Recon Marines III: The Marine's Doctor (30 page)

“
In the woodlands again?”
Molly’s mind raced, thinking of what they might find to help them
fight another battle with all the odds stacked against them. All
except the brains and the experience.

“
It doesn’t matter.” Mak
laced his fingers through hers, his calluses rubbing against her
softer skin. He didn’t sound worried and no longer whispered.
“We’ll prepare ourselves for them to cheat again. Shear knows her
men can’t beat us in a fair fight.”

Molly squeezed his fingers,
understanding he’d issued a challenge to Helen. It might work. Her
ego might accept the dare to not give her men superior
weapons.

Mak’s body relaxed against her, his
breathing settling into sleep. She’d seen soldiers able to do that,
fall asleep anywhere and immediately. But she wasn’t a solder and
no sleep came to her. Despite Mak’s boast to the hidden listeners
Molly knew he couldn’t defeat the giant men if they got their hands
on him. They would tear him apart.

****

“
We’ll give you a one hour
head start.” Shear looked down on Molly and Mak from her
hovercraft. Her armed guards made a wide circle around them. “Run
if you’d like.”

“
Are your men going to
hunt us using hovercraft?” Mak asked. He lifted his left arm still
chained to Molly’s right hand. “You must be frightened of what I’ll
do this time. How many are you down to now?”

“
Enough healthy men will
join this exercise. They’ll use whatever resources I decide.” Shear
tossed a handgun to the ground halfway between her craft and Mak’s
feet. “You’ll have the same weapon as them, but you’ll remain
linked to your lady love. But the time this training bit is
finished, our ride to the next base will be here. We heard from
them just an hour ago. They’ll make atmosphere within three
hours.”

Mak heard Molly’s sharp intake of
breath though he hid his disappointment. He’d believed Pender and
Box would have made it through. If Shear took him and Molly off
this world, they’d be dead before General Drant could track them
down if he ever could. “Do you think your men will need three hours
to capture a man and a woman chained together?”

“
Let us go, Helen,” Molly
said. “You’re a physician. How can you be so cruel to us and those
poor men you’ve destroyed?”

Shear laughed. “You’re so naïve,
Molly. The only reason you’re still alive is because I know I can
get Mak to do what I want with you as a hostage to his actions. As
far as being cruel, I’ve treated you kindly. I could have let my
men have their fun with you. I don’t care for that kind of activity
but we are at the ends of the universe here. After the fiasco at
the last base where one of the subjects overpowered a female
technician, I staffed the facility with males only. It does make it
a bit lonely for my security squadron.”

“
What about the men whose
minds you’ve destroyed? They’ll never be the same people again.”
Molly took a step toward Shear.

“
Why would they want to be
the same person? They volunteered for this program to be better
men, better soldiers.”

Mak pulled Molly back to his side.
“They’re nothing but killers. There’s nothing about soldiering left
in them.”

Shear narrowed her eyes. “I won’t
argue with something like you. My men are of human origin. All of
them have a real mother and father. None of them were borne of a
series of lab procedures resulting in unnaturally designed life
forms.”

Molly started forward again but Mak
held her back. If Shear’s reinforcements were on the way, he
couldn’t afford to waste time. Stalling had been to his and Molly’s
advantage when they expected General Drant would come to their
rescue. Now that they were on their own, they didn’t need to buy
time. They needed to kill Shear’s men. Killing all of them was
their only chance.

“
Tell your men to prepare,
doctor. We’ll be waiting for them.” Mak held her stare, the stare
of a woman of true evil.

Shear curled her lip. “They’ll take
you alive. I’m nearly done with the studies of your blood but we
can learn from you yet. Molly, you can join me in my research or
serve only as our means to keep your marine
cooperative.”

The hovercrafts returned to the
hangar, leaving Mak and Molly not far from the spot where they’d
first captured him. Mak waited until the enemy moved out of sight
before leading Molly at a jog toward the spot where he’d left her
hidden beneath the sod. “Is my backpack where I left
it?”

“
Yes. I didn’t see the
need for it since it had no weapons.”

Each step jarred Mak’s injured ribs
and bruised body though Molly’s bandages helped somewhat. He
spotted the disturbed ground. Molly had settled the flap of sod
over the pack though the men on the hovers should have spotted it.
After they’d discovered Molly on the planet, they should have
searched for her hiding place. Very incompetent
security.

Mak gritted his teeth against the pain
as he threw back the heavy turf and then pulled out his pack. His
AI device wasn’t exactly as he’d left it. Not surprising since
Molly had searched it. It powered up at his touch. A few taps later
and he’d set the beacon signal he’d told Box to expect.

Molly looked around his shoulder.
“Won’t Shear’s men pick that up?”

“
It’s on a channel not
normally used by the military, and they have no reason to believe
we have the capabilities to send a signal.”

“
Who do you expect to hear
it?” She sounded defeated.

Mak wouldn’t lie to her. “Whoever
comes looking for us will eventually come to this planet. We’ll
leave them everything we know.” He handed the tablet to her. “Put
in everything you have time to record. Then we’ll hide the AI and
hope someone finds it before the power runs dead.”

She took the AI and then stretched up
on her toes. Pulling his head down so their lips met, she gave him
a quick kiss. But he didn’t let her back away. She felt so good and
right against his body though it hurt all his bruises. His lips
found her again, kissing her as if it would be their last. “I’m
sorry I didn’t protect you better, Molly.”

“
Mak.” She framed his face
with her hands. “All of this is my fault. I should have recognized
Helen’s duplicity. I’d started to think of her as a second mother,
and all the while she was spying on me. I was duped and landed us
in this trouble. And staying behind to help you has only hindered
you.”

