Ages in Oblivion Thrown: Book One of the Sleep Trilogy (23 page)

Pain tugged her back, as always.
She put her hands down over her belly, expecting to see the
illusion that was usually there. Her hands were clean. She blinked
and shook her head vigorously.

“I wouldn’t do too much of that.
You’re going to be sore enough for a day or so.” A young doctor
leaned on the doorway. Maeve noticed she was in a bright, clean
room, with all manner of tubes and thingies stuck to
her.

“How did I get
here?” She still hated hospitals. The doctor came over,
frowning.
Lt. Cdr. Bahur
was printed on his nametape. He wore blue scrubs
and smelled of aftershave and antiseptic.

“You don’t recall?”

“It’s fuzzy. Last thing going on…I
had a knife lodged in my chest.” Dr. Bahur clucked his tongue in
amusement.

“There, you see. You do recall. Of
course you’re fuzzy, you lost several litres of blood.” He walked
around the bed to check things over. Maeve let him fuss over taking
her pulse, checking her for post-concussion symptoms, and more. He
was looking over the chart when she saw a thin red line running
along his ear.

“Did you hurt yourself?” Bahur
looked at her quizzically. She tapped her own ear.

“Ah, yes. Rugby. Sometimes you get
more than you bargain for in the scrum. Nearly came clean off. You
should have seen the look on the face of the one who did it.” He
smiled innocuously at her.

۞

“The morgue? Like where dead
people are kept?” Grace felt a wave of dizzy fear break over
them.

“Colonel, please tell us what’s
happened.” Josh seemed to be the only one who was able to speak
calmly. He held up his hand to shush Leif and Wallace.

“Right after I get some answers.”
Tark took a deep breath, and then wished he hadn’t. “We have one
person in here. And we have another who nearly ended up here. And
we have, or rather don’t have, someone who is
responsible.”

“Not that I understood a word of
that, but, I’ll bite. What do you want us to tell you?” Josh spoke
as he kept Leif in his peripheral view.

“You’re going to start with where
you’ve all been for the past few hours. And then, you can tell me
why you’re suddenly palling around with Mrs. Han.” Dmitry had an
instinctive feel that none of them knew yet, but he was running
high off adrenaline and fury.

“Sorry. Not playing your game. Not
inclined to tell you shit unless I know what’s going on.” Leif had
worked himself back into a bad attitude. He and Dmitry began to
square off; Tark sighed and realized that he had to rein things
in.

“Alright. Major, come on.” Tark’s
words might as well remained unspoken. Dmitry did not budge. Leif
stood over him by several inches, was broader by several more, but
Tark knew Dmitry would not back down. “Mr. Christensen, if you
would? I’m sorry to have to do things this way, but I didn’t want
to have news traveling ahead of me.” He gestured through a set of
double doors. They all walked into an extremely chilly reception
area. Tark slipped into a small office.

“You could play hockey down here.”
Grace’s uncomfortable quip hung in the air, untouched. None of them
felt jovial anymore. A sense of terrible anticipation fell over the
group. An eternity later, Tark reappeared with someone. The
coroner? She was hastily tying her hair up, tugging on exam gloves,
commenting on the nature of “this one”. As it were, that it was
“better” than the last one. They all knew to whom she referred.
Antonio wondered what state the doctor’s remains were in. He
shuddered a little.

“This way.” The presumptive
coroner addressed them, looking vaguely uncomfortable. Nobody
moved. The reality of what might be beyond, lying on a table, and
in what condition…had just dawned on them.

“Who is in there?”

Tarkington and Petrovich said
nothing. The woman, in her dark blue scrubs, took the few last
steps and pushed open another set of double doors. Along one side
of the room beyond were the expected drawers, on the far side, the
tables. Only one was being used. The overhead light shone down
brightly. They looked in; tried to process what shouldn’t be there.
This wasn’t right.

۞

A nurse walked in. Bahur was still
watching Maeve in a way that left her unsettled. She wished she
could stand up and walk out, leave him behind, but that was not
possible. Not yet. She could only match his gaze, and hope that the
nurse would linger. Exhaustion nibbled away at her resolve to stay
alert.

“They haven’t caught him yet, if
that’s what you’re wondering.” Bahur seemed amused by her stubborn
resistance to sleep.

“I figured.” She narrowed her
eyes. “Actually, I was thinking about what I did to him. He
probably lost a bit of blood…and the leg wound…. It does occur to
me that he’s not in the best of health right now.”

“What are you
suggesting?”

“Well, unless he’s a doctor,” she
said with deliberate slowness, “one might imagine that he’s gone to
ground to fix himself up.” She watched Bahur carefully, trying to
gauge his reaction. He had an awfully good poker face.

“Why do you think he was in your
rooms?”

“Garden variety sexual predator, I
suppose. He must have watched some one of us and realized that
there are no other occupied apartments down there.”

“Seems a bit
convenient.”

“Hardly. We’re not on the official
rolls, if you know what I mean. We’re just guests.”

“We?” At that, Maeve relaxed. If
he didn’t know about the others, maybe it was all right.

“My friends and me. We’re guests
of the…station, I guess.”

“I see. If you’ll forgive my
saying so, this whole scenario seems less random than it
appears.”

“What do you mean?” She fiddled
with the bed to try to get it sat up.

“Well, in accepting your theory, I
believe we should have seen some evidence of sexual assault. But he
didn’t try to do that to you, correct?”

“Um, no.”

“And the other young woman, the
one in your bed,” he coughed uncomfortably, “no evidence there
either.”

“Really?”

“This is what I have from our
medical examiner. No findings of that nature. To me, that sort of
says this guy was there to do a job.” Bahur fixed his cool grey
stare onto the wall.

