifle, slung it over his shoulder. If he was recognized, there was no telling which way this could go.
Talbot killed the power, then jumped over the seat, barely missed stepping on Rocket, and lifted the back of Kylee’s litter.
Dya had clambered over the side, helping to brace the litter on the aircar’s frame as Talbot climbed out and took the back. “Come on Rocket.”
The quetzal, on unsteady legs, leapt out onto the street, a rainbow of colors rippling along his sides. Rocket’s tongue flicked this way and that as it quested along the side of Kylee’s litter.
Talbot led the way, barely aware that people had stopped short to stare. Then he flung the doors open with one hand, charging into the hallway, calling, “We need a doctor! Now!”
A woman, dressed in a white apron, stepped out of an office a couple of doors down past the waiting area, a clipboard in her hands.
“We’ve got a nine-year-old girl,” Talbot thundered. “Broken hip and femur. We need a doctor. We have trade. We’ll pay.”
The woman started forward. “Bring her this way . . .”
She stopped short, eyes going wide. “Good God! That’s a quetzal!”
“His name is Rocket,” Dya called. “He’s Kylee’s pet. He won’t hurt you!”
The clipboard fell, hitting the floor with a clatter. The woman was backing away, face gone white. She seemed paralyzed.
“Where’s Dr. Turnienko?” Talbot asked. “Get her! Kylee’s hurt.”
The nurse’s gaze remained fixed on Rocket, as if mesmerized by his splashes of color.
“Where’s the surgery?” Dya almost screamed. “Now!”
“D-down the hall. Second right.” The nurse backed into the room from which she’d come, slamming her door behind her.
“Shit!” Talbot bellowed. “Come on.”
At the second door to the right, Talbot backed through, carried Kylee to the raised table beneath a thick cluster of overhead lights. Yep. It looked like an operating room: cabinets filled with medical supplies; surgical tools under glass in an ultraviolet sterile case; all the monitors, hoses, and electrical gizmos.
A siren began to wail, loud, offensive.
Rocket hissed, as if the noise frightened him.
“Let’s get her up on the table,” Dya told him, and together they shifted Kylee’s fragile and broken form onto the padded table.
“Stay with her,” Talbot said. “I’m going for the doctor.”
He stepped out into the hallway, found it vacant. The siren continued to wail.
Not knowing what else to do, he opened the door across from the surgery. A woman, partially swathed in bandages, and obviously a patient, was just getting out of bed. Talbot caught her in the act of pulling a coat around her shoulders.
“Where’s the doctor?” Talbot demanded. “Which room?”
“Should be in her office, but with the alert, she’ll be headed to the front.”
“What alert?”
The woman, her thick black hair pulled back, stopped short and studied Talbot with remarkably blue eyes. Even with the bandages on her cheeks, he was looking at a beautiful . . .
“You’re Supervisor Aguila,” Talbot said, realizing why she looked so familiar. “What happened to you?”
“Mobbers,” she snapped. “Who are you? And more to the point, what are you doing in my room?”
“I need the doctor.”
“Well, good luck. A quetzal in the compound outweighs whatever’s wrong with you.”
“A quetzal in the . . . Shit! That stupid woman.”
He wheeled around, blocking the Supervisor’s door, and looked down the hall. Here they came. At the entrance, armed men and women were forming up.
“Can this get any worse?” Talbot wondered.
Looking the other way down the corridor, he could see additional people looking in the rear entrance windows, rifle barrels silhouetted through the glass.
“Port Authority shuts down over a quetzal alert,” the Supervisor said from behind. “Nothing’s going to happen until the whole town is searched and either the quetzal’s destroyed or the town’s determined to be clean.”
Talbot clenched his fists, ground his jaws, and cursed himself for a fucking fool.
“The quetzal’s here, damn it,” he gritted. “He came with me. His name’s Rocket, and he’s not going to hurt anyone.”
“Are you out of your mind?” she demanded.
“Yeah, I probably am.” Talbot laughed, hearing the maniacal tones behind it.
At the front entrance, the doors opened; two women and a large man entered at a crouch, rifles shouldered. Competent, capable, they started forward, sweeping for a target. Stopping at the front lobby, they showed perfect form as they cleared the room.
Talbot eased out into the hallway, heart thudding at the base of his throat. “Hey! Down here!”
He watched as they stopped short, the woman out front calling, “Get to cover. There’s a quetzal in the building!”
