Gabriel: Zero Point (Evan Gabriel Trilogy) (8 page)

Biermann stood upright away from the desk and met Gabriel’s stare, having to look up a few inches into the taller man’s face. His arms stayed crossed, and a small smile crossed his face.

“Something on your mind, Lieutenant?” he asked.

Gabriel clenched his fists at his side, his inner turmoil raging. The pain from the through-and-through was starting to creep into his system, and his arm still throbbed. The blood on his face had nearly dried, and he felt the sticky substance crack and stretch as he worked his jaw. But all of those sensations were secondary to his anger, which was now directed squarely at his commanding officer.

“What was this, Captain? Some sort of… test?” He spat the last word out in disgust.

Biermann stared at Gabriel for a long moment, then turned away and walked back behind the desk. He waved the shorter civilian out of the room. Gabriel saw that Knowles had her eyes lowered and wouldn’t look back at him.
 

“Of course it was a test, Lieutenant,” Biermann said. “I’m not going to buy a weapon without trying it out first. I’m sure you’ve test-driven cars before, right? Think of it that way.”

“No one died when I test drove a car,” Gabriel said. “Sir,” he added through clenched teeth.

Biermann looked off to one side, his eyes unfocused. “They chose their fate long ago.”

Knowles turned from the desk and slowly walked towards the back wall of the room, her head down. Gabriel watched as the slump of her shoulders gave way to a posture of frustration as she put her hands on her hips. He could almost feel the emotion radiating from her. The same tangled web of thoughts he was experiencing.
 

He stared at Biermann, whose gaze remained on the far wall. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Biermann looked back at him, and Gabriel saw a flash in his eyes. “What that means, Lieutenant, is that those people were nothing but criminals. Each of them a murderer, or rapist, or traitor to the Federation.” He stood up and fixed Gabriel with his stare. “They chose their fate long ago. Every one of them has given up their right to be a member of society, and every one of them was sentenced to death. We give them a chance to reduce their sentence, to change their fate, by participating in a test. This test. A test you passed, Lieutenant. Otherwise you wouldn’t be standing here.”

Gabriel’s head spun. Images flashed across his mind: the barrel of the pulse rifle smashing into a man’s face, blood spurting from his wrecked nose; burn holes in the back of a woman’s body armor; the crazy angle of a man’s lower jaw.

He leaned over and placed his hands on the front edge of the desk, breathing deeply, trying to wrest control from the emotions flooding his system. Two dead, another four injured, by his hand. For a test.
 

“Does that make a difference to you now, Mister Gabriel?” Biermann asked. “Now that you know who you killed?”

“You bastard,” came Knowles’s voice as she turned back around. “That’s a loaded question and you know it. How can any of them who come through here answer that?”

Gabriel’s head came up and he looked at Knowles, whose face was red. From anger or frustration, he wasn’t sure. He saw flashes of the emotion he detected in the lab. This was what she was concerned about. But why would she be caught up in this type of operation?

He looked back at Biermann. “I don’t believe you.”

Biermann pulled a folded sheet of hardcopy from a folder on the desk and read from it.

“The two men who were sent to the lab. Falk, Walton H. Tried and convicted of murder in the first degree of a shopkeeper in the commission of a robbery, Denver. Bathory, Ian W. Serving a life sentence for rape, but killed two men in a Mexico City prison, so was sentenced to death.”
 

He opened the sheet to the inside fold and continued. “The two you gassed and took out. Ruggieri, Samad M. Traitor to the NAF, sold state secrets to the Chinese which directly resulted in the deaths of fourteen foreign service agents last year. Sentenced to death for high treason. Sefu, James K. Kidnapped and killed two women from a daycare in Calgary. Sentenced to death.” Biermann’s face cracked into a small smile. “The tear gas was very inventive. You’re the first to use that tactic. I liked it.”