“A job. Killer for hire, that kind
of job?”

“I suppose.” He watched as Maeve
touched her chest where the knife had been. The processing of his
theory fell against strong opposition. It wasn’t that she disagreed
with his logic, merely that she hated the implications of
it.

“When the other doctor, Hawke,
when she was in the airlock…what she said, I thought she must have
been delusional. Was she just warning us?” Maeve had seen her
repeating her one small phrase.

“What did she say?” Bahur sat
forward, seeming suddenly intense.

“They’re
coming.
”

۞
Earthside
–
The Med

Boko had used up an entire ream of
paper on airplanes, in an absentminded attempt to derail his
insomnia. He sat in the half-light of daybreak, leant against his
headboard, in the small bedroom of his apartment. He'd been awake
most of the night, stubbornly refusing to turn on the bedside lamp.
He told himself that he was trying to sort out his thoughts without
the distraction of sight.

Fatigue hovered in the periphery, but
he pushed it away. Folding paper blindly, he could hear his
grandfather's voice echoing in the darkness. Kun had given him a
second chance. Forgiveness had been granted without condition. Boko
was sure that unspoken obligation had been in the gentle hand laid
on his shoulder.

A touch that reminded him of when he'd
left, in anger, cursing his family, his legacy, and unwanted
responsibility. He still couldn't face those memories. It was far
easier to simply accept the blame, and move on. It was only a
weight, a burden. He could still hope that absolution might be
granted him.

He dragged his reluctant brain back
into the room with him, thinking about the task before him. The
sheer magnitude of it was halved only by the fact that there was no
need to infiltrate the organization that was being brought down.
Boko the trusted and valued advisor would become the man who would
kill Robert Warden.

Grandfather had not been eager to
impart this responsibility onto his only grandchild, having only
just gotten him back. But it was because of their long separation
that Boko would be able to draw closer to his prey without arousing
suspicion.

No one knew of any living relative to
the man they knew as Bhujoung "Boko" Pritt, their associate who had
come into his own after being a ward of the state during his
minority. Boko had paid good money to erase his past, originally
out of shame. Now he continued to use this to exact restitution.
After it was all over, he would visit his mother. He owed her that
much. He would never know if she could have forgiven him as his
grandfather had done. She had passed into the shadow lands, from
where honored ancestors watched over the living.

Warden was a man of habit, almost
infant-like in his need to be on some sort of schedule from day to
day. The results of a disruption were often felt rather
resoundingly by his colleagues. Therefore, they'd all learned not
to be the source of any such ripple. Boko had often felt as though,
watching Warden move through their offices, that the man moved as
though he was expecting an ambush at any moment.

He had been in the military for a few
years in his younger days, according to the corporate dossier. Boko
knew what had appealed to Warden about that kind of life, the power
plays, the potential for destruction. But Warden had turned to more
profitable ventures, and finally, to politics, when he could buy
his way into them.

For Boko, that amounted to formulating
a plan to destroy a man who had everything to lose, a man who was
constantly aware of his own possible demise. It was a nearly
impossible task, except, for some unfathomable reason, Warden saw
Boko as a younger brother. Someone to trust and share all of his
gruesome secrets with.

Boko didn't exactly consider himself
to be an angel, but he found Warden's stories troubling, to say the
least. Nor could he fathom why his boss had latched onto him. Not
that it really mattered. Next week, they were set to go on a
business trip together. Just the two of them, off to a remote
operations headquarters. Next week, Robert Warden would have an
accident. Boko finally put his head down; sleep had won him
over.

۞
The Nimitz

“
What happened???” Grace shouted into
the stunned silence.

“
We were hoping you’d be able to shed
some light….” Tark held up his hands to try and calm the
crowd.

“
On what? You think one of us would
have done this?!?” Antonio felt ill. From across the room, all they
could see was a pile of black hair.

“
I think nothing, except that I have
one more dead woman. Then there’s Maeve, who nearly suffered the
same fate.” The room erupted into shouting.

The woman in scrubs, who was the
medical examiner in reality, slowly backed out of the room. There
was a little too much testosterone for her liking. This was why she
only had dogs, truthfully. Training. As simple as clickers and
biscuits.

“
I will tell you everything I know, so
long as you start doing the same. Enough with the
secrets.”

“
Fine.” Leif pointed to the steel
table. “Start talking.”

“
We found her in Ms. Howard’s rooms.
Maeve herself walked in as the perpetrator was either finishing, or
merely waiting for her. We’re not clear yet.”

“
Why was Jemi in Maeve’s
rooms?”

“
Not clear yet.”

“
Okay, what is clear? What do you
know?”

“
Perp was a male. Mid-thirties,
average height and build, but ‘wiry’, Maeve hurt him pretty badly,
from what we understand. He’s still at large,
unfortunately.”

“
What’s being done to find him?” Leif
put his face inches from Tark’s, while the station commander tried
to regain his bearing. Tark put out his hand to discretely back
Leif off, while Dmitry moved to stand firmly by his friend’s
side.

“
We have a door to door currently in
progress. We’ll find him. It’s not like he can run.”

“
Colonel, have you forgotten what
desperate people can accomplish?” Antonio did not take his eyes
from Jemi’s face. She was gone. It was the first time he had ever
seen the body of someone he’d known. He might have seen his mother,
but he’d been a toddler. There was no memory from those days.
Jemi’s hand was cool, not yet as chilly as the room.

“
No, Mr. Assunta, that has not gone
unthought. We’ve halted all traffic out though, and we can search
this place rafters to rivets.”

“
And what if he forces your
hand?”