16
On their way to the vehicle maintenance bay, armed with his altered gun and a medi-kit, John did his damndest to coordinate a fast and dirty 'intervention', having Five generate a computerized likeness (one not pounding along a corridor, covered in flash-fried dust) through which he relayed hisinstructions. He and Pete arrived at the giant hangar to find Dr. Bennet working on Roger, who'd been shot. Fortunately for the Marine, his survival suit had treated the bullet strike as a micrometeorite and swelled instantly shut, applying pressure, generating a localized electric field, and increasing the oxygen mix.
Nevertheless, there was more to be done. As she pulled off the man's right glove and shoved back his suit arm and liner sleeve, Linda told him,
"Find something to focus on, Roger; Medi-kit's here. I'm going to extract and suture."
He was transferred to the crane floor, allowing her to work in peace while Pete and John took over reconfiguring Endurance. The doctor sprayed a local anesthetic and began probing the blackened wound. Dermal, sub-cutaneous and musculo-skeletal trauma, bleeding, swelling, burned tissue, scattered bone chips and shreds of damaged periosteum... Not good, by any means, but treatable.
The object of Roger's focus, meanwhile, lowered her almond eyes to the deck and radiated a faint, becoming blush. Linda was far too busy to notice.
...Apply antiseptic and broad-spectrum bacteriophage... scalpel off the necrotic tissue, insert gauze to wick away blood and lymph...
Cho would have helped, but Linda muttered tightly that she'd be best off distracting the big Marine, whose breath hissed like a bellows at each sizzling pass of the laser scalpel.
...Cauterize blood vessels and cleanse..., more anesthetic to kill the reflexive tensing which threatened to block her access to the flattened bullet... It had punctured his lower biceps, lodging against the humerus. Technically, not a difficult extraction. She used a surgical-grade 'smart tool', a pair of shape-memory tweezers with a computer chip that allowed them to alter form, texture and grip strength in response to conditions. Handy, and very skillfully wielded. She was very calm; very slow and precise, tugging gently with one hand while cauterizing with the other. A smell filled the little chamber that Linda did her best to block out. Frying meat.
Recalling an operation of his own, John attended to the procedure with the back of his mind, focusing most of his concentration on Endurance, Cindy Taylor, and the 'intervention'. Then Five dropped the other shoe. More grim news, from Tahiti, this time. Dammit!
Four separate, coordinated assaults; not particularly smooth, or well-planned, but dangerous. (John had a strong hunch, too, that the objective wasn't what it seemed.) People had been critically injured, first in a possibly related plane crash, then at a once secure location. Only this time, the target had been the kids: Gordon, Alan and TinTin.
'Fine,' he thought, typing away at his uplink with Five, 'You want to play hardball, Mister, keep on pitching. I like games, too.'
In that age and time, nobody's communications were entirely secure. Not from him. A fast sweep and Bayesian filter culled the tangle of messages down to a few likelies, from which his computer selected the most suspicious.
As Dr. Bennet was bandaging up her patient, John listened in on the top three candidates, finally pegging his quarry from certain repeated phrases. Code, almost certainly... And absolutely not good enough to confuse an aroused and angry John Tracy. He listened harder, helping Roger off the deck and down a lift to the bright-painted boarding gantry.
"Five," he subvocalized, as the crew hustled themselves aboard the altered spaceship, suited up and strapped in, "Get a message to Father and Scott, using my image. Tell them that all three situations are under control, and that the attacks do not, repeat with emphasis, not originate with WorldGov, but that somebody's sure trying hard to make it look that way. Someone wants to stir up a confrontation, reasons unknown."
Unknown, and deeply troubling. The crew very much needed to get their sleek sitting duck off the launch pad and back on the wing, before anything worse happened.
"Jam the targeted frequency," he continued, in a voice that traveled no further than his own throat. As Endurance underwent an insanely abbreviated systems check, John continued, "I want every nexus on that comm grid isolated and overcome. Run it past Father, first, but instruct agents to protect themselves and innocent lives at all costs... and authorize use of deadly force."
'Understood, John Tracy. Complying,' she replied at his left wrist. And again... What a time to be leaving the damn planet.