He turned the hardcopy over. “Gorog, Markku L. The big ugly guy outside the door. He’s a real winner. We were saving him for a special test, and you drew him. Professional hitman from Croatia. Killed twelve minor members of the NAF government two years ago for reasons unknown. He’s been on ice since then, waiting for diplomatic extraction, but that fell through. So he became ours.” He pursed his lips. “Wasn’t sure if you’d get past him. Again, very inventive, using our own weapons against us in an unexpected way. Shows outside the box thinking. I can use that.”

Gabriel stared at him for several long moments before speaking. “And the woman?” he growled.

Biermann leaned towards him across the desk and stared back, not looking at the hardcopy. “Bustos, Erika M. Housewife from Sacramento. At least that’s what she was to neighbors. In reality, she was a serial killer. She singlehandedly killed over twenty men in a two-year period. Kidnapped them, emptied their bank accounts, tortured them, and burned them.” He leaned in closer. “Alive.”

Gabriel clenched his teeth, thinking back to the pale face and dead eyes lying on the floor of the corridor.
 

“Before you accuse me of lying, Lieutenant, feel free to look it up. Pull up news faxes from northern California, 2164. And make sure to get a look at her images in those stories. She was sentenced to die by lethal injection last year, but was hanging on by appeals. She made her choice, and she was even given a second chance, here.”

Biermann walked back around from behind his desk and stood next to Gabriel. “What you need to understand, Lieutenant Gabriel, is that not all enemies come in clearly marked packages. Once you realize that, you’re on your way.”

Gabriel squeezed his eyes closed. Criminals, serial killers, rapists, traitors. No matter, he knew the images of their faces, of their pain, of their deaths, would haunt him for a long time.
 

He opened his eyes. “On my way where, Captain? What is this all for?”

Biermann nodded slowly. “The ones who came before you have asked the same question. There are threats to the Federation, threats we know about, and ones we don’t, which can be even more dangerous. In order for us to protect the freedom of its citizens, the Federation needs the best in technology, intel, and training. And people, Mister Gabriel. The most valuable assets any military force can have are its people. People like you. We’re here to take the best soldiers to the next level. And,” he said with a mirthless chuckle, “the saying is you can never make a good omelet without breaking a few eggs.”

Gabriel looked at Knowles, whose face was now clouded with anger. His mind whirled again. This was all happening so quickly, he knew he needed to clear his head, or the adrenaline running through his veins would get the better of him, and Biermann might end up paying the price.
 

He turned on his heel and headed for the door.

“Lieutenant, where the hell do you think you’re going?” snapped Biermann.

Without breaking stride, Gabriel responded over his shoulder.

“I’m going to get my shoes.”

Chapter 12

Gabriel walked through the doorway only to be greeted by the taller civilian standing watch over a cleanup crew replacing wall panels damaged by the dual frag grenade blasts. The lights were on and the overhead recyclers hummed steadily, clearing the smoke. The stealth-suited body was gone, leaving behind a small dark stain where blood had pooled. A maintenance worker walked over with a bucket in his hand.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said as he edged past Gabriel and knelt to work on the stain.

The civilian looked back at Gabriel. “Hell of a mess. Hard to believe anyone survived.”

Gabriel turned away without answering and headed down the corridor, lost in his own thoughts. Yes, he had survived. Survived a test, which still gnawed at him. Was he that expendable that the Navy could throw him into a meat grinder of armed convicted felons? And a limpet mine to boot?

The walk back to the lab was over a third of a mile. In his mad dash to the target, it seemed to take merely seconds to cover that distance. Now, as he walked slowly past another cleanup crew — a man scrubbing blood off the floor in front of the elevator bay and a woman patching a mag pistol round hole in the wall panel — that same distance seemed to take days.
 

This had all been a test. A test to see if he was good enough to become a weapon, as Biermann had termed it — a weapon in the hands of the Federation.
Jesus, that sounds ridiculous
. It seemed like only yesterday he was graduating OCS in Newport, with DePalma and Cristoff at his side. Within months, they’d be dead, and he’d be reassigned. And now here he was, the product of some top-secret military procedure, walking back to the lab to get his shoes. Past the evidence of his handiwork.