“
No.” He couldn’t let her
take on that guilt. “If not for your ideas, I wouldn’t have been so
successful against them in the forest. We’ve cut their numbers
down. Our only chance it to take out the rest of them. So, my
genius doctor lover, start working on a plan.”

“
Are we going to face them
here?” Molly stepped out of his arms and tapped information into
the AI. “I’ll just tell them we could be still alive and being used
as prey in their training games at their next base.”

“
We’ll move toward the
stream and keep their attention away from the AI.” Mak scraped away
some of the soil hanging on the roots of the sod flap. He placed it
over the emitting AI when Molly finished with it. Hopefully the few
inches of dirt wouldn’t inhibit the range of the device. Mak tucked
and smoothed the edges. They shouldn’t see it, not with their level
of competence.

Mak dug deeper into the pack. He found
the soft explosives still in the bottom. Despite the consistency of
the clay, the material was quite safe without a charge to set it
off. “Let’s head to the stream.”

He figured they’d used about twelve
minutes of their hour. He slung the pack over his shoulder so he
could use both hands. Molly handed him the gun and then let her
right arm go slack so he could move his with ease as hers flopped
around. He needed both hands for his next task.

The pistol magazine held fifteen
rounds. He ejected the shells from the gun and then he handed it
back to Molly. The next part was delicate as he dabbed a small
amount of the soft explosive onto each shell. Too little and it
wouldn’t do the job. Too much and the gun could explode in his
hand. It was delicate work to do while walking, but they needed
distance from the AI.

It took another ten minutes to reload
the pistol with its remodeled ammunition. Fifteen shots and every
one had to count.

“
What did you just do?”
Molly asked.

“
Made our nonlethal
bullets deadly.”

“
Good. I have some ideas
of my own.”

Mak stopped and looked at her. She
grinned at him. Even in the simple black uniform she wore, she was
the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Smart, brave and so very
human. Her compassion should be a weakness but somehow it made her
strong. “I love you.”

Her mouth dropped open. To Mak’s
horror, her eyes filled with tears. “You shouldn’t. You should hate
every doctor in my field.”

It wasn’t the reaction he’d expected
though he hadn’t meant to blurt out the words that had sprang to
the front of his thoughts. “Why should I hate you?”

“
Because of what was done
to you?”

“
I don’t understand. What
was done to me?”

Molly blinked away the tears, and a
smile curved her lips making him want to kiss her again. “What was
done to you? A group of scientists and doctors got together and
designed the most wonderful, terrific man in the world.”

Mak sorted through her words, not
quite sure of the meaning.

She laughed and tugged him onward.
“Come on. No sense in being chained to a genius if she doesn’t come
up with a great plan to save your life.”

****

Molly squatted down by the stream and
tugged loose one of the fibrous vines. “I saw this near the stream
where it cuts through the forest. It’s a vine that invades
waterways in some galaxies. Its stems are so hard that it can’t be
cut by anything less than a high-powered laser.”

Mak touched the plant and ran the
strip through his fingers. He pulled on it, freeing a ten-foot long
strand from the muck of the stream bank. He stood up and walked
along the stream pulling up more of the vine growth.

Molly had to trail along beside him,
the short chain swaying between their wrists. “Do you think you
could use some of that explosive to sever the links in these
shackles?” She feared her weight on the other end of that chain
would get him killed.

He shook his head. “It’s too risky.
Even if I judged the amount of explosive correctly enough to not
blow off our hands, the shrapnel created could cause serious
injury.”

“
I’ll slow you down,
Mak.”

“
We won’t be running from
them.” Mak pulled up the vine until a hundred foot section lay on
the bank. He then took out a small piece of the rubbery explosive
and a short matchstick from his pack. After striking the match on a
nearby rock, he stuck the unlit end into the explosive. He jumped
up and pulled Molly back from it.

A small, soft pop created a breath of
smoke, the only evidence of the charge going off. He led her to the
other end and severed it the same way. Then he wound the organic
cable into loops and slung it over his shoulder.

“
Do we have time to do
anything with it?” Molly asked as Mak helped her across the
stream.

“
We have twenty three
minutes left,” Mak said. “If Shear sticks to her word.”

“
No reason to think she
will since all she’s done is lie to us for this entire mission and
for all the years I’ve known her.”

“
She might.” Mak threw the
vine to the ground. “This exercise is about training her giants so
I think she’ll follow the rules she set up.” He used more
explosives to cut the vine into three equal lengths. His strong
hands twisted the wiry plant sections to form a loop at one
end.

The open plains offered little in the
way of cover, but Mak used the last of his explosives to blow a
hole in the ground. They settled into the shallow depression,
hunkered down so their attackers would need to close in to fire
upon them. Just in case they brought long-range firearms
along.

Mak took the gun in his free hand,
acting as if none of his injuries bothered him. Molly knew every
breath would cause discomfort for his ribs. He lifted his eyebrow
when he noticed her staring at him.

“
We’re ready.”

Molly swept her gaze over his serious
face. The bright sun turned the dark blue in his eyes to a deep
violet. She dared not imagine them failing and something happening
to this perfect man. She was glad he hadn’t broken the chains
binding them together. At least they would die together. At least
she’d had the chance to know him and love him.

Mak looked away toward the distant
hangar. “They’re coming.”

Chapter Nineteen

Mak set the lassoes within easy reach.
If he could swing them they might take out a few hovers. If he
could make every shot count. Fifteen bullets against an unknown
number of giants. And then Shear’s regular guards. He expected the
enemy would wear body armor, especially after their losses in the
forest. This time he had to kill instead of only disabling the big
men. The only way he could save Molly was to take the lives of the
entire nest of traitors, criminal and monsters.