Recon Marines III: The Marine's Doctor (5 page)

Box blinked and swallowed as if he had
a lump in his throat. He struggled to his feet and moved a few
unsteady steps back from Mak. “That thing was dangerous and Dr.
Drant was right behind you.”

“
We had no evidence it was
dangerous.” Mak scooped up his knife he’d dropped when he grabbed
Box. The corporal backed up another step. “Are you justifying your
disobedience with the conjecture that I couldn’t protect our
charges against one unarmed enemy?”

Box shook his head but no words came
from his mouth. The sour stench of fear sweat rose in the dry
air.

Mak noticed the doctors watching them
with wide eyes. “Pender, keep this room secure until I return. No
one leaves. Make sure Box doesn’t shoot me when I come back.” He
ran down the hall after the creature. Its gamey odor hovered in the
narrow corridor.

It had passed through the outer room
and then out the hall that led to the exit. Mak paused before
exiting, listening for any sound indicating the odd being’s
presence. Instead he heard rapidly approaching steps behind him.
Her scent chased the last remnants of foulness out the
door.

“
You were to stay behind
with Pender.”

“
Kory can’t order me to do
anything.” Dr. Drant leaned around him, peering out the
door.

Mak gently eased her behind him. “I’ll
go first, but when we return to the ship, we’re going to review the
command structure.”

“
I was thinking the exact
same thing.”

Despite her words, Mak suspected she
wasn’t really agreeing with him. He stepped out of the doorway,
centering himself so the doctor wouldn’t be exposed. The overgrown
path to the landing pad was empty. He found fresh scuffle marks in
the old leaves to the left of the path. The creature had run into
the trees, his strides almost twelve feet each. He could easily be
more than a mile away by now. Mak couldn’t track him with the
doctor on his heels.

“
I didn’t see any blood so
I assume Andy missed him. Are we going after him?”

Mak started back through the hall.
“You’re going back to the ship. Gather your people and what you
want to take along.”

She hurried after him. “We need more
time in that operating room. I’ll tell the others what to do and
you and I will go after that one.”

“
Why?” He stopped and
faced her. “Why go after it?”

He couldn’t interpret the expression
crossing her face. “Because we need to learn about it. See if there
are more of them. Did you see how confused he was? We need to help
him.”

Mak searched his experiences for a way
to interpret her expression or her words. “Help him
how?”

Her mouth turned down into a frown and
she shrugged.

Mak continued to the operating room,
nodding to Pender who stood alertly by the door. The other two
doctors had continued their work on the cadaver. About half a dozen
little jars filled with samples lined the head of the metal
table.

Corporal Box searched through the
metal cabinets along the back wall. He avoided looking at Mak
though he glanced toward Dr. Drant. Mak wondered at the best way to
discipline him. Sending him back to base would be inconvenient and
leave them short a crew member.

“
You have thirty minutes
to collect what you need. We’ll stay on planet for twenty-four
hours in case you need to return for more samples.” The three
doctors frowned at him but Mak ignored them. He crawled beneath the
desk he’d been searching earlier. The previous occupants had
thought they’d stripped the lab of anything that might give away
their plans, but like many civilians and even some soldiers, they’d
forgotten to take the galactic security chip affixed directly to
the batteries of the communication equipment. The emergency memory
unit’s existence wasn’t widely known but it stored all
communications of any unit using military grade devices. Admiral
Ben Lester should have known better.

The doctors spoke quietly amongst
themselves, all of them glancing now and then at Mak. Whatever they
discussed, Dr. Drant ended it with a firm order. “Get what we can
now, and we’ll catalogue it back on the ship.”

Mak put Pender at rear guard on the
return trip, trusting the young man to obey orders and stay alert.
He kept the corporal at his side. The sun greeted them when they
cleared the trees. Once they started through the grasses, Mak
switched with Pender and took up the rear position himself. Though
he heard and saw nothing, Mak knew something watched them from the
shadows. More than one thing.

Every instinct warned him to flush out
their stalkers. But if they all moved as fast as the interloper
into the lab, Mak could only stop them by shooting them. The
thought of killing them sickened him. How much choice had they had
in what they’d become? Perhaps no more than Mak had had in his own
creation. He watched the tree line thinking he might have more in
common with the humanoid creatures lurking there than the people
walking in front of him.

****

Molly gasped at the readings from the
tissue sample. The levels of testosterone alone would have driven
the man insane. The invasions into the frontal cortex had completed
the erasure of their humanity. Hector searched for DNA
manipulations in the bone samples they’d collected while Helen used
her AI device to enter the data they’d recorded on bone size and
density.

Had the people perpetrating these
treatments called themselves medical doctors? Molly didn’t know if
she wanted to continue the mission though she wouldn’t let her
father down by backing out. The study of diseases, vectors,
treatments and genetic predispositions were her main areas of
interest. Nature did enough all on its own to destroy human life or
distort it in lethal or crippling ways. Most people believed she’d
inherited her father’s steely interior, but Molly doubted her own
toughness when forced to witness and record these crimes against
humanity and breaking every oath ever taken by
physicians.

“
I would give a lot to
examine that live one,” Helen grumbled. “When are you going to tell
Lieutenant Big Shot how we run our discovery journeys?”

“
I’m sure your father gave
Mak strict orders about your protection, Molly,” Hector said. “And
after what we saw today, you have to admit we’ve never been on a
trip like this one. A dangerous trip, that is.”

“
Andy and Kory have always
been enough escort for us,” Molly said.