The body of the woman — Erika Bustos, Biermann said her name was — was gone, but he could see where she had fallen. The cleanup crew hadn’t yet gotten this far down the corridor, and bits of burned armor lay in the middle of the floor. The remnants of his precise three-shot burst that had ended her life. He knew Biermann was telling the truth; he hadn’t needed to look up Bustos’s history. Something in the way he’d rattled off the names and crimes struck him as genuine.

So here she had fallen. A serial killer of over twenty men. Someone who was running at him firing an energy weapon, trying to end his life so she could extend hers. Could he blame her? No, not for the second part. For her crimes, she deserved the punishment. But for her efforts, did she deserve this fate? He wasn’t sure. He only knew that he was responsible for the very end of her life, and again deep down killing a man felt different. It was something he couldn’t quite put into words or even a concrete idea, it was just… a feeling.
 

The two walls outside the lab were complete wrecks. The wall where the limpet mine was attached was shattered and cracked, but the wall on the opposite side of the directional charge was completely destroyed. The panels had warped and snapped, and the heavy steel bulkhead beneath them was exposed and blackened.
 

He walked up to the mess and ran his index finger along the edge of one of the burnt panels. If he hadn’t reacted to the memory of Gilly’s death on the asteroid and recognized the mine for what it was, his upper body would have suffered the fate of the panels in front of him.

The steel bulkhead was peppered with pockmarks, evidence of the force of the charge. It wasn’t meant to scare, or injure, or maim. It was meant to kill. He’d been tested throughout his life, from grade school through high school, from Basic through OCS, in the field and in the classroom. But never had a test been this… deadly. He gave thanks to whatever god was watching over him, or whatever nano machines were running through him, that he passed.

He turned and walked into the lab. The initial attackers were gone, as the civilian informed Biermann, and the lab appeared just as it had before the assault. His boots were under the lab table, and his water bottle sat placidly where he left it. The tank’s lid was still raised, and his soggy briefs sat underneath it where he’d thrown them. But the steel locker he left open was closed, the one with Knowles’s bloody pullover in it. She was in on the whole thing, and had apparently done this with many others.

“Lieutenant?” A voice came from behind him.

Knowles. He walked up to the tank without acknowledging her and stared inside.
 

“Evan,” she said. “We need to talk.”

He stared into the tank. It was still wet, small beads of water remained in the bottom. He looked at the nodules along the side, the injectors that had begun the process.
 

“Zero point,” he said.
 

She walked up to the tank and stood on the opposite side. “It’s a lot to take in all at once, I know.”

He looked up. “How do you know? How many procedures have you done? How many of…of us have died in this damned test?”

She looked down into the tank before replying, and when she did, her voice cracked slightly. “You are the seventeenth person to come through here. I can name each and every one of them. Fourteen men, three women. To me, you are not weapons, or tools, or hammers. You are people. Each one of you different and unique.” She looked up and met his gaze. “Six died during the test.”

He ground his teeth together and leaned his forearms on the edge of the tank. The broken skin on his right arm protested as it stretched and began to bleed again. “Six? Jesus Christ. How can you…”

“Because it works. Because this program can do far more good than harm. Because…”

“You’re a damned doctor,” he said sharply. “How can you allow patients to die like this, knowing what they have to face? How can you put people through this?” He looked up at the ceiling. “And how many prisoners have died on your watch? Can you name each and every one of them, Moira?”

Knowles dropped her gaze again and paused for a long moment. “Biermann is a bastard. There’s no other word for him. But he’s right, and he knows what he’s doing. In the long run, this program works, and the product of this program must be tested before it goes into the field and puts other people at risk.”

He laughed. “Do you hear yourself? Product. It. You’re contradicting yourself, doctor. Either we are people, or we’re tools. Which is it? Do you know anymore?”

He turned from the tank and stepped over to the table. He reached under it and picked up his boots and began putting them on. He felt a wetness under his shirt, and remembered the mag pistol wound.
I’m a wreck,
he thought.
And this is a successful test?

“Evan, you have to understand. You of all people. You’ve been through death before, all the way back to your mother…”
 

He spun to face her. “Don’t ever bring up my mother,” he snapped.