Roark (Women Of Earth Book 1) (18 page)

Chapter 20

Mira felt like a prisoner, and said so as she marched across the compound with Ahnyis at her side. Harm marched a dozen steps ahead of them. Two soldiers marched a dozen steps behind.

“Welcome to my life,” Ahnyis whispered and at Mira’s questioning look explained. “Haven’t you noticed that I don’t go anywhere alone? I always have an escort. Haven’t you ever noticed the warrior who stands outside the door while we have lunch? I’m a helpless female, or haven’t you noticed that, either. That’s one of the big things the Katarans and the Godan have in common. They call it protection. I call it something else and it’s not very nice,” she added primly.

“They leave you alone with Mason,” Mira reasoned. She knew Roark and Vochem didn’t like it, but they did it.

Ahnyis rolled her eyes. “Hardly ever. Anyway, they know I wouldn’t do anything with Mason, the big flirt. I’m a good Kataran girl. I’m saving myself for my good Kataran husband.”

Mira sputtered a laugh. “Ahnyis, you’ve all but admitted you two are...um...connected.”

“Having sex, you mean. You can say the word. I’m a healer after all.” She waved her hand and giggled. “They know I’m just yanking their tails.”

“Chains, Mira corrected the idiom. “It’s yanking their chains.”

“Not if you’re a Kataran.” The healer dug her elbow into Mira’s side and when Mira looked down, Ahnyis winked. “A sexual relationship with an alien being would be too adventurous for a girl like me. It’s against our Kataran nature. We’d rather curl up by a cozy homeworld hearth, secure in the love of a matrimonial union arranged by our mothers.”

Mira didn’t believe it for a minute, and she was surprised Roark and Vochem did.

A group of soldiers passed. They marched in a perfectly aligned formation, heads turning as one in recognition of the Prime. At their head was a woman.

“What about her?” Mira asked. “How does she or the other female troops get by without protection?”

“Oh, them. They’re Amazonians,” Ahnyis said as if that explained it.

Holy crap! Mira shook her head in disbelief. Myth just met reality. Again. Her list of commonalities between human and alien was growing by the day.

“What did you call them?” she asked just to be sure.

“Amazonians. They don’t need protection. The gods laugh at the man who tries to touch them. Since they discovered artificial insemination, they have no use for men at all. The only reason that they’re here is because the Confederation treaty requires it.”

“There used to be a television show called the Twilight Zone. I think I’m living in it,” Mira said, turning to get a better look at the marching woman. “Either that, or you guys have been here before.”

“I don’t understand your reference, but I do know the Katarans haven’t been here before. As I said, we’re not an adventurous race. The Godans, however, have been exploring for thousands of years. There’s no telling where they’ve been.”

They were almost to the clinic when Ahnyis stopped. The two guards behind them maintained their distance and stopped, too. Harm walked another few feet before looking back to see what the holdup was.

“Aren’t you going to ask about the children?” Ahnyis asked.

Mira had thought about it. “After what Roark said, I didn’t think you’d answer.”

Ahnyis resumed walking. “The First Commander said
he
wasn’t going to talk about it. He didn’t say anything about me.” She grabbed Mira’s hand and swung it between them like school children enjoying a stroll. “You really need to learn how the game is played, Mira.”

Harm missed a step when he coughed.

“I don’t want to know about games, Ahnyis. I want to know what happened to those children.”

“I don’t know, but I know that they’re alive, or at least some of them are. Their medical reports all read the same; found abandoned and starving. That isn’t unusual, but there are no individual notations and there should be with that large a number. Clothing has been shipped, bedding, food, that sort of thing, but classroom equipment is still crated in the warehouse. Schools for the abandoned are always staffed with locals and half the teachers should be local, too. There are no teachers, not ours or yours.