They worked quietly then, though Molly
tried to hear anything from the ship’s open door. Mak had kept Andy
outside when they’d returned from the trip. Molly had grown up
among the military establishment. Poor Andy’s firing of his weapon
wouldn’t be easily explained or forgiven by someone like Mak.
Molly’s father might have gone so far as to discharge Andy, but Mak
couldn’t do that out here in the middle of empty space.

Molly thought she should go speak for
Andy. He’d been an asset to her team in the past. But his actions
had shocked her. His attack on the creature seemed of fear and
anger. How could she trust him if he was so afraid of what they
might encounter that he would discharge his weapon against orders?
She sighed and went back to her work. Whatever Mak was saying to
Andy, it was a military matter.

“
Look at this, Molly,”
Hector said.

She left her workstation and went to
his side. A large viewing screen hung suspended at head
height.

Hector pointed to the greatly
magnified image of gene pairs. “This is the gene that influences
white blood cell production. It’s been changed but without seeing
their notes, I don’t think I can identify what enzymes were
involved and how they were altered.”

“
So part of their purpose
was to improve their subjects’ immune systems.” Molly wondered if
something good might have come from the inhumane studies. “It we
had a blood sample from the live one, we might figure out what they
did.”

“
Fresh blood would be
easier to work with,” Helen said. “But I don’t think that wild
creature is going to volunteer a sample.”

“
You’d have a sample if I
had shot it,” Andy said as he walked into the lab. He spoke quietly
and looked over his shoulder.

“
Are you finished getting
your balls busted?” Helen had never hid her disdain for the
corporal.

Andy curled his lip, but he looked
over his shoulder again. “The lieutenant has never worked in a
science unit before. He told me, ordered me, to send you to the
bridge, Molly.”

“
I wanted to speak with
the lieutenant anyway.” Molly started for the door, but Hector
stopped her.

“
Ask him how we can get
those blood samples. Maybe a Recon Marine can run that giant down,”
Hector said with a grin.

Though she knew Hector was at least
half joking, trying to lighten the mood after Helen’s and Andy’s
sour exchange, Molly considered the idea. What was the use of
having a Recon Marine along if they didn’t take advantage of his
unique skill set?

Mak sat in the pilot’s seat, working
on the ship’s AI unit. A thin wire connected the unit to the
rectangular object Mak had taken from the deserted lab. “Thank you
for joining me, Doctor.”

Now was the time to settle the command
issues. “I chose to join you. I didn’t come to the bridge because
you ordered it.”

Mak stood up and took a step to close
the distance between them. Did he seem taller here in the small
confines of the bridge? “Do you need to return to the lab for more
samples or will the ones you have suffice?”

Molly thought of Hector’s joke.
“Actually, what we really need is a blood sample from the living
lab experiment.”

Mak did the cute thing with his
eyebrow. Damn, when had she started thinking it was cute? And
adorable was a better description. “You must have a sample or you
would like a sample?”

Molly couldn’t lie even with a bit of
exaggeration. Not when it might mean something dangerous for him.
“A sample would give us a better look at what was done in the
lab.”

“
What was done? They
experimented on those men and then deserted the base, leaving their
victims locked up to starve to death.” Though his expression didn’t
change, something bleak and hopeless dulled Mak’s bright
eyes.

Molly hadn’t considered how the sight
of the dead lab experiments had affected Mak. He’d been nothing
less than professional. She’d half-believed those reports claiming
the Recon Marines didn’t have feelings like normal people. Surely
with his origins, the sight of the abused and abandoned…soldiers
had touched him more than anyone. “I meant what was done on a
cellular level.”

The AI chirped an alert but Mak kept
his gaze on Molly. “You have the samples taken from the
bodies.”

“
Fresh blood always makes
a better study.”

“
Perhaps you misunderstand
the mission we’re on, Doctor. The general told me we were to track
down all the sites where Admiral Lester and his criminal colleagues
had worked their illegal research and make sure there were no more
surprises like the Nemon person we saw in the vid. How would
getting a blood sample help us complete the mission?”

“
I understand the
general’s directives, but it would be wasteful to miss the
opportunity to do studies that might help develop new immunity
treatments. Perhaps we can glean something useful that would make
everything done here not so terrible.”

Mak tilted his head, silent for a
moment as if mulling her meaning. “I guess that depends on whether
you were one of the people inside those cages or outside
them.”

Molly’s heart did a funny little skip
at his stark words. True words. How aware had the lab’s subjects
been of their impending doom? “If we learn something from a blood
sample that can save lives, maybe their deaths won’t have been for
nothing.”

Mak looked away, staring out the front
view screen that showed nothing but grass and sky. “I don’t know if
I can get a sample without shooting them. I can try a stunner but
they’re so big I don’t know if it will knock them down.”

Molly hesitated to ask, and perhaps
Mak wouldn’t tell her, but she had to know. “Did my father order
you to kill anything we found on our mission?”

Mak swung his gaze back to her, his
eyebrow raised in its question mark. “The general would never issue
such an order.”

“
Even if we find someone
like that monster, Nemon?”

“
Lethal force will be used
if necessary for self-protection.”

Molly didn’t want the creature to be
killed in order to collect its blood. Then something Mak had said
registered in her thoughts. “You said they’re so big. Do you think
there are more than one of them still alive?”

Mak gestured at another screen on the
control panel. “Scanners show five of them watching from beneath
the trees. They must have been lucky enough to escape their cages
before starving, but they didn’t know anything but the
lab.”

“
What are they watching?
They can’t see the ship from there.”

“
I set Pender on top of
the rise to give them something to think about.”