“He’s with me. His name is Rocket. He’s in the surgery with my daughter Kylee. She has a broken hip and femur. All we want is a doctor. We have trade.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“We’re Wild Ones. From a farmstead out west. My daughter was injured in a fall. We have trade. Just fix my little girl, and charge our power pack, and we’re out of here.”
Some sixth sense made him glance behind. They were coming in from the rear, as well. Talbot slipped his rifle from his shoulder, calling, “That’s far enough! Not another step.”
“We kill quetzals here, mister,” one of the men behind him called.
“You’ll have to kill me first,” Talbot called.
“Not a problem,” the lead man called, raising his rifle.
Talbot stepped back into the protection of the Supervisor’s room, leveling his rifle. “Put the gun down! Bunched up like you are? A full-auto burst will leave your blood and guts all over the hall!”
Shifting, it was to see that the group coming from the front had split up, diving into rooms.
“Hey!” Talbot called. “Before you idiots start something you can’t handle, I’m standing in the Supervisor’s room. You go to shooting in here, we’re going to have a real mess.”
He shot a glance back over his shoulder, saying, “Can you believe this shit? All I want is to get medical aid for my daughter? Are these people nuts?”
“That seems to be a common theme around here. But then I didn’t bring a quetzal into a hospital, either.” Supervisor Aguila had backed up to her bed, adding, “You know they’re going to kill you, don’t you?”
35
A quetzal in the hospital? When the alarm sounded, Talina had felt a rush of cold blood run through her veins. She had leaped out of Shig’s office, slammed open the weapons locker door, and stripped a rifle out of the rack. Even as she went sprinting down the admin building hallway the siren began to blare its deadly warning.
“Make a hole, people!” she had hollered at the knot of folks waiting outside of Yvette’s office to file paperwork.
“What have you got, Two Spots?” she had demanded, accessing her com system as people scrambled to get out of her way.
“Felicity says that a man and woman burst into the hospital carrying a child on a plank. And she insists that they had a quetzal with them. She just turned and bolted her door before she called me.”
“A man, woman, and child. With a quetzal?”
“You know as much as I do.”
That had been before she, Trish, and Step Allenovich had carefully stepped through the entrance to the hospital. She’d seen the dusty Beta parked in the street outside.
Now she stood, her body protected by Raya’s office doorway, her rifle at the ready as she scanned the hallway. She could just see the Wild One’s rifle barrel. A military weapon, capable of full-auto fire.
The guy wasn’t kidding when he said he could fill the hallway with blood and body parts. And worse, the fool had the Supervisor hostage?
“Listen, no one has to get hurt,” Talina called. “What’s this about a quetzal?”
“His name is Rocket!” the guy hiding in Kalico’s room bellowed back. “He’s not going to hurt anyone!”
“Iji here,” the botanist announced in her ear bud. “We’re in through the rear. Spiro might be able to shoot the guy through the Supervisor’s window.”
“Roger that.” Talina peeked around the door jamb. To the gunman, she shouted. “What on Earth possessed you to bring a quetzal here?”
“He’s bonded with my daughter,” the guy shouted back. “Just get the damned doctor down here to check Kylee out! She’s badly injured. Maybe dying. And leave Rocket alone. He’s not going to hurt anyone. You get it?”
“Hey, take it easy.”
“Easy?” he bellowed back. “We just came to get a child medical attention, and now I’m up to my ass in the shit! You hurt my kid, or her quetzal, and you’d better be ready for hot rounds.”
Hot rounds? The way he talked? Talina frowned.
“Stand down, Marine. No reason to get into the shit. Not here. If I come out, can we talk? No tricks?”
“Best news I’ve heard all day. But where’s the doctor?”
“Two Spots? Where’s Raya?”
“Locked down at the cafeteria.”
“Escort her to the hospital.”
To the marine, she called, “She’s on the way. Coming out!”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Trish called from where she sat ready on the other side of the hall, gun braced on Felicity’s door frame.
“Hey, who knows more about quetzals than me?”
To her com, she said, “Everybody hold. Let me see if I can figure this out.”
Taking a deep breath, Talina set her rifle butt-down against the wall and stepped out into the corridor, hands up. “No tricks,” she reminded as she walked slowly forward. She had that eerie, queasy feeling as the military rifle’s muzzle centered on her gut.
She stopped no more than three paces from Kalico’s door and stared into the marine’s eyes. He might have been thirty, tanned, with a clear-eyed stare, the rock-solid type who’d been down-range, seen it all. She thought he looked vaguely familiar. One of Cap’s guys. His dress was unusual, textile rather than chamois or quetzal hide. But clearly handwoven.