“Your registration papers clearly mark you as a teacher of languages. You would have been one of the first to be contacted and offered employment. That’s how my search began. I wondered why you weren’t.” Ahnyis smiled. “I thought you might have some awful secret in your background, or maybe you weren’t who you said you were. Roark seemed awfully taken with you, so I thought I’d better check.”

“The little healer protecting the big bad First Commander, huh?” Mira thought it was sweet and a little amusing. While the men thought they were looking out for Ahnyis, she was looking out for them.

“He’d be angry if he knew it.” Ahnyis giggled and then sobered. “You wouldn’t tell him, would you?”

“Of course not, Ahnyis. We girls have to stick together.” Mira returned Ahnyis’s elbow dig and wink.

“All the paperwork for the school has been filed,” Ahnyis went on, “but everything they contain is false.”

“Shipping reports lead us to believe they’re at Outpost Three,” Harm said as he held the door for them, and proving that he’d been listening in on their entire conversation. “There is no Outpost Three. We’re going to have to cross reference mileage and fuel consumption on individual transport vehicles to see if we can define a distance radius around the base to begin the search.”

He was looking down at Mira when the Ahnyis screamed.

“Stop!”

Two Godan warriors in full armor ran down the hall in the opposite direction and exited through a door at the end. A guard, weapon useless at his side, lay dead on the floor in front of them.

Mira’s stomach sank when Harm ran to the open door along the hall rather than chase the culprits. It sank further when she heard him utter the Godan word for fuck.

The two soldiers following them pushed past her, followed by Ahnyis whose high pitched screech echoed in the hall.

“No!”

For a few seconds that felt like whole minutes, Mira couldn’t move. Harm’s shouts, Ahnyis’s calls for help, the two soldiers running in pursuit, none of it made an impression on her mind. All she understood was that Davey was behind that door; Davey, who Roark promised would be safe.

Her feet began to move as she steeled herself for what she would find and her mind began to work again, planning how best to tell Wynne that their brother was gone.

~*~

“You guys aren’t really talking zombies, are you?” Mason laughed and hunched his shoulders. Hands clawlike, he spread his arms in mimicry of the horror movie creatures.

“Shit.” Roark had forgotten the human was there, hiding as he was in the corner by the coffee machine.

“Shit,” Vochem echoed as he turned around to stare his sister’s pet project.

“No shit.” Mason put his coffee down and reached for the blue bottle Vochem had poured from. He didn’t bother with a glass, but gulped a mouthful, winced as the fiery liquid went down, and shook his head.

“Shit,” he said again, though this time it came out in a long raspy breath.

Vochem took his translator from his pocket and held it up to his mouth. “Zombie,” he said, looking hopeful. The light in his eyes continued when he looked up and smiled.

“We do not animate the dead. No Zombies. Now leave.”

Mason held up his hands. “Wait a minute. I get three strikes. Baseball. It’s a time honored tradition.” His brows furrowed as he put his thoughts together aloud. “You’ve got dead guys who aren’t really dead, right? No burial records, no next of kin, right? I’m already smelling a conspiracy here. You’re missing replicators that can produce functioning and realistic body parts, and those knitter things, which are really cool by the way. You’re way ahead of us in restorative technologies.”

“We are wasting time playing games.”

Mason held up his hand. “Aw, come on, no fair,” he complained. “I’ve got two more strikes.” His fingers moved as if he was using them to count. “Not dead guys, replicators, knitters, missing bio-engineers and what did Ahnyis say? No, don’t tell me,” he said excitedly. “High-tech neural generators, whatever the hell they are.” He smacked his hands together in triumph, then spread his arms wide and sang.

“Put them all together they spell cyborg...” He looked from the frowning Roark to Vochem, who had the translator out again. “You guys have no sense of humor.”

Vochem closed his eyes as if praying for strength and then nodded his head.

“Yes.”

“Yes, you have no sense of humor or...” Mason stared at Vochem and then swallowed visibly. “Holy shit, I’m right?”

“Apparently so,” Roark confirmed.

Mason took another swig from the blue bottle and this time only winced a little. Bottle in hand, he pointed to Roark. “You’re not kidding. You’re serious. You’re...”

“Capable of breaking every bone in your body before I allow you to die. Remember that before you breathe a word of what you just heard.”

“Particularly to my sister or Roark will have to wait his turn to break bones. I’m much more adept at soft tissue destruction.”

Mason raised his hands. “Hey. Guys. I’m not sure what I did to piss you two off, but I’m a doctor, a real MD with diplomas and certifications and everything. All the paper is hanging on my office wall, or it used to be. Mira says it’s all under a pile of rubble now. We have something called doctor/patient confidentiality. It’s sacred. It means I can’t talk to anyone about my patient or one where I’ve consulted on the case. Ask me a few questions and thank me for my opinion. Bam! I’m a consultant on the case and to make it official I’ll send a bill for my services on the first of the month. I can use the cash.”

“How much do you know about physiocienics?

“Never heard of it.”

“Physiologic-cybernetic interfacement with exosuggestive neurological impulse controls?”

Mason shook his head. “Nope, unless you’re talking grinders and biohackers. Don’t know much about that either, but I know it’s out there, or it was until the Hahnshin started blowing everything to hell.”

Vochem nodded. “Good. You don’t know anything.” He waved his hand in a shooing motion. “You can go now. I’ve asked you questions. You’ve been consulted.”

“No fucking way. You can’t chase me off now. This is the payoff for all that broom pushing. You’ve got to tell me who, when, how? If this was the movies, I’d be thinking secret government agency, but you guys are the government, right? So who are the evil geniuses determined to take over the world?” He shrugged. “Or galaxy, as the case may be.”

“Let him stay,” Roark decided. “He’s smarter than he looks and he might prove useful. Tell him what he needs to know and no more.” His order was accompanied by a meaningful look.

Vochem returned the look before he blew out his breath and reluctantly began.

“What you’ve seen here are artificial structures replicating existing bone and soft tissue. They, as you say, are advanced but similar to the prosthetics your people are capable of producing. Some time ago, the Godan began experimenting with physiological enhancement through another means, taking those replications to a new and what was hoped a higher level in strength, endurance, agility and...”

“Military performance. Super soldiers. I get it,” Mason said. He grinned and tapped his head. “Smarter than I look, remember? The program failed I take it. Otherwise you wouldn’t be so freaked.”

“The neurological part of the procedure failed. The xoralinium, the nanometal alloy they used, reacted badly with the neuroimpulses. Better than half the test subjects died spontaneously from massive brain hemorrhages. Others suffered irreparable damage. The survivors became uncontrollable, particularly under emotional stress.”

“And soldiers are always under stress, right? What happened to them?”

“Most were put down,” Roark said flatly and curled his fingers toward the blue bottle.

“Most?” Mason asked as he passed it to him.

“Most.” Roark took a deep draft of the brew and repeated, “Others were hunted down and the connections removed.”

“They lived out their time in a very secure and comfortable environment, like pampered pets.” Vochem’s words held regret. “With about the same mental capacity.”

“Damn, and you think someone here is trying to recreate the experiment,” Mason concluded.

“Yes.”

“No,” Roark disagreed. “They can’t. They’d need xoralinium.”

“Or a substitute,” Mason offered.

“No, xoralinium is the only metal that can be spun fine enough to form the neural connections without damaging the myelin sheath, and strong and malleable enough to be used in replacing striated muscle tissue.” Vochem shook his head. “That’s the simplified version. It’s nanotech work involving biochemistry and genetic manipulation. The process is long and complicated and takes several years to complete.”

Mason cocked his head to the side. “You were part of the team, weren’t you Vochem?”

Vochem nodded. “Neural dynamic integration was my specialty. I left the program and went back to hands-on healing. It was while Ahnyis was still at school. She knows nothing of this and I’d prefer you not consult with her about it.”